Tapinza—he who had instigated all of this, he who had had designs on Moke’s mother, who had brought the green monster that had tried to kill Calhoun, who was in league with all of it—he, Tapinza, tried to run.
But he had caught Moke’s attention, and Moke—once he had noticed something—did not allow it to go.
The wind had become far more fierce, if such a thing was possible, and now it converged around Tapinza. He clawed at the air, trying to batter it back, but there was nothing for him to push away, even though it was solid enough to do him damage. He cried out Moke’s name, but as with all other protests, it was carried up and away … and so was Tapinza. It started slowly at first, but then increased in speed as the whirling vortex lifted Tapinza. He tried to apologize, he tried to beg for mercy, he tried promises of wealth and grandeur, of fame and fortune. He even tried to claim that he was Moke’s father, which was not remotely true— although, at that moment, it wouldn’t have mattered even if it were.
Higher and higher still went Tapinza, so fast that, in no more than an eyeblink, he went from being on the ground to a couple hundred feet above it. Then, like a cat moving on to more interesting prey, the wind released him, and Tapinza fell.
Exactly one person noticed—the Maestress. It was hard for her not to; Tapinza was falling right toward her. Obviously, the Maestress Cawfiel was caught between warring emotions. On the one hand, she knew that attempting to catch the falling Maester would be suicide; on the other hand, she couldn’t bring herself to clear out of his way and thus abandon him at his time of greatest need. And so she stood there, transfixed, unable to decide what to do. Then, at the last moment, as she saw the velocity with which the body was falling, she realized that her death was upon her, and the thought terrified her—which was interesting, considering she had spent a long time thinking that nothing terrified her anymore.
She let out a screech of protest and fright that was, of course, drowned out by all that was around her, and then a large hand grabbed her by the back of her dress and yanked her out of the way as Tapinza hit the ground. He did so with such force that blood spattered everywhere, including all over the Maestress. She stood there, paralyzed, decorated with bits of Tapinza’s body. She didn’t even look to see who it was that had saved her life. Instead, she was focused only on the unmoving sack of meat and bones that had once been the only creature who walked the planet who had stirred anything akin to emotion in her withered soul.
The howling of the wind was mirrored in the howling torn from Moke’s throat, and the storm grew greater, and the hailstones fell with greater ferocity, and there was lightning all around, and the town was being smashed to pieces, and the rest of the people were going to die, that was all, just die, die, death everywhere, a great sea of death, for Moke had never known death before, but now that he grasped the concept, he was going to visit it on all of them, everyone who had ever hurt his mother or him or—
“Enough.”
Over all the desperate and terrified cries, over all the yelling, over all the insanity that was around them, the voice of Mackenzie Calhoun carried. He was standing barely two feet away from Moke, and it was clear from the look in his eye that he was going to accept no excuses, no protests of innocence, no further battering of people or property. Mere seconds before, he had pulled the Maestress out of the way of a very ugly death. Now, he put his own life on the line, standing before a child insane with grief, and he said again, in a tone that made it clear that this was an order, “Enough, I said.”
“But they—”
“Moke,” and this time there was an implied menace, “enough. Your mother wouldn’t want this. Neither should you.” Then, his voice suddenly getting softer, more compassionate, he said, “Go to her. She needs you now.”
Moke hadn’t even realized that there was life left within his mother. Immediately, the town forgotten, spared by the mercurial nature of a child’s attention span, Moke ran to his mother. He collapsed at her side, staring down into eyes that saw him only with love.
“You made … quite a mess …” she managed to say.
“They hurt you …”
“I know. But they can’t hurt me … anymore …” She was speaking as if from very far away. There was, amazingly, a sound of mild relief in her voice.
“Ma …” he said urgently, but was too overwhelmed at first to continue.
Calhoun knelt beside her. At first, she looked at him blankly, as if aware that she knew him from somewhere, but couldn’t quite place where that might be. Then she realized. As if reading his mind, she whispered, “It’s … all right … not your fault …”
“Just rest,” said Calhoun.
She clearly tried to shake her head. “Plenty of time … for that …”
The winds were dying down, and only a last few hailstones were trickling from the sky. The moans and cries of the people were starting to become audible.
Her voice became even more hoarse, a bare shadow of itself. He had to strain to hear her. “I understand now … never had power … until Moke was born … my mother had it … not me … then, when Moke was born … got power … didn’t realize … I never had it … he did … I’m a … a catalyst … there’s something in me … that triggers ability … in my family … that’s why … I couldn’t make rain … when Moke was around … because of me, my mother had it … because of me … so did Moke … never on my own … and Moke, on his own … won’t …”
“I don’t wanna be on my own,” Moke wailed.
“You won’t be …” she said softly, and she looked to Calhoun. “Will he?”
Calhoun slowly shook his head and there was a sad smile on his face. “Never.”
She tried to lift her arm, but it wouldn’t respond. With infinite gentleness, Calhoun raised her hand up and put it against his face, on the side opposite the scar.
“Whoever she is …” Rheela managed to get out, “… the woman who … holds your heart … she’s … she’s very lucky … tell her … I said she is … you will … tell her …” He nodded.
“Moke … honey … Mommy loves you … always … you can make the clouds go away now … have it stop being … so dark …”
“I have, Ma. Look …”
Above them, the clouds had indeed parted, and now, from on high, a single stream of light enveloped them, as if the eyes of the gods on high were staring straight down upon them.
“Much … better …” she whispered. “Just let me … enjoy the light here … for a few moments …”
And Moke held her close until she was gone.
SHELBY
SHELBY DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING for some time after Robin Lefler finished speaking. When she did, it was simply, “Then what?”
Lefler shrugged, as if nothing much mattered after that. “Well … Si Cwan and Kalinda left not too long after that. I’m not too sure where they went. Although … believe me, Captain, I know them. If there’s a relaunch of the Excalibur, they’ll know about it, and will probably show up.”
“And what will you say to him? To Si Cwan, I mean.”
“I know who you meant. I just …” She shook her head. “I don’t know.” Then, as if to try and change the mood through sheer force of will, she slapped her thighs and said, “My mom and Scotty have been working day and night since then, overseeing repairs and such. The owners of the place want to put Scotty in charge of the joint as manager. He keeps saying he’s not interested, although Mom keeps telling him just to think of it as a really big pub.”
Shelby laughed at that. Then she said, “Do you think your mother will want to come along to the christening?”
“Oh, I doubt she’d miss it. By the way … you haven’t told me. Who’s captaining it?”
Shelby smiled.
At first Lefler didn’t understand the silent grin, but then she got it. “You? You? But … but you just got the Exeter!”
“I know. But when the Excalibur came open, well …”
“You applied for it?”
“Actually … no. No, I was asked if I was interested. At first I said no, but then, on reflection—the reflection coming about a minute later, you understand—I agreed to it. I had some trepidation, I fully admit that. But somehow … I thought that—well—”
“He would have wanted it that way?”
She nodded. “Exactly.”
“Who asked you if you were interested?”
“Actually … you won’t believe it … but it was Jellico.”
Lefler’s jaw dropped. “No!”
“Yes. I know, I know, it’s … kind of hard to believe. Every so often, he’ll say or do something that surprises the hell out of me.”
“Me, too,” said Lefler wonderingly. “What about the rest of your command crew? Do they mind making the transfer?”
“Well …” Shelby cleared her throat. “They’re … not making the transfer, actually.”
Lefler blinked. “They’re not?”
“No. There have been some … well, some personality conflicts. Things haven’t gone quite as smoothly as I’d hoped. I suppose, in a number of respects, it wasn’t fair to them.”
“Fair to them? In what way?”
Shelby looked at her levelly. “I was asking them to live up to the standard set by one of the best crews it’s ever been my privilege to work with. A crew that—frankly—I’ve come to miss the hell out of. And a crew that I’m hoping I can reassemble to be under me on the Excalibur.”
Lefler’s lower lip trembled. “I … I think I’m going to cry …”
“That won’t be necessary. A simple ‘Yes, Captain’ will suffice,” said Shelby, taking great pains to ignore that she was getting a touch misty-eyed herself.
Lefler drew herself up and, tilting her chin proudly, said, “Yes, Captain. It will be an honor to serve under you again.” Then she laughed and shook her head. “I still can’t believe that, for once, Admiral Jellico did something just to be decent.”
“Well … he may have had some mild degree of superstitious self-interest in mind.”
“What?” Lefler had no clue what she was talking about.
“Well,” said Shelby, clearly amused at the prospect, “he also said something about not putting it past Calhoun to find a way to come back from the dead and haunt him if anyone except either him or me was in charge of the new Excalibur.”
“You know what? I wouldn’t put it past him either.”
CALHOUN
IT DIDN’T TAKE CALHOUN LONG to locate Krut’s vessel. Unlike his own shuttle, which had been more or less destroyed in the landing, Krut’s ship was giving off energy emissions as its onboard circuitry went about its automated business. Utilizing the tricorder, Calhoun found the ship in short order. He looked at it grimly, not the least bit amused to see the nature of the ship. It was a Federation runabout. There was no telling where Krut had gotten it from, but it was likely that either he’d stolen it, or somehow hijacked it after killing whoever it was who had previously been in it. Certainly such a vehicle allowed him to travel around with relative impunity. Furthermore, as he studied the ship’s controls, he found a variety of holo comm disguise programs built in. In essence, if someone chose to make visual contact with the runabout, the runabout would send back a customized image, depending upon who was doing the hailing. A Vulcan ship would see a Vulcan in command of the runabout; a Rigelian would be talking to a Rigelian, and so on. It was possible for a sustained scan and double-check to penetrate the disguise, but for casual encounters, it was more than sufficient to allay suspicions.
Moke had been silent since his mother’s passing. Calhoun had considered Moke and himself lucky that they’d gotten out of the city when they did, and with as much ease. The townspeople, after all, did not realize that Moke was about as dangerous as the average small boy was now that his mother was gone. The unusual bond, the link that they had shared that had enabled him to wield his weather powers so forcefully, was gone. If they’d understood that he was no longer a threat, they would have torn him apart, and very likely Calhoun along with him, if he’d tried to defend the boy. Fortunately enough, the people were so terrified that they simply stood (or lay) there as Calhoun and Moke left the town, riding on the back of the luukab, which—astonishingly—had weathered the storm with such equanimity that one would have thought it no more hazardous than a light shower.
They had also brought the body of Moke’s mother. It was not a pleasant notion, but Calhoun would be damned if he left Rheela’s body behind. Who knew what they would do to it? But although he was worried about Moke’s reaction to his mother’s corpse accompanying them for the ride, he needn’t have been concerned. Moke didn’t seem to pay any attention to their “cargo” at all. Calhoun had a feeling as to why: as far as Moke was concerned, his mother was gone. The brutalized shell that remained behind was no more his mother than an empty boot was the sum and substance of the foot that had once occupied it.
Calhoun, though, was loath simply to bury her, since he didn’t trust the townspeople—once their terror had dissipated, to be replaced by outrage over what had occurred—not to seek out her grave and defile it. The solution was presented to him when, guided by the tricorder, he located Krut’s ship, situated in a secluded area not far from town. Upon entering, he discovered assorted weaponry, including a standard issue Starfleet phaser. A natural enough item for a runabout to have, although once again he thought bleakly about where Krut had come across it; he’d probably taken it off the body of a Starfleet officer.
When he emerged from the ship, holding the phaser, he slid Rheela’s body off the luukab and placed it on the ground as delicately as he could. It was more for the boy’s benefit than anything else, since obviously Rheela couldn’t feel anything anymore. Moke watched the entire thing with calm, almost distant eyes.
Calhoun took several steps back, and then turned to Moke and said gently, “You can say good-bye if you wish.”
“I already did,” he said, looking much older than he had when Calhoun first met him, months ago.
He nodded, then thumbed the phaser to “disintegrate,” and fired once. The beam struck her and, in a haze of light, she discorporated.
Moke looked with wonder at the phaser, and then to Calhoun. He pointed to the weapon and said, “Is she in there now?”
Calhoun suppressed the urge to laugh. This was, after all, a sad moment, not one that suggested levity, no matter how unintentionally funny the boy’s question had been. “No, Moke … she’s not in here. She’s …” He paused and then said, “She’s with Kolk’r now.”
He mulled this over and said nothing. Calhoun hoped that he would understand, although the truth was that Calhoun was much older than Moke and there were still quite a few things that he himself didn’t understand … and quite likely never would. Then, tentatively, and even a little fearfully, Moke asked, “Are you going to use that … to send me to be with Kolk’r and Ma, too?”
Calhoun couldn’t help but think it was the saddest question he had ever heard anyone pose in his entire life. He shook his head. “No, Moke. No, hopefully it’s going to be a long, long time before you go visit with, uhm … Kolk’r.”
“So what’s going to happen to me?”
“Well …” Calhoun took a deep breath. “I figured you would come with me. I’ll take you home. My home.”
Moke looked skyward. “Is it … up there?” When Calhoun nodded, Moke asked, “Is it scary?”
“It can be,” Calhoun said honestly. “But then again, there’s scary things everywhere. And it can be very exciting as well. I think you’ll like it.”
For a very, very long time, Moke stared at him … so long that Calhoun started to wonder if something was wrong. And finally, Moke said to him, “Are you my father?”
And Calhoun gave the only response that he could:
“I am now.”
He considered that a moment, and then nodded. “Can I call you ‘Dad’?” he asked.
“If you would like to. Would you like to?” Moke nodded.
“All right. That would be fine.”
“Dad … ?”
“Yes, Moke.”
“Did you love Ma?”
He smiled sadly. “I could have, given time … and different circumstances. Yes, I could have loved her very much. But I do love someone … who is very much like her. Come. I’ll take you to meet her.”
And moments later, the runabout lifted off the surface of Yakaba, never to return, while the stray atoms of Moke’s mother flitted about, forever a part of the atmosphere that she had once joyfully manipulated.
EXCALIBUR
THEOFFICIAL TRANSFER of the captaincy of the Exeter from Shelby to Garbeck went smoothly enough. On the bridge of that ship, Shelby said—as the rest of the crew looked on—“I’m officially turning her over to you, Captain. Good luck to you.”
“Thank you, Captain,” replied Garbeck and—in one of the very, very few instances in Starfleet where it was still customary—she saluted. Shelby snapped off a sharp return of the salute, which was fairly impressive, considering how rarely she made one. Then Shelby went down to the transporter room, where Ensign Chris Kennedy waited to beam her over to her new command.
When she arrived on Excalibur, they were all waiting for her.
There, in the main reception hall, the entire crew had assembled. Burgoyne and Selar were there, and to Shelby’s complete astonishment, their infant son, Xyon, was already standing and clutching his mother’s pant leg. Burgoyne was looking on proudly. Soleta was also there, looking a bit more—haggard, somehow, although Shelby might have been imagining it. Zak Kebron was there, and Shelby had forgotten how incredibly massive the Brikar was. Nearby was Mark McHenry, engaged in a relaxed chat with Robin Lefler. Again, it might have been Shelby’s imagination, but she felt as if Kebron was—every so often—casting suspicious glances in McHenry’s direction. She had no idea why that would be the case, though. Morgan Lefler was there as well, chatting with Jean-Luc Picard and Admiral Jellico. Picard was just staring at her, in what could only be considered polite frustration, as if he knew her from someplace but couldn’t quite figure out where that might be. Also present were Si Cwan and Kalinda. Apparently, Lefler had it pegged exactly right. They had found out, and they had come on their own. She watched as Si Cwan walked straight up to Kebron. The two of them had historically had very little patience with one another, but this time, when Cwan tapped his heart and head in sequence and bowed slightly—a traditional Thallonian greeting of respect—Kebron actually returned the gesture in as polite a manner as he could. It almost gave Shelby hope for the future.