Somewhere inside the array, he heard one of the crystals shatter.
His communicator beeped twice on his belt. Keeping watch over the crumbling array, he pulled out his communicator and flipped it open. “Xiong here.”
“Mister Xiong, this is Lieutenant T’Prynn. Are you ready for transport?”
The first narrow tendrils of dark energy snaked out of the machine’s core. Primal fear rooted Xiong in place and left him paralyzed. Watching the black liquid creep upward, he knew it would be only a matter of moments until it shattered another crystal, and another—then all the Shedai would break free, and there would be no hope of ever containing them again.
T’Prynn’s voice cut through the dire wailing of the Shedai. “Mister Xiong! Do you copy? Are you ready for transport?”
Startled back to his senses, Xiong replied, “Negative. I . . . I have to finish something.”
“The rest of the crew is being beamed out as we speak. Endeavour is holding position until all personnel are accounted for. How long until you’re ready?”
An entire row of crystals shattered and rained to the floor in shards. A vast cloud of unnatural black smoke roiled inside the isolation chamber, its inky swirls swimming with violet motes of energy, its entire mass seething with violence and malice.
Xiong fought the temptation to trigger the self-destruct sequence right then. Instead, he forced himself to patch in a feed from Vanguard’s passive sensors, revealing the positions of the Endeavour and the Enterprise, the circling mass of the Tholian armada, and the escaping convoy of civilian vessels escorted by the Sagittarius.
“Tell them I won’t be coming,” Xiong said.
It was the only choice he could live with. If he set a long-enough delay on the self-destruct timer to permit the two Constitution-class starships to reach minimum safe distance, he couldn’t be certain the escaping Shedai wouldn’t disable the system after he left. If he triggered it now, he would doom the two starships and everyone aboard them to a fiery end. His only way of making sure he’d contained the threat he’d helped awaken three years earlier was to stand over it and personally drag it down into oblivion.
“Captain Khatami refuses to leave you behind,” T’Prynn said several seconds later. “Stand by while we establish a transporter lock on your communicator.”
Cracks began to form in the transparent enclosure of the isolation chamber, the wall of triple-reinforced transparent steel that the engineers had assured him was impenetrable.
Xiong realized the Endeavour’s crew would never abandon him as long as there remained a chance that they could pluck him from danger, and he had no time to explain the true nature of the threat before them. He couldn’t take the chance that they would steal him away and leave the Shedai free to terrorize the galaxy for another aeon.
He dropped his communicator to the floor and crushed it under his heel. Putting his weight into it, he ground the fragile device beneath his boot until nothing remained but broken bits and coarse dust.
Inside the isolation chamber, the array collapsed like a house of cards in a gale.
A symphony of shattering crystal filled the air.
Then came the darkness.
T’Prynn watched Xiong’s communicator signal go dark, and then its transponder went off line.
Over the comm, one of the Endeavour’s transporter chiefs was in a panic. “Vanguard! What happened? We’ve lost your man’s signal!”
“Stand by,” T’Prynn said. “I’m trying to isolate his life signs using the internal sensors, but he’s inside a heavily shielded area of the station.”
“Make it quick,” the chief said. “We’re being told it’s time to go.”
Massive interference from the starbase’s overloading reactors and numerous radiation leaks from battle damage made it difficult for T’Prynn to get a clear reading from the station’s lower core levels. Then the signal resolved for a moment—long enough for her to confirm that the Vault’s antimatter-based self-destruct system had been armed, and that the secret laboratory was awash in the most concentrated readings of Shedai life signs she had ever witnessed.
If Xiong was doing what she suspected, then speed was now of the essence.
A final check of her panel confirmed that all the other personnel who had made it to the evac sites had been beamed out. She reopened the channel to the Endeavour.
“We’ve lost Lieutenant Xiong,” she said. “Retreat at maximum speed as soon as I’m aboard. One to beam up. T’Prynn out.”
Kirk swelled with admiration for his crew. Asked to do the impossible, they had carried it off with aplomb, unleashing the Enterprise’s formidable arsenal against the Tholian armada despite being locked into a circular flight pattern with no margin for evasion or error.
Even as the ship had lurched and shuddered beneath a devastating series of disruptor blasts and plasma detonations, chief engineer Montgomery Scott had kept the shields at nearly full power, and helmsman Hikaru Sulu hadn’t wavered an inch from the close-formation position Kirk had ordered him to maintain between the Enterprise and the Endeavour. Ensign Pavel Chekov’s targeting had been exemplary—not only had he dealt his share of damage to the Tholians, he had even picked off several of their incoming plasma charges, detonating them harmlessly in open space several kilometers from the ship.
Every captain thinks his crew is the best, Kirk mused with pride. I know mine is.
Lieutenant Uhura swiveled away from the communications panel. “Captain, we’re being hailed by the Endeavour. Captain Khatami’s given the order to withdraw at best possible speed.”
“Then it’s time to go,” Kirk said. “Sulu, widen our radius, give them room to break orbit. Set course for the convoy, warp factor six.”
Spock stepped down into the command well and approached Kirk’s chair. “Captain, sensors show the Endeavour’s warp drive is off line. She will not be able to stay with us.”
“Sulu, belay my last.” Kirk spun his chair toward Uhura. “Get me Captain Khatami.”
A thunderous collision dimmed the lights and the deck pitched sharply, sending half the bridge crew tumbling to starboard. Kirk held on to his chair until the inertial dampers and artificial gravity reset to normal. “Damage report!”
Spock hurried back to his station and checked the sensor readouts. “Dorsal shield buckling. Hull breach on Decks Three and Four, port side.”
Uhura interjected, “I have Captain Khatami, sir.”
“On-screen,” Kirk said. As soon as Khatami’s weary, bloodstained face appeared on the main viewscreen, Kirk asked, “How long until your warp drive’s back on line, Captain?”
The transmission became hashed with interference as Endeavour weathered another jarring hit. Khatami coughed and waved away smoke. “Any minute now. Go ahead without us.”
“With all respect, Captain: Not a chance. Signal us when you’re ready for warp speed. We’ll cover you till then. Kirk out.” He glanced at Uhura and made a quick slashing gesture, and she closed the transmission before Khatami could argue with him. “New plan. Sulu, stay on the Endeavour’s aft quarter and act as her shield until they recover warp power. Chekov, concentrate all fire aft—discourage the Tholians from chasing us. Spock, angle all deflector screens aft. Everyone else, get comfortable; we’re in for a very bumpy ride.”