He heard the floor shift and creak in one of the church’s upper galleries, and whirled to see someone moving swiftly away, blending into the shadows. He vaulted over several bodies, yelling into his combadge as he moved. “Someone else is here, Mr. Bolaji. I am pursuing.”
He followed the running figure up a set of dark green, intricately carved wooden stairs, but he scarcely noticed the craftsmanship. He paused and set his phaser on heavy stun, unsure whether he was chasing down an adult Neyel or someone younger. Indeed, he didn’t know whether his quarry would turn out to be friend or foe.
A step broke beneath his weight, causing his ankle to twist sharply. He ignored the pain. Moving forward, he soon reached the upper level, where he stopped again, pulled out his tricorder, and began scanning. He found a biosign ahead, apparently in the third antechamber that lay straight down the hallway.
Akaar crouched outside the doorway to the antechamber, his weapon at the ready, then scurried inside. A Neyel dressed in bright blue robes was crouched on the floor, its hands holding a book, its eyes closed.
He’s some sort of cleric,Akaar thought. He allowed this mass suicide. Probablyencouraged it.Rage swelled within him.
“Get up!” he shouted at the Neyel.
The creature stood and turned, its hands clasping the book. Akaar noticed only then that this was a female Neyel.
“Why have you invaded our sanctuary?” she asked, her gray eyelids shuttering closed, then open again.
“Why are youwilling to kill your followers?”
“The Lfei-sor-Paric are believers. They go to the next level in peace, unsullied by the machines of Auld Aerth or elsewhere.”
“This world is being destroyed,” Akaar said. “There will be no more Oghen within the next day or so. And your religion will die with you unless you come with us.”
The woman tilted her head in what Akaar interpreted as a gesture of incredulity. Or perhaps curiosity. “Our worldmay end, but wewill not. And we are at peace with that.”
Akaar shook his head. “The children down there didn’t have the chance to make that decision for themselves.”
The cleric looked at him—or perhaps through him—before responding. “You don’t know whatour children are capable of. Their sacrifice is as meaningful to them as the one you made many, many Oghencycles ago.”
Akaar felt a chill go down his spine. How could she possibly know?
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“You made a sacrifice for someone who mattered to you then, but you were pulled back from the abyss. Your faith sustained you that your sacrifice was right and justified. And you hold on to the anger toward your savior even now.” She paused and smiled at him. “Will you now take away from us oursacrifice?”
Akaar backed away, suspicious. “Did Tuvok tell you any of this?”
She tilted her head again. “I do not know Two-vok.What I know comes entirely from you. I am a goquilavof the Lfei-sor-Paric. I see many things that were,that are.Sometimes things that will be.”
She turned away. “Leave me here now. Take whomever you will take. They will decide later whether they wish to follow the Lfei-sor-Paric ways or not.”
As Akaar carefully backed away another long pace, she turned her head once more to regard him. “But know always that youhave made a decision to put your desires above our faith. How you will live with that is something I cannot foresee.”
As he made his way down the stairs and to the enclave, Leonard James Akaar felt hot tears beginning to stream unbidden down his cheeks.
It was the first time such a thing had happened to him in over three decades.
Chapter Seventeen
SHUTTLECRAFT ELLINGTON,STARDATE 57038.4
Moments ago, an enormous conflagration between normal space and the growing fabric of the protouniverse had destroyed most of the Oghen’s largest moon. Fragmentary debris from the ancient, airless body’s remains were even now raining down through the ionized, smoke-shrouded atmosphere of the swiftly dying planet. The majority of the rubble was arranging itself in a spectacular ring around the planet’s equator.
Beautiful. But soon nobody will be around to see it.
Ranul Keru stared grimly through the forward window of the shuttlecraft Ellingtonas fiery streaks of moon debris plummeted through the atmosphere toward the planet’s surface. He could see in the glass the reflection of the others in his rescue crew as they stood behind him. They were all exhausted and thoroughly beat up. He was trying to be a strong leader for them, but there were times when he felt he could barely even hold onto consciousness. The wounds in his chest hadn’t fully healed, and he knew that he had coerced Dr. Ree into releasing him from sickbay a bit prematurely. Had Ree known that he had intended to participate directly in the evacuation runs over Oghen, he might have had been tempted to place Keru in a restraining field.
But I’m needed here,he told himself. Everybody is needed.There was scarcely a single member of Titan’s crew, with the notable exception of new mother Olivia Bolaji, who wasn’t taking part in the rescue missions in some capacity.
Ensign Reedesa Waen gave him a quick glance, her teeth gritted in concentration. The Bolian woman was a good pilot, even if that wasn’t her primary assignment. He saw beads of sweat forming on the crest of the ridge that bisected her azure face.
“I hope this hailstorm of burning moon rock doesn’t do us in,” she said, keeping her voice steady, even if the calmness seemed a bit forced. “Dodging the spatial distortions is tough enough without also having to worry about boulders grinding us into powder.”
“You’ll do just fine,” Keru said, patting her on the shoulder. He then turned toward the other members of his team: Kent Norellis, the human astrobiologist who seemed to have romantic designs on him, however unwanted; Nurse Kershu, an Edosian whose three arms and highly dexterous hands made her especially valuable during medical emergencies; and Lieutenant T’Lirin, the Vulcan security officer who’d proven herself to be quite tough, not only during the recent raid on Vikr’l Prison, but also over the course of the last three orbit-to-surface-and-back evacuation runs.
“This will have to be our last run,” Keru said, though it pained him to have to say it. “Local space is destabilizing too quickly. We’ve all done the best we can, but we won’t make it home if we attempt any more evac runs.”
Norellis turned to look at a monitor, on which a sensor alarm was flashing. His fingers tapped one of the touch-sensitive panels nearby. “We’ve found another small group of refugees, Commander. Only ten or twelve individuals. But it looks like they’re not out in the open. They’ve taken refuge below ground, in a cavern. I’m having trouble getting a transporter lock.”
“Head for their coordinates,” Keru told Waen. “We’re not leaving here empty-handed.”
Moments later, the shuttlecraft was hovering about twenty meters over a settlement that had been built into a series of buttes. But a cursory glance at the rubble and smoke visible everywhere revealed that little of the village was left standing. To make matters worse, the ground itself was bucking and roiling, as cracks yawned wide and spewed plumes of molten magma and fountains of super-heated steam.
“The bedrock is completely destabilized,” Norellis said, his tone edging almost toward panic. “We can’t land. And the caves the survivors are hiding in are too kelbonite-rich to let us beam them out without pattern enhancers.”