Reap the Whirlwind

Four of the routes away from the intersection appeared to lead outside. A few seemed to lead only to other intersections. But one was unique, and it captivated her. At its end was a vast chamber steeped in a deep violet glow and inky shadows and resounding with a macabre groaning choir punctuated by keening atonal wails of noise. By her reckoning, that chamber was inside the massive domed structure that the Apostate had pointed out to her, the one he had called the First Conduit. If, as she suspected, it was linked to the artifacts that Starfleet had found throughout the Taurus Reach and the device that Xiong had found on the Tholian battleship, she wanted to see it up close.

A broken obsidian body slammed to the floor outside her crevice and shattered into billions of crystalline shards.

She recoiled—and felt something grab her shoulder. Instinct coupled with training made her duck, plant her feet, and throw her elbow backward. It hit something pliant, and she looked back to see a slim, handsome, fair-haired human man in civilian clothes holding his bloodied nose.

“Brilliant,” he said, his voice rendered nasal by the fact that he had pinched his nostrils shut.

Her hands covered her mouth, first out of surprise, then out of amusement. “Sorry,” she said, gri

“Mostly,” he said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. He offered her his other hand. “Hi, I’m Tim Pe

She almost laughed out loud.

“You’re kidding, right?” “Um…I don’t think so.”

“Why would Starfleet send a reporter to rescue me?”

He shrugged. “Kind of a long story. I’ll tell it to you when we get back to the ship.”

Still slightly suspicious of this fortuitously arrived stranger, she asked, “How’d you even find me?”

Pe

Her eyes locked on to the tricorder. Making a visual observation of the peculiar chamber under the dome might have merited the risk of pressing on, but the ability to make a scan of it with a functioning tricorder was definitely worth it. She looked back across the intersection. The battle had shifted, and the passageway to the darkly shimmering enclosure was clear. Despite knowing that the situation could change at any moment, it was the chance she had been waiting for.

With a jerk of his head, he urged her, “Come on, time’s ru

“No,” she said, grabbing his sleeve and pulling him with her into the intersection. “Let’s go forward.”

He’s undone us, raged the Wanderer. And for what? Flickers of life. Sparks that fade as soon as they are made.

She was high above the city, a sentient wisp tethered by a gossamer tendril to the dying shell of their collective corpus, watching and reporting on the tactics of the enemy.

She was an obsidian sentinel on a lower rampart, standing firm beside the Adjudicator, locked in a struggle both physical and essential with the unpredictable fury of the Myrmidon.

She was a blade of fire, searing and unstoppable, but already two transmogrifications behind the Thaumaturge, who squelched her blaze with his new body of frigid mist.

Flanking maneuvers, sneak attacks, holding actions. She directed a half-dozen more avatars, some gargantuan, others infinitesimal. Without the legions of the Nameless to keep the partisans of the Apostate in check, those Serrataal loyal to the Maker were taxed to their limits fending off the usurpers, who were more experienced and adept at dividing their essences.

Now the Apostate defends one of the Telinaruul within our own sanctum, she seethed. His blasphemies know no end.

Her mind’s eye sought him out, probed the galvanic textures of the conflict raging around her, questing for the malevolent presence of the betrayer. As she had suspected, he lingered close to the Telinaruul—then she noted with alarm that they were moving toward the heart of the Shedai’s power.

All her diverse forms evaporated like forgotten dreams as she focused herself into a single, fearsome guardian avatar. Rushing to intercept the Apostate and his fragile charges, she issued an urgent summons to the Maker and all her allies.

The Apostate guides the Telinaruul to the First Conduit, she warned them. He must be stopped.

A hundred minds followed hers toward the First Conduit. His treachery has gone far enough, the Wanderer decided. No member of the Serrataal had ever been permanently disincorporated, but the Wanderer resolved that the Apostate would be the first.

Lieutenant Ming Xiong rematerialized on the transporter pad of the Sagittarius before he’d even had time to rejoice at receiving a response signal to his tricorder’s emergency beacon. He had made the fortunate decision to keep the tricorder slung at his side ever since he’d made his survey of Jinoteur’s peculiar energy field and its co

He practically jumped off the pad onto the top deck. Cahow, who was ma

“Good to be back,” he said, scrambling over to the ladder. “Pardon me, have to get to the bridge!” She cocked a curious eyebrow at him but said nothing as he shimmied through the deck portal, planted his hands on the outside of the ladder, and slid down in one smooth motion. His boots struck the deck and produced a familiar, welcome metallic echo. He sprinted around the short curve of the main deck to the bridge.

The door slid open ahead of him, and he slowed, then lurched to a stop. Everyone on the bridge was too wrapped up in work to note his entrance.

“Range two hundred sixty-one million kilometers and closing,” Sorak noted dryly.

Nassir thumbed a comm switch on his chair’s armrest. “I need warp speed, Master Chief!”

“Workin’ on it, Skipper!”

“Captain,” Xiong said, “I’ve made a fascinating—”

“Bridy Mac,” Nassir said, ignoring Xiong. “Any contact with the Rocinante?”

“Negative, sir, still too much interference.”

Xiong was perplexed. The Rocinante? Pe

“Later, Ming,” Nassir said. He looked over his shoulder at Sorak. “Are the shields up yet?”

Sorak flipped several switches and checked his display. “Affirmative, Captain. Operating at seventy-

one-point-three-percent power.”

“Helm,” Nassir said, “get ready to break orbit. Bridy, keep hailing the Rocinante.”

As the curve of the planet retreated from the main viewer, Xiong asked Nassir, “Sir, what’s going on?”

“The Klingon battle cruiser Zin’za just entered the system,” Nassir said. “And if we don’t go to warp in five minutes, it’ll rip us to shreds.”

25

Pe

Dominating the cathedral-like, nearly spherical enclosure was a machine larger and more bizarre than anything he had ever seen before. Its top and bottom halves were like mirror images of each other: hulking, twelve-pronged claws of shining obsidian. In the open space between them burned a globe of dark fire so intensely violet that it left a golden afterimage on Pe