Star Trek - Lost Era - Well of Souls

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侵权投诉
“CAPTAIN. WE’RE TOO STEEP! WE
WONT BE ABLE TO BREAK AWAY!”
As if to confirm Glemoor’s words, Garrett felt her stomach
drop in free fall as the ship took a sudden plunge, slammed
from above by what felt like a solid belt of hypercharged
particles and compressed gases.
“Captain, the gravity!” Bat-Levi shouted. The ship rocked,
and the artificial gravity hiccupped enough to send her
backpedaling on her heels, off-balance, and slamming into
the guardrail. She wheeled around, clutching for support.
“It’s sucking all the matter in this region toward the black
hole!”
Garrett didn’t need her to spell out the rest. With the
increased compression and electromagnetic winds, the ship
would be slow to respond, like trying to turn on a dime in a
pool of molasses.
Garrett whirled on her heel. “My ship, Mr. Castillo!” My ship:
an age-old command, one used by pilots of planes, not
starships, but Castillo needed no translation. He jumped to
one side as Garrett leapt to the helm and activated first the
starboard, then port thrusters.
“Forty degrees.” Glemoor threw a quick glance at his captain
then back at his instruments. “Forty-five. Hull stress
increasing, Captain. Approaching tolerance limits ...”
“Captain, we’re close,” said Bat-Levi, “and if we pass too
close to the gravity well ...”
“Fifty!” shouted Glemoor, the Naxeran’s calm breaking at
last. “Impulse power at three-quarters! Hull stress at
tolerance! Captain!”
Almost there. Garrett blinked sweat from her eyes and
winced at the sting. Come on, girl, come on, don’t let me
down, don’t quit on me now.
POCKET BOOKS
New York London Toronto Sydney Singapore Farius Prime
The sale of this book without its cover is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware
that it was reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed.” Neither the authors nor the publisher has received payment
for the sale of this “stripped book.”
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS
POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
Copyright © 2003 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark of Paramount Pictures.
This book is published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., under exclusive license from Paramount
Pictures.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information
address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
ISBN: 0-7434-6375-7
First Pocket Books printing November 2003
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America
For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-
6798 or business@simonandschuster.com.
This book is for Dean Wesley Smith—editor, writer,
mentor, colleague—and for David, with love, always.
Contents
HISTORIAN’S NOTE
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Epilogue
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
About the e-Book
HISTORIAN’S NOTE
This story is set in the year 2336, forty-three years after the presumed
death of Captain James T. Kirk aboard the U.S.S, Enterprise-B in Star
Trek Generations, and twenty-eight years before the launch of the
Enterprise-D in “Encounter at Farpoint.”
Prologue
Ishep was dreaming, and that should have been a mercy because bad dreams
always end. Then Ishep would have awakened and known that this was all in his
head.
In his dream, his father, the Night King, wasn’t in his tomb deep underground in a
labyrinth of tunnels beneath the Red Mountains, and Ishep should have been
happy. In his dream, there should have been bright sunlight and grass so green and
beautiful his heart hurt—and there was, and it did—and he should have stood with
his father by the shores of a deep, clear lake that was clean and still—and he did,
because Ishep, who was a bastard, had loved his father more than Prince Nartal,
who was First Son and a coward, ever had. But Ishep knew everything was wrong,
and it was as if his dream knew that, too. In the next instant, the sky melted, and
the lake turned to stone, but Ishep’s heart still hurt because his father, the Night
King, was dead.
He saw then that his father had no eyes. The worms had eaten them. One worm
that was very thick and clotted with black blood oozed from the hole where his
father’s right eye had been and slithered down his father’s cheek, leaving a single,
glistening trail like that of a tear. The skin over his father’s face was brown and
tight as old leather with age and decay, and flaps hung in tatters like torn curtains
because the bones of his skull had ripped through as easily as ... well, as easily as
sharp bone slices through wasted skin thinner than paper.
Yet, as Ishep watched, his father moved, shuddered ... then groaned. The naked
white bone of his jaw unhinged, and his mouth dropped open. For a wild moment,
Ishep thought that maybe it was all a mistake and his father wasn’t dead after all
and Prince Nartal hadn’t left Ishep behind, lost and alone, in the tombs, but that
this was some horrible game because this is a dream, it has to be a dream, I don’t
want to die down here. But then his father vomited—no, no, something thick as a
man’s arm and milky like the bloated belly of a rotted fish bulged and writhed in
his father’s mouth, like a fat, obscene tongue. The thing spooled out from the dark
place inside his father and drooled over his jaw, and Ishep saw the thing’s muscles
undulate and ripple like waves beneath its too-white scales.
And then it looked at Ishep. Its dead eyes were flat and dull as gray slate. Ishep
saw that it had the head of a woman, and all in a rush he understood that he stared
into the face of Death itself, into the eyes of Uramtali, Goddess of the Well of
Souls, and he knew then that he would die. But he could only watch, in horror, as
her skin split open with a loud ripping sound, like cloth being torn in two, and then
she didn’t have a face anymore: just a skull, and teeth curved and sharp as white
knives.
Her voice, in his head: Are you afraid?
And Ishep, so terrified his heart pushed in his throat: Yes, yes!
Good—her knife-fangs parted, and her mouth gaped open until there was nothing
else but the darkness in her throat that was a shaft into which Ishep tripped and
began a fall that would last until time itself ceased, and that was forever—because
you should be.
Screaming, Ishep woke.
The tomb was pitch black. His scream echoed, bounced off stone, then died. Ishep
pushed up on his hands, his blood thumping in his ears. His sandals rasped upon
cold stone, and the rock bit into the thin, sensitive skin of his thighs. He listened,
but other than the hitching of his breath there was no other sound, not even the
faint sizzle of candles guttering—a sound like frying meat—and that was because
the candles had burned out. Darkness flowed over him, and when he moved, it was
like swimming in thick black water. Although he was cold and stiff from sleeping
on stone, his face was hot, and when he brought a hand up to his cheek, he felt the
dried salt track of tears.
I’m still here. Moaning, Ishep jammed his fist into his mouth to keep from crying
out. I’m still here and I’m going to die down here and no one will ever find me, no
one will know that they’ve sealed me in by mistake, and my mother, oh, my mother
...
His thoughts stuttered to a halt. Something was different, and Ishep seized on this
because it gave him something other to do than wait to die of thirst in the tomb of
a dead king. The darkness felt different, almost as if he’d been moved. Walked in
his sleep? Maybe. His father’s tomb had two other rooms besides the main burial
vault, and he remembered that he’d fallen asleep next to the carved stone edifice
of his father’s bier. There was treasure all around the reliquary—piles of gem-
encrusted goblets and fat yellow discs of gold coin fanning from chests of fine
blackwood. But now when he patted the floor, his fingers grazed against icy rock,
and nothing else. Nothing here—blindly, Ishep crept upon his hands and knees,
pausing to sweep his arms in wide arcs—no treasure, nothing, I must be in one of
the other rooms, but which one, where am I, what’s happening?
And then his hands found something smooth and cool: wood. But not a
chest—breath hissing through his teeth, Ishep sat back on his heels and ran his
fingers up and down—no, this was something tall and slender, with three sides. A
pedestal. He stood, his palms following the graceful taper of the wood until he
came to the flat, triangular surface, and his fingers slid against something cold and
metallic.
There was a soft, perceptible click.
Ishep started, gasped, snatched his fingers away as if he’d been burned. He waited,
eyes bulging, heart knocking against his ribs.
The darkness began to dissolve. A sharp cry ripped from Ishep’s mouth, and he
stumbled back as the light bloomed: not like the sudden flare of a torch, but as if
the light from one of the world’s two moons had lost its way and come here, far
underground. The light melted the darkness, and then Ishep saw that the room was
bare except for a pedestal of ebony bloodwood. On the dais lay a silver mask.
The mask had no markings and Ishep saw immediately that it would cover his face
from his brow to his upper lip. The mask was bathed in a silver glow: a bolt of
light that beat down from somewhere high above. Ishep shielded his eyes but
couldn’t find the source. Then, suddenly, the light intensified, flooding over the
dais and spilling to the floor. The light was alive—like the thing in my dream,
coming from my father’s mouth!—and it slithered along the floor in thick tongues
that puddled like silver water.
Ishep’s mind screamed: Get out, get out, run! But his body wouldn’t obey, and
where was there to run anyway?
Then a voice brushed against his mind: Come here.
Ishep’s blood iced. What? No, no, he wouldn’t! But even as his own mind
protested, he felt a firm, steady pressure tugging at his brain, as if something had
hooked in fingers of pure steely thought and begun to pull. No—he struggled to
break free—he mustn’t, he had to run, he had to ...
Come here.
Incredibly, Ishep started forward, his movements as jerky as a puppet whose
strings have gotten tangled.
Pick it up. The voice was a whisper, and yet it was so strong. Put it on.
“No,” Ishep moaned even as he reached for the mask. His fingers slid over the
metal, and he was surprised that the mask wasn’t cold now but warm as blood.
Do it. Now.
“No,” Ishep said, as he slipped the mask onto his face. The metal curled; the edges
grasped the skin of his face like greedy, clutching fingers. “No, please!”
A bolt of pain sizzled through his body. Ishep screamed. It was as if someone had
poured hot, molten metal into his body. Fire coursed through his veins and licked
at his heart; his brain exploded with a sudden white-hot flash that seared his mind.
Now. Turn around. Move.
And then somehow—Ishep didn’t know how, because he was burning up, he was
dying, and there was something crowding into his mind, his body—Ishep was
back in the main vault, and he was standing over his father, the dead Night King.
The vault was still dark, though Ishep could just make out the hump of his father’s
body.
Through the roaring in his ears, Ishep heard the rustle of cloth against stone, a
sound like the feet of mice skittering over sand. And then his father moved, and
his body began to glow.
What was left of Ishep wailed in terror.
The king’s mouth opened. Tendrils of something—the dream, my dream!—like
luminous coils of thick white smoke billowed out, twisting and writhing. The coils
mingled; they met; they coalesced and assumed a shape, now a woman, then a
serpent, now a naked eyeless skull.
Suddenly, Ishep was aware of movement, a rush of air. Specters pulsed and
streamed into the chamber, issuing from the walls like fog rising from a still pond.
Ishep recognized the shapes of gods and goddesses, and strange chimeras that
were part-beast, part-man, part-woman. They were as amorphous and indistinct as
clouds shifting beneath a hot sun. And then the woman-thing, the one that had
issued from his father’s mouth, gave a great cry and spread its wings and leapt into
the mass of roiling shapes. The others closed around the woman-thing the way a
man’s arms might encircle a lost lover, and in another moment, Ishep saw the
woman-thing dissolve; and then, in his mind, Ishep heard the gabble of their
voices—or maybe it was their thoughts because he knew there was no sound.
Ishep sensed one voice detach itself from the rest, as if it had decided to step aside
from a large crowd. The voice was clear and strong and rang through his brain
with the clarity of a single, solitary bell.
You are not chosen. The voice-thought—a woman’s—paused then walked its
spectral thought-fingers over the nooks and crannies of Ishep’s mind, as if
searching for something. You are not Night. There is Night within you, but ...
The woman’s voice-thought trailed away, as if considering what to do next.
Ishep knew, without knowing how he knew, that the voice-thought was talking
about the prince, Nartal. Nartal was Night, the prince of a Night King from a line
of Night Kings. Nartal had been bred for Night, bred to carry the soul of an
Immortal, a dithparu.
And then, quite suddenly, Ishep ceased being afraid. Beneath the mask, Ishep felt
a strange pressure, like that of hands molding clay, and he knew that he was being
kneaded into something new and wholly alien. But he wasn’t afraid. Why? How
odd ... Ishep searched his emotions, turning over the secret places of his heart the
way a child tips over rocks for bugs. No, he wasn’t afraid, and he should have
been. Instead of fear, there were other emotions: regret for his mother, though she
was moving far away in his thoughts now, growing smaller and more distant, a
memory that would soon be lost in the mists of time. There was anger at Prince
Nartal, that coward, for slinking away after the rest of the funeral procession had
left. But, most of all, there was sadness, and grief. Because Ishep knew that he was
dying, and there was nothing he could do but watch his life slip away.
The woman’s—Uramtali’s—voice-thought again: Why are you here?
Ishep said, out loud, “I love my father, and I followed the procession here, and
then I hid because I wanted to see an Immortal, a dithparu, being born. Only now I
don’t know the way out because Nartal left and I got lost.”
Then, more boldly and with sudden inspiration: “That wasn’t supposed to happen,
was it? The princes have always stayed behind, because they’re supposed to carry
a dithparu from the Well of Souls, that’s what they say.”
That’s true. Now ... As Ishep watched, the whirling spirit-shapes bunched, shifted.
We have to think what to do next. A pause, then: Maybe you.
Then, as the thing’s thought-fingers wriggled deeper into the crevices of his mind,
it was as if its thoughts and Ishep’s merged, and then Ishep knew the truth.
They’re just spirits, and that’s all they are. Ishep grappled after the thought, tried
to hang onto it. They’re Immortals, but they need a body, a certain kind of body, a
body bred for Night. Only then, for some reason, they have to return here, because
this is the place where they live; they can’t leave this place on their own. But now
Nartal’s broken the line and now everything will change. They’ll never get out
anymore, because only Nartal knew the way out, they don’t know the way,
because they’re spirits and they can’t know, and now they’re trapped here until
time stops, and that’s forever ...
Something was happening to the spirit-shapes. As Ishep stared, one portion of the
mass seemed to bud, then separate itself from the rest. The figure hovered before
Ishep, congealing like cooling glass into something recognizable: a snake with the
head of a woman that shifted to a skull then back again, as if it couldn’t quite
摘要：

“CAPTAIN.WE’RETOOSTEEP!WEWONTBEABLETOBREAKAWAY!”AsiftoconfirmGlemoor’swords,Garrettfeltherstomachdropinfreefallastheshiptookasuddenplunge,slammedfromabovebywhatfeltlikeasolidbeltofhyperchargedparticlesandcompressedgases.“Captain,thegravity!”Bat-Levishouted.Theshiprocked,andtheartificialgravityhiccup...

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