After the Fall

by Peter David

  “No. All I intend to ask you to do is be a mother to our son while he’s here.”

  “As mother to our son, my job is to ensure that he will be here for longer than his biology will allow. Particularly since he refuses to do the job and you are incapable of it. Does that conclude our business, Commander? Because, if so, I have a sickbay that very much needs to be repopulated with doctors.”

  “Just tell me one thing…”

  “Does it involve you performing an action that is physiologically impossible upon yourself?”

  “Do you see him as a failed project?”

  It was all she could do to maintain her Vulcan mask of indifference. “No.”

  “Then what? How do you see him? When you look at him, do you see our son? Do you see someone you love? Do you see—?”

  “A freak.”

  Once spoken, the words hung there between Selar and Burgoyne, objects of great weight.

  “He…is a freak,” Selar repeated, and all the pain and all the rage she felt were smothered and buried deep inside her, deeper than they had ever been. “Of course, I…mean that in the strictest medical sense, as an organism created through unusual or strange circumstances….”

  “The hell you did,” Burgoyne shot back. “A freak is a monster. You think of him as some sort of monster….”

  “But he’s my monster! My freak! And I have to—”

  The outburst was so unexpected that Selar’s eyes widened in genuine shock. She put her hand to her mouth as if she could not believe she had said it. Burgoyne looked dazed.

  With Herculean effort, Selar pulled herself together. She squared her shoulders, smoothed down her uniform coat, and tilted her chin slightly. “Upon…further consideration,” she said, her voice so soft that Burgoyne had to strain to hear her, “you may be correct in your…concern over the amount of sleep I have been getting as of late. I will…take your opinions in that regard under advisement.”

  “Thank you,” Burgoyne said, hir voice hollow.

  “Is there anything else, Commander?”

  “No, that should…that’s fine for now.”

  Burgoyne walked out of the sickbay, looking considerably shaken. Moments later, the technicians and the ensign getting a checkup filed back in. They looked to Selar, question marks in their faces.

  She was already back to work, and only a medical scanner would have tipped the fact that her heart was pounding with triphammer force.

  The Lyla

  i.

  Deep down, Kalinda had been concerned that Xyon was trying to trick her. That as soon as she ate something, he would turn around and continue to try and get her out of Thallonian space.

  Such was not the case, as it turned out. She filled her belly, slaked her thirst, and Xyon kept the course steady for New Thallon.

  She was relieved. For all the icy and imperious demeanor she’d been displaying, the fact was that she’d been so ravenous it was all she could do not to break down in tears. But a show of weakness like that one would hardly have helped her situation.

  At the same time, though, she had to admit to herself that she felt a bit…saddened. For in acquiescing to her demands—in realizing the error of his actions—something seemed to have been extinguished in Xyon.

  You crushed his heart. What did you expect? That was what one part of her mind demanded. This, of course, was quickly replied to by the other part of her mind which demanded, He took you against his will and treated you as if you had no rights at all. What did he expect? There was absolutely no way she should feel any guilt over Xyon’s feelings. No way.

  And yet…

  No “and yet”! Don’t let yourself even begin to think in that direction!

  She had to admit that, for his part, Xyon wasn’t doing a thing to try and heap some sort of guilt upon her. The decision having been made to return her, he was all business. Not angrily so or arrogantly so. He operated his ship with brisk efficiency, as if Kalinda were simply a young woman who had booked passage aboard his vessel. He asked after her concerns, he did his best to make her comfortable. He even engaged in harmless small talk.

  Still, she felt that there was a faint air of melancholy hanging over him. But certainly that was completely his problem, not hers. And he wasn’t trying to foist it upon her or make it her problem, so she made the conscious decision to ignore it.

  Except…he was so damned sad…

  “No!” she said firmly. “You’re not going to do it.”

  Xyon had been keeping a wary eye on the console, but now he turned and looked at her in bemusement. “Do what?” he asked.

  “Sit there and make me feel guilty.”

  He appeared to consider that. “All right,” he said, saying each word individually and carefully as if he were dealing with a dangerously deranged person. “So you wish me to…what? Stand? Sit somewhere else? I don’t…”

  “Don’t be cute.”

  “It’s a curse,” he admitted sadly. “I’ve learned to live with it.”

  “Xyon…!”

  “What do you want from me, Kalinda?” He shook his head, looking rather hopeless. “I realize I was wrong to take you. I’m bringing you back. And I’m being careful about it….”

  “Why ‘careful’?”

  “Because,” he told her matter-of-factly, “there are still ships out there in sizable numbers looking for me. If I run afoul of them and they haul us in, my saying to them ‘Oh, but wait, I was returning her to New Thallon anyway’ is hardly going to weigh in my favor. Chances are they’d push me out an airlock and take bets as to how many seconds I’d last in the vacuum.”

  “Not necessarily. I could let them know you’re telling the truth.”

  “Really.” He swiveled his chair so he was facing her. “Here’s a thought: They won’t care.”

  “Of course they would—”

  “Kalinda, now you’re just being naïve. They care about getting you back. They care about punishing me. And if someone finds you, they’ll fall all over themselves to be the first ones able to tell your brother that I’m a shriveled corpse floating inside an asteroid belt somewhere. For that matter,” he continued, giving the subject further consideration, “the fact that Si Cwan and your beloved spread the word about your disappearance may do you as much harm as good.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, work it out,” he urged her. “The general populace of the great New Thallonian Protectorate knows that the sister of the great Lord Si Cwan is in the hands of…of whatever epithets they use to describe me. I’m sure I’m not considered someone of good repute. I very much doubt that Si Cwan will publicize that I’ve taken you because I’m madly in love with you and would sooner cut off my right arm than harm you or allow you to be harmed in any way. So they’ve doubtless attributed some sort of nefarious reasons for my vile deed or, at the very least, allowed others to conjure up their own suspicions of my evil ends. That leaves a significant downside.”

  “I still don’t see what you…” Then her eyes widened.

  He gestured grandly. “And the dawn arises.”

  “They’ll assume I was taken to be ransomed.”

  “Yes.”

  “Which means that if some…some…”

  “Villain?”

  “Yes,” she nodded, “some villain gets his hands on me…”

  “Go ahead,” he urged, “you’re almost there.”

  Kalinda made an irritated face at him, not appreciating the condescending tone he’d adopted…although she had to admit that it really should have been self-evident. “…then said villain will simply pick up where he believes that you’ve left off, or where he left you off.”

  “Yes. And there’s every chance he won’t treat you as well as I have.”

  “I’d hardly be patting myself on the back if I were you when it comes to your treatment of me,” she told him archly.

  Xyon seemed unimpressed. “Believe me, there are people out there who would treat you far
worse than—”

  That was when every warning device in the ship went off at once, up to and including Lyla abruptly appearing out of thin air. Considering her normal expression was one of infinite calm, the tremendous concern she was displaying now was more than enough to underscore the severity of the situation. “Xyon!” she called out over the alarms. “Long- and short-range sensors have picked up an incoming vessel.”

  “Long- and short-range? How—?”

  “Because it’s moving so quickly that by the time the long- range scanners picked it up, it was practically right on top of—”

  “I get it! Cloak us now! Now! Shut off everything except the cloak, minimal life-support, and the viewscreen! And bring us to full stop!” He pointed at Kalinda. “I don’t know any ship that can move that fast, and if it’s unknown, I want to make damned sure it doesn’t notice us. So don’t talk! Don’t even breathe!”

  “But—”

  “Shut up, I said!”

  Kalinda slammed her mouth shut automatically. Instantly all the lights went out. She had become so accustomed to the steady hum of assorted instrumentation that it was startling to her when it suddenly ceased. She leaned forward in her chair. It squeaked. Immediately she went to the floor, crouching, waiting, staring fixedly at the viewscreen.

  Space shimmered a short distance away, and a vessel dropped out of warp space. It was unlike any that Kalinda had ever seen. The design made no sense whatsoever. Just about every vessel Kalinda had ever seen had some degree of symmetry. Not this one. It was almost as if the various parts of it had been stuck together haphazardly, a series of tubes (or maybe tunnels) affixed to pulsing globes. It looked like nothing so much as a gigantic molecule. There was no sense of design to it, although certainly it made sense to whatever entity or entities had crafted it.

  Kalinda had no idea how big the thing was, since she had nothing to compare it to, but she had the uneasy feeling that it was gargantuan compared with the Lyla. She couldn’t even determine where its method of propulsion lay. Kalinda glanced nervously in Xyon’s direction, but he seemed just as bewildered as she. She started to inhale in preparation for asking a question, but he fired her a furious look that seemed to scream “Speak so much as a syllable and I knock you cold.” Perhaps he hadn’t been thinking that, but whatever he was thinking, she suspected she wouldn’t like it. So she kept her mouth closed.

  The vessel slowly pivoted in space. Although she had no way of proving it, Kalinda was getting the uneasy feeling that the thing…whatever it was…was looking for them. For her.

  Everything that Xyon had said to her about someone far worse than he getting their hands on her came back to her, and suddenly Kalinda had never wanted to be so far from a particular place in her life.

  And then the molecule-shaped vessel stopped turning. She prayed that was because it was about to head off in some other direction. Hell, perhaps it wasn’t looking for her in the first place. Perhaps its presence here was pure coincidence.

  Then it started toward them, slowly but with enough certainty that Xyon muttered, “Grozit. Lyla, engines back on line, now.”

  Quickly he backed the ship up, pacing the far larger vessel, going exactly the same speed but in reverse.

  “Can they see us?” she whispered.

  “No, the cloak’s still in place. But I don’t know their…maybe they can…” His mind was racing so fast he wasn’t taking time to finish thoughts. “It’s possible they see us. It’s also possible they don’t really know we’re here. But I can’t afford to just sit and take the chance. I’m changing our direction. If I move out of their way, maybe they can’t track us….”

  And then the bigger ship began to speed up…and altered the angle of its approach so that it was heading right toward Xyon’s ship.

  “Then again, maybe they can. Hold on to something. I’m getting us the hell out of here.”

  “Xyon,” Lyla said, reappearing. “The approaching vessel appears to be far faster than we are.”

  Xyon ignored her. Instead he whipped the ship around 180 degrees and hurtled off into space. He prayed it would be enough, that somehow, miraculously, this was all coincidence and this monstrous new ship would be left behind.

  “It’s after us,” said Lyla.

  “I know!”

  “It’s gaining.”

  “I know!”

  “It’s still gaining and I believe it’s actually toying with us.”

  “Shut up, Lyla!”

  “Who are they?!” demanded Kalinda.

  “Well, hell, Kalinda, and here I thought they were friends of yours.” He scanned them even as he drove the ship in retreat. “I think they’ve got weapons systems, but it’s not anything I’m familiar with. I’m not taking any chances. Lyla, drop the cloak and give me full power to shields.”

  “If you drop the cloak, they’ll see us!” Kalinda cried out.

  He pointed angrily at the screen. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but they seem to have no problem following us. Which means the cloak is doing us zero good. They might have an even more advanced version of a tachyon detection grid than Starfleet does. So if they start shooting at us, I want to have at least some chance of withstanding an attack.”

  “How do you know their weapons won’t easily destroy the shields?”

  “I don’t,” he said pointedly. “You want to jump out here and take your chances?”

  Kalinda clambered back up into her seat and watched with mounting concern as the vastly larger ship bore down on them. “Do you…have a plan?”

  “Yeah, I have a plan,” he shot back. “Since I’m not skulking around, we hope that some of the other ships looking for you—hopefully the ones captained by men of principle— detect our movements and come running. They fight our new friends, we escape in the melee, and I bring you back to get a reward.”

  “A reward! You kidnapped me!”

  “I don’t have time to dwell on details.”

  “Obviously! You’re not even dwelling on the little detail,” and she pointed at the ship on the screen, “that maybe they’re not hostile! Maybe you’re just worried about saving your own skin.”

  “I’m definitely worried about that,” he assured her. “But it’s your skin I’m worried about, too. They’re hostile.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do,” Xyon said, and there was no trace of doubt. “I just…I sense it. You would too, if you opened your mind to it. I mean, you’re the one who’s had truck with the dead. What do you get off our new best friends?”

  In response to the challenge in his voice, she turned and focused on their pursuer. She tried to see it in some sort of…of new way. She wasn’t exactly sure what way that was, or how to look at it, especially considering she wasn’t actually looking at it, but instead an image of it on a screen. All she could think to do was just clear her mind, to open herself to general impressions from it. Allow it to…

  …to…

  …and then it began to crawl into her.

  Blackness, and flashes, just quick flashes, of something gelatinous, and there were tentacles reaching out toward her, and there was screaming of such deep-seated terror, and…

  “Kalinda!”

  She blinked and looked up, terrified. Xyon had somehow crossed the cabin and was standing right in front of her, shaking her with rough urgency. “What happened? You…you blacked out or something, I—”

  “Get us away,” she whispered, and then much louder, “Get us away!”

  Without hesitation, Xyon leaped over to helm. “Lyla, everything we’ve got in terms of speed!”

  “You have it, Xyon,” said Lyla, her holograph form materializing next to him. “But it’s matching our speed.”

  “Is there anything around here we can lose them in.”

  “There’s the Singfer Nebula at—”

  “I don’t care where! How long to get there?”

  “Nine minutes at current speed.”

  “Lay in the course—!�
�

  Instantly the coordinates were in the navigational system, and Xyon changed the ship’s direction. The pursuing vessel course corrected to keep up.

  “What did you see?” Xyon asked tersely.

  “I…I don’t…” Kalinda gulped. “Just keep me away from it.”

  “But I need to know—”

  “No, you don’t. Trust me, you don’t. All you need to know is to stay away.”

  “I’m trying!” He looked in frustration at the ship, never slowing. “I don’t get it. Why aren’t they firing at us? Or overtaking us?”

  “Maybe they don’t have weapons. Maybe they’re just waiting for us to run out of power or something. Maybe they think we’ll surrender.”

  “Then they don’t know me very well.”

  Lyla spoke up. “I don’t think they know you at all.”

  “I know they don’t.”

  “Then why did you say…?”

  “Not now, Lyla.”

  Lyla promptly vanished.

  The long minutes ticked down. Everyone in the cabin stopped talking. The small vessel hurtled through space, the vast pursuer right after them, never slowing, never speeding up, just constantly and invariably there.

  When Lyla suddenly reappeared, Xyon jumped slightly in surprise and Kalinda gasped. “Two minutes to nebula border.”

  “What happens when we get into the nebula?” Kalinda asked.

  “Well,” Xyon said, his thoughts racing furiously, “there’s no guarantees, but it should interfere with our new friend’s sensory devices and their visuals. So we may be able to give it the—”

  That was when Lyla screamed.

  The entire vessel began to shake as if something had seized hold of it, and the first thought that howled through Xyon’s mind was Tractor beam! But they weren’t slowing or being pulled in the other direction.

  And Lyla was there with her arms thrown back, her head tilted back, her mouth wide open, the initial sound of the scream having vanished immediately. And then her hard light form split apart, almost particle by particle, flying explosively in all directions at once with a flash that was nearly blinding.

  Xyon shielded his face against them; they passed through him harmlessly. But there were spots hanging in front of him since he’d been looking right at Lyla when it happened. He could barely make out Kalinda or anything else…