Star Trek: Vanguard: Storming Heaven Page 5

  Once inside, he heard the atonal playing more clearly. He skulked across the kitchen and stopped at the door to the dining room. Peering through its small, eye-level window, he saw T’Prynn sitting at the piano, her fingers hesitating above the keys as if she had never touched the instrument before. Her back was to him, so he couldn’t see her face, but the way she bowed her head and half clenched her right hand spoke volumes to Pennington about the frustration the Vulcan woman must be feeling. Most members of her species were psychologically inscrutable to him, but he had spent several months traveling incognito with T’Prynn after helping her escape Starfleet custody on Vulcan—a ruse that had involved her adopting a fake identity and then marrying Pennington to claim the legal benefits of Earth citizenship, in order to exempt herself from some of her homeworld’s more draconian security policies. As a result of the time they had spent together, he had learned to read the subtle cues of her moods in a way that very few others on the station ever had, or likely ever would.

  He recalled watching her play that piano, on that stage, just a couple of years earlier. Her virtuosity had stunned him as much as her choice of portfolio—songs drawn from catalogs of up-tempo Terran blues and jazz, music of tremendous complexity and expressiveness. She had been able to inspire crowds to standing ovations after performing a single number. Her long, graceful fingers had tickled those keys with subtlety or pounded them without mercy, but always with passion and precision. Now she hunched over the immaculately polished Steinway and poked at it like a child prodding a dead animal with a stick, a portrait of uncertainty and sorrow.

  Pennington nudged open the kitchen’s swinging door and sidled into the dining room, hoping to approach a bit closer before announcing himself. As soon as he let the kitchen door close, T’Prynn stopped, turned her head, and stared directly at him.

  He was annoyed at being found out so easily. Damn that Vulcan hearing.

  T’Prynn stood and hurried down the stage steps, then slalomed through the tables and chairs toward him. “What are you doing here, Mister Pennington?”

  Hooking his thumb backward, he said, “I heard the music from outside.”

  “And you used it as a rationale for trespassing?”

  He recoiled from the accusation. “What about you?”

  She stopped in front of him. “I’m here with Manón’s permission.”

  Looking up slightly to meet her confrontational stare, he was struck by the imposing quality of her dark beauty. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  She took him by the arm and pulled him back the way he’d come, through the kitchen. “If you have no further business here, I’d suggest—”

  “Hang on,” he cut in, stumbling to keep up with her. “Maybe I can help.”

  “I don’t need your help.” She pushed open the rear exit and shoved Pennington through the doorway, back out to the alley behind the cabaret.

  He spun back to face her and grabbed the door’s edge. “I remember how you used to play. You stopped after your breakdown. They’re connected, aren’t they?”

  “Most insightful,” T’Prynn said. “But I don’t wish to discuss it.” She tried to shut the door, but he held it open, albeit with great difficulty. “Let me go.”

  He shook his head. “Not till you talk to me. I was there the day you saw the Malacca get bombed. I saw the look on your face, and I knew it, ’cause I’d seen it on mine the day I lost someone I loved.” His words seemed to crack T’Prynn’s stern façade, and he saw a fleeting instant of vulnerability in her eyes. Remembering her sexual orientation, he took a chance on a wild guess. “What was her name, T’Prynn?”

  She didn’t answer him, but the momentary anguish that possessed her features told him he had deduced the nature of her distress. Visibly struggling to recover her composure, she succeeded only in transforming grief to fury. “Go home, Tim.” Then she yanked the door closed with overwhelming force, and Pennington let it go to prevent her from amputating his fingers.

  The door slammed shut, and he heard its lock click into place.

  Everyone makes their journey alone.

  6

  Nogura set the data slate on his desk, reclined his chair, and rubbed his eyes. It was the middle of the night, close to 0300, the scheduled launch time of the Ephialtes, and he was burning the midnight oil so that the Sagittarius and her crew would not embark for danger while he slept.

  There was no shortage of work demanding his attention. He had asked for a steady stream of hot tea and productive distractions, and his three yeomen had obliged him, one duty shift at a time. From 0800 to 1600, Lieutenant Toby Greenfield had piled his desk high with the latest news and administrative paperwork from the Federation’s numerous colonies throughout the Taurus Reach. From 1600 to midnight, Ensign Suzie Finneran had buried Nogura beneath an avalanche of reports from the station’s department heads, including maintenance, security, and engineering, as well as an update from Starfleet Command on the latest fleet deployments. He had found the criminal-activity reports especially entertaining reading, and so had saved most of them to enjoy while he ate his dinner.

  For the past three hours, he had been attended by his gamma shift yeoman, Lieutenant Lisa McMullan, a cherub-cheeked woman in her twenties. She managed to convey both joviality and professionalism with her easy manner and quick smile, and she had been intuitive enough to sense that as Nogura’s day dragged into its twenty-first hour it might be time to fill his docket with lighter fare. She had loaded a slate with all his unread personal correspondence from home and had even been savvy enough to secure the latest recording from his favorite jazz quartet back on Earth, an album of music that fused classical jazz styles with the Mardi Gras chants of New Orleans’ traditional Creole Indians. It was utterly unlike anything else Nogura had ever heard. Listening to it inside the refuge of his office, he marveled at the way a single piece of music could bridge the gulfs between centuries, cultures, and ideas.

  The buzz of his intercom broke the music’s enthralling spell. He turned down the volume and then opened the channel. “Yes?”

  McMullan replied, “You have a visitor, sir.”

  He furrowed his brow in disbelief. “At this hour?”

  “It’s Doctor Fisher, sir.”

  That was two bits of unexpected news in quick succession. “Send him in.”

  The door opened with a soft pneumatic hiss, and Doctor Ezekiel Fisher, the station’s chief medical officer, walked in and saluted Nogura with a data slate. “Evening, Admiral.”

  “Doctor. Everything all right?”

  Fisher stopped in front of Nogura’s desk, looking quite mellow. “Couldn’t be righter.”

  Nogura leaned forward and folded his hands on the desktop. “So. What brings you here at oh-dark-hundred?” He held up his hand to forestall Fisher’s response. “No, wait, let me guess.” After a pause for dramatic effect, he added, “I’m overdue for my annual physical.”

  The elderly surgeon grinned, his perfectly white teeth brilliant in the middle of his deep brown face. “Probably. But that’s no skin off my nose. Care to guess again?”

  “An outbreak of Typerian meningitis aboard the station?”

  Amused, Fisher shook his head. “Not that I’ve heard.”

  Nogura was too fatigued to continue with guessing or small talk. “Out with it, then.”

  Fisher handed him a data slate and waited until the admiral activated it before he spoke. “I’m resigning my commission and my post, effective immediately.”

  The news left Nogura dumbfounded. He put down the slate. “Why?”

  “The simple truth?” Fisher looked tired. “There’s nothing left here to make me want to stay.” He gestured at one of the chairs in front of Nogura’s desk. “May I?” Nogura motioned for the man to sit down, and once Fisher had settled into a chair, he continued. “I was halfway out the door to my retirement when this assignment landed in my lap. The only reason I took it was to be there for Diego. After all we’d been through, I f
elt like I owed it to him.”

  A veteran of many such obligations born of shared service, Nogura sympathized. “I understand. You and Commodore Reyes served together for a long time.”

  “Yes, we did.” Fisher turned thoughtful. “After I thought he’d been killed in the ambush on the Nowlan, I stayed here to look after Rana. I knew how much she’d meant to him, and I couldn’t leave until I knew she’d be okay.”

  Nogura had known that Fisher and Captain Rana Desai, the former ranking officer of the station’s JAG division, were friends, but he hadn’t really understood the context of their relationship until that moment. “I’m sure Captain Desai was grateful for your support.”

  A sad smile. “She was, in her own way.” His leaden sigh conveyed the totality of his exhaustion. “But now she and Diego are both gone—her back to Earth, and him to God knows where. And I’m here all alone.” He reacted as if to a private joke. “Isn’t that a funny thing to say? Sitting here, surrounded by thousands of people, and I feel alone.”

  “It’s not such a strange concept. Trust me: I speak from experience.”

  The surgeon leaned back and folded his hands in his lap. “Bottom line: I’m too old for this kind of work. It’s time for me to go home and spend the rest of my life with my family.”

  The admiral nodded in approval. “As noble a goal as any. Where’s home for you?”

  “These days? Mars. My daughter has a medical practice in Cydonia.”

  “Very nice.” Nogura picked up the data slate and skimmed its terse letter of resignation. “I’ll be sorry to lose you, Doctor. But I can’t fault your reasons. I’ll approve your resignation on an interim basis, but I can’t arrange your transfer home until Starfleet Command and Starfleet Medical sign off.”

  Fisher nodded. “I understand. There’s nothing harder to shake off than bureaucracy.” He eyed the slate. “I included a short list of attending physicians at Vanguard Hospital who I think would be qualified to take my place. For the time being, I’ve appointed my chief attending as acting CMO. You can decide for yourself whether you want to keep him or not.”

  “Fine.” Nogura hoped the advisory he was about to give didn’t prove too disappointing. “Just so you know, the Klingons and the Romulans have been playing hell with our commercial and civilian traffic out here lately. Everyone’s running behind schedule as a result. It might take a few weeks or even longer to book you a spot on a transport headed home.”

  The bad news drew a good-natured chortle from Fisher. “That’s all right,” he said. “Now I’ll have a chance to catch up on my reading.”

  Sleep eluded Captain Adelard Nassir. It had always been that way for him on the eve of a mission, but this assignment left him grappling with a peculiar blend of anxiety and restlessness. He tried to chalk it up to encroaching middle age, but he knew the root cause was his temporary lack of control over his circumstances. Shipping out, even into grave peril, was an exciting time for any starship commander. Occupying the center seat, with the universe stretching past on the main viewscreen, gave one a sense of possibilities, of facing one’s destiny head-on.

  On this occasion, however, the Sagittarius was being carried off in the belly of a great metal leviathan. Trapped inside the cargo hold of the Ephialtes, there was nothing Nassir or his crew could do. They weren’t in control of their fate, they were just passengers, and their ship naught but freight. It was a humbling experience, exacerbated by the open resentment and hostility of the civilian crew that had been pressed into portering them.

  Agitated and wide awake, the slim and short Deltan captain stepped out of his private quarters—a privilege limited to himself and the first officer—into his ship’s circular main passageway. He drank in the sounds of routine life aboard the tiny scout ship. To his right was the bridge, located at the leading edge of the ship’s saucer. He went left, past the unisex head and showers. Water was running in one of the stalls, and clouds of vapor billowed out of the open doorway, accompanied by deep and melodious singing. The voice belonged to the senior engineer’s mate, Salagho Threx. Nassir had been enthralled the first time he overheard the man belt out what he assumed were Denobulan folk tunes. Then he’d asked Threx to translate the lyrics and had been appalled to find the songs he’d so admired were positively obscene.

  Cabin 3—which was assigned to Doctor Lisa Babitz, the chief medical officer, and Lieutenant Celerasayna zh’Firro, the second officer and senior pilot—was silent. Cabin 4, on the other hand, rumbled with the sawing snore of Master Chief Ilucci. Nassir wondered how Ilucci’s cabinmates could stand it—especially Sorak, the elderly Vulcan senior recon scout, with those supersensitive ears of his.

  I guess people can learn to adapt to anything, Nassir figured.

  He kept on walking, past the lifeboat he prayed he’d never have to use, and then past the open space of the ship’s mess, which doubled as its conference room. Medical technician Ensign Nguyen Tan Bao sat alone at one table, picking at what appeared to be a reconstituted bowl of tofu stir-fry. Lieutenant Dastin sat on the other side of the mess, nursing a mug of something hot while reading a well-worn copy of the interstellar bestselling novel Sunrise on Zeta Minor. Each man wore the ship’s standard uniform, an olive green utility jumpsuit that had the crew member’s name stitched above the left breast and a Sagittarius insignia patch on the right shoulder, but no rank insignia. Because the ship’s typical mission profile was based on long-range pathfinding and reconnaissance, its fourteen-person crew survived long missions in tight quarters by taking a relaxed and highly informal approach to uniforms and protocol. Each member of the crew also had to be cross-trained in multiple mission specialties in order to qualify for a spot on the Archer-class vessel—even Nassir himself, who, in addition to being skilled in starship combat tactics, had trained in both cryptography and warp propulsion at Starfleet Academy.

  Passing beneath the ladder that led up to the transporter bay and engineering deck, as well as down to the cargo hold, Nassir heard sounds of life from both directions. From above came the voices of engineer Karen Cahow and science officer Lieutenant Vanessa Theriault. He couldn’t discern what they were saying, but the two women clearly found their discussion hilarious: Cahow’s effervescent, unabashed laughter pealed down the ladderway, drowning out Theriault’s more demure but still enthusiastic chortling.

  Wafting up from below was the huffing and puffing of exertion at a regular tempo. At first, Nassir worried he might be eavesdropping on a private moment between two of his crew—not something that had been an issue yet under his command, but neither was it verboten—but then he realized he was hearing one person exhaling with the rhythm of hard exercise. Stealing a look down the ladderway, he spied a scaly arm and leg practicing martial-arts forms and wondered whether his Saurian recon scout, Senior Chief Petty Officer Razka, ever got tired.

  He wandered on, past the dark alcove of sickbay, and then past cabins 10 and 11, which were both quiet. As Nassir neared Commander Terrell’s quarters, Threx passed by on the way to his cabin—stark naked in all his beefy, hairy splendor, a standard-issue white towel draped around his neck. The Denobulan smiled and nodded without a hint of self-consciousness. “Captain.”

  “Threx,” the captain said, keeping a straight face only through effort and practice. Unclothed flesh usually didn’t bother Deltans in general or Nassir in particular, but when it came to Threx, he wished the Denobulan hadn’t been raised in a subculture without a nudity taboo.

  Not seeing any point to another lap around the deck, Nassir drifted onto the bridge. All the duty stations were powered down and unmanned. Lieutenant zh’Firro was alone on the bridge, seated in the command chair and scribbling with a stylus on a data slate. She glanced at Nassir as he entered, and she tensed to stand. He held up one hand. “Don’t get up. I’m just roaming.”

  The beautiful young Andorian zhen smiled. “I understand.”

  He ambled over to her and peeked at the slate. “What’re you working on?”

&nbs
p; “Poetry.” She lifted the tablet with one blue hand and turned it toward him.

  A memory nagged at him. “You had some poems published last year, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, on Andor.” A humble shrug. “The critics liked them, but most people don’t seem to care. I guess I won’t be retiring on my royalties.”

  “Still, I’m envious. At least you have something to occupy your mind.” He folded his hands behind his back and looked around, at nothing in particular. “Without work, all I have right now is too much time to think.”

  She set down her slate. “What are you thinking about?”

  “This mission. Other missions. Philosophical quandaries.” A crooked, embarrassed smile. “Those and a hundred other dusty thoughts that roll around this dry old brain of mine.”

  Her stare was keen. To Nassir, it felt as if she could look right through his pretenses and evasions and know that what he wasn’t saying—what he was really afraid of—was that this mission might go wrong the way the Jinoteur mission had. That ill-fated adventure had cost the life of one of his recon scouts, and it had very nearly led to his ship’s destruction by the Shedai, followed immediately by a close brush with capture by the Klingons. Nassir was not by nature a superstitious man, but lately he had begun to feel as if his luck was running out.

  Finally, zh’Firro released him from the bonds of her gaze. Tapping her stylus on the side of the data slate, she asked, “Would it help if you had something else on which to focus?”

  The implication of her query intrigued him. “Such as?”

  She cocked her head and twitched her antennae in an utterly affected but still totally charming way that was uniquely hers. “I need a Vulcan word that rhymes with Uzaveh.”

  Nassir pondered that, feeling both amused and vexed at the same time. “Well,” he said, “that ought to keep me busy for the next few decades till I retire.”