Cathedral by Michael Mangels (ebook reader color screen txt) 📕

viewed a holographic image of the object returned tenfold. In spite of himself, Vaughn had to wonder if he was staring into the business end of another one of the universe’s transcendent, inquiry-resistant mysteries. He recalled the peaceful, floating death-dream he’d experienced after touching a Linellian fluid effigy, a memory that remained green despite being nearly eight decades old. The artifact also brought to mind the life-changing epiphany he’d received from the Orb of Memory, when he had helped recover it from the derelict Cardassian freighter Kamal only a few months earlier. That encounter had forever altered the trajectory of his life, ultimately leading him to DS9, the Defiant… and finally out here, to confront the ragged edge of the human experience. In the presence of the weird alien construct, he could not help but recall his far more recent sojourn on the world of the Thoughtscape entity, which had forced him to confront the many mistakes he had made as Tenmei’s absentee father. Over his almost eighty years of Starfleet service, he had witnessed enough inexplicable events to credit the notion that some things just might remain forever beyond human ken.

During the Defiant’ s approach, the bridge’s population had gradually increased. Vaughn glanced around the room and noted that Shar, Merimark, Gordimer, and science specialists T’rb and Kurt Hunter were all present. Along with Bowers, they stood totally still, staring owlishly at the geometrical contradiction that slowly somersaulted end over end on the screen, a conglomeration of Platonic shapes viewed through a tumbling kaleidoscope.

Vaughn’s feelings of awe were being steadily mellowed by an overtone of caution. He couldn’t help but recall Bowers’ report on Sacagawea’s obviously conflicted feelings toward the ancient edifice that now held the entire bridge so spellbound.

Cathedral. Or anathema.

A hard determination rose within him to get at the truth of it, no matter what it took. Cathedral. Anathema. Either way, the artifact represented the only hope of reversing—or even understanding—whatever changes it had wrought upon his first officer, chief medical officer, and chief engineer.

His friends.

Vaughn saw that Tenmei was already running a series of passive high-resolution scans on the object’s interior.

“Anything, Ensign?” he said.

“Negative, Captain. It’s a blank wall.”

“We’re going to have to work for it, then. Switch to active mode.” He turned to Shar and T’rb, who had already begun busying themselves at a pair of adjacent consoles on the bridge’s upper level. “The moment our sensors turn up the smallest sign of internal activity, I want to know about it.”

“Standard sensors negative,” T’rb said. “It’s like the thing isn’t there.”

Vaughn smiled. T’rb’s off-the-cuff comment was almost literally true, since most of the artifact’s mass lay outside normal space.

“I’m picking up a graviton absorption signature,” Shar said. He sounded almost triumphant, as though he’d just proved a pet theory. “Evidently the object is sweeping up energetic particles and carrying them into its own higher-dimensional spaces.”

“What about positron tomography?” T’rb said to Shar.

“Already engaged.” Shar frowned, his antennae and his gray eyes seeming to work in concert in an effort to bore a hole in his instrument display. “There,” he said at length. “I’m reading a hollow space in the object’s interior.”

T’rb and Tenmei immediately tied their consoles in with Shar’s. They quickly began nodding to each other, confirming Shar’s discovery.

Then T’rb scowled at his readings. “The boundaries of the hollow space seem to be fluid. In motion.”

“I see it, too,” Shar said. “It must be a distortion effect caused by the object’s being in multiple dimensions simultaneously.”

“Or our sensors are just reading it wrong,” T’rb said dryly.

Vaughn didn’t like the sound of that. “Ensign Tenmei, can we beam an away team safely into the interior?”

Tenmei looked at her console again as though to double-check, then nodded. “I believe so, though I can’t get a reading on the atmospheric composition, if any. And Chief Chao had better stay away from those shifting boundaries.”

“I’ll tell her to aim for the middle.” Vaughn said, and turned back toward Shar. “Lieutenant ch’Thane, I want you to assemble an away team, with full environmental suits. Jury-rig an EV suit for Sacagawea and bring him along.”

“Yes, sir,” Shar said. “I request permission to lead the team as well.”

“I don’t think so, Lieutenant,” Vaughn said with a gentle shake of the head. “I want to keep you on board. We still need a working translation of that alien text, and so far you’re better grounded in it than anyone else.”

The young Andorian’s eyes flashed with an intensity Vaughn had never seen before. His aspect was half plea, half fulmination. “The computer and some ancillary equipment are handling the bulk of the work now, sir.”

It wasn’t like Shar to argue with him right on the bridge. Something was wrong. For some reason, the usually reticent science officer appeared to need to go.

“All right, Shar. You can come along. But I intend to lead the team myself. I want to keep a low profile, but I also want plenty of secur—”

“Incoming bogeys, Captain,” Bowers said, his fingers suddenly moving at blinding speed across the tactical console.

Vaughn shifted instantly into his combat-imminent mode as everyone who had been standing about watching the screen scattered to various battle stations. “Are they coming from the artifact?”

“No, sir,” Shar said from the science station, fully intent once again on his own console. “From the sunward direction.”

“How many?” Vaughn wanted to know.

“Eleven,” Bowers said. “No, thirteen ships. Closing fast, in a tight wedge formation. Configuration matches the hostiles we chased away from the D’Naali ship. And they’re powering weapons.”

Though his heart thudded heavily in his chest, Vaughn maintained a studied outward calm born of decades of practice. “Yellow Alert. We’ll maintain a passive posture as long as possible, but I want you to keep the shields and phaser banks warm, Mr. Bowers. And give me a tactical display.”

The image of the mysterious alien edifice vanished, replaced instantly by a baker’s dozen bulbous, blocky aggressor vessels, each of them very similar to the ship that had opened fire on the