Feeling new purpose resonating through her, she redirected her concentration, once again attempting to reach outward, toward the distant stars, seeking the source of this fleeting, mysterious contact. Even as her consciousness protested this new demand on her still-depleted strength and she registered yet another momentary hint of song emanating from the Conduit, instinct told her who was responsible for these startling new sensations.
Telinaruul.
Without the Conduit to guide her, the Wanderer was unable to determine from where the feeble signal had originated. Still, she was certain it came from one of the worlds that now seemed to be infested with Telinaruulwho bore little resemblance to those beings who once had been subordinate to the Shedai. While she and her people had spent that unmeasured period locked in slumber, their realm had been invaded by these inferior beings. At first, the Wanderer was convinced that the Telinaruulcould easily be punished for their impudence, either defeated in battle and run off or obliterated altogether.
That underestimation had nearly been her undoing during one encounter with them. On the barren, ice-covered world they had defiled with their very presence and upon which they had seen fit to plunder the Conduit erected there, the Telinaruulhad very nearly destroyed her. They possessed knowledge and technology far superior to what she remembered from before the long sleep that for so long had claimed the Shedai. While their abilities alone were insufficient to overcome the power she wielded, the Wanderer had come to realize that their intellect was not to be misjudged. She would not do so again. When next she encountered them, she would do so with all of the force she could bring to bear, leaving nothing to chance. She vowed that the Telinaruulwould be crushed.
For that to happen, she would have to escape this lifeless rock, which had become her prison.
Taking stock of her condition, the Wanderer knew that her strength was far from restored. Her escape from the First World had weakened her to a degree she had never before experienced. Even the encounters with the Telinaruulon other Shedai worlds that had left her depleted for reasons she still did not understand had not approached this level. In the time that had passed since her arrival here, she had recovered only a fraction of the energy necessary to escape this moon. Without the Conduits to aid and guide her, simply channeling her mind to listen for the songs was difficult. Any attempt to journey from the moon, even to the closest destination, would be an undertaking of such magnitude that the physical toll on her would be second only to the immense mental strain she would endure. Indeed, she knew the risks were so great that the passage might drive her to insanity, if she even survived at all.
None of this mattered, of course. Her loyalty to the Serrataaldemanded that she take whatever action was available to her. The Telinaruulmust be purged from all that once was Shedai. Once that was complete, the Enumerated Ones could return to their former glory.
The very thoughts, burning as they did in her mind, fueled the Wanderer’s emergent powers. Soon, she knew, she would be ready.
2
Briana Pham leaned back in her seat, feeling the vibrations of the Bacchus Plateau’s massive engines as the ship made the transition from warp speed to impulse power. The reverberations played across every surface of the compact bridge, rattling loose deck plates and even causing her coffee mug to tremble in the makeshift holder she had fashioned for it on her chair’s right armrest. Pham likened the shift to the vessel releasing a heavy sigh at the end of a protracted exertion. As always, she was unable to resist reaching out to give her helm console a reassuring pat.
“There, there, you big baby,” she said, her tone mocking. On the viewscreen before her, she watched streaks of multihued light recede to distant points against the impenetrable black curtain of space.
To her left, her copilot and second-in-command, Joshua McTravis, smiled and shook his head. “One of these days, you’re going to do that, and she’s going to buck you right out of that seat.”
“Maybe,” Pham replied as she reached up to brush a lock of her long black hair back from where it had draped across her eyes, “but not today.” She had no worries about the ability of the vessel to get her crew and her cargo wherever they needed to be, on time and in one piece. The ship had more than proven its mettle as part of her family’s deep-space transport business for four generations, benefiting from the loving care lavished upon it by engineers such as the two she currently employed as part of her crew. Compared with some of the longer hauls the Plateauhad endured during its many years of service, the three-month journey at warp five from Rigel X had been a walk in the proverbial park.
“Warp drive is shut down,” McTravis reported, sitting up in his chair and running his fingers across his own console. “We’re at point seven, passing through the fourth planet’s orbital plane.” He pointed to the trio of display screens dominating the section of console that sat between them. “Sensors show no other ship activity in the system, save for what look to be two transports in orbit above the colony.”
Pham nodded, satisfied. “That’s good to hear. Make our course for standard orbit.” Reclining in her seat, she allowed herself to relax, if only a bit. After the uneventful voyage from Rigel, Pham wanted nothing more than for the Plateauto complete its latest contract assignment with an equal lack of excitement. From what she knew of their current destination, the colony on Lerais II was less than a month old, but it already was expanding at a pace far greater than similar settlements spread throughout the Taurus Reach. Still in its infancy, the colony also had managed to escape the turmoil that had engulfed other planets in this region of space.
Thanks to subspace news feeds received while the Plateauwas in transit, Pham and her crew had read of Gamma Tauri IV's utter destruction at the hands of a joint bombardment carried out by Starfleet and Klingon vessels. According to the incredible story published by the Federation News Service, the order to annihilate the planet had come from the commander of the massive starbase constructed in the Taurus Reach in a bid to contain what had been described as a threat from an unknown species. By all accounts and according to the latest FNS reports, the potential threat to Federation security was on a scale unlike anything encountered in the history of human space exploration, dwarfing even the Earth-Romulan conflict of more than a century ago.
And yet here we are,Pham mused, flying head-on right into the thick of it.
The unsettling revelations that had come in the wake of the tragedy that befell the colony on Gamma Tauri IV, along with the other news of increased traffic by Klingon vessels throughout the region, had done little to assuage her unease about traveling through what might well be evolving into the epicenter for interstellar conflict. While the situation had been anything but tranquil from the outset—something Pham and her people knew firsthand from previous contracts with other Taurus Reach colonies—these latest developments were something else altogether. News disseminated via the FNS and messages received from other transport vessels traversing the region were saying the same thing: the Klingons were on the move, spreading out and tightening their grip.
With this in mind, she had discussed with the Plateau’s crew the possibility of abandoning their contract and reversing course. It was a notion with which she naturally disagreed, of course. Though born on Earth, she had spent less than a third of her life in her home country of Vietnam before following her father to space and eventually succeeding him as the Plateau’s master. Hard-won experience had taught her that uncertainty and even danger were occasional realities of the job, which was not to be abandoned in the face of adversity. Despite her own unwillingness to abandon the obligations to which she had committed herself and her ship, she knew she could not simply continue the voyage without giving her people opportunity to voice their concerns.