Fire On High

  "I don't think it's pathetic at all," Si Cwan said softly. "Clearly you cared a great deal for her. Certainly she must have known this. I'm sure it made a difference to her."

  "Not enough of a difference to get her to change," replied Lefler bitterly. "And then, when I was still a teenager, just like that, poof. She's out of my life. I spent years mourning the loss, Si Cwan. Not just mourning the fact that she was taken from me, but mourning the fact that I never really got to know her. That I had been deprived of a normal mother-daughter relationship when she was with me, and that I'd never have the opportunity to try and fix things. I've carried that with me, that base sense of failure, for a decade now. And you know what the worst thing was?" He shook his head and she continued. "Deep down… waaaaay, way deep down where smart people don't go, I almost felt as if she had gotten killed because she wanted to get away from me. How is that for a completely screwed up way of viewing the world? That this was a woman who was so tired of having me around for a daughter, that she was actually ready, willing, and able to shrug off this mortal coil rather than have to deal with me anymore. The thing is, you can chalk this up to the overstimulated and angst-ridden imaginings of a teenager, but now here I am, I'm all grown up, and look what we've got. We've got my worst nightmare come true. She's alive, Si Cwan. She's alive, and it looks for all the world like I was dead right. That she went and faked her death just to find a way out. Part of me is screaming, 'Good move, Lefler. Not only did you drive away your mother, but you cost your father his wife. You cost him his life, because he died of a broken heart!' It's beyond belief! It—"

  He took her face in his hands. She was amazed by the warmth of his skin, and when he looked into her eyes she felt as if she were being pulled into them.

  "Now you listen to me," he said forcefully. It was the voice of someone who was not only accustomed to giving orders, but to having them obeyed instantly. "Whatever happened with your mother was not your fault. Whatever happened with your father was likewise not your fault. You are carrying whatever burdens they may have had upon your shoulders. There is no point to that, no reason for it. Whatever reason your mother had for disappearing had absolutely nothing to do with you."

  "You don't know that."

  "I do not have to. I know you. I know the wonderful kind of person you are, Robin. I can see it in your eyes, in your heart. You're kind and compassionate, and if you wish to ascribe to your mother all the reasons for your most positive qualities, then that is entirely your privilege. The important matter is not how you got this way, but that you are this way. She missed you growing up, and that is your loss, but it is also hers. And she was the one who set that into motion.

  "Listen carefully to me, Robin. You are being given a rare opportunity here. My entire family was slaughtered in the fall of Thallon except for my younger sister, who is lost somewhere in this gods-forsaken space sector. My relations with my family members were extremely acrimonious, and there were many points of disagreement between myself and them. There is so much that I wish I had said to them, so many pointless hours wasted in argument and vituperation that could just as easily, and preferably, been utilized for some positive pursuits. But all those hours are lost to me, as is my family. You have been blessed, Robin. You thought resolution, closure, maybe even personal growth were all lost to you. Instead, you have been given a second chance. Most of us would kill for that second opportunity. I certainly know I would. You've been given that chance, and the optimistic and bright-eyed Robin Lefler would probably have a rule to cover that. Does she?"

  "Lefler Law One hundred and eight," she said without hesitation. "It's not over until it's over, and sometimes not even then."

  "I'm not sure I understand it," Si Cwan told her,

  "but you say it with conviction. The most incomprehensible pronouncements of our time have been said with that sort of conviction, and subsequently accepted. In fact, there are any number of laws that have been made that probably originated in just that way."

  "You think I'm being ridiculous," she sighed.

  "I think you're being Robin Lefler," he replied.

  "And that is more than enough for me. It would be nice if it could be enough for you as well."

  "You flatterer," she said with a shake of her head.

  Suddenly he drew her face toward his, and she knew that he was going to kiss her. For a wild moment, she wondered what it would be like. Would it be soft and loving or hard and rough? Which way did she want it? Part of her wanted to be swept off her feet by this rather dashing and romantic fallen monarch. But another part wanted to take it slow, to have the relationship meet its full potential. To …

  He kissed her chastely on the forehead.

  She stared at him.

  "You know," he said, sliding back into his seat and patting her hand warmly, "in so many ways, you remind me of her."

  "Her who?"

  "My sister. Same enthusiasm, same joy of living, same social consciousness and feeling that the problems of the galaxy are all caused by her. Being with you reminds me of her, makes me feel like we're together, just for a little bit."

  His sister. Great. I'm his surrogate sister.

  "Robin, are you quite all right?"

  "Oh, fine," she said quickly. "I'm perfectly fine. Your sister, huh? Well, that's certainly what I was aspiring to. And you're certainly like the brother I never had. Well, the brother I never had if he'd turned out to be red-skinned and have tattoos on his forehead. That kind of brother."

  "I see."

  "I want to tell you, Si Cwan," she said as she started to rise from her chair, "this has been a really wonderful, revealing chat."

  ELSEWHERE…

  HER LOVER IS SPEAKING TO HER.

  It tells her of a loss. Another of its kind is suddenly gone, just like that. It causes her, just for a moment, to cease her singing. She feels her lover's sadness, and she mourns the loss of others like it.

  And then a fear begins to pervade her. She does not realize its origins at first, because she thinks it may be coming from within her. But then she realizes that such is not the case. It is, in fact, coming from her lover.

  The realization is startling to her. In all this time, her lover has been her strength, her salvation. All of her own confidence and certainty comes from the protection that her lover provides her. For her lover now to feel fear, it must be a most terrible state of affairs indeed.

  She reaches into her lover, probes gently, to learn what disturbs it.

  She finds fear of being kidnapped. Fear of forced abandonment. Her lover senses something, senses that some change has occurred. That something new has been introduced into its personal environment. A variable, an x factor that threatens to disrupt the status quo. And once something like that has been introduced, it is impossible to determine what the outcome will be or where it will all end up.

  It is possible, of course, that there will never be any disruption to her lover. That their little world of Ahmista will remain undisturbed and unaffected by whatever is happening elsewhere in the galaxy. It is more than possible, in fact. It is extremely likely.

  But there is still a chance, of course. An outside chance that something could happen. Someone might come to try and take her lover away.

  She will not let that happen. She knows that for a certainty. If someone should come along and try to deprive her of her lover, she will fight back with every bit of ability at her disposal. Mercy will be an alien concept to her. She will destroy anything and everything that attempts to separate her from that which she adores, that which she could not live without.

  She strokes her lover gently and speaks to it with the power of her mind. She reassures it, lets it know that she will never abandon it or turn away from it. You are mine. You will always be mine, and I yours. Nothing can ever change that. If others try to… I will destroy them. I will obliterate them. It will be as if they had never existed. You can trust me on that, I swear to you. I swear it.

  And her lover believe
s her. It knows that she is sincere, and accepts her without hesitation.

  She will be one with her lover. She will stay with her lover.

  She draws it tighter to her, and in her mind she calls out defiantly to any and all who might try to separate them. Come to me, she challenges any and all potential threats. Come to me and I will show you what happens to anyone who would hurt me, or who would try to come between my lover and me. We are together, forever. Come to me, if you will. Come to me… and know my love… and know your death.

  And she waited eagerly for the chance to prove her love by destroying whomever might approach.

  VII

  "IT'S BACK, SIR."

  Leaning over the console in Burgoyne's office, Ensign Beth tapped the readouts dancing across the screen, the energy spikes being generated by the engines. Burgoyne shook hir head in disbelief as, all around hir, the day shift in Engineering came on duty.

  "You see? During a routine diagnostic, it suddenly spiked as if it… it…"

  "Woke up," Burgoyne murmured. "That'll teach me to start a day with anything approaching a good mood."

  "A good mood?" Beth smiled wanly. "Another wild evening with Dr. Selar?"

  Burgoyne immediately fired her a look that fairly shouted to her that she'd overstepped herself. "I'm disinclined to be grist for the rumor mill, Ensign, if it's all the same to you," s/he said sharply.

  "I'm—" She quickly looked around as if hoping that she could suddenly spot someplace else she should be. "I'm sorry, sir."

  But Burgoyne simply regarded her as if from very far away for a moment, and then said wistfully, "No, no, it's all right, Ensign. You're just being human, with all the attendant problems that brings with it. If we could design a starship that was fueled by rumors, we could probably crack Warp Ten with it." S/he scratched hir chin thoughtfully. "I should have known it wouldn't be that easy, that the problem wouldn't just disappear."

  "You were speculating earlier, Chief, about the possibility of there being something…" She looked uncomfortably in the direction of the warp core. "Well, something alive in there? And now you're talking about maybe something woke up. Do you really think that—"

  "I'm not sure," admitted Burgoyne. "But I'll tell you one thing, Beth. If there really is some sort of energy being or creature rumbling around in the engines, this has suddenly gone beyond being an engineering problem. I'm going to have to bring in science on this." S/he tapped her commbadge. "Engineering to Soleta."

  "Soleta here. Go ahead."

  "We have a situation down here that I'm having trouble resolving—and you did not hear me say that, since everyone knows I have the answers for everything."

  "Understood, Chief. I am about to brief the captain and commander on the details of my excavation on Zondar, but I will be down directly."

  "I'll be waiting. Burgoyne out." Burgoyne turned to Beth just in time to notice that Ensign Christiano was walking past Burgoyne's office and he seemed to be trying to sneak a very nonchalant look in. Beth was pointedly looking in the other direction. This exchange, or lack thereof, was hardly lost on Burgoyne, who said, "Trouble in paradise with Mr. Christiano, Ensign?"

  "Lieutenant Commander," Beth said stiffly, squaring her shoulders, "if you are permitted to keep the details of your private life private, then I would think that you would allow me the same courtesy."

  "By all means," Burgoyne assured her.

  "Whatever is going on between Ensign Christiano and myself, or whatever is not going on, is not something that I really wish to discuss at this time."

  "I understand completely."

  "I don't want to talk about him or my ring, all right?"

  "I'd be happy to honor your…" Burgoyne blinked a moment in confusion. "Your ring? What ring?"

  "Well…" She cleared her throat. "Since you asked…"

  * * *

  In the conference lounge, Calhoun was holding up the disk, carefully examining it front and back. Standing directly behind him, looking over his shoulder, was Shelby. "I take it, Lieutenant, that despite your time already spent in this sector of space, that you've never seen anything like this?"

  "No, sir, I have not," said Soleta. "The symbol on it has no particular meaning. The material itself is not especially abnormal. An alloy with a mix of at least twelve different elements to it. No internal circuitry that I can detect; it appears to be solid throughout."

  "Looks like a metal hockey puck," Shelby observed.

  "Since I'm unfamiliar with that device, I will take your word for it," Soleta said.

  "And you said that it talked to you somehow? That it channeled some sort of a … a mind?"

  "So it seemed, Captain. But to be honest, everything happened so quickly that it is difficult to know precisely what happened. It's as I described in my report: I touched it, I felt some sort of warmth, and suddenly there was this… this voice in my head. Events unfolded rather quickly after that."

  "Yes, so you said. Nice that you made it back in one piece." He sat back and said sadly, "I just wish that there had been something left there for us to study."

  "As do I, Captain. Unfortunately, there's definitely nothing left. The force blast that blew off the top of the mountain was rather comprehensive. It was designed to obliterate everything that was there. From my firsthand observation, I would have to say that it more than did the job."

  "And you're convinced," Shelby said, slowly walking along the interior of the room, "that the image you saw was Ontear. The Ontear of Zondarian history."

  "That is my conclusion, yes."

  "And mine as well," Calhoun reminded her. "I saw him, too, when I was a captive down there."

  "You're not going to tell me this was a ghost, are you?" Shelby warned, clearly not sanguine over that prospect.

  "Far from it. I think he was all too real," said Calhoun.

  Soleta was nodding as well. "From your accounts, Captain, and from my own experience, I believe that what we saw was a crude form of observational time travel. Ontear utilized technology that enabled him to project himself forward in time, to observe and, if he desired, interact with whatever he encountered while never truly leaving his own period of time. Since he amassed himself a considerable reputation as a seer, I would surmise that he pursued these endeavors within his local arena of time as well. There is not all that much difficulty in being a soothsayer—"

  "If you have firsthand access to the sooth," Calhoun said. "Charming little deal he has worked out. He goes to the future, watches it unfold, then in his own time he predicts its coming."

  "But he had to be judicious about it," Shelby pointed out. "He had to do things in such a way that it wouldn't result in the future actually being changed. That could have jeopardized the entire time line that he was trying to observe."

  "From my preliminary research," Soleta told them, "at least half of his predictions involved natural disasters. Warning people of floods, quakes, and such. Nothing that foreknowledge could possibly have made any difference in."

  "I disagree," said Calhoun. "Let's say that Citizen X was destined to die in a volcano. If Ontear targets the volcano, and Citizen X knows to get the hell out of there or he winds up roasted in lava, then history could indeed wind up being changed."

  "We will never know for certain," Soleta admitted. "Although I would like to think that, at the very least, he was selective in whom he dealt with and what particular moments, if any, he chose to interfere with. He might have been bright enough to target the potential focal points in time that could seriously have disrupted the path of Zondarian history."

  "We can only hope," sighed Calhoun. He slid the disk back across the table to Soleta. "Check this with Si Cwan. See if he knows anything about it or has ever seen anything like it. This is supposed to be his home turf, after all."

  "As you wish, sir."

  With a glance at the both of them that seemed to indicate they were finished with their business, Calhoun rose and headed back to the bridge. Soleta was about to follow whe
n she heard her name spoken very quietly, just under someone's breath. She turned, mildly surprised, to see that Shelby was whispering her name, barely mouthing it. Shelby knew that Soleta's rather sharp hearing would detect it. She hung back since Shelby's desires were clear: She wanted to speak to her privately for a moment. As soon as Calhoun had departed, Soleta turned squarely to face Shelby with a questioning eyebrow raised.

  "Soleta, may I ask your opinion about a personal matter?"

  "Of course you can, Commander."

  "I just…" Shelby's hands seemed to move in vague patterns. "I… wanted to talk to another woman for a moment."

  "Do you wish me to find one for you?" Soleta inquired.

  "No, I—" Shelby laughed softly. "I meant I wanted to talk to you. You're the highest ranking woman on the bridge aside from me. Maybe that's a silly criterion, but nonetheless I feel a sort of… of connection with you in that respect."

  "It is flattering that you think of me with such regard. Very well, Commander, how may I be of service?"

  Shelby walked slowly around the table with a bit of a swagger to her step, as if endeavoring to bolster her confidence, as if she were discussing something that was mere silliness at best. "You seem to be a fairly sharp judge of character, and you've had a chance to observe the interactions of all concerned fairly closely since the launch of the Excalibur, and I suppose that one of your strengths is analysis, which would make you an ideal person to ask about this. I fully admit, I'm not entirely comfortable discussing it, but I'm a strong believer in talking things out, getting opinions and feedback. You understand, don't you?"

  "Understand what? I confess, Commander, I am still uncertain as to precisely what it is that we are discussing."

  "Love. Desire. Attraction. That kind of thing."

  She looked at her askance for a moment. "Commander, are you propositioning me?"