The Returned, Part III Read online

  “And now what? You intend to destroy this world as well?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “There’s no need for this, Nyos. Our universe is vast. There is plenty of room for everyone. Rather than simply annihilate everyone and everything, let me put together a meeting with you and the United Federation of Planets.”

  “A meeting? To discuss what?”

  “Somewhere for you and your people to settle. There is no need for you to just go around and destroy everything you encounter. Allow us to work with you to come to an agreement where all of us can coexist.”

  “Did you not pay attention, Captain? Did you listen to nothing I told you? Such actions would run counter to the very underpinning of our people.”

  “Your underpinning is ridiculous. Destroying the entirety of life simply because it exists . . . that is no way for you to lead your people.”

  “I very much appreciate your concern, Captain. Nevertheless, we are now left with the situation of what to do with you. The answer is simple: We will destroy you. Then we will destroy the populace of the planet below. And then we will destroy every bit of sentient life in this galaxy. I’m afraid that there really isn’t anything you can do about it.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Calhoun said.

  “Captain!” Tobias suddenly shouted. “We’re under att—”

  She didn’t have time to get the word out, as concentrated blasts from the Dayan ship slammed into the Excalibur. The shields held, but barely, as sparks blew out of consoles from all over the ship.

  “Bring the cloak on-line! Return fire!” Calhoun called.

  He knew what the problem with that response was going to be. Since they would be shooting at the enemy vessel, the Dayan would be able to determine where Excalibur was and use the origin points of the blasts to target the ship.

  “Fire photon torpedoes and engage evasive maneuvers as you fire!” Calhoun ordered.

  “That’ll make targeting problematic,” said Kebron.

  “Look at the size of that thing,” Calhoun countered. “Shoot anything in its general direction and it’s likely to hit it.”

  “Good point.”

  The Excalibur was firing and moving, firing and moving, trying to stay one step ahead of the return blasts from the Dayan ship.

  It did no good. Even glancing blows from the Dayan’s powerful weaponry were enough to cause the shields’ powers to skid rapidly downward. In less than a minute, the shielding was on the verge of complete collapse.

  Meanwhile the offensive blows fired by the Excalibur had the impact that Calhoun had feared they would: none. Pieces of the vast ship were blown off but the ship instantly regenerated, its healing factor making it impossible for the Excalibur to achieve any long-term or even short-term damage.

  “Stop firing!” Calhoun called. “Calhoun to engineering. Reroute power; try to get the shields back on-line.”

  “It’ll take a few minutes,” Mitchell’s voice came back.

  “We don’t have a few minutes.”

  The Excalibur went dead, then the Dayan ship halted its barrage. Calhoun wondered pointlessly if perhaps they had given up their assault, but then Nyos’s voice floated over the comm channel. “This is the end for you, Calhoun. We know approximately where your ship is, and for our weaponry, ‘approximately’ is all that’s required. This has been a stimulating endeavor, and I hope that wherever your next life takes you, it . . . what the hell?”

  Calhoun had no idea what Nyos was reacting to, but then he saw it: phaser blasts were erupting from nowhere, assaulting the Dayan ship.

  And a new voice crackled over the comm system.

  “Did you miss us?” asked Kat Mueller of the Trident.

  Trident

  “DESMA! BRING US around!”

  Mueller’s Andorian executive officer, Commander Desma, was sitting at the flight control station. Mick Gold’s death during an attack from the Brethren had left the position unfilled; Desma started as a conn officer before being fast-tracked to second-in-command.

  She angled the Trident around sharply as blasts from the massive Dayan ship sailed wide.

  “Fire again, Arex,” Mueller ordered her chief of security.

  Lieutenant Arex Na Eth targeted the ship, which wasn’t that difficult considering its size, and let fly with a barrage of phaser blasts.

  “Hard to port!” Mueller said immediately.

  Desma cut to the left, and once again the Trident evaded any blasts from the ship.

  Calhoun’s voice came over the comm unit. “Kat? What the hell are you doing here? Where are you?”

  “Shelby sent us.” This wasn’t strictly true, but it seemed the simplest response. “She was worried you could use some backup. She equipped us with a cloaking device as well. Apparently her people made a thorough study of it while Soleta was in a coma. Didn’t take long for us to construct one. Are you all right?”

  “We’ve been better. Be careful of the Dayan vessel. It packs a lot of clout.”

  “We’ve noticed.” The captain turned to Romeo Takahashi at ops. “How much damage have we inflicted on that thing?”

  “None,” said Romeo.

  “What?”

  “It keeps repairin’ itself,” Romeo told her, with mounting frustration in his voice. “No matter how much we hit it, it’s fixed in seconds.”

  “That’s unfortunate. Mac, any suggestions?”

  “None, I’m afraid. Anything you do to the ship just acts as a delaying tactic. We haven’t figured out a way to destroy the thing once and for—”

  “Incoming!” shouted Arex.

  His warning came a second too late. Blasts erupted around the Trident with such force that Mueller was almost knocked out of her command chair as the bridge canted sideways.

  “Shields at fifty percent!” Arex said.

  “From one hit?” Mueller couldn’t quite believe it. How much power did the other ship’s weapons have, anyway? “Not even a direct hit?”

  “Afraid so,” said Arex.

  “Full reverse. Fire photon torpedoes.”

  “Photon torpedoes, aye.”

  The Trident hurtled backward as it simultaneously unleashed an attack of photon torpedoes. But the torpedoes encountered the same problem that the phasers had. They struck the ship directly, but seconds later it was as if they hadn’t inflicted any damage at all.

  “This is becoming a problem,” said Mueller.

  Once more the Dayan vessel unleashed blasts at the Trident and once more the ship shook violently. This blast was much more direct and when, seconds later, Arex told her that the shields had collapsed, she wasn’t the least bit surprised.

  The voice of the Dayan ship’s commander sounded through the bridge of the Trident.

  “Greetings, new vessel. We assume you are similar or identical to the Excalibur. And we believe we can safely assume that your ship is in as dire straits as that one. We suppose that whether you die now or later, in the grand scheme of things, does not make that much of a difference. Farewell, new ship. Farewell, Excalibur. This is the beginning of the end of your galaxy. A shame you will not be here to witness it.”

  And then, just like that, it was all over.

  Excalibur

  THE DAYAN SHIP disappeared.

  Calhoun gaped as the entire ship vanished from the screen. It reappeared moments later, approximately a hundred thousand kilometers from where it had been before.

  However, the Dayan had not gone with it.

  Every single one of the Dayan were suddenly floating in space. No one was wearing spacesuits, because they had not been prepared for their ship to vanish from around them. Space was thick with thousands of Dayan, flailing about, trying to find some manner of protection that didn’t exist in the depths of the void.

  Calhoun couldn’t believe it. “What the
hell just happened? What caused their ship to move? Kat, are you seeing this?”

  “Affirmative, but I’m not sure what it is that I’m seeing.”

  “You’re seeing the death of an entire race,” said Zak Kebron, and Calhoun knew that he was correct.

  Some of the Dayan were already dead. The rest of them were going fast.

  “Captain,” said Burgoyne, “shall we beam any of them aboard?”

  For a long moment, Calhoun said nothing. He simply stared at the Dayan as they flailed around helplessly, dying before his eyes.

  Burgoyne tapped his combadge. “Bridge to transporter. Prepare to—”

  “Belay that,” Calhoun said quietly.

  Burgoyne and Calhoun exchanged looks, then Burgoyne said, “Forget it, Halliwell,” and clicked off.

  The seconds extended, and no one said anything as the entire Dayan race died helplessly in space. One of them was floating toward the Excalibur, and Calhoun immediately recognized it as Nyos. What were the odds that out of the thousands of them out there, Nyos would wind up floating his way?

  Calhoun watched as Nyos’s confused expression froze on his face. His eyes were wide and glazed over; he was clearly unconscious. Drops of internal fluids had frozen on his lips. His arms and legs were spread out and stiff, indicating paralysis. Calhoun had read fanciful tales written years before about people who were thrown into space and exploded, which was nonsensical.

  Nyos was moving rather quickly. He drew closer to the ship until, presumably, his body ricocheted off it. It spiraled away, heading toward New Thallon, where, with any luck, it would burn up upon reentry.

  “They’re dead,” whispered Tobias, who seemed to still be processing what they had all just witnessed. “They’re all dead. What the hell just happened?”

  That was when a golden light exploded on the bridge. It enveloped a body that seemed to be taking long seconds to compose itself and then finally managed to do so.

  It was a Thallonian. His entrance was so similar to Q’s that Robin Lefler automatically assumed that it was Q wearing a Thallonian disguise. Then the light faded and he was left standing there.

  He was dressed simply in what appeared to be a black unitard with gold trim on the arms and legs. His face was round and open. He seemed quite pleasant.

  “Well, that worked,” he said briskly. “I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to give any of you notice on that. It just seemed the most expeditious way to deal with them. I mean, destroy New Thallon? Destroy the galaxy? We really couldn’t allow that.”

  “Who are you?” asked the bewildered Calhoun.

  “Oh, that’s a good question. I’m afraid I’ve been spending most of my life traveling. Seeing the multiverse, observing it in action, watching how everything comes together. I’ve had an excellent teacher. Learned so many things from him. But now I believe that it’s time to put all that aside and take up my new life. And I figured that disposing of those galaxy-destroying cretins would be a good way to announce my presence.”

  “I’m glad you appreciate my question,” said Calhoun, “but you still haven’t answered it.”

  “Right. Of course.” He stuck out a hand and shook Calhoun’s. “I’m Cwansi.” He turned to Robin Lefler and smiled. “Hello, Mother.”

  Robin Lefler fainted dead away.

  Bravo Station

  SHELBY WAS SHAKING her head in disbelief. “I still can’t . . . I mean, Cwansi?! He’s an adult? Q just . . . just up-aged him somehow?”

  She was lying next to Calhoun in the bed of his guest quarters. Their bodies were cooling off from the sweat that they had worked up, and now Calhoun was shaking his head. “No up-aging at all. He led a full life. Q decided to raise him from infancy and taught him all the ways of the Q.”

  “Why did he do that?”

  “Well, according to Cwansi,” said Calhoun, “Q felt that the Continuum needed some sort of formal link to our universe. That the job was more than Q was interested in doing on a full-time basis. So he selected Cwansi to be the Continuum’s representative.”

  “And Cwansi is okay with that?”

  “It’s what he was raised to become. He’s had a lifetime to adjust to the notion.”

  “And Robin’s all right with this?”

  Calhoun laughed at the notion. “All right with it? She wants to track down Q and kill him. He kidnapped her child. He raised him. Well, not just him: my understanding is that Q’s mate and son also participated somewhat. Apparently his mate actually had an interest in the entire business. It seems she was actively protecting McHenry while he was trapped in the Q Continuum, which Q was unaware of at the time. Anyway, Q deprived Robin of her right to raise Cwansi. But there’s nothing she can do about it now. Her son is grown and ready to take command of New Thallon. Which he immediately did.”

  “Shintar Han must have loved that.”

  “From what I understand, Shintar Han was so fed up with everything that had happened that he was happy to cede control of the world to Cwansi.”

  Shelby’s voice darkened. “And the D’myurj?”

  Calhoun was briefly silent. “Sulentus is going to stand trial. Quentis will be a witness against him, as will Admiral Nechayev and the rest of the Starfleet personnel we rescued from his castle. It won’t bring my people back, but at least they will know some justice.”

  “I know that’s important to you.”

  He had been propped up on his elbow, but now he dropped his head onto his pillow. “I don’t appreciate,” he said in annoyance, “you and Jellico conspiring to get me to go after Nechayev and the others. Did you truly think that you were fooling me?”

  “Not really,” Shelby admitted. “But you understand the politics. We couldn’t just knowingly send you into Thallonian space.”

  “No, you just bet that I would find Nechayev so that she, out of gratitude, would get Starfleet off my ass.”

  “A safe assumption. I had confidence in you, Mac.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  There was a buzz at the door of his quarters. “Not now!” he called out.

  “When would be a good time for you, Captain?” Soleta called back.

  He and Shelby exchanged looks. “Hold on,” he said, and he clambered out of bed. He quickly threw on his uniform pants while Shelby grabbed a robe and draped it around herself. “All right. Come in.”

  Soleta walked in but froze when she saw Shelby standing there. “Oh. Uhm. I can come back some other time, if you’d prefer.”

  “No, it’s okay. Elizabeth, you remember Soleta,” he said with mock gravity.

  “I do seem to recall her lying unconscious here for several months. And serving with her before that.”

  “Yes, I remember that as well,” said Soleta. “Captain, truly, I can come back later. In fact, it would probably be better if I returned to the Excalibur and just waited there for—”

  “She knows, Soleta,” Calhoun said softly.

  She looked from Calhoun to Shelby and back. “She . . . she knows?”

  “Yes, she knows. I told her all about it.”

  Soleta sank into a chair that was near the door, staring down intently at her knees. “I am so sorry, Admiral.”

  “You’ve had sex with my husband. I think you can call me Elizabeth.”

  “Captain, I should not say what I have to say to you in front of her,” Soleta said. “It is not right. You should have the opportunity to process my words before your wife hears them.”

  “I told you, Soleta,” Calhoun said firmly, “I have no secrets from Elizabeth. We are together in every respect. What you want to say to me, you can say in front of her.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes, I’m certain.”

  Soleta nodded and, keeping her voice even, said, “I have had myself thoroughly checked over and am forced to come to the conclusion
that you were right. I was in the throes of Pon farr when I . . . assaulted you. And because of my half-Romulan makeup, the result was far more aggressive than anything that a Vulcan would experience. It is not the Vulcan way to take hold of someone’s mind in the way I did yours and force them to become sexually enamored. In that respect, I had as little control over the events as you did. I do not tell you this as any sort of rationalization for my actions, but simply an explanation that you are free to accept or not.”

  “I accept it,” Calhoun said judiciously. “And as long as we can accept that there will never be a repeat of the action, I’m sure everything is going to be just fine.”

  “No, sir,” Soleta said firmly. “No repeat. Ever. I appreciate your understanding, Captain—and yours as well, Admiral.”

  “Not a problem,” said Shelby.

  “Good. As for other matters, rest assured that I will seek out the help of a medical doctor and have it attended to. Assuming that’s what you want, I mean. That is to say, I feel you should have some input into the decision.”

  Calhoun stared at her, uncomprehending. “What are you talking about? What ‘other matters’?”

  “Oh. I guess I was not obvious about that. Pon farr is a mating ritual that stems from a Vulcan’s need to reproduce.”

  “Okay. And?”

  “It’s how I knew for certain that I was in Pon farr.” She stared at their uncomprehending faces.

  “I still don’t understan—” Calhoun started to say.

  That was when Shelby got it.

  “Oh, shit.” She turned to Calhoun. “Mac . . . she’s pregnant.”

  For a long moment, Calhoun was silent.

  “Yeah. Maybe you should’ve waited until Elizabeth wasn’t here.”

  About the Author

  PETER DAVID is a prolific author whose career, and continued popularity, spans more than two decades. He has worked in every conceivable medium—television, film, books (fiction, nonfiction, and audio), short stories, and comic books—and acquired followings in all of them.