Catherine
Lee looked around Ten Forward and noticed Lieutenant O'Shea waving her over to a
table by the windows. Catherine made a small detour to the bar and ordered a
glass of plum-wine from crewman Neldon before joining the Valkyrie's Ops officer at the table.
"Have
a seat Counselor, please." Moira was alone at her table and the Counselor
picked a chair that allowed her a good view of the forward windows.
"I am surprised to see you here," Catherine remarked and Moira looked quizzical. "I would have expected you to be down in sickbay with Lieutenant Hagen."
Moira shook her head. "I would only get in the way, now that they are setting up the forcefield emitters and besides, I still have this." She pointed at a small box that sat on the table and Catherine recognized it as Rishana Hagen's birthday present for Captain Veal. "Somehow having this at hand makes me feel quite close to Rishana, even if I am not entirely certain why."
Catherine
Lee took the glass a crewman handed her and took a small sip before she replied.
"I don't envy you for your experiences during the war, but it must have
formed some very strong bonds between you and the other members of the Eclipse's
crew." It was merely a statement of facts and nothing more. The Counselor
knew from her own experience how it felt to be a victim of the Chaos War and she
had worked with survivors of that conflict long enough to gain an understanding
of what it must have been like fighting on the front-lines.
Moira
noticed that the Counselor was not speaking as a member of her profession, but
just as someone who shared her free time with her – just another member of the
crew. "Yes, it has, but Rishana and I have been friends a lot longer than
that. We have been acquaintances at the Academy and we became close friends when
we were both assigned to the Eclipse,
two years before the war."
Catherine
set her glass down and reached for the box. "May I?"
"Sure,
why not." Moira picked up the small case and put it in the Counselor's
hand.
Suddenly
the lights went out and the sound of breaking glass and a series of heavy thumps
filled the room as people dropped whatever they had been holding and passed out.
* * * * *
"Where
the hell are we?" Doctor Jascar asked, but Ben had no immediate answer. A
moment ago they had both been busy in the Valkyrie's
sickbay when suddenly a wave of chroniton radiation had struck them and before
they had any chance to react everything went dark around them.
Now
the two men were surrounded by green-tinged mist that stretched in all
directions. Ben wasn't sure if he could see more than a few meters, if that much
at all, but when he looked down he discovered he was standing on a featureless
metal surface. He kneeled and touched the silvery green metal. It was as smooth
as it looked but felt oddly warm.
Doctor
Jascar sniffed. "The air seems breathable enough. Have you noticed how dry
the air is, considering all that fog?"
"No, I hadn't, but now that you mention it..." Ben stood up and looked around again, but there was still nothing to see but mist swirling around them. "Something else is odd. There is not the slightest wind and yet the fog is constantly moving." He touched his combadge. "Tucker to bridge." Only silence answered him and Theron Jascar didn't have more luck when he called for anyone to respond on his own communicator.
"Strange,"
Ben remarked. "Your call should have reached my communicator, even if the Valkyrie
isn't in range or her comsystem is down." He shrugged. Without at least
some basic tools there was nothing he could try to do about the combadges.
"Well, what next?"
"I believe that's for you to decide, Commander Tucker. After all, you outrank me by half a pip." Ben looked down at the older man's collar and noticed that Theron Jascar wore the insignia of a Lieutenant Commander. Up to now Ben had not paid any attention to the Doctor's rank.
"Now
that just makes my day," Ben
Tucker exclaimed with a humorless grin. "Here I am, commanding my first
away mission in a place I shouldn't be, with no tools or weapons, and my sole
companion is a medic who doesn't even have a simple bandage at hand."
"That
seems to sum it up nicely." Theron breathed deeply, then suddenly looked up
at the engineer with a smile on his lips. "And boy, am I glad I am not the
one in charge here." He winked and Ben was taken aback by the sudden
display of friendly emotions.
"I
am glad one of us is enjoying himself. But," Ben added, "standing
around here doesn't lead us anywhere, so let's just pick a direction and start
walking."
* * * * *
The
first sign of change was the faint echo of their own footsteps and soon Ben and
Doctor Jascar stood in front of a wall that stretched in all directions. The
wall was apparently constructed from the same metal as the floor and joined it
without any visible seam. The curvature of the wall was barely noticeable, but
by Ben's estimate it formed a circle at least a mile in diameter, and he and
Theron were standing on the inside of the structure.
Ben
touched the wall and noticed the same warmth the floor had. "What would you
say," he asked without looking at his companion, "about 37 or 38
degrees Celsius?"
"Yes,"
Theron agreed after he laid his hand on the wall. "Body temperature or very
close to it." The temperature of their surroundings was much closer to 20°C
and Theron withdrew his hand from the wall a few centimeters. "You don't
even notice the warmth unless you touch it. Quite remarkable."
"Yes,"
Commander Tucker agreed. While he didn't share Doctor Jascar's enthusiasm Ben
was still intrigued by the apparent physical inconsistencies of their
surroundings. On the other hand they needed answers to some more basic questions
like where they were and how they had gotten here. He stripped out of his
uniform jacket and clipped the combadge to his gray turtleneck. He dropped the
jacket on the ground and took a deep breath. "Let's see if we can find a
door or something like it."
* * * * *
When
he saw his uniform jacket again Ben cursed loudly and was startled by the sound
of his own voice. Most of the time he and Theron had walked in silence, ever
alert for any sound in the mists, but neither had they heard anything nor found
a door in the smooth wall.
He sat on his heels and picked up the garment he had left to mark their starting position. At least staring at the uniform jacket was better than constantly watching the green haze swirl around him. Ben Tucker tried to calm his mind and push back the frustration he had started to feel for at least an hour, yet it was anything but easy. How long had they walked through the mist now, without finding anything that would provide a clue to their whereabouts? Ben wasn't sure, but something occurred to him he hadn't paid much attention to before. Still starring at his jacket he asked: "Doctor, are you feeling hungry?"
Theron
Jascar carefully considered the question before he answered. "No. It must
have been several hours since my last meal and I don't feel hungry or thirsty.
In fact I am not tired at all."
"Same
here." Ben stood and put on his uniform jacket again. "I hadn't
noticed it before, but since we came here I feel quite energetic and our little
walk hasn't tired me at all." He pressed his back against the wall and
looked down slightly before he started walking forward again.
"There
is nothing on the circumference of this blasted hall, so let's try to locate the
center of it. Maybe we will find something there."
* * * * *
Ben
whistled softly. Finally they had found something, but whatever he had expected,
this was not it.
Theron
was equally astonished as he looked across the shimmering pool at the largest
tree he had ever seen. The trunk of the gnarled old tree measured at least ten
meters in diameter and it's lowest branches were barely visible as dark shades
in the mists, at least 50 meters above the ground. The clear area in the fog
that surrounded both tree and pond formed a perfect hemisphere and as much as
the wisps of fog moved around, nowhere did they breach the imaginary boundary
that marked the center of the colossal hall.
Commander
Tucker took a few steps forward and watched the ground around the pool of water.
The closer he got to the glistening clear liquid, the more he noticed that the
metal floor lost it's greenish tint, until, at the very edge of the pool, it had
turned to a shiny and glittering silver that was hard to distinguish from the
color of the liquid it encircled. Stepping closer to the water's edge Ben became
aware of something else – where the small waves of the pond licked over the
metal the ground itself continued the motion of the liquid, forming small
ripples and waves, as if the metal had suddenly transcended it's solid state and
become something almost alive.
"I
think I know where we are," he remarked in a low voice, unable to draw his
eyes away from the display of lights and movements he observed.
Theron
was as incapable of looking away from the tree as Ben was unable to look away
from the pond. Even his first glance at the gigantic old ash had aroused in him
a feeling of awe he would have been hard pressed to put into words, but was
unable to shake off. Somehow everything he beheld appeared to be larger than
life in much more than the physical sense of the words. From the first moment he
had stepped out of the mist Theron had felt as if he had suddenly become aware
of how small and insignificant he was compared to the rest of the universe, as
if he could at the same time comprehend both the sheer size of the universe and
his own place in it. Deep down inside the thought frightened him and yet he
found it comforting – suddenly his own problems and worries were not important
anymore, if they had ever been important at all.
"Then
where are we?" Theron ran his eyes up and down the bark of the tree and
tried to make out some of the details that where lost in the mist above him, but
what he saw hardly registered on his conscious mind.
"Tarin
has told me about this place." The thought of the woman he loved almost
stirred Ben from his mesmerized state of mind and he tried to concentrate. He
closed his eyes and slowly exhaled, took a deep breath and exhaled again, just
concentrating on his breathing. It helped a little, but he didn't dare to open
his eyes again. While the glistening pool reflected a light source that was
nowhere to be seen, he had seen something else in the bottomless pool – tiny
specks of light that twinkled like stars. He had noticed how the lights formed
small groups or slowly danced around each other in constant motion and then he
had realized what it was he really saw in the pool - those were real stars,
forming clusters and galaxies that were only recognizable in the far distance
where the lights were no longer recognizable as individual stars but only as
part of the larger formations.
He
shook his head, still trying to clear his mind. "This must be the Well of
Urd," he explained to Doctor Jascar. "While it existed in the Aesir
dimension, the place – and the feeling – match what Tarin has told me about
it."
The
mention of the Aesir - and the memories of the Chaos War he associated with that
name - managed to stir Theron from his trance-like state enough to concentrate
on his companion, even if it remained difficult for him to stay focused.
"But
I thought this place was destroyed at the end of the war. We can't really be
here, can we?"
"No,"
a soft feminine voice answered him from the mists, "this is just a dream."
* * * * *
At
last Ben and Theron snapped out of their enthralled state and looked around,
just in time to see a young woman step into the clearing in the mist.
"This
is my dream and you two are not supposed to be here," she declared.
"Rishana?"
She looked like the Valkyrie's helmsman, but Ben had some doubts. As odd the as
the whole situation was there was something eerie about her he found more
unsettling than anything that had happened during the last few hours.
"Yes."
She smiled, only to turn more thoughtful, and after a few seconds she slowly
shook her head. "No. A part of me is the Rishana Hagen you know, but I am
also a lot more."
The
sudden aloofness of her voice frightened Ben, but at least her momentary
hesitation had allowed him and Theron enough time to notice the small
differences between this woman and the Rishana Hagen they had last seen in the Valkyrie's
sickbay.
There were neither a combadge nor rank pips on her uniform and she seemed taller than Theron remembered her by about ten centimeters. While Ben saw the same, he noticed something else. The woman they had just encountered wore her hair in a different style - straight and falling to just below her shoulders. Last time he had seen Rishana her hair was several inches longer and more curled. He recalled the chat he had with Dar and Moira a few days ago and how Moira had told him that after the war Rishana had intentionally changed her hair style to something that wouldn't remind her so much of Skuld, her distant ancestor. If this was a dream it was a dream of a time before or during the Chaos War, but if that was a good or bad thing Ben couldn't tell.
"You
two have no place here." Rishana sounded calm, matter-of-factly, but at
least she smiled again and Ben breathed a sigh of relief.
All
his hopes were shattered when he saw a bright speck of light spring to life in
her open palm. As the light grew it's color turned from bright white to a
ghastly green that throbbed and pulsated, reminding Ben of a beating heart.
Whatever this was, it didn't bode well.
"Wait
a minute!" he shouted as he took a quick step forward. "Whatever you
are about to do, we didn't ask to be here." He raised his arms to his
shoulders in a defensive gesture. "I guess you are right that we have no
place in your dream, but this looks a
bit excessive to me, whatever it is." He just bent his index finger to
point at the pulsating orb of light and was glad to see the hesitation in
Rishana's face.
While
the ominous nimbus of light didn't die down it pulsed more slowly, which Ben and
Theron both took as a good sign. The woman they faced stared at something very
far away from the two men and imperceptible to them, before her smile widened.
"You are right, I shouldn't be too hard on you."
Ben
was almost glad but somehow he had a sinking feeling there was a price attached
to Rishana's benign attitude. It probably had to do with the way she looked at
him and Theron – like a mother who faced a child that had gone astray,
benevolent and yet ready to drive home a painful but necessary lesson, however
much it would pain her to do so.
"You
have tried your best to help me, however misguided your attempts may have been
and you are right Ben, considering that, I shouldn't be too harsh on you."
Rishana was still smiling, but now the nimbus of light that surrounded her hand
started to pulse in a much quicker rhythm.
She
turned to the Valkyrie's CMO. "There is one thing you have wished for more
than anything else the last few months and I will grant your wish."
The
sphere of green light flared, blinding Ben for a moment, and when his vision had
cleared Theron Jascar was gone. "What have you done!?"
"Ah,
no need to worry Ben." The smile was still on Rishana's face and still it
did nothing to alleviate Ben's tension. "I gave him exactly what he wanted
– not that he will enjoy it much, but it was his wish not mine."
Commander
Tucker took a step backwards, but he knew there was no escape.
"Not
long ago you wished that you had been part of the Eclipse's
crew during the Chaos War." Again the sphere of light pulsed faster, it's
glow strengthening and throwing an eerie shine on Rishana's face.
"Now you will see what it was really like."
Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3
Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7