by TylerRose.
Shestna and Tyler had supper in Baener’s apartment after watching the proceedings.
“She’s not going to change anything to our favor,” Tyler said, taking her seat at the table.
“She might,” Shestna replied in a hopeful tone.
“Don’t kid yourself,” she sniped. “She’s going to let things stand and pass it off to the next appellate judge, and that one will pass it off to the next. How many are there? None of them will be willing to alter anything. It’ll get to the last one three years from now? Five? Then half of it will be overturned, dismissed, struck from the records, and he’ll be free to do as he pleases again, including getting back into politics.”
“I fear you may be right,” Baener had to agree with her. “So let’s enjoy this respite for as long as it lasts. He’s not here and he won’t be here until the very last decision is rendered. Maybe we can drag that out until he dies.”
“I’ll drink to that!” she said, lifting her glass to tap against his.
A lovely dinner with much conversation and when they were ready to leave, Baener held her hand between both of his to capture her full attention.
“It’s good to see you interacting with the universe again. It has missed you.”
“Thank you. It’s nice to not feel the universe trying to kill me for a change.”
He kissed her cheek and Shestna took her onto his arm to return to the Voranian suite.
“You flirt with him too much,” he complained as they got off the lift on their floor.
“What are you talking about?”
“That you flirt with other men too easily. I have been noticing more over the last few weeks.”
“You’re noticing nothing, Sta,” she said, going into the suite.
“Do not dismiss my observations,” he said, voice rising.
“Your observations are incorrect.”
He grabbed her upper arm, pulling her back. “Do not tell me what my observations are, female.”
“Hey! Get off me!” she shouted, yanking her arm out of his hand.
Shestna struck her, slapping her face hard enough to send her back a step.
“What is happening?” Dorn’s voice cut through.
“None of your business,” Shestna said, taking a step toward his wife.
Dorn intervened, stepping between them. “Stop, Brother. Right now.”
“Get out of my way. I will deal with my wife.”
“Deal how? She’s done nothing wrong. You are the one getting out of hand.”
Shestna punched. Dorn blocked and put Shestna on his back with a leg sweep and a push. Volf blocked Tyler’s view, having come out of his room with the commotion. She leaned around him to see what was happening.
“Don’t make me do this,” Dorn said, pinning Shestna to the floor.
Shestna lashed out with the crystal energy, creating a burst of blue around himself. Dorn grabbed him by the wrist and held tight. A shout from them both and Tyler felt the energy within Shestna transfer into Dorn in one explosive burst that filled the room. Shestna collapsed under him.
“I told you I would take the power if you ever hurt her,” Dorn said.
“Hurt her? What did I do?” Shestna demanded. “Where is she? Tyler!”
Dorn looked over his shoulder to see…no one. Volf was gone. Tyler was gone. A quick look into the two bedrooms at that end of the suite, to see both were empty. Dorn had his communicator out and tried to get Volf.
“It’s going directly to messages. They’re out of range.”
“Out of range? There’s no such thing in this quadrant or the Sol system of Alpha quadrant,” Shestna said. “Did I hurt her? I don’t remember anything after supper in Baener’s apartment.”
“You struck her face and were going to do more. I stopped you. I took the Crystal power from you. Your leukemia is cured, so you should be fine in that regard,” Dorn said, calling Mankell instead. “Did Tyler show up there just now?”
“No. What is wrong.”
“She’s not in any danger. She just took off with Volf. I thought maybe she’d come to you. His phone is either off or out of range.”
“I can see if I can locate it.”
“Please do,” Dorn said, and ended the call. His next was to both residences and the palace on Voran to see if she’d gone to any of them.
Volf held her tight as she dragged loud breaths into her lungs in a panic attack like he’d never seen before. She was shuddering so hard she would have shaken herself right off her feet. Feeling her legs weaken, he sat down on the spot with her across his lap to wait it out. There wasn’t anything else he could do but speak quietly and calmly into her ear, repeating that she was safe and it was okay. Several minutes of labored breathing and constricted airway and she calmed, leaning on him too heavily.
“Fuck, that hurt,” she managed to say. “I’m dizzy as shit now.”
“I’m sure. We’ll move when you’re ready. Where are we?”
“Hell if I know. I can’t feel anything right now. I barely got us out of there before my abilities were shot.”
Phone in hand, he saw he had no signal. The room, he’d seen while holding onto her anxiety storm, was dark stone, plain. Nothing identifying of the planet. No place he’d been with her before. He couldn’t even get a planetary or galactic position.
“Damn it.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, mind clearing and strength returning. “It’s safe here.”
She got up, looked around to find the door, recognized this place.
“You know where we are now?” Volf asked, on his feet and leading the way to the door to look out himself.
“This is my temple on Ercoli,” she said softly. “We won’t be here long.”
“Madam, how may we serve you?” asked the waiting Custodian.
“My friend needs to make a phone call. Please take him to where he can do that.”
“Of course. This way.”
“What do you want me to tell them?” Volf asked Tyler.
“That we are safe. Nothing more. They don’t know about this place and I don’t want them to. Ask if it’s done and safe for me to come back; if the crystal energy has subsided. If they’re done hitting each other.”
“How far do I have to go to get signal? I don’t want to leave you alone,” he realized.
“The Immaculate will be fine, Soldier,” the Custodian said. “You won’t go far.”
Reluctantly, Volf left Tyler with no companion guard and followed another monk-looking man to a room on the other side of the large central room. A control room. Computers, view screens. A stark sight compared with the apparent lack of technology in the other room.
“Whoa.”
“You can use your communications device now,” his escort said.
He dialed Dorn.
“Where are you?” Dorn demanded.
“Safe. Is it clear to come back? She said the burst of energy hurt her.”
“Take her back to her home on Voran. I don’t want her to get here and find she can’t stand it. We’ll be there in a couple days.”
“How is Shestna?” Volf asked. “She’ll want to know.”
“He will be fine after he’s had a sleep and acclimated. She must not worry about him. You’d best call Mankell and tell him you’re fine. He won’t be satisfied if I tell him.”
“Understood. Thank you.”
Volf called Mankell and assured him all was well. He explained what happened, that Tyler had fled because the Crystal energy had overwhelmed her and been painful.
“Why did Dorn take it from Shestna in the first place?” Mankell asked.
“I don’t know what happened. I was asleep when they came back. He and she were quarreling. Then Dorn was there, fighting with Shestna. Then she and I were here.”
“Where is here?”
“She has told me not to say. We are going to her home on Voran in a moment, so where we are now doesn’t matter anyway.”
“Which means some secret loc
ation she wants to keep to herself for now. Very good. I’ll have at least one of the others there soon as they can grab their bags and—”
“No, don’t,” Volf cut him off. “She doesn’t need anyone else. She’s okay. It just hurt really bad when it happened. I have to get back to her. Talk to you in a couple days.”
That was it. He had to end the call or Mankell would keep asking questions Volf couldn’t answer. Tyler was waiting in the chamber in the middle. Information relayed, she teleported the two of them to her own living room.
“I’m exhausted,” she said. “I’m going to bed.”
“Exhausted? You had a nap earlier and just went to dinner and back,” he replied, following her through to her room.
“There was this huge burst of energy that saps my abilities and I teleported us a few million miles to another section of the galaxy” she snapped at him. “I’m tired.”
Behind the dressing screen and she called for a Neverseen to help her out of the dress that was laced up the back and she couldn’t undo it without assistance. As soon as she was in her nightgown and heading for the bed, the Neverseen turned the blind slats to block out the midday sun. Volf had already changed into his night shorts. He waited for Tyler to get comfortable before taking position across the foot of the bed.
“So what was that place?” he asked.
“A temple someone built specifically to sequester me many thousands of years ago,” she sighed heavily. “If Shestna knew about it, he would want to move me there and shut me away from the universe.”
“Yes, he would,” Volf had to agree.
“There may come a day when that really is needed. That time is not now. I need to be out in the galactic society, not hiding away from it.”
She fell asleep. Volf reached behind himself for the book he was reading and the small light. He glanced up when she fidgeted and grew restless, looked to the wall over the bed to see a small vortex of…whatever that was. It faded and she became still. A phenomenon that happened two or three times a night three or four times a week, he’d ceased to be alarmed by it. She said it was spirits passing by her to go to their place of rest or rebirth. He took her word for it.
When she sat bolt upright demanding “what was that?”, he paid more attention.
“I don’t know. What was it?”
“A burst of explosion, like a bomb. People are terrified. Falling. Rock crushing. We have to go to it.”
She was on her feet. He dropped the book and lamp and stood with her. This was no sleepwalking episode. She teleported them somewhere and directly in front of them some two hundred feet away, was a huge section of the side of a mountain. It had fallen, crushed everyone and everything inside. The dust cloud was still billowing outward and upward
“My temple!” she realized, seeing sheared off chambers on the cliff side. “How in the hell did this happen? Get on the phone and call Baener and ask him to contact Ercoli and find out.”
“On it.”
A two minute phone call that was returned another few minutes later as they were teleporting around the site looking for survivors. Everyone who had been inside was dead.
“Let me speak to her,” Baener said when Volf answered the call.
He handed over the phone without a word.
“What happened?” Tyler asked.
“Ercoli planetary defense monitors observed a single shot from a ship that barreled into orbit, took the shot and took off again. It was deliberately destroyed, Tyler. Someone knew where it was, flew in, destroyed your temple and fled.”
She did something Volf had never seen her do before. She went perfectly still and calm. No cursing and stomping around. No shouting and throwing things. She was so calm it was the most frightening thing he’d ever seen in his life.
“Thank you, Baener. Tell the Ercoli that I am very sorry for the loss of life of the monks and attendants.”
“I have already done so. They have offered to build another.”
“No.”
She hung up on him, gave the phone back to Volf. In a blink, they were on Voran, inside her temple there. She methodically lit every candle in the bank. That done, she held her arms out over the flames to feel and absorb their warmth. Flames from the short little candles stretched up to impossible heights they’d normally be incapable of reaching. When she was warm enough, she backed away and lowered to her knees on the pillow kept there for her.
In perfect stillness with head bowed, she remained unmoving for hours, head cocked at a particular angle, lips pursed a particular way, eyes closed.
Okay, this was the most alarming thing Volf had ever seen. Cool acceptance? Reticence? Utterly unpredictable.
She rose to her feet as smoothly as she had knelt. A hard shove of her hand and the bank of candles extinguished simultaneously.
“You say nothing of this,” she told him, and left the otherwise empty temple.
Rather than teleport to her home, she walked. Darkness had fallen at last, the quiet of night in a place that went to bed at a reasonable hour most of the time.
She went back to bed without a word. Come the morning, she immersed herself in her music. Different songs than he’d heard her perform before, hard rocking with disturbing lyrics about destruction and nightmares. Hour after hour of it, pausing only to have a meal and then going right back to it. He smelled her marijuana numerous times as she refreshed her buzz. He almost called Mankell at one point, deciding that she would call him herself if she wanted more authoritative companionship.
The music finally turned off for good at suppertime. She came out to the table, bringing her journal and pipe with her. When she hadn’t been actively singing, she’d been writing. The book that had been a few pages the last time she’d written in it was now nearing its last page. She finished it and brought another just like it to her hand to continue uninterrupted. At last she put the pen down and closed the book, a third of its pages now written on.
Her eyes lifted to look at Volf. “Go home.”
“What? No. My job is right here.”
“It’s not about your job, Volf. It’s about your life. If you stay, you will die.”
“I’m good with that if it’s to protect you.”
“I’m not good with that. I’m not willing to have you die for me.”
“I don’t understand why you’re doing this, Tyler,” he said with a confused shake of his head.
“Someone who knows things sent another person to destroy a temple that was made for me eons ago. There aren’t many who even knew that place existed. It was Earnol. He hired someone to destroy the temple that I’d only just found a few months ago. Yesterday was the second time I’ve been to it. He knew I’d been there. He felt it. Either he knew where it was or he used my going there to find it. Doesn’t really matter. The fact is that he sent someone and that someone, killed every man who was in that temple. Dozens of them. Without care. Without remorse. Knowing they were there and would die. I feel the weight of that in ways you cannot imagine. I will not have your death on my conscience too. Get your things. You’re going back right now.”
“No.”
In a blink, Volf was standing in Mankell’s Gar Hall in the middle of breakfast, his travel sack at his feet.
“Why are you here?” Mankell demanded from his seat.
“I think I’ve been fired.”
Mankell took him across the corridor to the House room and Volf explained about the temple being destroyed, the following hours, being sent back home.
“How long were you in the temple with the candles? Did anyone else see you there?” Mankell had to ask.
“We were there for several hours. There were a few people coming in and out, yes. Plus the custodial priests who live there and take care of the temple. They checked on us numerous times. Why?”
“Because Earnol is dead. He took his own life several hours ago,” Mankell said, turning on the view screen so Volf could see for himself.
The newsreader was narrating the text of a
n apparent suicide note confessing his long-term blackmail and threatening of numerous planets to get what he wanted. He had hanged himself over his own bed.
“Can she make a person do that from that distance?” Mankell asked. “Is making someone do something within her abilities?”
“I’ve never seen her do anything like that. I swear it to the Raas. She displays almost none of her abilities except to bring things to her hands and teleportation,” Volf said with a shake of his head.
Mankell sat in the nearest straight backed chair, finger rubbing his chin. “She alone now?”
“Except for her Neverseens, yes.”
“Thank you. Dismissed,” Mankell waved him off with a small gesture.
Rather than call her, he called Pisod to send him to take up the watch.
“Just because Earnol is dead doesn’t mean she’s safe.”
“I was off duty anyway. Give me a second.”
Pause.
“Okay, I’m here. She’s smoking her pipe and glaring a hole through me.”
“Do not let her teleport you away,” Mankell said.
“Not a problem. I’ll be here until my brothers arrive,” he said, and put the phone into his pocket. “Honey, I’m home.”
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “You tell me.”
“Why did you send Volf away?” he asked.
“Because several dozen men were killed today just for helping me. I don’t want that to happen again.”
“That’s what guards and soldiers are for, Tyler. To fight on your behalf. To die protecting you if needs be. Where did they die? How? I’ve not heard about anything.”
“Needs don’t be,” she said, ignoring his questions.
