Текст книги "Sword of Damocles "

Автор книги: Geoffrey Thorne

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  Troi was-

  “I’m here, Ensign,” said the Betazoid, guiding her down to the cockpit floor. “Be calm.”

  “It’s fading away,” said Modan, her distress making her voice tremble along with her body. “I can’t hold on to it.”

   Causality is an illusion supported by a limited ability to perceive. That wasn’t from Jaza, was it?

  “Be calm,” said Troi and, suddenly, she was. Her mind stilled itself, her respiration slowed, her body ceased its tremors. “Good.”

  “My body is metabolizing Najem’s memories,” said Modan weakly. Vale cursed but couldn’t do anything to assist Troi. She had her hands full helping Keru keep the ship from being smashed in the tesseract’s event horizon.

  “What can you do to stop it?” said Troi, her wide dark eyes showing nothing but assurance and calm.

  “Nothing,” said Modan. “I could pass them to another Selenean, perhaps, but there aren’t any-”

  “Pass them to me,” said Troi.

  “You don’t understand,” said Modan. “It’s not telepathy. It’s chemical. I will be changing the chemistry of your brain.”

  “You did this already, Ensign,” said Troi. “You showed us Jaza’s past.”

  “Images,” said Modan bitterly. “Emotions. Simple things. Minor changes. This is information, complex theories, equations. It could damage you.”

  “We’re all about to get damaged to death,” said Keru. “Give her the damned memories.”

  The Ellingtontook another violent jolt as the tesseract shifted in space-time around them. A few more and Keru’s pronouncement would become a fact.

  “Do it, Modan,” said Vale. “That’s an order.”

  Terrified, the Selenean did as she was told, striking Troi’s temples hard with her linking spines. The counselor cried out softly, more in surprise than pain. Her eyes rolled backward in her head as she pitched forward across Modan’s prone body.

  “We’re losing it,” warned Keru as the ship shook and rattled around them.

  All at once, Troi sat up, apparently reenergized and alert. She hefted Modan’s body up into one of the jump seats and quickly strapped her in.

  “Well?” said Vale through clenched teeth. “Can you get us out of this?”

  Wordlessly, Troi ran aft and disappeared into the engineering compartment.

  The ship lurched again, eliciting a curse from Keru. Warning lights activated all across the navigation console.

  “Troi,” yelled Vale. “What the hell are you doing? Leave the core alone.”

  “Wait,” said Keru. “Wait, I think-I think we’re getting through. Whatever she did is working.”

  Sure enough, the multicolored light show was slowly fading, giving way to the familiar twinkling blackness of normal space. They were almost home.

  “Nice work, Counselor,” said Keru as Troi returned and flopped into the jump seat opposite Modan. “What did you do?

  Troi seemed not to hear him.

  “Deanna,” said Vale. “What did you do to the core?”

  “What?” she said, distracted, her attention still focused inward. “Oh, nothing. We needed extra power to push through to normal space, so I removed the plasma buffers and disabled the safeties.”

  “Oh,” said Keru. “That explains it.”

  “What?”

  “Why the engine’s building to overload,” he said.

  “Well,” said Captain Riker, the tension in his voice telegraphing the growing concern in his mind. If it was the shuttle, why couldn’t he feel Deanna’s presence reasserting, reconnecting? Where was she? “Is it the shuttle or not?”

  Tuvok would not be hurried or prodded by the increasing tension and excitement in the non-Vulcans who surrounded him. He was methodical. He was precise. He would be absolutely sure before making any pronouncements.

  “Yes,” he said, after a silence that generated thoughts of his homicide in the minds of nearly everyone present. “It is the Ellington. Somehow it has survived inside the Eye and is attempting to return to normal space.”

   Will?Troi’s mental fingers reached out to him from what seemed a great distance. Will, I’m here.

  He tried to project his relief and pleasure back at her but was unsure if his feelings could make it through whatever was impeding her communication.

  “I am reading four life signs,” said Tuvok. “One human, one Selenean, one Trill, and one Betazoid. Mr. Jaza and Dr. Ra-Havreii are not aboard.”

  It was difficult not to be elated at the shuttle’s return, but they managed. They had no idea what could have happened to the missing away team members, but there was little hope that the news on that score would be good.

  “Give me a visual,” said Riker. Immediately the main viewer zoomed closer to the Eye, where what had been a small grayish dot now resolved itself into the familiar shape of the shuttle.

  “Sir,” said Lavena. “I’m getting an anomalous reading off the shuttle. The warp core-”

  “Bridge to transporter room A,” said Tuvok.

   “Radowski here, sir,”came the instant reply.

  “I believe the Ellington’s warp core is about to breach,” said the Vulcan. “Target all organics aboard for transport on my mark.”

   “Aye, sir.”

  “Tuvok,” said the captain.

  “One moment, Captain,” said Tuvok. “Mr. Radowski, do you have a lock on all personnel?”

   “Yes, sir,”said the transporter chief. “Solid lock on all four.”

  “Energize now,” said Tuvok. “Now, Mr. Radowski.”

  At that moment there was a tremendous flash of white light that filled the main viewer, obliterating any other image. When the light cleared, the shuttle was gone.

   Deanna?He could feel her, he thought, but he didn’t want to trust the feeling until-

   “We got them, sir,”said Radowski’s voice. “Mr. Keru and the rest are back aboard.”

  “Cutting it a bit close there, Mr. Tuvok,” said the captain, beaming. “Dramatic license?”

  “No, sir,” said Tuvok, seemingly as appalled as a Vulcan could be at such a suggestion. “The shuttle was not fully integrated into normal space. Had we attempted to transport them too soon-”

  Before he could finish, Titansuffered a powerful and unexpected jolt that set the lights flickering and put several of the surprised officers on the deck.

  “What the hell?” said Riker, helping Ensign Bohn back into the navigator’s chair. There was no need for anyone to answer. The Eye appeared in the visible spectrum for the first time, and it was not an appealing sight.

  Still not quite all there, the Eye had manifested itself as a violently undulating orb of bubbling energies that seemed unwilling to decide if it was bloodred or a sinister indigo blue at any given moment.

  Around its edges, framing it like the halo of a black hole, a jagged rainbow aurora sparked and shot lances of what looked like solar flares in every direction.

  “Brace for second wave,” said Tuvok. Even as he finished, the wave hit, just as powerful as the previous.

  “What’s happening?” said Lavena. “I thought this part was over!”

  “The shuttle explosion seems to have destabilized the Eye,” said Tuvok as the third shock wave hit the ship. “The established counterpulse is not effective. I am attempting to compensate.”

  The fourth jolt hit just as the turbolift doors opened and sent Troi and Vale stumbling onto the bridge.

   Imzadi!Deanna sent to him along with a flood of deep emotion nearly as powerful as the waves of force currently emanating from the Eye. There was another presence there though, an unfamiliar, incredibly orderly set of thoughts and emotions that hit him like a fist.

   Deanna?he sent, but she brushed his thoughts aside.

   No time, she sent back. Explanations later.

  He watched, puzzled, as she moved right to Tuvok’s tactical station and began conversing with the Vulcan in low tones. The conversation was entirely technical with Deanna evidencing knowledge of Titan’s systems that Riker hadn’t known she possessed.

  Vale threw herself into the chair on his right. She, like Deanna, looked like hell, but, also like his wife, she was very much alive.

  “Welcome back, Commander,” said Riker, glancing back at Deanna, still in deep earnest conversation with Tuvok.

  “Thank you, sir,” said Vale. “Sorry we’re late.”

  “Just in time, actually,” said Riker, still distracted by his wife’s odd behavior.

  “It won’t work, Counselor,” Tuvok’s voice said over the chatter. “The shuttle’s warp core explosion-”

  “I can compensate,” she said, obviously desperate. “I can key the right corrections, but you have to let me do it now.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Troi elbowed Tuvok aside and began recalibrating Titan’s counterpulse.

  At first the Vulcan meant to continue his objections, but when he saw what she was doing, he fell in with her, adding supplementary code to her modifications.

  “I need phaser control,” said Troi absently. Her hands moved like lightning across the console, and Tuvok was pressed to keep her pace.

  “Here and here,” said Tuvok, gesturing. “Counselor, how are you accomplishing this?”

  “It’s not me,” she said. “It’s Jaza. And I’m losing him. We’re only going to get one try at this.”

  “At what?” asked Riker.

  In response, Tuvok and Troi simultaneously activated both the phasers and the newly recalibrated counterpulse. The pulse wasn’t visible, of course, but the twin beams of phased energy were. They lashed out across the intervening darkness, striking the Eye at its core.

  Where they hit, a soft golden glow began to spread outward across the surface of the Eye until the glow had replaced the red and blue oscillations completely.

  “Not yet, Najem,” said Troi softly. “Stay with me.”

  The glow grew as they watched, becoming brighter and brighter until it was difficult to look directly at the viewer. Troi entered second-by-second modifications to the counterpulse while Tuvok modulated the phaser frequencies, muttering corrections to each other as they went.

  “Almost,” said Troi. “Almost…”

  The glow from the screen became oppressive. The light was everywhere now, nearly bright enough to overload the viewer.

  “Aili,” said Riker, shielding his eyes. “I think it’s time to go.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Lavena, already punching in escape vectors.

  Then, before she could finish, Troi said, “Now!”

  Tuvok input the final modulations to the phaser frequency, and the whole world went white. Titanshook as violently as a paper sailboat in a hurricane.

  Alarms went off all over the ship as wave after wave of unknown energy again tore through it and its crew.

  The main viewer, finally overtasked from projecting such a powerful image, shut down, plunging the room into relative darkness.

  “Get that viewer back online,” said Riker when the shaking stopped. Presently the main screen lit up again, and instead of the Eye or the storm it had created, there sat the planet Orisha, a study in lilac, white, and powder blue.

  The Eye of Erykon was gone.

  “Local quantum conditions are returning to normal, Captain,” said Tuvok as the sensor data came in. “The flux wave has dissipated. May we stand down from Red Alert, sir?”

  Riker nodded but said nothing. What was there to say? They had finally won through, but at such a terrible cost it was difficult in that moment, for him, for any of them, to want to raise a glass or cheer.

  Troi let out a low moan and collapsed, exhausted, into Tuvok’s waiting arms.

Chapter Sixteen

   It took only a few days for the Orishans to pull down the Spires and demolish their fold devices. Without the Eye hanging over their heads they had no need to conceal themselves or the civilization they had built.

   Titanhung in orbit over the planet, helping to coordinate rescue and relief as the survivors of the apocalypse made their several ways to the surface they had avoided all their lives.

  There were fewer of them now, hundreds of thousands fewer, but there were enough to begin again and more to continue this time what they had started with fear.

  “It is something we can never repay,” said A’yujae’Tak. “You are truly the servants of Erykon.”

  “I thought you were done with all that,” said Vale. She wasn’t challenging the insectoid, only concerned for their future well-being. You didn’t need the orb in the sky to instill fear, especially in those for whom fear came as naturally as breathing.

  A’yujae’Tak made an untranslatable noise that Vale took to denote amusement. “You do not imagine, because we know the Eye was not truly from Erykon that we have given up following Erykon’s ways,” she said. “Erykon is. We are the Children of Erykon.”

  They offered to leave some people behind-an engineer or two, some social planners, just to help kickstart them on their long ascent. It would be difficult to rebuild everything, impossible in some cases for generations.

  The Orishan refusal was polite but firm.

  “It is our fate,” seemed to be the consensus. “We will make it ourselves.”

   Well. You have to admire their grit.

  While the gathering of stragglers and refugees continued, A’yujae’Tak gave them the run of the planet should any of them wish to take a stroll. It was a beautiful world for all its strangeness, and many of the crew took the opportunity to put their feet on some honest to goodness soil.

  She found him in the wreckage quietly scanning and occasionally digging. He hadn’t seen her since that night in the sensor pod when she’d offered him comfort.

  She asked what he was up to and he made some noises about getting clean scans of Charon’s bones to provide Starfleet HQ with the most accurate record of the event. It was a Cardassian thing, and he didn’t really expect her to understand.

  She told him she did understand, that news of Mr. Jaza’s strange but beautiful sacrifice had already been distributed via the rumor mill. If he didn’t mind the company, she said, she would be pleased to help him search for some remnant of their friend’s presence here.

  He didn’t mind the company.

  He found her loitering around the skeleton of the central Spire, intentionally keeping well clear of the others who had come down for some time in the sun.

  “You did well,” he told her. “Exceedingly so.”

  She, of course, disagreed. She had lost Jaza to time and his Prophets. She had nearly destroyed the Ellingtonand almost taken herself, Troi, Vale, and Keru with it.

  Had she not been able to count on his ability to understand and improvise, none of them would be here now.

  “I have much to tell the Mother,” she said, but expressed doubt at how much of it would please.

  They walked together for a while, mostly in silence, listening, as if for the first time, to the myriad happy and mysterious noises that every jungle makes.

  He told her that he knew a bit about carrying regret around like a stone, and if she would agree to remind him not to do it overmuch, he would certainly remind her.

  She smiled at that and accepted.

  Later he offered to play her some music and she accepted that as well.

  She found him in a dense cluster of the thick vines, decidedly out of uniform and romping wildly with several creatures that reminded her of frogs and of bats and maybe a bit of turtles.

  He roared at one of them for attempting to steal a nut of some kind on which he had been sharpening his teeth and sent it scurrying away into the bush. It returned presently with a small army of its fellows and pelted him into oblivion with an assault of the very same nuts. The scene brought a smile to her face.

  “You should have guessed that would happen,” she said. “You’re supposed to be a counselor.”

  “My counsel is sound,” he said, biting into one of the sweet juicy leaves he’d also recently discovered and getting covered in its sap. “It’s my patients that are sometimes lacking.”

  She laughed again and called him silly. He agreed and said she would do well to occasionally strip down and run naked through a jungle or two.

  She asked him if that was his professional opinion. It was. She was a smart woman, he told her. Therefore her need to play, to just play, was greater than most.

  “You’re awfully free with advice,” she said, “considering your track record.”

  “If you mean Trois,” he said. “I stand on my success. Happy together at last viewing.”

  “What success?” she said. “They fixed the problem themselves.”

  “Time apart reminds the heart,” he said, and clawed his way up the vine to discover the real true nature of the very attractive piece of hanging fruit.

  She laughed at that too and kept her clothes on. But she stayed and watched him for a while.

  He found them together, sitting in happy silence in the shade of several of the low-hanging lilac fronds. They graciously invited him to join them, he graciously accepted, and for some hours the three of them discussed gods and fears and the restorative aspects of going through, sometimes, rather than around.

  Then the sun dipped low and they all had the same other place to be.

  Before they parted, he finally told them with cautious optimism the news he had come to share, clicking his fore-claws as he delivered it.

  They thanked him, watched him go, and after a few tears, they celebrated.

  He found him at dusk, hiking, taking him very much by surprise. Neither of them said a word, only stood there looking.

  Both of them smiled.

  After that they walked along together for a bit. And then the sun dipped even lower and they had the same other place to be.

  They gathered in the place where they discovered his secret home. They never found his bones or any sign of how it had ended for him.

  They never mentioned to the locals who their Oracle had really been, but they knew they couldn’t leave him sleeping there without saying their good-byes.

  Their leader spoke, telling stories of his quick mind and easy ways and the times he played and fell for practical jokes.

  His protйgй attempted to speak, failed to find the words, tried again, failed again, and ended with a promise to live up to expectations.

  His former lover said a few official things about bravery and commitment. She said a few things about faith and what she did and didn’t understand about that. She said one bawdy thing about the placement of ridges and one quiet thing about love. Then she said good-bye.

  Then, one by one, in all their secret ways, his friends said it too.

  They left Orisha the best way that anything can be left: better than they’d found it, freer than its people had allowed themselves to dream, and a little sad to see them go.

Prologue

   “We must move on. Now. Before hearts cool and hands grow tired with waiting. We must move on, downstream, on the great river, which is Life. We have fought the battles and made our peace and all that’s left us is our time and how we fill it.”

  -Excerpted from the Ascension of Makkus, First Sovereign of Ligon II

   The sky was lovely. The Daystar was at its apex, shining its bright benign light down on everything. The other great orb, Erykon’s Eye, continued its slumber and the people below rejoiced. It had been a short war as they went here, lasting only those few days that their god had spewed wrathful fire from above and deadly tremors from below.

  The thousand clans, each with their own notions of how best to serve Erykon and remove any offense from the world beneath the Eye, had done their best to slaughter one another on a nearly unimaginable scale.

  Now all that was done and the survivors had crawled back to their warrens and hives to lick their wounds and learn if enough of their breeder males had endured to rebuild the ranks of their clans.

  It would be some time before any of them tested another clan’s territorial border or tried to raid their food stores or steal their breeders.

  Time was what he needed, and he had it. He knew the Eye wouldn’t wake again for a thousand years, tens of thousands of what the locals called cycles.

  He might live a tenth of that if he took care. Not long, but perhaps long enough to ensure their future.

  His first convert, Tik’ik, was loyal and resolute as she had been from the first day, but, of course, she had the benefit of seeing his magic firsthand.

  She came and went at the times he dictated, bringing news of the clans and of their relations with one another. She never questioned his need for this information or asked why Erykon’s representative never showed himself. She didn’t question. She was devout.

  New apostles would be harder to come by. It was both a help and a hindrance that he could only ever be a disembodied voice to them, a collection of unusual scents, but he had known that going in. One glimpse of his true form and they would tear him to shreds, eat what was tasty, and immediately fall back on their self-destructive and violent ways.

  They would wipe themselves out in a generation if left to their own devices, and, as he had seen that that was not in fact their fate, he would never allow himself to do anything to compromise his ability to save them from the abyss.

  His people had polluted Orisha’s destiny by slamming this graveyard of technology into its surface. It hadn’t been their desire to do this, but it had happened, and now, to ensure that Orisha’s future proceeded as it should, indeed that Orisha even had a future, he would stay and play shepherd.

  He made his home in one of the more intact parts of the crashed remains of the starship, the area they called the Shattered Place. Already the myth of the strange goings-on there had grown. He would do what he could to cultivate that. They needed to fear this place just a little if he was to survive long enough to do them good.

  If nothing else, the insectoids had already proven they had a talent for fear.

  The first steps would be the toughest and the most important. They had to be kept from ever thinking of this place as anything but holy and taboo. They were too smart and inventive a species even to be allowed near this wreck for too long. Anything they built or discovered had to be done without the benefit of the “magical” items they might find here.

  He’d already found a few himself to make his stay slightly more pleasant-random power carts, medical supplies, some interactive novels, bits of undamaged circuitry he would need in case the tricorder ever died. The most significant find was the tool kit, and he considered it a gift from the Prophets.

  He’d left the one in the shuttle for Modan, not knowing what she might find on the other side of her journey back to their own era.

   Herown era.

  This was his home now, this time and this place.

  His little room was in what was left of the ship’s former holodeck, still mostly intact. He liked it for its size and hidden ventilation ducts, but mostly for the fact that its entrance had been so fused with wreckage and the ground that it couldn’t now be navigated by any but the smallest of the big insectoids.

  He needed that privacy in order to give his stealth apparatus a rest or to repair it if need be. And he needed it to remind himself that he was not, in fact, an Oracle or a seer, but a man, the student of his Prophets, servant of these Children of the wrathful god Erykon.

  After some months, when the first of his acts as their shepherd began to bear fruit, he woke up in a cold sweat with images of unfulfilled paradoxes in his mind.

  Through Tik’ik, whom he had taken to calling Yujae, the word in her language that meant “vessel,” he had brokered the first merger of two formerly rival clans into what he hoped would one day become the Guardian caste. She called him Spirit Guide and never wavered in her devotion to him and his requests.

  He could never truly remove the Orishan adherence to hierarchy, certainly not with the limited time available to him, but he could shape it. He could bend it into a configuration that didn’t lead to constant bloodshed and useless destruction.

  He had sent Tik’ik back to them to celebrate and to iron out some of the finer details-how many female fighters to breed with how many Weaver males, how many larvae the new superclan could support and remain healthy. How much territory they could use before infringing on their nearest neighbor. What to do when they inevitably did.

  She had been happy to go, though still clearly puzzled at his ultimate goals. He hadn’t cured her of prostrating herself before him yet either, but he would eventually. He had been happy to see the back of her if only for a few days so that he could relax and update his star charts and logs.

  Then the thought crept in. Just after his evening supper of what the locals called heart beetles, just before he actually dropped off to sleep, he thought-

  If, as he had tried to do, Modan had been sent back to the proper era with the necessary tools and information to prevent Titan’s coming here, shouldn’t the wreckage have vanished? In fact, he himself should not be here, as he would never have had a reason to enter the shuttle.

  He’d never enjoyed paradoxes, and this one was no exception. The only way he could resolve it was to assume she had failed and that everything would play out as it had before, despite his effort to save his friends.

  The thought depressed him deeply, and for a time, when Tik’ik came to call, he couldn’t be bothered to see her except to send her away again. What good was his plan, his sacrifice, if his friends could not be saved?

  He took to wandering through the wreckage in the early mornings, the time when the Orishans were mostly sluggish or asleep, identifying bits of the wreckage and remembering moments or people that were somehow linked with them in his mind.

  There was the broken and scorched galley table where he and his friends had debated ethics and science and everything that lay between.

  There was the charred remains of a computer console from one of the research labs in which he’d spent so many happy hours.

  There was a section of the wall of the bridge that had contained the turbolift, still nearly pristine somehow though mostly buried in the dirt. He could see the edge of the dedication plaque.

  Suddenly he had to have it. He needed something from his time that wasn’t tarnished or burnt or somehow cannibalized to serve his mission.

  Unmindful of the potential danger, he began to claw at the earth around the plaque. The soil of Orisha was more coarse than on other worlds, less apt to come apart with only the use of fingers, and this was no exception.

  It quickly became clear that if he wanted that plaque, he was going to have to get a tool and dig it out.

  His hidden room and the tool kit were on the far side of the crash site, nearly a kilometer away. If he went back now he couldn’t return until the following morning for fear that some passing scout would hear or smell him and come to investigate.

  He’d had a close call already when he’d set up his lavatory and bathing facility in the remains of one of the large cargo drums. He had spent two hours pressed into the interior of the small bubble at the top of the drum while the intruder wandered around the crash site attempting to isolate the new and unusual scent. He did not want a repeat performance.

  He cast around for something with an edge that was sharp enough for digging and yet would not be so jagged that he would slice up his hands using it.

  He settled on a nearby bit of plasteel that had once been part of a chair or perhaps a section of cable tubing. He looked it over quickly to ensure it wouldn’t splinter and then, literally, dug in.

  When he finally pulled it free, he was amazed at what he found inscribed on the plaque. A broad smile spread across his face as he reread it for the fourth time, and presently he began to laugh.

  The Prophets had a wonderful sense of humor: it was robust and subtle and full of lessons. Later, when he thought about the other meaning of the words on the plaque and the deaths of the hundreds who had sailed under its banner, he wept as well.

  He hung it the next evening, just beside the innermost entrance to his little garret where he would see it every day, coming or going.

  He needed to see it, he realized. It gave him strength somehow, even though the authorship of the inscription was unknown to him.

  The words were simple and powerful and they gave him hope.

U.S.S. CHARON

LUNA CLASS

STARFLEET REGISTRY NCC-80111

UTOPIA PLANITIA FLEET YARDS, MARS

LAUNCHED STARDATE 56980.2

UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS

  And then, below the names of the beings behind the creation of the ship, the ship’s motto:

ONLY SEEK, AND YOU SHALL FIND.

  He would never know for sure how Modan’s journey had ended. He would never have proof that she had returned, safe and sound, and used what he’d given her to help save Titan. He would never have that confirmation, nor any knowledge whatsoever of the events transpiring in what was now, for him, the distant future.

  Maybe Modan would not succeed. He chose to believe she would. Maybe Titanhad not survived this ordeal as it had its many others. He chose to think it had. Maybe Orisha would finally be consumed by the forces unleashed by the thing they thought was god. He chose to believe they wouldn’t.

  He chose these things because they were the only choice. The Prophets had guided him this far, and they would guide her and them too, whether or not any of them believed it.

  He had no tangible evidence of this, no empirical finding to hold up in front of a peer review, but he didn’t need it.

  He had faith.

THE VOYAGES OF THE

STARSHIP TITAN

WILL CONTINUE IN

STAR TREK: DESTINY

COMING IN OCTOBER 2008

About the Author

  Geoffrey Thorne is the prize-winning author of the short story “The Soft Room” in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds VIand the equally prize-winning “Concurrence” from Strange New Worlds 8. His other Star Trektales, “Chiaroscuro” and “Or the Tiger,” appeared in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine-Prophecy and Changeand Star Trek: Voyager-Distant Shores, respectively.

  He has contributed installments of Reality Cops: The Adventures of Vale and Mist, a web serial from Phobos Entertainment, as well as being the creator and executive producer of the critically acclaimed original web series The Dark(thedarklines.blogspot.com), and he’s a contributor too.

  He still lives, inextricably, in Los Angeles with his lovely and supernaturally patient wife, Susan, and he still very much enjoys Star Trek.