Not for one minute during her time on the bridge did she cease thinking of her son. But, just as expected, it gave her something additional to think about.
The one person—if the term person could apply to her—to acknowledge that Robin’s presence was a little odd, naturally, was her mother. Morgan would appear from time to time, looking over Robin’s shoulder, asking if there was anything she could do to make Robin’s stay more pleasant. It seemed a little odd to Robin. On the one hand, her mother was coming across as solicitous; on the other, it seemed like she was being territorial, trying to ensure that Robin didn’t get too comfortable at the ops station. Robin reasoned she might have well been imagining it.
Several hours later, Robin started to feel fatigue setting in, dropping over her mind like a fuzzy blanket. She realized she hadn’t slept properly in more than twenty-four hours. She was running on fear and adrenaline, and it was starting to take its toll, but she was unwilling to ask for any special treatment. It didn’t matter because Calhoun noticed her movements seemed slower. He ordered her to go to her quarters and get some sleep. “You’ll be of no use to me if you’re passing out at your station,” he said, and she knew he was right.
When she got to her quarters, she flopped down onto her bed fully dressed. Her eyes had just started closing when she heard the door chime. “Come,” she said, forcing herself to sit up and rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
The door opened. It was Kalinda.
Robin moaned softly and flopped back onto the bed.
Kalinda stepped in, the door sliding shut behind her. “If that’s intended to interest me, you’re succeeding.”
“Oh, God. I don’t need this.”
“I know. It’s unfortunate—”
“It’s unnatural!” Robin nearly exploded with frustration. “Dead is dead!”
“In the universe as you experience it, yes,” said Kalinda. “But there are aspects beyond your experience—”
“Don’t start.”
Kalinda smiled sadly. “With all the things you and the crew have experienced, is this truly so beyond the pale? How could I have known the things of which I spoke to you—”
Robin shrugged. “Cwan confided in you. Or you overheard. Or you were listening in. Or you read my mind.”
“You would readily believe in psychic abilities? Such phenomena are scarcely more unusual than that which I’m claiming.”
“At least they’re measurable!” Robin said in frustration. “At least they’re scientifically established! Not superstition or magic!”
“I tend to think that your ancestors would have been more comfortable with the notion of ghosts than vessels flying through the stars.”
“That’s not the point.”
“You’re right,” said Kalinda, sounding very much as if she understood everything Robin was going through, which inexplicably annoyed Robin all the more. “That’s not why I came here anyway. I just wanted to find out what was happening. I’ve been supplying the heading…”
“You mean your best guess as to the heading.” Robin shook her head in disgust. “Part of me still can’t believe the captain is taking you at your word.”
“Intellectually he finds it just as difficult to accept what I’ve been telling him as you do. But the captain also tends to trust his instincts. Besides, as has been pointed out, you really don’t have anything better to go on.”
Robin remained on the edge of the bed, staring into space. Kalinda walked over, sat down next to her, took her hand, and squeezed it tightly. “Whether you believe I’m who I say I am, or whether I’m just a woman who’s lost her mind…either way, we’re stronger together than we are apart. We should be united in our concern for Cwansi, be he my son or nephew.”
Robin nodded reluctantly, allowing Kalinda to continue to hold her hand. Despite the unusual aspects of the situation, she found it oddly comforting.
“Do we know anything more of Cwansi’s whereabouts?” Kalinda said.
“You mean,” said Robin, “other than the direction we’re heading on your say-so?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if you’re correct, and if the Spectre maintains a consistent heading, then it’s going to make planetfall on a rim world designated AF1963. The captain has alerted Kat Mueller’s ship, the Trident. They happened to be in that general area on a star charting run. So they’re heading to AF1963, hoping to head them off. I’m not sure how Mueller is going to have any more luck detecting them than we do. And this planet. What’s even there?” said Kalinda.
“Nothing. Nothing that I know of. Nothing that anyone knows of. It’s an inhospitable ball of rock.”
“Why would Selar be heading there?”
Kalinda shrugged. “I don’t know. My connection is only to Cwansi, not to the people surrounding him.”
“Do you have any idea how insane that sounds?”
“I have every idea,” said Kalinda. “If the situation were reversed, I would be as doubtful as you. I don’t know what to tell you, Robin, except that my love for you and our son is so great that—”
“Stop it,” Robin said, standing up and turning away. “Just stop it. I’m begging you.”
Kalinda remained seated, but there was sadness in her voice. “Are you so unwilling to accept a miracle when it’s being presented you?”
“How am I supposed to accept it?”
“You can just—”
“How am I supposed to accept it,” she repeated, her voice rising, “knowing that, sooner or later, you’ll go right back to whatever spirit world spat you up? I’m right, aren’t I? If you’re who you say you are, this…” She gestured helplessly. “…this situation isn’t going to last indefinitely! At some point I would lose you again! How many times am I supposed to lose the same person I love? How many?”
She sagged against a wall, and when Kalinda tried to walk over to her, comfort her, embrace her, Robin’s arms whirled about, driving her back. Robin covered her head with her arms and sank to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably.
“I’m sorry,” whispered Kalinda helplessly. She backed up until she reached the doors, which slid open behind her, and retreated from the cabin.
Robin continued to sob, slumping over onto the floor, and she remained there until she fell asleep.
The Spectre
i.
What have I done? What have I done?
A feeling of hopelessness seized Selar, but she knew that indulging it was not an option.
A haze had been removed from her mind, like fog dissipating. She could not even dwell upon what she had done; it was too much for her to contemplate. It was all she could do not to be overwhelmed by the consequences of her actions.
The word that summarized her state of mind in the past few days echoed in her head, but she refused to acknowledge it. It was considered the bottom rung in the ladder of Vulcan development, a state of mind shunned by every right-thinking Vulcan in the galaxy. How was it possible for her to have allowed herself to descend to such a level? She could not have allowed it, and therefore she had not done so.
No. It is not demonstrated. That is a logical fallacy, circular reasoning. What is wrong with you, embracing logical fallacies to avoid taking responsibility for your behavior?
She put her face in her hands and slowed her breathing, straining to pull herself together. Then she looked down at the shackle around her ankle and the length of chain that attached it to the wall. She pulled on it experimentally. The chain did not display the slightest interest in breaking, which was not very accommodating of it.
She checked the child. Cwansi was still asleep. She had no idea how long he had been sleeping. When she was awake, she was perfectly able to keep track of time, down to the second. However, since she had been rendered unconscious, she wasn’t certain about how much time had passed.
How could you not have anticipated that Lucius would do such a thing? He was willing to betray his own companion. What could possibly have made you think he would hesitate
to turn on you the moment you ran contrary to his wishes? Especially when he’s been so vague about his motivations. Nothing beyond “For the good of the Empire.”
Selar tried to tell herself that there was no point in dwelling on the past. She could not correct her mistakes; her only choice was to try to create a future that was more to her liking. The problem was that, given her current state of affairs, contemplating her mistakes was the only pastime available. It wasn’t as if she could accomplish much of anything else.
Except that is not entirely true, is it.
She looked once more to the unconscious form of Rulan. There was still the possibility that she could discern from hir information that would be helpful to Xy. Perhaps it might even provide her insight into the predicament that she currently found herself in. She had been reluctant to probe hir mind earlier. And thanks to the dreamlike events that had terminated her previous attempt to do so, she was uncertain now whether there was even any point in trying.
Why not? You have already lost your ship, your son, your good standing in Starfleet. There is simply no way you are ever going to be able to recover from this. You have nothing left to lose.
She was across the room from Rulan. That was going to make effecting a mind meld with hir more challenging, but not impossible. Selar closed her eyes, slowing down her heart rate. She envisioned hir thoughts, hir essence, pictured them as a pure glowing ball of energy. Then she reached out with the tendrils of her mind, merging her thoughts with hirs, and she is searching, carefully, meticulously, and there is a towering wall in front of her, and she cannot quite believe it, because there it is, an actual wall that seems to go on forever in all directions, and she is floating in front of it, trying to go above it or around it and there is no way, she is blocked every which way, and then she tries to see if there is a way to get under the wall, some crack overlooked, some hole that will provide access, and she goes to the bottom and envisions herself starting to dig away at the foundation so that her essence can get through, and she believes she is beginning to make headway when there is a rumbling around her that seems impossible, yet there it is, and it is becoming louder, and it’s everywhere, and suddenly she looks up and realizes that the impossibly high wall is beginning to crumble right over her, and she throws her arms up over her head to try to shield herself, but she fails and down it comes, all of it, collapsing on her, burying her, and she hears screaming coming from outside and she thinks it may be the baby or it may be Lucius but she cannot be sure, and she is looking in too many directions at once, and then she is completely entombed by the collapsing wall, and darkness claims her once more…
ii.
Even in the bridge, Lucius could hear the reedy, plaintive wails of the infant. He cursed the ears that enabled him to detect noises others would have been unable to perceive. He waited for Selar to attend to the child, but apparently she was not doing so. Was she still unconscious from the disruptor blast? How could that possibly be? That had been hours ago.
A ploy. That was it. It had to be a ploy to bring him down to the brig, possibly in the hopes of ambushing him. Well, there was simply no way he would be foolish enough to fall for something that obvious. He was going to stay right where he was.
The cries escalated in volume and intensity and finally Lucius could not stand it any longer. With a furious growl he bolted from the bridge, down to the brig, and stood outside the force field. Selar was lying there, unmoving, still chained to the wall. The Hermat had not budged from where s/he’d been before. And sure enough, there was the baby, hands balled into tiny fists, face scrunched, crying. The child had been screaming so long and so intensely that his face was nearly as red as the natural skin color of his father’s race.
“Shut up!” shouted Lucius at the child, which he knew was a waste of time. The child ignored him. If anything, his screams seemed to become louder. “Selar! Attend to him! Don’t think you can lie there pretending to be unconscious! Attend to the child, or I’ll kill him myself! My future be damned; I’ll not tolerate his howling for another minute!”
Selar didn’t move. Looking closer, he realized that her eyes were open, but they were darting about furiously as if she were dreaming while awake. Her breathing was shallow, almost impossible to perceive. It was as if she were in some sort of self-induced trance. If this was a stunt on her part, then it was well-conceived and amazingly pulled off.
There was nothing he could do on the other side of the force field. Lucius reached over and touched the control panel that was just to the right of the doorframe. As he did so, he pulled out his disruptor so that he would be ready for anything. The force field arcs withdrew into the sides of the wall, leaving the doorway unobstructed. Lucius entered, keeping his disruptor leveled on Selar. He stopped several feet away from her, beyond the reach the chain would have allowed her to attain if she suddenly came to—presuming she was faking. He afforded the Hermat one more look. There was no movement there, but Lucius had extremely good peripheral vision. If the Hermat made any move, Lucius would see it. Then he turned his attention to the baby, who was continuing to howl.
He switched his target from Selar to the baby and said warningly, “Last chance, Selar. Attend to the child or I swear by all the gods, I will attend to him myself, and it will be permanent.” It was a bluff, or at least he thought it was. The baby was the whole point of the mission. Still, the damned thing was getting on his nerves in a terminal manner.
She didn’t move. The baby continued to cry.
“Fine. On your head, then.”
He swung the disruptor toward the child, threatening to pull the trigger.
That was when his peripheral vision alerted him.
The Hermat was coming right at him.
Lucius swung the disruptor back around, bringing it to bear on the Hermat, and there was no way the Hermat should have been able to cross the distance of the room before Lucius pulled the trigger. The Hermat was moving faster than Lucius would have thought possible. Lucius fired, but the Hermat had darted inside Lucius’s reach and slapped his arm to the side. The shot went wide, and Luicus tried to bring his arm back around again. But it was as if he were moving in slow motion compared to the Hermat.
The Hermat’s hand swung, and hir fingers were thrust outward, flat, like the head of a spear. It swung across Lucius’s throat and Lucius grabbed at it reflexively. His eyes widened as something warm and wet began to soak his hand. He looked at it and saw that his hand was covered with greenish blood, and he realized with a sort of distant surprise that it was his own.
The Hermat was now standing several feet away, hir hand up in front of hir face. Lucius saw, to his surprise, that claws were extending from the tips of hir fingers. He hadn’t seen those before. Must be retractable, he thought. Interesting. Once I’ve attended to this minor wound, I shall have to find a way to remove them, preferably from the wrist up.
That was when he realized the bleeding wasn’t ceasing, despite the pressure he applied to it. If anything, it seemed to be flowing faster. It was pouring down the front of his clothing, a huge green stain that was spreading quickly.
The Hermat appeared to be looking right through him, and then the Hermat collapsed once more. Lucius tried to bring up his disruptor, but it slipped from his suddenly nerveless fingers and clattered on the floor.
He was losing strength in his legs. He stumbled backward, barely making it to the door, and then he hit the force field control panel. The force field flared to life, once again imprisoning Selar, the baby, and the Hermat within.
Lucius turned on his heel, certain that all he had to do was get to sickbay to attend to this minor, if profusely bleeding, wound.
The gravity of his situation finally began to dawn on him when the floor tilted wildly beneath him, yet he heard nothing attacking the ship that might have caused the vessel to skew in such a manner. By process of elimination, he came to the realization that his legs were giving way. By that point, he was already hitting the floor.
&n
bsp; He lay there, trying to command his body to move but getting nowhere. Instead his legs made feeble motions that produced no forward movement, and he couldn’t get his arms to move at all. He lay in front of the brig, staring in.
At least the damned baby has stopped crying, he thought, and then realized the baby was lying on the floor, staring at him. At. Him. There was no smile on the baby’s face, no frown. Instead it seemed to be fascinated by him, as if someone who was so young found the prospect of witnessing death to be utterly intriguing.
Death…?
No…this cannot be how I die. I am a warrior. I am a soldier. I am destined to be the ruler of the Romulan Empire. I saw it.
Help me…
Soleta…she will help me…she will…
Soleta…I am so sor—
Lucius’s blood continued to flow out of his severed jugular vein until most of it was on the floor. Some of it rolled up against the force field and made crackling noises as it fizzled against the energy grid. The rest stained the floor dark green.
In the meantime the Spectre with no one at the helm to man it, continued on its way to AF1963, and there was no means available to anyone in the brig to alter its course.
Starship Excalibur
Tania Tobias, conn officer of the Excalibur, had just come off shift and was entering the Team Room for some relaxation when she saw Kalinda seated on the far side, all by herself. It was obvious to Tobias that Kalinda was the subject of conversation by many of the crew, who were giving her sidelong glances and speaking to one another in hushed voices.
She supposed it was to be expected. After all, she was not only walking around claiming to be a dead Thallonian lord, but also, in defiance of all logic, the captain was following her lead to pursue Robin Lefler’s missing baby. It seemed a ludicrous concept on the surface, but the crew of the Excalibur had long come to trust their commanding officer. That did not mean, however, they were necessarily going to trust Kalinda or welcome her in the same manner they had welcomed her when she was merely Si Cwan’s sister, rather than a young woman claiming to be the vessel for her late brother’s return.