Текст книги "Well of Souls"

Автор книги: Ilsa J. Bick

Соавторы: Ilsa J. Bick
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“Captain, We’re Too Steep! We Won’t Be Able to Break Away!”

As if to confirm Glemoor’s words, Garrett felt her stomach drop in free fall as the ship took a sudden plunge, slammed from above by what felt like a solid belt of hypercharged particles and compressed gases.

“Captain, the gravity!” Bat-Levi shouted. The ship rocked, and the artificial gravity hiccupped enough to send her backpedaling on her heels, off-balance, and slamming into the guardrail. She wheeled around, clutching for support. “It’s sucking all the matter in this region toward the black hole!”

Garrett didn’t need her to spell out the rest. With the increased compression and electromagnetic winds, the ship would be slow to respond, like trying to turn on a dime in a pool of molasses.

Garrett whirled on her heel. “My ship, Mr. Castillo!” My ship:an age-old command, one used by pilots of planes, not starships, but Castillo needed no translation. He jumped to one side as Garrett leapt to the helm and activated first the starboard, then port thrusters.

“Forty degrees.” Glemoor threw a quick glance at his captain then back at his instruments. “Forty-five. Hull stress increasing, Captain. Approaching tolerance limits…”

“Captain, we’re close,” said Bat-Levi, “and if we pass too close to the gravity well…”

“Fifty!” shouted Glemoor, the Naxeran’s calm breaking at last. “Impulse power at three-quarters! Hull stress at tolerance! Captain!”

Almost there.Garrett blinked sweat from her eyes and winced at the sting. Come on, girl, come on, don’t let me down, don’t quit on me now.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

An OriginalPublication of POCKET BOOKS

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Copyright © 2003 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

 STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark of Paramount Pictures.

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This book is for Dean Wesley Smith—editor, writer, mentor, colleague—and for David, with love, always.

Historian’s Note

This story is set in the year 2336, forty-three years after the presumed death of Captain James T. Kirk aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise-B in Star Trek Generations,and twenty-eight years before the launch of the Enterprise-D in “Encounter at Farpoint.”

Prologue

Ishep was dreaming, and that should have been a mercy because bad dreams always end. Then Ishep would have awakened and known that this was all in his head.

In his dream, his father, the Night King, wasn’t in his tomb deep underground in a labyrinth of tunnels beneath the Red Mountains, and Ishep should have been happy. In his dream, there should have been bright sunlight and grass so green and beautiful his heart hurt—and there was, and it did—and he should have stood with his father by the shores of a deep, clear lake that was clean and still—and he did, because Ishep, who was a bastard, had loved his father more than Prince Nartal, who was First Son and a coward, ever had. But Ishep knew everything was wrong, and it was as if his dream knew that, too. In the next instant, the sky melted, and the lake turned to stone, but Ishep’s heart still hurt because his father, the Night King, was dead.

He saw then that his father had no eyes. The worms had eaten them. One worm that was very thick and clotted with black blood oozed from the hole where his father’s right eye had been and slithered down his father’s cheek, leaving a single, glistening trail like that of a tear. The skin over his father’s face was brown and tight as old leather with age and decay, and flaps hung in tatters like torn curtains because the bones of his skull had ripped through as easily as…well, as easily as sharp bone slices through wasted skin thinner than paper.

Yet, as Ishep watched, his father moved, shuddered…then groaned. The naked white bone of his jaw unhinged, and his mouth dropped open. For a wild moment, Ishep thought that maybe it was all a mistake and his father wasn’t dead after all and Prince Nartal hadn’t left Ishep behind, lost and alone, in the tombs, but that this was some horrible game because this is a dream, ithas to be a dream, I don’t want to die down here.But then his father vomited—no, no, something thick as a man’s arm and milky like the bloated belly of a rotted fish bulged and writhed in his father’s mouth, like a fat, obscene tongue. The thing spooled out from the dark place inside his father and drooled over his jaw, and Ishep saw the thing’s muscles undulate and ripple like waves beneath its too-white scales.

And then it looked at Ishep. Its dead eyes were flat and dull as gray slate. Ishep saw that it had the head of a woman, and all in a rush he understood that he stared into the face of Death itself, into the eyes of Uramtali, Goddess of the Well of Souls, and he knew then that he would die. But he could only watch, in horror, as her skin split open with a loud ripping sound, like cloth being torn in two, and then she didn’t have a face anymore: just a skull, and teeth curved and sharp as white knives.

Her voice, in his head: Are you afraid?

And Ishep, so terrified his heart pushed in his throat: Yes, yes!

Good—her knife-fangs parted, and her mouth gaped open until there was nothing else but the darkness in her throat that was a shaft into which Ishep tripped and began a fall that would last until time itself ceased, and that was forever– because you should be.

Screaming, Ishep woke.

The tomb was pitch black. His scream echoed, bounced off stone, then died. Ishep pushed up on his hands, his blood thumping in his ears. His sandals rasped upon cold stone, and the rock bit into the thin, sensitive skin of his thighs. He listened, but other than the hitching of his breath there was no other sound, not even the faint sizzle of candles guttering—a sound like frying meat—and that was because the candles had burned out. Darkness flowed over him, and when he moved, it was like swimming in thick black water. Although he was cold and stiff from sleeping on stone, his face was hot, and when he brought a hand up to his cheek, he felt the dried salt track of tears.

I’m still here.Moaning, Ishep jammed his fist into his mouth to keep from crying out. I’m still here and I’m going to die down here and no one will ever find me, no one will know that they’ve sealed me in by mistake, and my mother, oh, my mother…

His thoughts stuttered to a halt. Something was different, and Ishep seized on this because it gave him something other to do than wait to die of thirst in the tomb of a dead king. The darkness feltdifferent, almost as if he’d been moved. Walked in his sleep? Maybe. His father’s tomb had two other rooms besides the main burial vault, and he remembered that he’d fallen asleep next to the carved stone edifice of his father’s bier. There was treasure all around the reliquary—piles of gem-encrusted goblets and fat yellow discs of gold coin fanning from chests of fine blackwood. But now when he patted the floor, his fingers grazed against icy rock, and nothing else. Nothing here—blindly, Ishep crept upon his hands and knees, pausing to sweep his arms in wide arcs– no treasure, nothing, I must be in one of the other rooms, but which one, where am I, what’s happening?

And then his hands found something smooth and cool: wood. But not a chest—breath hissing through his teeth, Ishep sat back on his heels and ran his fingers up and down—no, this was something tall and slender, with three sides. A pedestal. He stood, his palms following the graceful taper of the wood until he came to the flat, triangular surface, and his fingers slid against something cold and metallic.

There was a soft, perceptible click.

Ishep started, gasped, snatched his fingers away as if he’d been burned. He waited, eyes bulging, heart knocking against his ribs.

The darkness began to dissolve. A sharp cry ripped from Ishep’s mouth, and he stumbled back as the light bloomed: not like the sudden flare of a torch, but as if the light from one of the world’s two moons had lost its way and come here, far underground. The light melted the darkness, and then Ishep saw that the room was bare except for a pedestal of ebony bloodwood. On the dais lay a silver mask.

The mask had no markings and Ishep saw immediately that it would cover his face from his brow to his upper lip. The mask was bathed in a silver glow: a bolt of light that beat down from somewhere high above. Ishep shielded his eyes but couldn’t find the source. Then, suddenly, the light intensified, flooding over the dais and spilling to the floor. The light was alive– like the thing in my dream, coming from my father’s mouth!—and it slithered along the floor in thick tongues that puddled like silver water.

Ishep’s mind screamed: Get out, get out,run !But his body wouldn’t obey, and where was there to run anyway?

Then a voice brushed against his mind: Come here.

Ishep’s blood iced. What? No, no, he wouldn’t! But even as his own mind protested, he felt a firm, steady pressure tugging at his brain, as if something had hooked in fingers of pure steely thought and begun to pull. No—he struggled to break free—he mustn’t, he hadto run, he had to…

Come here.

Incredibly, Ishep started forward, his movements as jerky as a puppet whose strings have gotten tangled.

Pick it up.The voice was a whisper, and yet it was so strong. Put it on.

“No,” Ishep moaned even as he reached for the mask. His fingers slid over the metal, and he was surprised that the mask wasn’t cold now but warm as blood.

Do it.Now.

“No,” Ishep said, as he slipped the mask onto his face. The metal curled; the edges grasped the skin of his face like greedy, clutching fingers. “No, please!”

A bolt of pain sizzled through his body. Ishep screamed. It was as if someone had poured hot, molten metal into his body. Fire coursed through his veins and licked at his heart; his brain exploded with a sudden white-hot flash that seared his mind.

Now. Turn around.Move.

And then somehow—Ishep didn’t know how, because he was burning up, he was dying, and there was something crowding into his mind, his body—Ishep was back in the main vault, and he was standing over his father, the dead Night King. The vault was still dark, though Ishep could just make out the hump of his father’s body.

Through the roaring in his ears, Ishep heard the rustle of cloth against stone, a sound like the feet of mice skittering over sand. And then his father moved, and his body began to glow.

What was left of Ishep wailed in terror.

The king’s mouth opened. Tendrils of something– the dream, my dream!—like luminous coils of thick white smoke billowed out, twisting and writhing. The coils mingled; they met; they coalesced and assumed a shape, now a woman, then a serpent, now a naked eyeless skull.

Suddenly, Ishep was aware of movement, a rush of air. Specters pulsed and streamed into the chamber, issuing from the walls like fog rising from a still pond. Ishep recognized the shapes of gods and goddesses, and strange chimeras that were part-beast, part-man, part-woman. They were as amorphous and indistinct as clouds shifting beneath a hot sun. And then the woman-thing, the one that had issued from his father’s mouth, gave a great cry and spread its wings and leapt into the mass of roiling shapes. The others closed around the woman-thing the way a man’s arms might encircle a lost lover, and in another moment, Ishep saw the woman-thing dissolve; and then, in his mind, Ishep heard the gabble of their voices—or maybe it was their thoughts because he knew there was no sound. Ishep sensed one voice detach itself from the rest, as if it had decided to step aside from a large crowd. The voice was clear and strong and rang through his brain with the clarity of a single, solitary bell.

You are not chosen.The voice-thought—a woman’s—paused then walked its spectral thought-fingers over the nooks and crannies of Ishep’s mind, as if searching for something. You are not Night. There is Night within you, but…

The woman’s voice-thought trailed away, as if considering what to do next.

Ishep knew, without knowing how he knew, that the voice-thought was talking about the prince, Nartal. Nartal was Night, the prince of a Night King from a line of Night Kings. Nartal had been bred for Night, bred to carry the soul of an Immortal, a dithparu.

And then, quite suddenly, Ishep ceased being afraid. Beneath the mask, Ishep felt a strange pressure, like that of hands molding clay, and he knew that he was being kneaded into something new and wholly alien. But he wasn’t afraid. Why? How odd…Ishep searched his emotions, turning over the secret places of his heart the way a child tips over rocks for bugs. No, he wasn’t afraid, and he should have been. Instead of fear, there were other emotions: regret for his mother, though she was moving far away in his thoughts now, growing smaller and more distant, a memory that would soon be lost in the mists of time. There was anger at Prince Nartal, that coward, for slinking away after the rest of the funeral procession had left. But, most of all, there was sadness, and grief. Because Ishep knew that he was dying, and there was nothing he could do but watch his life slip away.

The woman’s—Uramtali’s—voice-thought again: Why are you here?

Ishep said, out loud, “I love my father, and I followed the procession here, and then I hid because I wanted to see an Immortal, a dithparu,being born. Only now I don’t know the way out because Nartal left and I got lost.”

Then, more boldly and with sudden inspiration: “That wasn’t supposed to happen, was it? The princes have always stayed behind, because they’re supposed to carry a dithparufrom the Well of Souls, that’s what they say.”

That’s true. Now…As Ishep watched, the whirling spirit-shapes bunched, shifted. We have to think what to do next.A pause, then: Maybe you.

Then, as the thing’s thought-fingers wriggled deeper into the crevices of his mind, it was as if its thoughts and Ishep’s merged, and then Ishep knew the truth.

They’re just spirits, and that’sall they are.Ishep grappled after the thought, tried to hang onto it. They’re Immortals, but they need a body, a certain kind of body, a body bred forNight. Only then, for some reason, they have to returnhere, because this is the place where they live; they can’t leave this place on their own. But now Nartal’s broken the line and now everything will change. They’ll never get out anymore, because only Nartal knew the way out,they don’t know the way, because they’re spirits and they can’t know, and now they’re trapped here until time stops, and that’s forever…

Something was happening to the spirit-shapes. As Ishep stared, one portion of the mass seemed to bud, then separate itself from the rest. The figure hovered before Ishep, congealing like cooling glass into something recognizable: a snake with the head of a woman that shifted to a skull then back again, as if it couldn’t quite make up its mind what it was, or would become. The woman’s face, when it was a face, had ridges encircling the brows and tracking down the neck on either side, and the ridges had scales, just as the snake’s body did below the woman’s waist. The woman’s hair was sleek and seemed to have a life of its own, falling in undulating, liquid black waves along its shoulders. Yet the woman’s eyes were cold and flat and the color of slate. The woman-snake—now woman, now skull, now vapor—floated before Ishep, and Ishep saw a welter of emotions chase across its ever-changing features before settling into one that Ishep instantly recognized: hunger.

“Uramtali,” Ishep whispered, his voice breaking. “Are you Uramtali?”

If you like. Prince Nartal was Night.The woman-snake pulsed and grew and reared above Ishep, her clawed fingers unfurling, spreading. But you are the son of a Night King and there is Night in you. Just enough.Then: Would you like to see your father again?

Ishep remembered the woman-thing that had joined the other spirit-shapes. Not his father, of course. These spirit-shapes were the Immortals, the dithparus.His father’s soul was mortal, and so his father was gone, his spirit vanishing along with his last breath.

Still, Ishep said, “Yes.”

Good. Are you afraid?

With a languid movement, Ishep shook his head. A strange warm torpor seized him, as if he were very young and been given too many goblets of wine, and suddenly, he was very sleepy.

Good-bye, Mother.Ishep felt his soul streaming away. His knees buckled. Good-bye.

Aloud, he said only, “No. I’m not afraid.”

In the last instant of his life, Ishep saw something very much like regret flicker in the woman-snake’s cold flat eyes.

You should be,she said, gathering herself. You should be.

And then Ishep screamed—but not for long.

Dawn ate away the night. In the palace, Nartal hid, waiting until the appointed hour when he would emerge and claim his place as the newly anointed Night King, bearing the soul of an Immortal. Except it was a lie, and it was the beginning of an end so far in the future that neither Nartal nor anyone else could possibly imagine it.

Far beneath the skin of this world, in a place where men from distant planets would not walk for another 6,000 years, the boy who had been Ishep sat. Ishep—the boy—was gone. Only the shell of his body, and the thing that was immortal, remained. Above, the world would spin on its axis, and the two suns would rise and set, but things would change, and very soon, because the world needed the Immortal in its shell to tend to the machines and make the light globes float. But the Immortal Uramtali—the dithparu—was trapped. So the world would break, and here was the supreme irony: For all its great powers, the thing was not a mind reader, and only Prince Nartal knew the way out.

Still, maybe it could last until it found another. Maybe.

Chapter 1

If she scanned one more duty roster, Captain Rachel Garrett was certain she would either scream or take her thumbs and pop the eyeballs out of the head of the first unlucky person to set his big toe into her ready room, and probably both.

Oh, weare in a good mood, we are justfull of good cheer, aren’t we, sweetheart?

“Well, I hate this,” Garrett said, talking back to that nagging little voice in her head. She scowled, hunched over yet another ream of scrolling names, and knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she had a migraine coming, a real whopper, and wasn’t that just her dumb luck? “And I hate you.”

ButI’m not the one who wanted to be captain.Nooo, you wanted the glamour,you read about all the Archers and the Aprils and the Pikes and the Kirks and the Harrimans of the universe and how they zipped around in their starships and you decided, girl, you want you one ofthose. Only no one ever talked about duty rosters and being short an officer because you were stupid enough to let your XO go on R and R and the crew’s still being on edge because you were too far away to help Nigel Holmes when he needed you most and everything that’s happened since isyour fault, it’s your fault, it’s your…

“Go away.” Blinking against a lancet of pain skewering her brain, Garrett pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger. “Buzz off.”

But the voice had a point, and the very fact that she was arguing with that little piece of herself hunkered somewhere deep in the recesses of what passed as her brain meant that maybe she shouldcall it a night, or maybe a day, or…what time was it anyway? Frowning, Garrett glanced at her chronometer and then groaned. She’d worked straight through into the beginning of gamma shift. That meant that her new ops, Lieutenant Commander Darya Bat-Levi, was gone, relieved by the next Officer of the Day. Well, working straight through beta shift would explain why she was hungry, tired, sore—Garrett reached around and massaged a muscle, tight as a banjo string, in her neck. If she hadn’t eaten or moved her aching butt one millimeter for hours, no wonder she was having an argument with a nasty little voice in her head. Except someone had to do this work, and without a first officer to pick up the slack, there really wasn’t anyone else, was there? Not anyone qualified, that is. Oh, she could probably tag one of the bridge officers to step up to the plate. Bat-Levi, maybe, though Garrett didn’t like the idea; the woman was on probation, after all. But Thule G’Dok Glemoor, for example: the Naxeran lieutenant was tactical, good head on his shoulders. In fact, he was OOD this very minute; maybe she should loosen the reins, tap Glemoor to…

“Don’t kid a kidder,” Garrett muttered, saying it before that needling little voice started up again. She was no more likely to order one of her bridge officers to step outside the scope of his duties than she was to suddenly sprout a set of Andorian antennae. The plain truth was she had trouble letting go. Not allocating duties: she couldn’t captain the ship otherwise. But if there was extrawork, she did it. Great, when she was a kid and her mom had chores that needed doing. Terrible, now that she was a captain and short an officer, and couldn’t even tag ops to take over because Bat-Levi was still on psychiatric probation, and that new psychiatrist, Whatshisname, Tyvan, hadn’t given his blessing yet and…

She put both hands in the small of her complaining back and arched. “Next time, Garrett, you don’t let your first officer go on R and R when you don’t have backup. Next time, you tell that Nigel Holmes that he…”

She stopped abruptly—talking and stretching. Mercifully, her little voice decided this was one time she didn’t require commentary, or a restatement of the obvious: that Nigel Holmes—her former first officer and maybe a little more than just a friend, though she would never, everadmit that to anyone, much less herself—was dead and had been very dead for over six months now. Except her subconscious didn’t want to let him go, did it? Nosiree,she thought, forestalling that little voice. No, and we both know why, don’t we? Samir al-Halak’s your first officer now, and yes, heis away on R and R and itwas rotten timing, only you’re not sure you like Halak very much because he isn’t Nigel and can neverbe Nigel, and so you let him go even when you shouldn’t have, and that’s because you can’t let Nigel alone, can you? That’s why you’ve tightened up around the ship, not trusting the crew to pitch in when you need the help, right?Right ?

“Wrong,” she said, out loud. “Wrong, wrong, you are sowrong.”

Blinking, she tried focusing on the pulsing red letters that made up the duty roster—stellar magnetometry, this time around, a chuckle a minute—and failed, miserably, because the letters wavered and refused to coalesce into anything recognizable and thatwas because she was ready to burst into tears.

I don’t have time for this.She pushed up from her desk. You idiot, you don’t have time for this. Coffee, go get yourself some coffee.

Trying very hard not to think, she crossed to a small cabinet below her replicator, stooped and pulled out a grinder, her stash of beans. She popped the vacuum lid and inhaled, gratefully. Nothing like the aroma of fresh coffee beans, and nothing like a good cup of fresh-brewed coffee. Garrett didn’t trust the mess chef (nothing against the man; she didn’t trust anyone to brew a cup just the way she liked it—that damned problem letting go again), and she couldn’t stand replicator coffee. Replicator brew tasted…well, artificial. Like burnt plastic.

The grinder was whirring so loudly she almost didn’t hear the hail shrilling from her companel. Just a cup of coffee—she crossed back to her desk and killed the hail with a vicious jab at her comswitch—just one lousy cup of coffee in peace and quiet, that’s all she was asking, and why couldn’t they leave her alone? “Yes?”

There was an instant’s startled silence, and Garrett had time to reflect that she sounded as if she might just order a full spread of photon torpedoes if whoever was calling uttered one moreword. Then a reedy voice sounded through the speaker. “Uhm…ah…call for you, Captain.”

Great. Garrett blew out, exasperated. Super. Bite off the man’s head, why don’t you? Clear the decks, folks, the captain’s on a rampage. Lieutenant Darco Bulast was a fine communications officer, and however angry she was at herself for the weird twists and turns her mind was taking this evening, or this morning, or whatever the hell time it was, beating up on the rotund little Atrean wasn’t fair, or very captainlike, for that matter. “Thank you, Mr. Bulast. From whom?”

Bulast told her, and then there was another moment’s silence, only this time it was because Garrett’s emotions, now a mix of apprehension and sudden remorse, were doing roller-coaster somersaults and double loop-de-loops for good measure. And this time the only voice inside her head was pure Rachel Garrett: Oh my God, it’s Ven, and I forgot again, oh, that’s just great, that isjuuusssst perfect….

There’d be hell to pay, no way she could duck it, and could things get any worse? Could they? Sure, probably, why not, this was her lucky day, right? Quickly, she glanced at her reflection in her blanked desk monitor, and squinted. She didn’t like what she saw. Her complexion was pale, as were her lips. Purple shadows brushed the hollows beneath her walnut-brown eyes, and her auburn hair, usually so neat and smooth it looked held in place with electrostatic charge, was in disarray courtesy of her restless fingers pulling, prodding, twirling as she’d perused the duty rosters and other effluvia normally reserved for officers other than captains. Plainly put, she looked as if she’d been stranded on a planetoid for a month with a canteen, a week’s worth of survival rations, no blanket, and nothing to read. And then, in the very next instant, she figured to hell with how she looked; she doubted her looks had much to do with how Ven Kaldarren felt about her these days anyway. She said, “I’ll take it in here, Mr. Bulast, thank you.”

“No problem, Captain,” said Bulast, and Garrett heard the relief. “But I…”

“Yes, Mr. Bulast?”

“Well, it’s the signal, Captain. It’s not on a priority channel and it’s not scrambled. But it’s not registered either.”

“You mean that you can’t tell which ship it’s coming from?”

“That’s right. It’s as if, well, I guess you could say that whoever’s making the call wants a certain degree of anonymity.”

“I see.” Unregistered ships weren’t unheard of, and certainly not registering a ship that wasn’t under Federation jurisdiction wasn’t a crime. She dredged up what Kaldarren had told her about the xenoarcheological expedition he’d signed up for. Precious little: they weren’t talking much these days, even less now that the custody battle for Jason was behind them. Then she gave up the exercise as pointless. Kaldarren could do what he wanted, whenever he wanted. That was a reason they’d divorced, right?

“Thanks for the information, Mr. Bulast. I’ll follow up on it. Now put the call through, please.”

“Aye, Captain,” and then her companel winked to life, revealing the unsmiling face of her ex-husband. And, damn it, the sight of him still took her breath away. She was used to thinking of Betazoid men as being almost androgynous: slender, dark-eyed, smooth-skinned. Ven was unapologetically different. Always had been, and probably that was the attraction. They’d met in 2316, a year after Garrett’s graduation from the academy. By then, she was a lieutenant and posted aboard the Argos.Ven was part of a Betazoid delegation of xenoarchaeologists the Argoshad transported to a Federation Archaeology Council symposium on Rigel III. Ven had hulked above the other Betazoids. Standing at a hair under two meters, Ven was broad in the shoulders and muscular; unlike his comrades, he wore his black wavy hair long, and his Betazoid eyes were full and slightly hooded, fringed with a lush set of black lashes. Bedroom eyes: That was the term, and then-Lieutenant Garrett’s first thought.

Lust at first sight,Garrett thought now. A long time ago, before things went south.They’d divorced in 2333, a year after she’d taken command of the Enterprise.

“How are you, Ven?” she asked. Garrett felt the unpleasant jolt in the pit of her stomach she always did when they spoke, as if she expected a reprimand by a superior officer. So different from those first few years, when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Now she and Kaldarren couldn’t stand to be on separate monitors in different rooms several dozen light-years apart.

Kaldarren’s head moved in a curt nod. “Fine,” he said, barely moving his lips. Kaldarren had all the animation of a piece of stone, and the dark eyes that had once burned for her were hard and flinty. “Jason is fine. My mother’s fine. Now that’s out of the way, what happened to you?”

“Well, yes,” Garrett tried a smile, “I guess I missed you on Betazed. You’re calling from a ship, right? Right. So you and Jase have already left…”

“Oh, were you really planning on coming?” Kaldarren’s black eyes went wide with mock astonishment. “Forgive me, Rachel, I guess I misinterpreted. When Jason’s birthday came and went and we didn’t hear from you, I assumed that, after a week, we were free to leave the planet. Or were you planning on surprising us by dropping by in another month?”

Garrett was stung, and then angry. What the hell did Kaldarren know about what she was going through, anyway? They hadn’t talked in months, really, and so he didn’t have a clue about what it was like to lose a perfectly good officer, a friend, and all because she was stupid enough to…