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Then he became aware of other presences, distinct entities, drawing near to him. Hunched giants of smoke and indigo light, they wore auras of arrogance and malice like crowns of evil. The unholy host of spectral figures pressed inward. Then one spoke with a voice that wed the roar of an avalanche with the fathomless echoes of a Martian canyon. “Foolish little spark.” Rich with condescension, its Jovian baritone shook the station. “What made your kind think it could ever contain such as us? You are but glimmers in the endless gaze of time. Weak minds trapped inside sacks of rotting flesh and fragile bone. You are nothing.”
Xiong wished he had some irreverent reply, some witty retort for its taunts, but all he had was a mouthful of blood and a body shivering with hypothermia and adrenaline overload.
“So? Who are you?”
“I am the Progenitor, the wellspring of all that is Shedai. First among the elite.”
“Good for you.”
He stole a look at the console. Endeavour and Enterprise remained at impulse. Come on. Go, already!
The Progenitor loomed over him, its countenance one of perfect darkness, a black hole surrounded by sickly hues and pestilent vapors. Its approach sent frost creeping across Xiong’s console. “All your worlds will pay for your trespasses. Your kind will learn to fear us like never before.” A tentacle of smoke coiled around Xiong’s throat and solidified into a substance that felt like solid muscle sheathed in cold vinyl. Then it lifted him up against the ceiling and started choking him by slow degrees. “Beg for mercy, and I will grant you a swift death. Defy me, and I will keep your consciousness alive to witness every horror and atrocity we visit upon your pathetic Federation.”
The Tholian armada was in position. Its final siege was only moments away.
Xiong could barely feel his hands as he clutched at the Progenitor’s black tentacle. Looking down in terror and anguish, he glimpsed his console, which was now blanketed by a paper-thin layer of frost. He could no longer see the sensor readout’s fine details, but he could still see two bright blue points of light that he knew were the escaping Starfleet ships.
Then both dots vanished from the display. They’ve made the jump to warp!
He forced out a desperate whisper, “Mercy . . .”
The Progenitor dropped him. He rolled as he hit the floor, coming to a stop in front of his console. Fighting past the torturous sensation of a hundred needles of ice drilling through his intestines, Xiong fought his way back to his feet and slumped against his console. He had pla
“So,” the Progenitor mocked, “it’s to be a quick death, is it?”
Xiong looked up at the Progenitor and flashed a bloodied grin. “You have no idea.”
He pressed the autodestruct trigger, and his pit of darkness turned to light.
Bruised and aching, Admiral Nogura stepped out of the turbolift and onto the bridge of the Endeavour, only to be brusquely shouldered aside by the ship’s surgeon, Doctor Anthony Leone, and one of its nurses, who together carried out an unconscious and maimed young lieutenant on a stretcher. “Out of the way,” Leone said, his nasal voice tolerating no argument. The short, sinewy physician seemed to regard Nogura not as a flag officer but as an obstacle.
The turbolift doors hissed closed behind Nogura as he inched toward the center of the bridge. Captain Khatami appeared to have suffered her fair share of lacerations from airborne debris. Blood trickled down from above her hairline and seeped from a cut beside her right eye; numerous bloodstains tainted her gold command jersey in flecks and streaks.
Apparently having caught sight of Nogura out of the corner of her eye, Khatami swiveled her chair toward him. “Admiral, are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Though I might have to court-martial Lieutenant T’Pry
A curious look. “For what?”
“Saving my life,” Nogura grumbled.
Khatami looked slyly amused. “Good luck getting a conviction for that.”
“Did you finish evacuating the station?”
“Yes, sir, thanks to Kirk and the Enterprise. We—” A sudden flash on the main viewer snared her eye and snapped her back into command mode. “Klisiewicz, report.”
The science department chief stared with haunted eyes at the sensor display. “It’s Vanguard, Captain. It blew up and took most of what was left of the Tholian armada with it.”
The image on the main viewscreen changed to show an incandescent cloud of fire blooming against the starry sprawl of deep space, its rolling blazes littered with chunks of the once-mighty starbase and the broken husks of dozens of Tholian warships. Within seconds the storm of superheated gases had already begun to dissipate into the endless darkness.
The autodestruct, Nogura realized. Xiong must have triggered it from the Vault. He descended into the command well. “Are there any Shedai life signs, Lieutenant?”
“Negative, sir. Only a few Tholian life signs, and they’re retreating at warp speed.”
Khatami remained on edge. “What about the ships chasing us?”
McCormack replied, “They’re changing course, sir. Breaking off and heading back toward Tholian space at warp eight.”
That news seemed to bring a wave of relief to everyone on the bridge except Nogura. He stared at the fading glow of the antimatter-fueled explosion that had just wiped Starbase 47 and every remaining member of the Shedai out of existence, and wondered whether, in the long view of history, this five-year covert operation would be deemed a success or a failure, and if the i
Ultimately, it didn’t matter, he decided. It would fall to future generations to judge this undertaking and its consequences with the benefit of hindsight. There was nothing left for him to do now but file his final report as the commanding officer of Starbase 47 and await new orders.
Officially, as of that moment . . . Operation Vanguard was over.
EPILOGUE
A BRAVER PLACE
CALDOS II
Pe
“You really didn’t have to do this,” Pe
Reyes’s long hair swayed with the tempo of his rowing. “Yes, I did.”
“I could have waited another hour for the ferry.”
The former Starfleet officer drawled, “I just wanted you out of my house.”
Pe
Exertion deepened Reyes’s respiration, and his exhalations added ghostly plumes to the morning’s heavy shroud of pale vapor. Catching his breath, he asked, “So, I meant to ask: What was the fallout from the Tholians attacking Vanguard?”