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  Dedicated to the memory of actor Michael “Kang” Ansara

  Historian’s Note

  This story takes place in August 2269, a couple of months after the Starship Enterprise returns from a rescue mission at Camus II (“Turnabout Intruder”) and approximately six months after the destruction of Starbase 47 (Star Trek Vanguard: Storming Heaven).

  Whom the gods love dies young.

  —Menander, Greek dramatist (341–290 B.C.)

  1

  Gazing into the eyes of her infant daughter, Nimur almost forgot for a moment that calamity was stalking her. The baby girl gazed up at Nimur with innocent delight, her golden eyes opened wide to drink in a world whose every detail was new to her. Nimur stroked her hand over the downy silver fuzz that covered her newborn’s teal-colored scalp, then traced the paths of pale yellow spots that ringed the girl’s ears and met at the nape of her neck before continuing down the center of her tiny back—the same coloration and pattern shared by all Tomol.

  Kerlo, the girl’s father, placed his hands on Nimur’s shoulders. “She needs a name.”

  Nimur craned her head back to smile at her mate. “I was thinking of ‘Tahna.’”

  Her suggestion conjured a bittersweet smile from Kerlo; it had been the name of one of their dear friends who recently had been claimed by the Cleansing. “If you like, yes.” He sat down beside Nimur and tickled the ­baby’s tummy and the bottoms of her plump feet. Tahna squeaked and cooed, then flailed her tiny limbs as a broad smile lit her face. A grim cast overtook his lean, handsome face. “Have you thought about who we’ll name as—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it yet.” A glare from Nimur gave Kerlo pause.

  It took him a moment to regroup. “We can’t put it off.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we don’t have much time left—either of us.”

  It was too painful for Nimur to face head-on. She had always known this day would come, that this was the cruel shape of her life, as it was for all Tomol. So had it been for countless generations, all but preordained, stretching back to the time of the Arrival.

  “I only just birthed her, Kerlo. I can’t give her up yet.”

  “No one says you have to. But we need to choose her Guardians.” Kerlo circled around Nimur and kneeled in front of her. He rested his hands upon her knees, a gentle and comforting gesture. “It took us so long to have a child, Nimur. Almost too long. We can’t afford to wait any more. We need to make a decision.”

  Nimur hugged her infant gently to her chest, then rocked slowly forward and back. The selfish part of her wanted to spend every waking moment reveling in her beautiful child, and in her wildest fantasies she imagined being able to watch Tahna grow up and become independent. But that was not the way of things. That was a dream born of delusion, a specter of false hope.

  She kissed the baby’s head. “What about Chimi and Tayno? They’d take care of her.”

  Kerlo was noncommittal. “I don’t know them. But if you trust them, so do I.”

  A twisting sickness churned in Nimur’s gut. Deciding to whom she and Kerlo would give up their precious child, the last proof they had ever lived, made her ill. Despite ages of tradition, it felt like a crime against nature, against her very essence, to surrender to such a demand. All she could do was salve her conscience with empty declarations of hope. “They’ll be kind to her, I think.” A foolish optimism sprang up inside her. “Should we try to have another?”

  The mere proposition made Kerlo blanch. “At our age? Nimur, we’ve both passed our seventeenth sun-turn. Conceiving new life at our age is forbidden.”

  “At our age? Kerlo, look at us! We’re better and stronger than we’ve ever been!”

  He shook his head in stern refusal. “You know the law as well as I do.”

  “The law, the law, the law! Nothing but words scratched on a rock!” She clutched his arm and squeezed it. “You and I are real! Our lives”—she nodded at Tahna—“her life, is real.”

  “So are the lives of everyone else we know.” Kerlo slowly lifted his hand and pressed his jade-colored palm to Nimur’s face. “Think of the Endless, the ones who defied the Wardens. Remember how much pain they caused? Do you want to do that to everyone we care about?”

  Nimur closed her eyes. Shutting out the world around her was easier than facing a future in which she had no place. “Can we talk about something else?”

  Kerlo stood and paced around their hut, which they had inherited from a long line of Tomol who had come and gone before them. “We need to get ready for next year’s crop rotation. And not a moment too soon, if you ask me. The north field needs a fallow season. But what I’m really worried about is irrigation. Last year was the driest I’ve ever seen, and the scribes say it was one of the driest on record. If we don’t get some decent rainfall next spring, I don’t think the tubers will make it to harvest season. We might have to pull them in the summer before—”

  His voiced faded over the last few words, then he fell silent.

  The sudden gulf of quiet was split by Tahna’s frightened wailing.

  Nimur clutched the infant closer in a futile attempt to comfort her, but the maternal gesture only made the baby’s cries louder and more shrill.

  Kerlo plucked the infant from Nimur’s hands and retreated across the room, then edged backward through the doorway to the bedroom they shared. He made no sound, but his face was marked by the same brand of horror that split the air in Tahna’s panicked shrieks.

  “What is it? What’s happening?” Nimur’s questions were acts of denial, a refusal to accept what she had long known to be inevitable. Kerlo grabbed up a walking stick of jungle reed and brandished it like a weapon. Still, Nimur refused to believe that this moment, whose arrival she had dreaded most of her life, was at last upon her.

  She turned toward a crude mirror propped up in the corner and saw the horrible truth.

  Her eyes burned with the crimson fire of the Change.

  It was the destiny of all Tomol, if they lived past their seventeenth sun-turn. None escaped the Change. It came on without warning and, within a single arc of Arethusa’s twin moons, turned all whom it afflicted into fiends of flame and suffering. No prayer, no sacrifice, no offering could spare a Tomol from its baleful touch—and now it had laid its burning hand upon Nimur.

  She fled from the hut and she ran, without direction or destination, into the sultry embrace of the jungle. Her feet followed familiar trails—around the great menhirs of the first Tomol, past the sacred Caves of the Shepherds, and over the Peak of Shadows. Thick foliage snapped as she sprinted through it, breaking each leafy embrace with a twist of her body. The erratic patter of her footfalls was lost beneath her frantic tides of breathing and heaving sobs of panic. She crested the steep-faced cliff and fell to her knees on a rocky ledge.

  Rage coursed through her. Why? Why do our lives have to end when they’ve only just begun? She hid her face in her hands as she wept. There was no path left to her now but the Cleansing, a willful descent into the ancient blue fire. She would be expected to give up her only child, her future, her hopes and dreams . . . her life. All to satisfy a law no one could overrule.

  A defiant streak inside her compelled her to deny the high priestess and her Wardens the satisfaction of condemnin
g her to the holy flames. I could leap from here and dash myself on the rocks, she told herself. She stared down over the edge, at the angry sea tearing itself across jagged stones where the cliff’s base met the water, and she knew she could never do it.

  The sea beckoned, but Nimur knew that no matter how strongly she felt the ocean’s call, her path lay in the Well of Flames. Every instinct she possessed told her that her daughter needed her alive—but every lesson she had ever been taught told her the hour of her death was at hand.

  2

  Senior Chief Petty Officer Razka waved a slender, web-fingered hand at the glistening cocoon that stretched from deck to overhead in the corner. “You can’t tell me this is regulation.”

  It was a fair statement. If pressed, Lieutenant Commander Vanessa Theriault would have to concede the ship’s lead field scout had a point. The svelte, red-haired first officer of the Starfleet long-range scout vessel Sagittarius leaned at a slight angle to look past Razka at the freshly spun shell of silk. All she could muster was an awkward shrug. “It’s . . . different.”

  A low hiss signaled the lanky Saurian’s displeasure with Theriault’s assessment. “Spoken like someone who no longer shares quarters.” He had been assigned to Compartment 10 with the ship’s two newest crewmembers: an Arkenite science officer, Lieutenant Sengar Hesh, and a Kaferian helm officer, Ensign Nizsk. It was the latter who had caused the Saurian noncom such dismay. Despite his seniority as a member of the ship’s crew, in this instance Razka had the misfortune of being the lowest-ranked occupant of the berthing space, and therefore had the fewest options. He crossed his scaly arms. “What if I awaken tomorrow in a tomb of silk?”

  Theriault skewered Razka with a scowl of reproach. “Raz, you know Kaferians don’t eat flesh. Their diet consists almost entirely of fruit sugars.”

  His vertically slit eyelids blinked slowly, an affectation Theriault recognized as a sign of distrust. “So they say. But on my world, anything that spins a web should be feared.”

  “That’s not a web, it’s a cocoon. Or, to be more precise, a hibernation sac.”

  “I see no significant difference.”

  “The former is for capturing prey. Nizsk uses that for a sleeping bag.” Theriault suppressed her growing frustration with the discussion. “Look, I’m telling you: It’s harmless.”

  The scout folded his elegant hands behind his back and leaned down, close to the Martian-born human woman’s face. “Then perhaps she could move into your quarters.”

  “That’s not happening.”

  “I see no reason for you to refuse.”

  “I’m the XO. That’s all the reason I need.” She poked her index finger against Razka’s narrow but rock-hard chest and nudged him backward, out of her personal space, with firm but gentle pressure. “You’ve never been squeamish before. Do insectoids creep you out that much?”

  He motioned for Theriault to step inside ahead of him. “Go wake her up.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He gestured at the massive cocoon suspended in the corner. “If you wish to discover the root of my objection to sharing my quarters with the ensign . . . I invite you to rouse her.”

  It was an odd challenge, one that sparked Theriault’s curiosity. Her admittedly limited knowledge of Kaferians told her there should be nothing to fear, but a more primitive node of her psyche kicked into gear upon hearing Razka’s suggestion. It sounded like a trap, and that got her blood pumping and her adrenaline flowing. Regardless, it would be unbecoming a first officer to shrink from the dare of a noncommissioned officer. She edged past Razka. “All right, then.”

  The Saurian followed her inside, but he lingered at least a few paces behind the trim young woman. Every quality of hesitation, every reservation telegraphed by his body language, implied that he knew something she didn’t about what was to come. She eyed him with suspicion, then stepped up to the cocoon and listened for any sign of activity from within. This was Nizsk’s scheduled rest cycle. As Theriault suspected, all was quiet inside the silken shell.

  She took a breath and made two gingerly taps on part of the cocoon that had dried to form a chitinous and slightly tacky patch. Within seconds there came a scratching sound from inside the cocoon, and then a fracture split the tall, cigar-shaped sac from base to tip. Two thick grayish green claws poked through the split at chest level and pried the cocoon open.

  As the sac was cleaved in twain by Nizsk’s emergence, a torrent of pungent, gelatinous goop spilled out of the cocoon. Razka backpedaled ahead of the nose-wrinkling slime, but all Theriault could do was watch it submerge her booted feet up to her ankles as it spread across the deck. The Kaferian helm officer and navigator stepped out of her hibernation sac glistening with the fluid, which dripped and oozed off her, adding to the mess underfoot.

  Mandibles slowly flexing, Nizsk turned to face Theriault. The Kaferian’s native language, which to human ears was an impossibly fast series of clicks with barely any variance in pitch, was instantly parsed by the universal translator Nizsk wore around her neck. The device rendered her words in a pleasant, rich feminine voice. “Yes, sir?”

  Theriault lifted one foot from the sea of goop. It pulled free with a disgusting squelch of broken suction. “Ensign, what is this that just poured out of your sleep sac?”

  “Regenerative jelly, Commander. It repairs damage to my exoskeleton, keeps the plates and connective ligaments supple, and purges bacteria and contaminants from my spiracles.”

  The first officer eased her foot back down with a soft squish. “And does this happen every time you retire for a sleep cycle?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s an involuntary function of my exocrine system.”

  “I see.” A slow nod was followed by a reluctant turn to face Razka. “My apologies, Chief. There was nothing about this in her personnel file.”

  Razka lurked just outside the open doorway, whose slightly raised lip for the sliding door’s guide track was all that held back the leading edge of the slime flood. “Apologies do not interest me, Commander. I should not have to trudge through these secretions to reach my bunk—even if they are the product of an officer’s glands.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Nizsk’s translator conveyed a tone of deep regret. “Forgive me, both of you. I did not realize I had imposed such an inconvenience. I have never been asked to share quarters before.”

  Theriault combed her fingers through her hair while she considered the situation. “The bad news is, this is a really small ship. We have nowhere else to put you.”

  Razka hissed. “You could give her your—”

  “Hush.” The first officer turned back toward Nizsk. “We can’t put you in the cargo bay, since we sometimes have to depressurize it. Besides, we need all the storage space we can get on this boat.” She looked back at Razka. “Any other complaints I need to be aware of?”

  He shook his head. “No. Just this.”

  “Fine.” She slogged out of the muck-filled compartment. “I’ll have the master chief put a vacuum-powered drain in the deck by her cocoon.”

  As she passed the lead scout, he asked, “And what of that repugnant smell?”

  “Beg some incense off Taryl, or learn to use a mop.” She slapped the tall reptilian’s shoulder as she stepped past him into the corridor. “I can’t solve all your problems, Chief.”

  • • •

  The silicon bearing had a mass of only a few dozen grams within the artificial gravity field inside the Sagittarius, but to the part of Lieutenant Sengar Hesh’s mind that levitated the bearing by forcing subtle changes to its wrinkling of space-time, it felt like a ponderous weight.

  Suspended by the force of his admittedly limited telekinesis, the metallic sphere rotated slowly. The Arkenite science officer sat cross-legged against the forward bulkhead of the Archer-class scout ship’s cargo bay and smiled at the distortion of his reflection on t
he metallic sphere’s brilliant surface. The image of his three-lobed head bent around its curved exterior, rendering his likeness in the stretched perspective of a funhouse mirror.

  Telekinesis was an uncommon talent among Hesh’s people, but even among the tiny fraction of Arkenites with psionic abilities, his own gift was considered minor, at best. He had never succeeded in manipulating anything with a mass greater than a hundred grams. Some of his classmates at Starfleet Academy had dismissed his special knack as naught but a “parlor trick.” To him, however, it was a source of comfort, a way to focus and relax his mind all at once. Whenever he felt his mental acuity deteriorating, his nerves fraying, or his mood souring, he tried to make time to get away and recover his mental and emotional balance by training his mind on a singular feat of simple levitation.

  A sharp gasp—the opening of a pressure hatch—­interrupted the soft thrumming of the ship’s engines and broke Hesh’s concentration. His silicon bearing dropped to the deck with a dull clang and rolled away from him, toward the shaft of light beneath the now-open ladderway to the main deck. As he uncrossed his legs and stood to pursue the escaping ball bearing, someone’s shadow eclipsed much of the light spilling down from the main deck. At first it was not clear who it might be, since all the personnel aboard the Sagittarius wore the same kind of olive-green coverall as their standard uniform. Each jumpsuit boasted a number of utility pockets on its torso and legs and bore the ship’s insignia patch—a bow-and-arrow graphic—on the right shoulder. No rank insignia adorned the uniforms. Their only unique details were their respective crewmember’s surname (or equivalent) stitched on a rectangular patch above the left breast.

  Hesh caught up to the rolling silicon bearing and scooped it up. He turned and recognized the person on the ladder as engineer’s mate Petty Officer Second Class Karen Cahow. The fair-haired, tomboyish young human woman flashed a warm smile at him as she bounded off the ladder. “Hey, Hesh. Whatcha doin’ down here?”