Storming

Heaven

by David Mack

“SUBCOMMANDER, DESTROY THAT SHIP.”

“Yes, sir.” Dimetris lifted her voice and began belting out orders. “Helm, set intercept course, maximum warp. Weapons, stand by for a snap shot. Target their center mass. Centurion, stand by to drop the cloak on my mark.”

Curt acknowledgments came back to her in quick succession, and Centurion Akhisar nodded once to indicate he was ready. Commander H’kaan watched the tactical display in front of him and felt his pulse quicken with anticipation as the Valkaya closed to attack position on the Sagittarius. When they reached optimal firing range for torpedoes, he said simply, “Now.”

Akhisar dropped the bird-of-prey’s cloak, and the weapons officer unleashed a burst of charged plasma that slammed into the small Starfleet scout ship and knocked it out of warp.

“Helm,” Dimetris called out, “come about and drop to impulse. Sublieutenant Pelor, charge disruptors and ready another plasma charge. Centurion, raise shields.”

Pelor replied, “Weapons locked!”

Dimetris crowed, “Fire!”

In the scant moments between the order and the action, H’kaan glimpsed the sparking, smoldering mass of the Sagittarius on the bridge’s main viewscreen. Looks like we scored a direct hit with the first shot, he observed with pride. All those battle drills finally paid off.

Then a pair of disruptor beams lanced through the smoldering husk of the Sagittarius, and the ship erupted in a massive fireball that quickly dissipated, vanishing into the insatiable vacuum of deep space. When the afterglow faded, all that remained was glowing debris.

“Secure from general quarters,” H’kaan said. “Well done, all of you.” Much as he tried to remain detached and professional, H’kaan could not resist the urge to gloat over his victory. “Kiris! Send to Admiral Inaros, ‘Starfleet vessel Sagittarius destroyed.’”

Historian’s Note

The prologue and epilogue of this story are set in April 2270. The rest of the narrative transpires in 2268, coinciding with the events of the latter half of Star Trek’s third season.

Wisdom begins at the end.

—John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (1623)

PROLOGUE

THE SENSE OF RECKONING

APRIL 2270

CALDOS II

Diego Reyes stared through the amber lens of a short glass of whiskey in his hand. “How long did you stay on the station after I left?”

Tim Pennington’s answer was low and fraught with grim remembrance. “I was there till the end, mate. The bitter, bloody end.”

The two men sat in reclining chairs that faced the gradually rekindling embers in Reyes’s stone fireplace. A silence yawned between them, broken only by random pops from fresh logs splintering atop the banked fire and tossing short-lived sparks across the broad hearth. Reyes tilted his head back, splaying his shoulder-length black-and-gray hair across his headrest, and enjoyed the quietude. They had been conversing for hours, ever since the journalist’s unannounced arrival on the shore of Reyes’s private island, just before sundown. The former Starfleet commodore had done most of the talking, of course, filling in gaps and illuminating secrets of what had gone on behind closed doors during his final days at Starbase 47, which had become better known, within Starfleet and to the public, as Vanguard. Now it was late, and the air in the room felt heavy from the surfeit of conversation.

Pennington tucked in his chair’s footrest and pulled himself to his feet. The lean, fair-haired Scotsman straightened and stretched his arms toward the high, open-frame ceiling, whose rough-hewn beams gave off a fragrance reminiscent of fresh cedar. As the writer lowered his arms, he paused to massage his right shoulder, where his cybernetic prosthetic met his torso. He had been plagued with a persistent ache, he’d confided, ever since losing his arm in a furious Starfleet-Orion crossfire on Starbase 47 a couple of years earlier.

Reyes watched him pick up his glass and carry it to a frost-bordered window that overlooked the lake. Dappled by wind and moonlight, the black water seemed to stretch away forever into the night. There were no lights along the lake’s shore—at least, none visible from Reyes’s home—so at night the heavily wooded mainland became a distant memory, swallowed by darkness until the stars wheeled away to their daytime hiding places.

The younger man nursed his drink and stared out the window. “I’m not sure how much I’m really allowed to say about what I saw.”

Another sip from his own glass rewarded Reyes with a mouthful of smoky warmth and a complex sweetness that mingled notes of caramel, cherry, and oak. He savored the pleasant burn of the small-batch whiskey as he swallowed, then he fixed his gaze on a pair of dueling flames inside the fireplace. “If it helps, you were never here, and we never spoke.”

“I’d figured as much.” He spent a moment looking into his glass. In the ruddy firelight and dancing shadows, he looked much older to Reyes than he had just two years earlier. Reyes imagined that whatever events Pennington had lived through since then were to blame for the crow’s-feet that framed his blue eyes and the worry lines that creased his high forehead.

Poor bastard, Reyes reflected with dark humor. He’s starting to look like me.

Pennington turned away from the window and drifted back to the empty recliner. He stood beside it and watched sparks float from the fire and disappear up the chimney. “What was the last thing you heard from Vanguard before the news blackout?”

“I seem to recall something about a civilian shipping accident.”

That drew a crooked, wry grimace from Pennington. “Ah, yes. The warp-core breach on the Omari-Ekon.” He shook his head, then looked askance at Reyes. “I’d always wondered why it was allowed to leave the station, after what happened.”

Reyes avoided his guest’s accusatory stare. “I didn’t.” He recalled his escape from the Orion merchantman—the same incident that had cost Pennington his arm. With a little help from Starfleet Intelligence officer Lieutenant T’Prynn, Reyes had hacked the Orion ship’s navigational records and stolen the coordinates for the source of an artifact that Starfleet had learned could be used as a weapon against the Shedai, an ancient race that possessed fearsome power and mysterious abilities. Although his and T’Prynn’s exit from the ship had resulted in a bloodbath, the Federation had defused the ensuing political fallout by exonerating the ship’s owner, Neera, of culpability for the firefight and sending her and her crew on their way.

What none of the admirals at Starfleet Command had said aloud was that there was no way they were going to permit the Omari-Ekon to leave Vanguard’s jurisdiction with that kind of intel aboard as a lure for the Klingons, the Romulans, the Tholians, and whoever else might be vying for control over the Taurus Reach and its terrible secrets. Consequently, shortly after moving beyond the station’s patrol zone, the Omari-Ekon had suffered a sudden, disastrous mechanical failure, and, just as Reyes had suspected, the first ship to reach its smoldering wreckage had reported there were no survivors.