“Give me the tricorder,” Theriault said, holding out her hand to him. He pulled the strap over his head and handed the device to her. As she began scanning the massive contraption, Pennington regained his wits long enough to raise his recorder and snap off several still images and some video.

A prismatic fury pulsed and scintillated inside the machine, revealing countless dark silhouettes twisting in its indigo flames. Pennington noted one form at the tip of each prong in the machine, while its center held a cluster of huddled shapes—all with the same unmistakable multilimbed anatomy.

“Tholians,” Pennington said as if it were an obscenity.

“I know,” Theriault said, watching the tricorder’s display as she slowly circled the machine. “They’re part of what makes this thing tick.” Just then the machine’s eerie disharmonies surged in volume and pitch, and high-frequency shrieks and wails surrounded them. Theriault winced momentarily and checked her tricorder again. “They’re in agony,” she said.

As if by reflex, Pennington replied, “Good.”

She turned her head and glared at him. “Excuse me?”

“What?” His temper flared. “I don’t care what Starfleet said about my story, the Tholians destroyed the Bombay.”

“That’s right,” Theriault said, her sweet demeanor replaced by righteous anger. “They did.” She pointed up at the fiery violet globe. “But those are sentient beings. I don’t care what your grudge is with their people, I’m not being rescued by someone who’d applaud torture.”

Shame warmed Pennington’s face as he stood accused in the purple glow of the machine’s fiery horrors. Her words stung him because they were true. Desperate voices, screeching like drill bits chewing through steel, pierced the machine’s funereal groan. He hung his head and made himself imagine the sufferings of the beings inside the flames. “You’re right,” he said to Theriault. “I let my anger get away from me. I was wrong…. Iapologize.”

“If you really want to say you’re sorry, you can help me find a way to free them,” Theriault said as she resumed scanning the towering artifact.

At a loss, he watched her. “How?”

“Look for some kind of control interface,” she said.

A majestic voice, like the roar of falling water married to the rumble of a stirring volcano, quaked the cavernous chamber and brought the pair to a halt. “Your efforts are for naught. Only the Serrataal can command the First Conduit.”

Pennington turned, suddenly cognizant of an amber glow casting his own shadow far ahead of him.

Looming over him and Theriault was a spectral giant rising from, and seemingly composed of, a polychromatic cloud of vapor. Bands of light, like miniature aurorae, orbited its body, and a golden radiance spread upward behind it. Its countenance was masked in a blinding shine brighter than the sun.

While the petrified journalist stood all but Gorgonized in the colossal entity’s gaze, Theriault stepped between them and spoke to it in a familiar tone. “Can you control it?”

“I can.”

“Then you can free the beings inside it,” she said.

A hard note crept into the radiant one’s mountainous baritone. “Not without causing great harm to the Colloquium….The Kollotaan are your enemies. Why do you wish them freed?”

Pennington cut in, “Because your machine is hurting them. They’re being held against their will and tortured.” He noted Theriault’s sidelong glance of approval. “We believe both those acts to be immoral. And we’re begging you for their freedom.”

Me, begging mercy for Tholians, Pennington marveled. To his surprise, he suddenly felt less burdened than he had in months.

The shining titan directed his attention at Theriault. “Do you also plead for the Kollotaan’s freedom?”

“Yes,” she said. “Can you return them to their ship?”

“I can,” he said after a brief pause. “And I will.” He ascended above their heads and drifted toward the screaming machine. “The others are coming. There is nothing more you can do here, little sparks. Flee to your friends. My partisans and I will do our best to shield your escape.”

Theriault grasped Pennington’s shirt sleeve and pulled him back toward the passageway that led out of the chamber. At its threshold, she turned back and said to the being, “Thank you.”

His last word was an irresistible command: “Go.”

Another skull-sized chunk of broken stone ricocheted off the top of the Rocinante. Quinn ducked by reflex and watched sandy debris scatter onto the ground behind him. Crouched under his ship, he made a few final adjustments to the impulse motivator, slammed the access panel shut, and locked it in place.

He gathered his tools and hauled the heavy toolbox back toward the aft ramp, noting with concern the speed with which fractures spread through the surface on which his ship stood. His pace quickened as he climbed the ramp. Time to get the hell outta here.

The aft ramp lifted shut with a slow, pathetic whine as he stowed the toolbox in the main compartment, which still stank of scorched metal and burnt duotronic cables. From the cockpit he heard Terrell talking to someone on the comm. “Can you see where you are? Any landmarks outside?”

“Not yet,” a woman replied, her voice shaking as if she were talking while running. “We’re still looking for a way out.”

“Keep the channel open,” Terrell said. “As soon as we get a lock on you, we’ll come get you.”

“Will do,” the woman said as Quinn returned to the cockpit. Terrell acknowledged him with a questioning look.

Settling into his seat, Quinn said, “We’re mobile. What’s goin’ on?”

“He found her,” Terrell said. “Now they have to get into the open so we can evac them.”

Firing up the engines, Quinn said, “They better do it fast, this place is fallin’ apart.” Several gauges on Quinn’s console flickered sporadically as he tried to conduct his preflight check. He slapped the console, and everything stopped flashing.

A buzzing from the overhead panel alerted Quinn to an incoming signal on the ship-to-ship subspace channel. He patched it in to the main speaker and heard a woman’s voice squawk through a loud scratch of static. “Rocinante, this is the Sagittarius. Please respond.”

“This is Rocinante,” Quinn said. “Go ahead.”

The next voice on the channel was Captain Nassir’s. “Mr. Quinn, have you found Commander Terrell?”

“A-firmative,” Quinn replied. “He’s right here with me.”

“Then I recommend you lift off and follow us out of the system immediately,” Nassir said. “We have company—a Klingon battle cruiser. They’ll make orbit in less than two minutes.”

“No can do,” Quinn said, looking at Terrell to confirm they were in agreement. “We got a lead on your girl Theriault, and my friend Tim went in to get her.”

“Send us their coordinates,” Nassir said. “We’ll beam them up before we break orbit.”

“Sorry, Captain,” Terrell said. “Too much interference. We can’t get a signal clean enough for transport. We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

Nassir’s anxiety was apparent. “However you do it, if you aren’t under way in the next sixty seconds you’ll be going toe-to-toe with a Klingon battle cruiser.” In a more somber tone he added, “Clark, I’m serious—we have to go.”

Terrell muted the channel and looked at Quinn. “It’s your ship,” he said. “That means it’s up to you. If we don’t leave now, we’ll be an easy target for the Klingons.”

Guiding the ship forward out of its cover inside the hollow tower and back into the maelstrom of rain and lightning, Quinn said with conviction, “I ain’t leavin’ Tim here.”

“Then let’s go get him,” Terrell said. He reopened the channel to the Sagittarius. “Captain, we’re going in to get Pennington and Theriault. If you have to break orbit, go. We’ll take our chances with the Klingons.”

Quinn accelerated and slalomed the Rocinante through a flurry of lightning strokes. He glanced at the tracking display on the navigation computer and made a mental note of the general bearing and range to Pennington and Theriault’s communicator signal. A dense cluster of collapsing towers and causeways blocked a direct route, forcing him to circumnavigate the disintegrating metropolis.