“The shuttle explosion seems to have destabilized the Eye,” said Tuvok as the third shock wave hit the ship. “The established counterpulse is not effective. I am attempting to compensate.”
The fourth jolt hit just as the turbolift doors opened and sent Troi and Vale stumbling onto the bridge.
Imzadi!Deanna sent to him along with a flood of deep emotion nearly as powerful as the waves of force currently emanating from the Eye. There was another presence there though, an unfamiliar, incredibly orderly set of thoughts and emotions that hit him like a fist.
Deanna?he sent, but she brushed his thoughts aside.
No time, she sent back. Explanations later.
He watched, puzzled, as she moved right to Tuvok’s tactical station and began conversing with the Vulcan in low tones. The conversation was entirely technical with Deanna evidencing knowledge of Titan’s systems that Riker hadn’t known she possessed.
Vale threw herself into the chair on his right. She, like Deanna, looked like hell, but, also like his wife, she was very much alive.
“Welcome back, Commander,” said Riker, glancing back at Deanna, still in deep earnest conversation with Tuvok.
“Thank you, sir,” said Vale. “Sorry we’re late.”
“Just in time, actually,” said Riker, still distracted by his wife’s odd behavior.
“It won’t work, Counselor,” Tuvok’s voice said over the chatter. “The shuttle’s warp core explosion-”
“I can compensate,” she said, obviously desperate. “I can key the right corrections, but you have to let me do it now.”
Without waiting for an answer, Troi elbowed Tuvok aside and began recalibrating Titan’s counterpulse.
At first the Vulcan meant to continue his objections, but when he saw what she was doing, he fell in with her, adding supplementary code to her modifications.
“I need phaser control,” said Troi absently. Her hands moved like lightning across the console, and Tuvok was pressed to keep her pace.
“Here and here,” said Tuvok, gesturing. “Counselor, how are you accomplishing this?”
“It’s not me,” she said. “It’s Jaza. And I’m losing him. We’re only going to get one try at this.”
“At what?” asked Riker.
In response, Tuvok and Troi simultaneously activated both the phasers and the newly recalibrated counterpulse. The pulse wasn’t visible, of course, but the twin beams of phased energy were. They lashed out across the intervening darkness, striking the Eye at its core.
Where they hit, a soft golden glow began to spread outward across the surface of the Eye until the glow had replaced the red and blue oscillations completely.
“Not yet, Najem,” said Troi softly. “Stay with me.”
The glow grew as they watched, becoming brighter and brighter until it was difficult to look directly at the viewer. Troi entered second-by-second modifications to the counterpulse while Tuvok modulated the phaser frequencies, muttering corrections to each other as they went.
“Almost,” said Troi. “Almost…”
The glow from the screen became oppressive. The light was everywhere now, nearly bright enough to overload the viewer.
“Aili,” said Riker, shielding his eyes. “I think it’s time to go.”
“Yes, sir,” said Lavena, already punching in escape vectors.
Then, before she could finish, Troi said, “Now!”
Tuvok input the final modulations to the phaser frequency, and the whole world went white. Titanshook as violently as a paper sailboat in a hurricane.
Alarms went off all over the ship as wave after wave of unknown energy again tore through it and its crew.
The main viewer, finally overtasked from projecting such a powerful image, shut down, plunging the room into relative darkness.
“Get that viewer back online,” said Riker when the shaking stopped. Presently the main screen lit up again, and instead of the Eye or the storm it had created, there sat the planet Orisha, a study in lilac, white, and powder blue.
The Eye of Erykon was gone.
“Local quantum conditions are returning to normal, Captain,” said Tuvok as the sensor data came in. “The flux wave has dissipated. May we stand down from Red Alert, sir?”
Riker nodded but said nothing. What was there to say? They had finally won through, but at such a terrible cost it was difficult in that moment, for him, for any of them, to want to raise a glass or cheer.
Troi let out a low moan and collapsed, exhausted, into Tuvok’s waiting arms.
Chapter Sixteen
It took only a few days for the Orishans to pull down the Spires and demolish their fold devices. Without the Eye hanging over their heads they had no need to conceal themselves or the civilization they had built.
Titanhung in orbit over the planet, helping to coordinate rescue and relief as the survivors of the apocalypse made their several ways to the surface they had avoided all their lives.
There were fewer of them now, hundreds of thousands fewer, but there were enough to begin again and more to continue this time what they had started with fear.
“It is something we can never repay,” said A’yujae’Tak. “You are truly the servants of Erykon.”
“I thought you were done with all that,” said Vale. She wasn’t challenging the insectoid, only concerned for their future well-being. You didn’t need the orb in the sky to instill fear, especially in those for whom fear came as naturally as breathing.
A’yujae’Tak made an untranslatable noise that Vale took to denote amusement. “You do not imagine, because we know the Eye was not truly from Erykon that we have given up following Erykon’s ways,” she said. “Erykon is. We are the Children of Erykon.”
They offered to leave some people behind-an engineer or two, some social planners, just to help kickstart them on their long ascent. It would be difficult to rebuild everything, impossible in some cases for generations.
The Orishan refusal was polite but firm.
“It is our fate,” seemed to be the consensus. “We will make it ourselves.”
Well. You have to admire their grit.
While the gathering of stragglers and refugees continued, A’yujae’Tak gave them the run of the planet should any of them wish to take a stroll. It was a beautiful world for all its strangeness, and many of the crew took the opportunity to put their feet on some honest to goodness soil.
She found him in the wreckage quietly scanning and occasionally digging. He hadn’t seen her since that night in the sensor pod when she’d offered him comfort.
She asked what he was up to and he made some noises about getting clean scans of Charon’s bones to provide Starfleet HQ with the most accurate record of the event. It was a Cardassian thing, and he didn’t really expect her to understand.
She told him she did understand, that news of Mr. Jaza’s strange but beautiful sacrifice had already been distributed via the rumor mill. If he didn’t mind the company, she said, she would be pleased to help him search for some remnant of their friend’s presence here.
He didn’t mind the company.
He found her loitering around the skeleton of the central Spire, intentionally keeping well clear of the others who had come down for some time in the sun.
“You did well,” he told her. “Exceedingly so.”
She, of course, disagreed. She had lost Jaza to time and his Prophets. She had nearly destroyed the Ellingtonand almost taken herself, Troi, Vale, and Keru with it.
Had she not been able to count on his ability to understand and improvise, none of them would be here now.
“I have much to tell the Mother,” she said, but expressed doubt at how much of it would please.
They walked together for a while, mostly in silence, listening, as if for the first time, to the myriad happy and mysterious noises that every jungle makes.