STAR TREK: NF 13 - Gods Above

  She so very, very much wanted to disagree with the assessment. She wanted to take the ambrosia and throw it in his face. She wanted to further break her Vulcan training and laugh at him, or shout at him, or in some way loudly proclaim that he didn’t have the faintest idea of what the hell he was talking about. Yet she found herself picking up the ambrosia just the same, and looking at it, and seeing in it a salvation she hadn’t even thought possible.

  And then she was raising it to her lips, even as her mind screamed at her that this was totally insane, and he must be doing it to her somehow, must be inside her and manipulating her in ways previously thought impossible, but somehow none of it seemed to matter because the temptation to still the voices that cried out within her was just too overwhelming, and besides, it was in the name of science. What scientist worth her salt wasn’t willing to take a chance, to lay herself on the line at some point in her life, in the spirit of discovery?

  She bit into the ambrosia, and her first thought was disappointment, because the taste was nothing special, faintly honeylike. Nor did it seem to be having any effect on her at all. She chewed it a couple of times and swallowed, and still there was nothing untoward about it. After all that. After that incredible “sales pitch,” after all that buildup, she felt no different. ...

  Then she noticed that there was some sort of warmth starting to build in her chest. It was like a small ball of heat, coming together in her solar plexus, and then it started to radiate outward. Her hands and feet were tingling, and she was beginning to get light-headed. She gasped and staggered, and then she felt as if something was lifting her up. It was as he had said before, about waves and water, and she felt caught up in a surf, riding a crest of a massive wave that was carrying her higher and higher. She laughed and cried and shrieked all at once, and the voices of the Romulans, of her inner doubts, of everything that had gnawed at her and eaten away at her was gone for the first time in ages. There was just her, there was Soleta, and she was happy with being Soleta, and more, she was happy with Thoth for giving her this, happy with the Beings for existing, for providing her with this miraculous substance, and she knew that she would do anything, just anything that was required in order to make sure that she would never, ever have to stop feeling this way again.

  And somewhere in the far reaches of her consciousness, she knew that Thoth was laughing, but that was all right, because so was she. ...

  TRIDENT/EXCALIBUR

  I.

  SHELBY COULDN’T QUITE BELIEVE that she had heard Mick Gold properly. “The Tholians? Are you sure?”

  He nodded grimly, half-turning in his chair at ops. “No question. I recognize the energy signature of their ships a mile off. It’s them.”

  “Perfect.” Seated in her command chair on the bridge, Shelby was starting to wonder if there was anything about this day that could remotely go right. “Raise the Excal for me.”

  “They’re hailing us, Captain.”

  “Figures. Put them on screen.”

  Moments later the concerned face of Burgoyne appeared on the screen. “I will give you the courtesy, Captain, of assuming that you’ve come to the same conclusion as we?”

  “That the Tholians will be here at any moment?”

  S/he nodded. “An imminent Tholian arrival is never good news.”

  “Believe me, Burgy, I know that all too well,” she said grimly. “I suggest a three-way conversation with the Tholians as soon as they arrive.”

  “Agreed. I’ll follow your lead, if it’s all the same to you, since you are the ranking officer.”

  “I appreciate the vote of confidence. Where’s Mac?”

  “He just beamed down to the surface. Soleta’s gone missing and he’s going down to confront Lodec about it.”

  She felt her blood rushing to her temples, which was not an uncommon sensation for her. “He’s doing what?”

  “Going down to confront Lodec over Soleta’s disappearance.”

  “What type of security team does he have with him.”

  “None.”

  “What?” She hated that her voice had just cracked and the decibel level had been practically earsplitting, but it was too late for that now. “How could he—?”

  “He said that if this Anubis dispatched Kebron so easily, then a multitude of human guards wouldn’t accomplish anything except to make him look as if he was so afraid of the Beings that he required security backup.”

  “But he does require security backup, to provide him—”

  “To provide him what, exactly, Captain?” asked Burgoyne, sounding rather reasonable about it. “How likely is it that another security squad would fare better than Kebron? It was Captain Calhoun’s belief that the only thing that could possibly win the day was a show of total confidence. Bringing a security squad to ‘hide behind,’ his words, would simply send the message that he was afraid of the Beings.”

  “They damned near tore your vessel apart, Burgy,” Shelby reminded hir. “If you’re not afraid of them to some degree, you won’t survive.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Mac going down there to face a god single-handedly. That’s ... that’s so ...” Then she just shook her head in weary acceptance. “That’s predictably typical, actually. Can you raise him?”

  “We were about to try and do so when you contacted us,” Burgoyne’s voice came back, sounding a bit cheerful that Shelby wasn’t going to continue carping about Calhoun’s command decisions. “I felt that, at the very least, he should be kept aware of the situa—”

  Suddenly Burgoyne stopped and looked sharply to hir right.

  “Burgy? What’s wrong?” asked Shelby with concern.

  “I ... thought I saw, for just a second ...” But then s/he shook hir head. “Sorry. Must have been my imagination.”

  Shelby leaned forward in her command chair, her brow furrowed. “What did you think you saw, Burgy?”

  “I ... thought I saw McHenry standing near by the conn station, big as life. Wishful thinking, I suppose.”

  “Yes. I suppose,” said Shelby sympathetically. She was familiar with the phenomenon. The tendency to believe that a lost crewmate is standing there, big as life. It was similar to someone who had been deprived of a limb having sensations of a phantom arm or leg.

  Burgoyne shook it off and then, all business, said, “I’ll inform the captain. And then ... we’ll see what happens.”

  “Yes,” Shelby agreed. “We surely will.”

  II.

  “S/he saw me. I’m sure of it,” said McHenry.

  He circled Burgoyne on the bridge of the Excalibur, trying to regain hir attention. He was certain that, just for a heartbeat, the Hermat had seen him. But now there was no further response. Instead Burgoyne was busy finishing a conversation with Shelby, and then endeavoring to raise Captain Calhoun on the planet’s surface.

  The Old Father stood nearby, arms folded, watching McHenry’s gyrations with what seemed to be a distant sadness. “This one is rather unusual. It sees the world in a slightly different way than others. More animalistic.”

  “S/he’s not an ‘it.’ S/he’s a ... a s/he,” said McHenry. For some reason he felt slightly defensive.

  “I see. Still, for his ... her ... its ... ?”

  “Hir.”

  “... hir ... attributes ... that shouldn’t be sufficient, in and of itself, for hir to perceive you. Is there some other link ...” Then he paused and a slow smile spread across his face. “Were you and this individual ... intimate ... at some point? Yes, yes, I see by the look of chagrin. You were indeed. Were you at the time of your ... mishap?”

  “No,” said McHenry quietly. Even though Burgoyne was less than a foot away, s/he seemed ever so much farther. “No. That was over quite some time ago. S/he was interested in someone else. I was more of a ... a diversion, really.” Then, just as quickly, he shook off the somber mood. “But I don’t understand. I’ve been in hir sight line before this. Why now? Why is s/he perceiving me now, even if only for a moment?”

&n
bsp; “Because,” said the Old Father with grim satisfaction, “you’re getting stronger. There are forces, energies, available to you. You do not consciously know how to tap into them, but nevertheless you are gradually developing the ability to manipulate them.”

  “S/he’s not seeing me now.” He waved his hand in front of Burgoyne. S/he stared right through him.

  “Because s/he does not believe you are here. S/he has dismissed the notion from hir mind. If hir mind is closed to you, then s/he will not see you.”

  “My God, how many rules does this ... this whole thing have?” he asked in frustration.

  “Only one, actually,” the Old Father told him. “One that was best articulated by a human being named Descartes many centuries ago. Cogito, ergo sum.”

  “I think, therefore I am?”

  The Old Father nodded.

  “Believe it or not,” said McHenry dryly, “that isn’t as helpful as you obviously think it is. These energies ... do the Beings manipulate them as well?”

  The Old Father again nodded slowly. “Yes. With far greater sophistication and skill than you, but yes.”

  McHenry laughed, but there was a bitter tinge to it. “That’s just perfect, isn’t it. Artemis wanted me to become like you people. I said no. So what happens? I have my ‘mishap,’ as you call it, and I wind up becoming like you anyway.”

  “No. Not like us. You have far too much conscience. The Beings care only for themselves. But your growing strength is one of the things I’ve been waiting for.”

  “And what else?” McHenry suddenly felt a surge of anger. “What else have you been waiting for? How many layers are there to this? What haven’t you been telling me? How do I know that you aren’t working with them somehow? Maybe ... maybe you’re just part of some master plan to keep me distracted or in check, to stop me from—”

  “From what?” asked the Old Father, eyebrow cocked in curiosity. “Left to your own devices, what would you do? Precisely? If I’m holding you back from some action that you’d rather pursue, then let me be the first to tell you to go to it. Best of luck to you. I’ll wait here.”

  Stuck for some sort of concrete strategy to pursue, McHenry rallied as best he could. He circled the bridge once more as he spoke, this time walking carelessly through crewmen at their stations. “Why are we waiting here?” he demanded. “Captain Calhoun is on the surface. The Beings are on the surface. What the hell are we doing in the Excalibur? Can’t we just go down there, and—”

  “Yes. We can,” said the Old Father brusquely, suddenly seeming less avuncular than he had before. “Directly into the source of power of the Beings. Perhaps we elude the perceptions of your crewmates, but the Beings will detect the both of us immediately ... and put an end to you.”

  “Not to you?”

  The Old Father shrugged. “They can try. They would not succeed. You, on the other hand, are far more vulnerable, and they would make short work of you. Or else they might actually convince you to join them. Honestly, I’m not certain which would be the worse fate.”

  “So we continue to just wait?”

  “And you build power, yes.”

  “Until ... ?”

  “Well ... until that, for one thing.”

  The elder guard was pointing at the viewscreen, and McHenry turned to see what he was indicating.

  There was a glowing, triangular-shaped vessel approaching. McHenry could see the ripple in space which indicated where it had just dropped out of warp space.

  It was at that moment he realized that the ripple effect shouldn’t have been visible to him. For normal human sight, it was visible for perhaps half a heartbeat before a ship settled into normal space. But McHenry could still perceive the energy surges and space-fabric disruption long seconds after the ship had already dropped into “real” space. It underscored for him the steadily deteriorating impact that faster-than-light travel had slowly had upon the environment of space. It also made him realize that his senses were expanding in ways he hadn’t been aware of, or even thought possible.

  He didn’t know whether to be pleased about it or frightened, and settled for both.

  His pacing around the bridge brought him to a halt near Burgoyne. He stretched out a hand and allowed it to “rest” upon Burgoyne’s shoulder, then “stroke” hir face, knowing that Burgy didn’t feel it. He wondered if, at night, in the recesses of hir sleep, hir innermost private dreaming, Burgy ever gave any passing thought to their time together.

  McHenry had stepped aside willingly and immediately upon understanding that Burgy’s attentions had lain elsewhere. For a moment, he wondered if somehow his life might have turned out differently if he hadn’t been such a good sport about it. Very quickly, though, he set aside the notion. There was no point in dwelling on it. What was done was done. Burgoyne had truly wanted Selar, despite overwhelming differences in their personalities and odds to the contrary. And no power had been able to come between them.

  Except ...

  Well ... McHenry had power, didn’t he. He just hadn’t used it.

  And wouldn’t it have been interesting ... if he had?

  And as he mused on such things, the Old Father regarded him with a very worried air.

  DANTER

  CALHOUN ARRIVED OUTSIDE the Danteri Senate several minutes before Ambassadors Spock and Si Cwan, but didn’t enter immediately as he was busy attending to a rather worrisome communication from the Excalibur. From within the Senate house he could hear the voices of the various senators discussing and debating this, that, or some other damned thing. The specifics were of far less interest to him that what he was hearing from his ship.

  “The Tholians?” he said worriedly in response to Burgoyne’s voice over his combadge. “Well, that’s exactly what this situation needed. Estimated time of arrival?”

  “Five minutes, Captain. Shall we beam you up?”

  It was certainly his first impulse.

  But then he began to do something that he very rarely, if ever, did: He started to second-guess himself.

  It wasn’t as if he was leaving Burgoyne hanging for an extraordinary amount of time. In point of fact, the entire decision process occupied fleeting seconds. And what it dwelt upon was Captain Elizabeth Shelby.

  The truth was that Calhoun was still smarting over the way he’d handled the Excalibur’s rescue by the Trident. It had less to do with Shelby than it did with his own infernal pride. He doubted he’d have felt any better about the situation if it had been Jean-Luc Picard himself to the rescue. Nevertheless, he was sure that Shelby had taken his frustration as some sort of commentary on the fact that it was his own wife who had come riding to his rescue. That the true sting came with being beholden to her. That somehow, in his way of looking at the universe, she wasn’t worthy to be the one to bail him out.

  He didn’t feel that way. At least ... he wanted to believe he didn’t feel that way.

  And certainly matters had been exacerbated when he’d shown up at Danter. Her ire over his abrupt appearance had been quite obvious. Once again she took it as an implicit statement that she wasn’t up to certain challenges on her own. That she needed Calhoun watching her back. As far as she was concerned, Calhoun had made the careful and considered judgment that he was more qualified to handle the Danteri than she was.

  Again ... he wanted to believe he didn’t feel that way.

  So now another matter had arisen. The Tholians, notoriously belligerent, certainly up to no good, had come upon the scene. Both the Trident and the Excalibur were potentially at risk and Shelby, as ranking officer on the scene, would be the one to make the key decisions as to how to proceed.

  Unless Calhoun returned. In which case he would be senior officer, and Shelby would be required by Starfleet protocol to take her cues from him.

  It would make eminent sense for him to return to the Excalibur and take charge. And the chances were that Shelby would certainly see it that way. Not even think twice about it.

  Then again, there was alw
ays the possibility that she might take it as yet another tacit commentary on her capabilities.

  Certainly that wasn’t his problem. If she had such issues, then they were hers, not his. Except there was the possibility that he had contributed to them.

  And besides, this was his wife. Although she might well raise a protest to the very idea, in Calhoun’s mind that still entitled her to special considerations.

  There was no way that Burgoyne would have suspected that all of that had gone through Calhoun’s mind in the brief instants of silence. And then Calhoun said, “Tell Captain Shelby that I trust her to handle the situation. Calhoun out.”

  There. Just like that, Calhoun had made abundantly clear that he had every confidence in Shelby’s command skills. He was, after all, trusting the welfare of his vessel to her.

  “What situation, Captain?”

  Calhoun knew perfectly well that Si Cwan had been approaching him from behind. Even distracted as he was, very little happened anywhere in proximity to him that Calhoun was unaware of. He turned to see both Cwan and also Ambassador Spock a few yards away.

  As quickly as he could, Calhoun outlined what he’d just learned. Si Cwan simply shrugged, having little to no experience with the Tholians. Ambassador Spock, on the other hand, commented, “I am not entirely surprised. There are very few predicaments that the Tholians cannot exacerbate if they put their minds to it.”

  “You’re familiar with them?” asked Calhoun.

  Spock inclined his head slightly, signaling the affirmative. “When one reaches my age, Captain, one is hard-pressed to find anything with which I do not have at least some degree of familiarity.”

  “And what happened when you encountered them?”

  “They endeavored to snare the Enterprise in what was, conceivably, the most inefficient device ever utilized to attempt capture of a ship: a large energy web that required both an inordinate amount of time to construct and also the target vessel to remain in one spot during that entire time.”