The tower continued to shake violently. Vaughn pushed himself up, fighting to rise onto his knees, and to his feet. He looked over at Ventu and saw vacant, white swirls blooming on his flesh, and Vaughn vividly remembered the horrible, silent screams of the Vahni.
He eyed the doorway, and briefly considered bolting through it and attempting to escape the tower before it collapsed. But he had little time, he knew, and if he got caught within the tower when it went down, he might be killed. He looked back at Ventu, but instead of trying to help him, as he had back on the Vahni world, Vaughn raced to the wall that rimmed the roof. Beyond the tower, he saw no Vahni city, nothing but the empty, rolling geography of this gray world. He gazed upward, and saw the sky filled not with the awful sight of a shattering moon, but only the constant cloud cover that haunted this place.
The tower shifted dramatically, nearly knocking Vaughn from his feet once more, but he grabbed the top of the wall and held himself up. He peered over at Ventu—or the masquerade of Ventu—and saw what he had seen a week ago: fear, embodied in the empty whorls cycling across the Vahni’s flesh, and the tentacles wrapped tightly around his upper body. Knowing what the next few moments would bring, and not wanting to chance the reality of the situation, Vaughn decided to protect Ventu. If they could make it through the destruction of the tower, then maybe Vaughn could get some of his questions answered.
With the roof moving back and forth beneath his feet, he staggered over to Ventu. “We have to protect ourselves,” Vaughn yelled. To demonstrate, he lifted his arms up around his head. “Ventu,” he screamed through the din, “protect your head!” Back on the Vahni world, Ventu had died from a massive brain injury. Maybe this time, Vaughn could—
That was when the tower collapsed.
Vaughn could not tell whether or not he had lost consciousness, but the next perception he had was that the quake had ceased, as had the thunderous noise accompanying it. He opened his eyes and raised his head, finding himself atop a pile of rubble that had once been the tower. A veil of dust hung in the air, and the debris beneath him ticked and popped as bits of rubble fell toward the ground. He had been here before.
Slowly, Vaughn moved, taking inventory of his body. He felt familiar aches, particularly in his limbs. What isn’t familiar here?he thought.
As he began a cautious descent, the urge to call the names of Bowers and Roness rose in his mind; that was what he had done back on the world of the Vahni. But now, when he peered out past the remains of the destroyed tower, he did not see a Vahni city, its pedestrian ways clogged with frantic crowds, smoke flowing skyward from several points, violet lasers shooting up and warning of the emergency. Instead, he spied only a barren landscape, with a narrow belt of roadway receding into the distance.
Moving carefully, Vaughn maneuvered down the mound of debris. Several stones tumbled from the pile, but he managed to avoid a similar fate. Minutes passed, until finally he reached the ground.
Vaughn looked down at himself. His coat was filthy. His uniform, torn open in a few places and covered with dirt, resembled, but did not match exactly, his uniform after the tower collapse back on the Vahni world. Cuts laced his hands, blood seeping from the wounds. He reached up and felt at his temple, his fingers coming away tacky with blood.
Vaughn circled the heap of rubble, looking this time not for Bowers and Roness, but for Ventu. He waved his way through the thick cloak of dust enclosing the scene. A third of the way around, where before he had come across Bowers and Roness and the other Vahni, this time he found nothing.
He continued walking. Farther along, he discovered the body of Ventu. The Vahni lay along the side of the tower wreckage, about three meters up. His tentacles draped lifelessly across the broken stone. Cuts and abrasions covered his body in numerous places, marring his beautiful red-and-blue flesh. And something had clearly fallen onto the headlike projection atop his frame; ichor oozed from a gaping wound that split the ring of his eye.
Vaughn pulled his tricorder from his coat, grateful that it had not been lost. He scanned the inert form of Ventu. The sensor readings confirmed the body as Vahni; there were no signs of life.
A tremendous sense of loss flooded over Vaughn, threatening to pull him down into its dark depths. Despite being convinced that whoever or whatever sprawled dead before him was not truly Ventu, the fact remained that Ventu had perished—not now, not here, but a week ago, on the Vahni world. Ventu, and three thousand other Vahni, and then Ensign Roness, all gone.
Vaughn stepped back away from the wrecked tower, then turned and made his way back to his supplies. He sat down on the roadway beside them, facing toward the wreckage, but averting his gaze, looking down instead. He pulled off his coat, opened one of the water containers, and wet a corner of the fabric. Gently, he wiped the blood from his forehead, then applied pressure to the wound there. He held his hand like that for several minutes, hoping to stanch the flow of blood.
Unable to stop himself, Vaughn thought about the Vahni Vahltupali. Such a lovely species of beings, they embodied what Vaughn had hoped to discover out in the universe. The Vahni stood as the antithesis of what the circumstances of Vaughn’s life had left him exposed to. They were bright and joyful, peaceful and calm. Truly, he could not have hoped for a better experience on his first exploratory mission.
And yet I was so anxious to leave,he recalled. While the rest of Defiant’s crew had expressed their desire to spend more time with the Vahni, Vaughn had looked ahead, to the next discovery, the next wonder, that they might come across. Charging through the mission as though it were an intelligence operation,he realized: checking off one objective and immediately moving to fulfill the next, without reflection or satisfaction, but only the intensity for completion. The crew had met the Vahni and embraced them, enjoyed their time with them, as Vaughn had simply categorized the encounter as a success and sought to move on to the next goal, the next discovery. Where had his own joy been, he wanted to know, his own sense of wonder? Somehow, he had missed the whole point of his own desire to explore, and now the cruel truth of that left him feeling empty.
Vaughn withdrew the section of coat he had kept pressed to his forehead. He dabbed at his wound with his fingertips to see if the bleeding had stopped; it had. He looked up and regarded the fallen tower. He felt very much like the ruined structure, shaken until it had torn itself apart.
“Stop it,” he said aloud. As he so well knew, he could do nothing about the mistakes of the past. He could only look forward. For now, the chance to explore had gone, leaving a mission in its place. He had to reach the source of the pulse and find some way to save the Vahni Vahltupali. Those were his next goals, and he had to concentrate on accomplishing them.
Vaughn stood up and packed up his few provisions once more. He circled the wreckage twice, searching for his phaser, which he had dropped on the roof before the tower had come down. He didn’t find it.
Not wanting to use up any more time, Vaughn put the mass of broken stone behind him, headed once more toward the mysterious pulse.
48
Kira worked the control pad set into the bulkhead. “These will be your quarters while you’re on the station, Minister,” she said as the door coasted open.
“Thank you,” Shakaar said. Kira had met the first minister at the docking bay and escorted him here. Their conversation along the way had been limited to official matters, and had been somewhat strained. It only underscored Kira’s feeling that Shakaar had put some distance between them.