A Time to Die

by John Vornholt

  “It’s not a gravity sink at all,” said Colleen with realization. “It’s a rift—from here to an alternate universe made of antimatter. The vortex is the intelligence behind it, and the demon flyer is an entity which gathers and returns antimatter that has escaped from that other realm. This ship has photon torpedoes, doesn’t it?”

  The Androssi stared at her with wide golden eyes. “We will not attack either one of them. I have no idea how Fristan got any antimatter from that whirlpool, but I will not risk an attempt.”

  “Now when it’s off-loading,” she whispered, “it’s vulnerable. Overseer, this anomaly is destroying Rashanar and making it very dangerous to work here. How much better would it be if you didn’t have to worry about the demon ship or gravity crushing your profits before you can get to them?”

  “We do need to be rid of this gravity sink. The shipwrecks would stop their orbit and float outward, making Rashanar larger.”

  “Hit it now,” she urged, “while there’s still time.”

  The Androssi captain straightened his shoulders. “Tactical, target a torpedo on the Pakled cruiser in front of the vortex.”

  “Yes, Overseer,” answered the officer with a worried wince. After working his board for a moment, he said, “Targeting complete.”

  “Fire torpedo.”

  The scow came out of cloak just long enough to launch it. The torpedo streaked a relatively short distance into the misshapen Pakled cruiser, which looked to be attached to the havoc like the stem of a child’s pinwheel. At first, Colleen didn’t think the weapon had any effect, until she saw a blazing hole begin to expand from within the blackness, crawling outward. The entity exploded, unleashing a rippling wave of charged particles that flowed outward and ignited the debris. Suddenly, the entire center of Rashanar erupted as matter and antimatter annihilated each other with all the force of a sun being born.

  The Androssi salvage ship was flipped and spun around. Something black and heaving coalesced all around them. Colleen could hear her Androssi shipmates scream in terrified death throes, but strong arms wrapped around her and pulled her out of the malevolent presence that had suddenly overtaken them.

  “Wes,” she sighed as she was carried through space. They raced against the explosion as it expanded outward, which made it seem as if they were witnessing the dawn of the universe. “So…beautiful.”

  “Hush,” he whispered, gripping her tighter. She could feel his strength and resolve. They paused at a safe distance.

  Wordlessly, they watched it finally die down to a silent, ever-expanding fireworks show. While her head seeped blood, Colleen felt as if she were in a dream. A dark and ominous force seemed to collect from the edges of space and slowly metamorphose into something metallic.

  “Damn,” muttered Wes, his voice sounding like nonexistent breeze in her stunned ears. “What the hell did you do? We’ve got to get back to the Skegge. How do you feel?”

  “Great…now that you’re here.” She patted his arm, and he tearfully nuzzled her neck.

  “I love you,” rasped Wesley.

  “Me too.” She tried to shake herself back to her senses, despite the fact that she was floating in space. Once again, it looked like a very active battlefield.

  The Traveler focused, and a moment later he and Colleen were back on the Skegge. Only the cabin was empty—no Picard or Vale. No one was at the controls, no one was drinking tea and pacing impatiently, but otherwise the tug seemed normal.

  “Did the Enterprise rescue them?” asked Wes, setting Colleen on the deck. She stumbled for a moment, but he held her up. The hackles on his neck rose just as he heard the whisper of the curtains opening.

  “Nooo!” he yelled, whirling around, but it was too late. A disruptor blast shot from the bunk behind the curtain, ripping Colleen across her midsection. She stared at him wild-eyed as her blasted body slumped to the deck, and more disruptor fire raked the place where Wesley stood.

  He stood for a moment before he bent over her body, numbed by shock and grief. “Noooo!” he roared at the top of his lungs. He bent down and hugged her bloody form even as another salvo blew out the viewport and allowed most of the air and loose articles to explode outward into space. He let go of her body, and watched it fly from his arms into the void. She was dead, beyond even his powers—and nothing could bring her back.

  His vision blurred with grief and rage, the Traveler felt as if he was outside of his body. He could see himself flying to the curtain even as two Orions in spacesuits stumbled off the bed, disruptors still blazing. He instantly had a fist in each Orion’s chest and was squeezing their massive hearts as they bellowed and kicked. Wes could feel their desperate need to get back to their ship, and he heard their death squeals. His body was encompassed in a transporter beam that was obviously intended to save the assassins, and he let himself be dematerialized.

  The human materialized in a small transporter room on the Orion vessel, and he sprang off the transporter pad even as two guards tried to aim their weapons at him. Before they could pull a trigger, he grabbed both of the green-skinned brutes by their sashes and whisked them off the ship into space. He flung them into the cold blackness and watched them flail in agony. A second later, Wes was on the bridge, where it was already pandemonium. Through burning tears and heartfelt sobs, the berserk Traveler singled out each Orion and either collapsed his windpipe, stopped his heart, or dragged him kicking and screaming into the graveyard.

  The horrible massacre went on for only a matter of seconds, although it must have seemed an eternity for the poor survivors who scuttled from the bridge like green rats. Wes hunted them down and found each Orion cowering somewhere on the wretched craft. “Why? Why her?” he shrieked as he snuffed out their miserable lives.

  Only none of it happened, except in his mind. In reality, two Orion assassins stumbled from the curtains, disruptors blazing, but the beams passed through the Traveler and only made the hole in the bow bigger. It took about a second before the escaping air blew them out the cavity into the graveyard where Colleen had vanished a moment earlier. Wesley had wanted to rip them apart, and he could have…but his training and basic nature restricted the bloody vengeance to his mind, leaving him only the grief. The two Orions were in spacesuits, he told himself, and they had associates nearby.

  The scavenger ship did not have as large a crew as his feverish imagination had conjured. Their bridge was empty, and he found the sole remaining Orion in the hold, guarding a cell that contained Captain Picard, Lieutenant Vale, and Fristan. The guard made the mistake of firing at him. In the blink of an eye, the Traveler streaked across the room, and the Orion found the disruptor in his midsection.

  “Stop!” shouted Picard through the bars of his cell. “Wesley, don’t kill him!”

  The words broke into Wesley’s consciousness, and he took several calming breaths and dropped the trembling Orion onto the deck. He stood there, red-eyed, panting. Hoarsely he said, “They murdered Colleen. They were lying in wait for us on the Skegge.”

  “Yes, I know,” answered Picard, lowering his head. “They were hoping to get revenge on us, and they thought you were a shapeshifter. They weren’t going to take any chances with you, no matter what we told them. They just wanted to kill you.”

  Wesley rubbed his eyes with his fists and grunted. “They only killed Colleen. They were blown into space along with her.”

  “Wes!” called Christine Vale, looking miserable. “I’m sorry for you. We all grew to like her, and we’ll miss her…but your anger won’t bring her back.”

  “It was in the line of duty,” said the captain, “and we all owe her a lot. Shake it off, Wes, concentrate on the mission, and grieve later. Guard, let us out of here!”

  “Don’t hurt me!” begged the cowering Orion, fumbling in his pocket for some old-fashioned keys. “I can show you how to run our ship.”

  “Just hurry,” urged Picard.

  “Yes, sir! Yes, Captain Jean!” The sole survivor quickly opened the cell do
or and ushered his new masters out, keeping a wary eye on the Traveler.

  Wes dropped to the deck and began to weep. He couldn’t think about anything but the lifeless body he had held in his arms. That could not be the woman he loved, the woman he thought he had saved. Instead he had swept her into harm’s way, and she had died instead of him. I was meant to die for misusing my powers! I went too far. Because of my arrogance, Colleen is dead.

  It seemed as if both of his lives were over. He wept for all he had lost…Colleen, his father, then his mother for several years, Starfleet, the faith of his fellow Travelers, and his innocence.

  He felt a gentle hand on his shoulder, and he looked up to see Captain Picard. “Wes, I’m sorry. The Orions came after us as soon as you left. We were dead in space. They used transporters—we had no chance to resist. You take some time to recover, but try to collect yourself. Vale and I are going to the bridge to contact the Enterprise. Are they on their way here?”

  The young man nodded.

  “What shape is the Skegge in?” asked Picard.

  “It’s destroyed,” answered Wesley, forcing himself to think of his comrades and not just his loss. “Listen, Captain, something else has happened. The Androssi followed the mimic ship to the vortex. I’ll have to sort out what I saw, but the demon ship seemed to be transferring antimatter into the gravity sink. It may be a rift that leads to an antimatter dimension, I don’t know. The Androssi fired on it. The gravity dump and the vortex were caught up in a chain reaction. The demon ship is still out there, still dangerous but without any purpose.”

  Wes realized it. It sounded as if he was talking about himself.

  The captain’s face darkened. “It seems as if matters have come to a head. We’ll be on the bridge.”

  “I don’t know where I’ll be,” said Wesley, his voice cracking.

  Although a dozen emotions crossed Picard’s face, he looked as if he couldn’t find any words to express them. He waved his arm, and Vale and the cooperative Orion followed him out of the brig. Fristan slumped down beside the young man and hummed silently.

  “Everything dies in Rashanar, they do,” said the Androssi sympathetically. “No one ever leaves. No one, no they don’t.”

  Wes sniffed back a stream of mucus and rubbed his reddened eyes. “Everything dies but the damn demon ship. The Androssi blew up its nest, but how can we kill that murderous entity?”

  Fristan scratched his stubbled chin, nodding in thought. “You still have the fire of revenge burning in your belly, you do. That will eat you alive, says I.”

  “Spare me the lecture,” grumbled Wesley. “Just tell me how to kill it.”

  Fristan looked perfectly sane as he mulled over the request. “When it becomes its prey, it must have the weaknesses of its prey. Do you not think so?”

  “Yeah,” said Wesley, still feeling as if he wanted to break into tears. The emptiness in his heart was searing, and the only event he could compare it to was his father’s death. But that had happened when he was a little boy. As a man, he had never experienced the loss of someone like Colleen Cabot. It had been true love, however brief. He had a feeling he would have been good for her, a calming influence in her life. Now he would never know.

  One fact of being a Traveler that failed me, he decided, is that I can’t be in two places at once. That’s why the Travelers had banded together to see and experience as much as they could by multiprocessing. Any individual Traveler who tried to use his powers to influence events, as Wesley had, was doomed to failure. In the end, he would always be limited by operating alone.

  “I’ll have to find it,” Wes told Fristan, “because I’m the only one who can.”

  The broken-down Androssi patted his shoulder. “The Avenger is just like you, it is. All the roots have been torn up, and it’s alone. Yes, perhaps now is the time for it to die, like poor Colleen.”

  His tears welling up again, Wes jumped to his feet and paced to the center of the brig. “I’ve got to be by myself. My arrogance killed her. It attracted her, then killed her.”

  “Listen, young man, take me back to the Enterprise, I beg you!” Fristan croaked. “I want to see Counselor Troi again. I want to help them.”

  Wes lowered his head and swallowed hard. “I can’t face…any of them.”

  “You don’t have to stay,” insisted Fristan. “Just drop me off and disappear. I’m ready to help them.”

  The Traveler frowned and gulped back another lump in his throat. “All right, I’ll drop you off.”

  When Deanna Troi entered the brig on the Enterprise, she expected to find Beverly Crusher there. But she didn’t anticipate the Ontailian prisoners leaping and crawling all over their trellises while chirping frantically. Despite this seeming improvement in their condition, the doctor didn’t look happy. Her tricorder apparently wasn’t telling her much either.

  “Beverly, your patients are up and about, looking much better.”

  “They’re agitated, not better. See their food—they still haven’t eaten. It happened all of a sudden. I don’t even know how they have the energy to carry on like this. What does it mean?”

  “Can we use the universal translator?” asked Troi.

  “It’s on,” muttered Crusher. “I’m afraid it just puts out gibberish. I’ve got a call in to La Forge, but they’re shorthanded down there. Do the Ontailians look frightened to you?”

  The Betazoid stepped closer to the frantic activity in the enclosure and was bombarded by alien emotions. “Anxious and alarmed…almost panicked. Resignation more than fear.”

  Beverly sighed. “Do they know something we don’t? Is this what they do before they die? I’m thinking about stunning them all and starting intravenous care, especially if any of them drop into unconsciousness. If only they would drink some water.”

  They heard the door whoosh open, and both of them turned to see Will Riker walk in. Deanna was glad to see him, but she instantly realized from his eyes that something was wrong.

  Riker couldn’t help but be distracted by all the thrashing and howling going on in the cell. “What is this, exercise period?”

  “We don’t know,” answered Beverly with concern. She briefly explained that the prisoners had gone from total lethargy into this frenzy in a matter of seconds. “If you’ve come down here to ask what we’re doing with them, that’s a good question. I want to talk to you about it.”

  “That’s fine,” replied Riker solemnly, “but that’s not why I’ve come to see you. We’ve gotten a message from the Skegge.”

  Beverly looked stricken. “Wesley?”

  “They’re all right, except for Colleen Cabot. She was killed in an ambush by some Orion salvagers. I don’t have the details. Wes has apparently taken it very hard, but he single-handedly captured the Orion ship after this happened. The away team is trying to fly it.”

  “Where is my son now?” asked Beverly, turning off her tricorder.

  “They don’t know. If he shows up, we’re supposed to keep him here.” The acting captain added, “They didn’t say how we were supposed to do this. I guess it will have to be by asking nicely.”

  The doctor seemed to break. Her shoulders slumped as she cried softly for a few moments. Deanna put her arm around her friend’s shoulder, and gave Will a nod of dismissal. He hesitantly walked to the door. Beverly had eight years of pent-up worry to release, but she didn’t use this moment to do it. As the whooping and hollering of the Ontailians grew louder, the doctor abruptly dried her eyes.

  She sniffed. “I grieve for that young woman and my son, too. You want your children to excel, but you also want them to have a normal life…to be happy. He’s blessed, but I know he isn’t immune to heartache. Will I lose him again?”

  Troi had no answer to the anguished question. The two women stood close to each other, lost in a myriad of thoughts. After a few moments, the counselor noticed a difference in the room—the Ontailians were quieter. She saw a few of them huddled by the water dispenser and the trays of gre
ens and grain.

  “Beverly,” she said, prodding the doctor’s arm. “Look!”

  The doctor looked up to see that her patients had opted to live rather than waste away.

  On the bridge of the Orion salvage ship, Picard scanned the cluttered region of space for the two missing Orions and Colleen Cabot’s body, but interference from the boneyard made the job impossible. The surviving Orion, Taluk, stood nearby, his hands behind his back and a look of contrition on his rugged face. Knowing what he did of Orions, the captain assumed that their prisoner had decided he was now their slave, and his fear of Wesley Crusher would keep him in line.

  The captain frowned at the confusing sensor readings, while Lieutenant Vale familiarized herself with the navigation controls. According to Taluk, the Orion scow was called the Green Goddess, and it appeared to be a serviceable craft that could replace the Skegge in their plans. Still, Picard was happy to know that the Enterprise was en route to their position, and Fristan was safely in Counselor Troi’s custody.

  Suddenly Vale turned to him and said, “Captain, one of those big Ontailian warships is off our stern. I think it’s the Yoxced.”

  “Did they hail us?”

  “No. They’re just sitting there, trying to scan us. Our shields are up.”

  Picard turned to their host. “Taluk, did this ship have any dealings with the Ontailians?”

  The big Orion shrugged. “They chased us a few times. We bought them off.”

  “How?”

  “Antimatter. They were always willing to buy it, but we didn’t salvage it. We brought it with us, which is why the Ontailians let us in. We just wanted the slave trade and a piece of the profits.”

  “I want to talk more about this, but later,” said Picard. He peered out the viewport, but saw only a few glittering chunks of debris. Less than a hundred meters away, a scorched Cardassian hulk slipped past them, but there was no active ship in sight.