The Last Treason 29

T'Laihhae

After the debriefing, I make my way back to the Messalina and my quarters. I am tired, and deeply troubled over the unanswered questions we still have.

I am not so tired that I do not immediately spot the object lying on my bed.

I remain quite still for a second, then draw out my tricorder, slowly and carefully. The object does not respond as I activate the scanning function. It is what it appears to be... a small commercial holo-emitter, suitable for mementoes or messages. There is a trace of organic material, but nothing that registers as harmful.

But how did it get there? I take a nervous step towards the bed, then another. The emitter does not react. I reach out, holding my breath, and touch its playback control.

Thyvesh's image, transparent and faintly luminous, appears in the air over the emitter.

"By the time you see this," his voice says, "I will be dead. It is unfortunate, but it cannot, now, be avoided. I tried to avoid it, the first time."

His voice sounds stronger and more certain than I remember it. Perhaps it is the knowledge of his impending death that makes him concentrate.

"The first time someone found the weapons cache at Priyanapari, it was a Tal Shiar Commander working for a General Vorkov, who wanted a political advantage against a rival named Hakeev. This Commander found the doorway, attracted my attention, and compelled me, by - methods I will not describe - to comply with her wishes. She was ruthless. She was clever. Her name was T'Laihhae i-Kanai tr'Aellih."

I feel the blood drain out of my face.

"She drove me to acquire my current levels of awareness, to enhance my sensitivity to the chroniton streams. She thought it would make me a better tool. She was right, I suppose - but the enhanced sensitivity also gave me more control over the doorway. I used that. I went back to a decision point, took a step.... I planted suspicion in Vorkov's mind, made him take a step that turned T'Laihhae against him. Turned you against him. Together, we built the console, and used that to circumvent the original you. Then I went back, to teach the techniques that she had made me learn, to an earlier me, before I ever met her. With your time-track and mine subverted, the original events at Priyanapari - simply never happened."

I stare dumbly at the image. The voice continues.

"I wanted to go on, but... it is not possible. That is what I discovered. The increased sensitivity to the time streams... forced me to an awareness. To the awareness that there was no way the Suliban could win. For all our weapons, all our ingenuity. We could divert the time stream, we could blast whole civilizations into nonexistence... but we could only work with what we had, and what we had was not enough. For the Suliban to become the dominant galactic power, we would have to change things... too much. Either make the galaxy a wrecked thing, not worth the trouble of dominating... or make the Suliban into something that was no longer Suliban. That simple knowledge... that was enough to break my earlier self. To break me. To know that, whatever I did, however I tried, the cause to which I had given my life - was futile."

His voice drops. "I knew, even then, that something else would happen. That there would be more meddlers in time, that the archive would be uncovered again. And I knew... it would have to end, and I would have to end along with it. I knew your abilities. I knew you would find some way to destroy the archive. And I knew... I know, now... that my own timeline would have to turn to a closed circle, somewhere within it."

He takes a deep breath. "As I make this recording, I know my younger self is looking for me. He will demand that I teach him the awareness techniques which disillusioned me to the point of madness. I know that, when I do so, he will realize what I realized. He will lash out, will kill me, in response. I welcome it. I have lived a long life, and much of it several times over. It needs to end."

His voice is so low that it is barely audible. "Goodbye, T'Laihhae. I will not ask for your forgiveness."

The image winks out.

I stand there, staring at the emitter, for a long time. I do not know what I feel about this. I do not know how to feel about this. I have always thought of Thyvesh as a friend. Now I know... that he made me what I am. That he set up the situation in which I betrayed another friend to execution... that, without him, I would have been - what? Something which I now despise - but that I would not have despised, without him -

I do not know what to feel. I think, perhaps, I never will.

I pick the emitter up, and feel something rattle inside it. There is a compartment in it - often the case, with these commercial gadgets; a little space for a trinket, a physical memento. I find the compartment, open it.

The rank badge drops into my hand. It is a conventional enough raptor, but twisted, crushed and bent. There are old, dried bloodstains on it. I close my hand around it, and my fingers fit perfectly. My badge. My blood. From the time when I took it off, crushed it, dropped it into the dust.

From the day that Thyvesh made me.

He took two Romulan soldiers, made one a corpse, made another a hero of the Republic. Perhaps it is best that he is dead. Because nobody should have that much power.

I trusted him. And, in the end, I left him to his death, and destroyed his life's work forever. Justice, perhaps? Betrayal wrapped around betrayal, and the last treason is also the first.

I put the badge back in the compartment, and close it. I find an empty shelf and put the holo-emitter on it. Then I go to my bed, lie down, and stare at the ceiling. I am desperately tired, but sleep will be a long time coming.

The Last Treason 27

Carolyn

I look daggers at T'Laihhae. "Ah can listen tae a reasoned argument, ye ken," I tell her. "There wisnae ony need tae stun me."

She is unrepentant. "There was no time for discussion. The damage to the station was too severe." She gives me a brief flicker of a smile, even. "At least your companion will not need to demand my intestines."

Ronnie Grau mutters something darkly. We're in a conference room on Earth Spacedock, for what might be an after-action debrief session - if we're sure the action is over. T'Mev has the chronographic reports, Ronnie and I have transcripts of our previous debriefing session - either a century and a half ago, or a day ago, it depends on your perspective - Tylha Shohl is there poring over the feedback from the Harrier's upgrade, and T'Laihhae, hopefully, has brought some explanations.

Tylha's antennae have been twitching for some time, and now she speaks. "This doesn't make sense to me. I mean, I can see the performance data, including the desynchronization issue -"

"Damn near shook the ship apart," Ronnie grumbles.

"- and I can work out a way to fix it," Tylha continues, "so why didn't I? I mean -"

"Because that desynchronization thing," says Ronnie, "hadn't happened when you made the original software hack. Sure, that data is a century or so old now, but it didn't exist, day before yesterday. I hate these temporal shenanigans," she adds with feeling. "What else have we got that didn't exist until just now?" She looks daggers at me. "There was the whole debrief with you and Starfleet Command -"

"Aye," I say cheerfully, "weel, we handled yon jist fine, am Ah right?"

"I didn't actually get cashiered," says Ronnie, "so that's something."

"Oh, face facts, Ronnie," says Tylha, "your disciplinary record was never anything to write home about, was it? - I could do something with this," she continues, staring at the PADD in her hand. "Maybe pull an old Constitution-class spaceframe from the mothball yards, see if I can install these software mods on some up-to-date systems...."

T'Mev clears her throat. "We have reports from our temporal observatories," she says, "which may clarify the questions that have been posed. We can confirm, for example, that the temporal intervention has been broadly successful."

"How broadly?" Ronnie asks.

"Your timeline has not been significantly affected, barring only the resolution of the predestination paradox that you, yourself, created. We can confirm the termination of the Na'kuhl agents' personal timelines, and that of their ship. And, most significantly, Priyanapari is now a marginally habitable class L world, with no temporal anomalies or unusual relics, except for a single crater on its surface - evidence of an explosion, in the twenty-third century."

"Which would hae wiped oot all traces o' th' Na'kuhl camp," I say. I turn back to T'Laihhae. "So how exactly did ye dae it?"

"The damage to the station was extensive," T'Laihhae says. "I could not afford, I believed, simply to set up a - a jamming signal - with the console. So, I used it in another manner. Since it was keyed to Thyvesh's doorway, I was able to relocate it, with only a modest outlay of energy, so that its coordinates coincided with the doorway's location." She gives another flash of smile. "In plain terms, I crashed the space station into the Suliban weapons cache."

"Oh," I say, because I can't immediately think of anything else.

"And that worked?" asks Ronnie.

"The weapons cache itself was not terribly extensive. The energy release, when the station started to occupy the same space-time point, was more than sufficient to vaporize both. Some of the energy, in fact, bled through the other side of the doorway, on Priyanapari. Enough to destroy the physical aspect of the door, there, in the explosion whose relic we see today."

"Which leaves us with only a couple of loose ends," says Ronnie, "but damn, they're nasty ones. Thyvesh. Clefune. Kirza."

"I am... almost certain," says T'Laihhae softly, "that Thyvesh was in the vicinity of the doorway when I destroyed it. It... it seems to be the solution he required." And she turns her face away from the rest of us.

"There was considerable concern over the apparent demise of an Organian," T'Mev says.

"Oh, yeah," says Ronnie, "I kind of noticed that, in the debriefing."

"In the current timeline," T'Mev continues, "this was allayed, some two months later, by a communication from the Organians themselves. A joint conference was arranged between Federation, Imperial and Organian dignitaries, to provide a list of - as the Organians put it - suggested projects for joint endeavours."

"I remember that," Ronnie says, and she pulls a face. "I remember it now.... The only time the Organians showed their faces, after the initial treaty signing. They brought us a whole long list of planets and asteroids, with details of the resources we could use... I don't think either side got through even a tenth of them before the Genesis crisis."

"And then, after the Praxis explosion, diplomatic relations between Federation and Empire were on an entirely different footing in any event," says T'Mev. "The Organians listed two hundred and seventy-seven possible projects in the sector, with another eight hundred and fourteen suggested secondary targets. They also provided, in an appendix, a list of the other habitable and marginal worlds in that region of space. Priyanapari appears on that last list."

"They buried it," says Ronnie. "They deliberately drew attention away from it. The clever little -"

"Both Federation and Empire were keen to show cooperation with the Organians," says T'Mev. "The joint conference was, in fact, regarded as a diplomatic success. I have a visual record of the final session -" She taps on her own PADD, and an image forms on the conference room's viewscreen.

"Haud on a wee minute," I say.

"Oh," says Ronnie.

"Is that who Ah think it is? Only Ah didnae get a verra guid look at him -"

"Oh, yeah," says Ronnie. "I never forget a face."

She stands up, goes to the screen, and taps on it. The Klingon ambassadors are on the left side of the picture, the Federation on the right, and in the middle are a group of undistinguished-looking humanoids in mediaeval clothes. Ronnie's finger is prodding at one of them.

"That's Clefune," she says. "Or maybe another Organian who's built the same body? - But it's got to be sending some kind of message, anyway. That Clefune... survived... somehow? Maybe?"

"Anybody want tae visit Organia an' jist ask? - Aye, Ah thought not."

"But if Clefune survived...." Ronnie shakes her head. "So what did happen to Kirza?"

"Imperial records show her lost on a mission on the Federation borders," says T'Mev. "A formal diplomatic inquiry was made - and a subspace message from the Organians, in response, informed them that no treaty violation had occurred. The Empire was not disposed to question the Organians more closely."

"So... what did happen?" Ronnie asks again.

"Ah checked the Leacock's sensor logs," I say. "The Hov'etlh wis closin' at max impulse when she jist... blinked oot. Nae trace. Ah'm guessin' Kirza hit th' wrong button on her temporal weapon, an' it backfired on her." I shrug. "But it's nae mair than a guess."

---

Afterwards, once we've all agreed what bits we're never allowed even to think about again, I make my way down the corridors and lift shafts of Earth Spacedock, down towards where the Leacock is docked. I feel tired. After-action reports will do that for me.

But my spirits lift as I see a tall blonde figure leaning against the bulkhead by the docking port. Even in twenty-fifth century coveralls, Zula's a welcome sight.

"Hi, hen," I say.

"Did it all go well?" she asks.

"Oh, aye. Paperwork, it's nae but a chore, after all.... Ah hear tell ye had some words wi' yon trigger-happy Romulan. Thanks fer that, ony road."

"If anyone gets to shoot you," says Zula, "it's going to be me. You are still trouble." She touches the key panel, and the door slides open. We stroll on together, into the docking tube.

"Ah'm th' fun sort of trouble, though. Admit it."

"Oh, sure." She snorts. "If you want your fun dangerous, unpredictable, and damn near incomprehensible."

"Aye, weel." I shoot her a quick glance as we carry on walking down the tube. "Ye ken aboot th' accent? Ah wis nae but a wee bairn when we moved tae England... an', weel, iverythin' wis strange and new, except th' way mah parents spoke... Ah had t' hae somethin' tae hang on tae, ye ken? An' Ah wis teased fer it at school - och, ye can guess that - an' that jist made me hang on all the harder." My voice grows a little soft. "When ye've had sae many things ta'en away... ye hang on tae what ye can. An', weel, Ah'm a lang way frae home, these days."

"Yes," says Zula. "Yes, I guess I understand." She lowers her voice, too. "And some things are worth hanging on to."

We've reached the end of the tube, where the docking collar fits snugly onto the yellowish ceramic coating of the Leacock's hull. Zula reaches for the airlock's control panel, but drums her fingers on the hull, instead.

"You're still trouble, though," she says. "And you're my commanding officer, now - I mean, OK, Starfleet guidelines are just that, they're guidelines, but it'd still be, well, improper...."

I don't say anything. Because, sometimes, I'm not stupid.

Zula sighs. "I get off duty at 2300, and I'm going straight to my quarters," she says. "I guess, if you leave your propriety outside my door, you can pick it up again in the morning."

Again, I don't say anything. I just smile.

The Last Treason 26

T'Laihhae

Before the body has time to drop, I swing the gun round to cover the other one. Her eyes are wide, her body tense. I have one moment to explain myself, before she launches herself at me.

"Set to stun," I say. "We have no more time for discussion. Get her to your fighter. Can you use the same route that brought you here?"

She stares hard at me, at the gun, at her commander's unconscious body on the floor. "The hangar deck is depressurized -"

"I can restore the force field. Temporarily. The gunfire, and the explosion, have further damaged the power mains. Get her to your fighter."

She stoops and gathers Caird up in her arms. "If you've hurt her," she hisses, "I'll have your guts for it, Admiral."

"I hope you will have the opportunity." I holster the gun. There is an emergency workstation by the doorway; I activate it, start to tap in the commands I need.

Gunfire ruptured an electroplasma main, and Caird's neutronic grenade finished the job. I can restore the force field by cross-circuiting a structural integrity generator - but it robs the station's overall SI field of power it needs, especially as I create a pressure imbalance by bleeding air from a reservoir to replenish the hangar bay - there are too many factors to juggle, and not enough resources.

There is a sound like a vast door slamming, and the deck beneath me quivers. "Hangar deck is repressurized. I do not know how long it will hold. Go."

She has Caird in a fireman's carry. She looks hard at me. "What about you?"

"I will follow. As soon as I can." I will use the gig's navigation console to retrace the path Thyvesh took, back to the Messalina. I hope. The Starfleet woman bites her lip, then heads for the door, shooting me one last dubious glance over her shoulder, before she goes.

And I turn, and run.

---

I run towards the console, and the station trembles around me. I have a vague feeling, in the back of my mind, that I have done this before... though I know I have not. Except perhaps in a dream, a dream of a memory that no longer exists -

I have no time for this.

The station is trembling, a deep humming tone seeming to sing through the structure, as I dash through the doorway and into the control room. The console is there. I am in time. Just.

Now, to consider what I must do -

I could set the console to send a... a jamming signal, I suppose, would be the best analogy. Only this will only last as long as the console does, and the console will only last as long as the station, and the station... is not healthy. I think, furiously. The console, and one side of the door, are outside normal space-time... but if the console's own subjective timeline ends, surely its effect on the door must end too?

I do not know. I would have to be well versed in temporal mechanics, to know for sure. What I am sure of - is that I can take no risks. Whatever I do now, I must end this.

My mouth goes dry as I start to punch in commands.

Extend the radius of the console's operation, so that it covers the whole of the station - I can do that. Then, there is a built-in... tropism. An affinity between the console and the door. I can use that, too. My fingers are trembling. This should work -

I enter the last command, and set the time delay. Five minutes. In the current time frame of the station. The procedure will execute in five minutes. I have that long to get clear.

I run.

My boots clatter on the trembling deck. Five minutes. I only hope the station will last another five minutes. I dare not trust the turbolifts. I find a ladder, scramble down it, hand over hand.

A sudden jolt leaves me sprawling on the deck at the foot of the ladder. Four minutes. I am one level above the hangar deck. I run for the next accessway, and the lighting flickers. Too much damage to the power mains. I suppose it is fortunate that I only reactivated one of the fusion reactors - if the station had been at full power, it would have blown up by now.

I do not bother with the next ladder, I simply drop through the accessway and onto the lower deck. Time is running out. But the door to the hangar is in sight, now, and I run to it.

And it does not open.

I check the status panel next to it. The force field is failing again, the air pressure has dropped - the doors are sealed as a safety precaution. Three minutes. I open up the panel, short out the sensors, crank the hydraulics manually. Air whistles, then screams, around the slowly opening door. Two minutes. If that.

I plunge through the door, with a cold wind gusting at my back, and my ears pop. The air pressure is low, so very low - it is like being on the peak of a high mountain. I feel a dreadful void opening in my chest, hear a buzzing in my ears, while other sounds go dim and dull and dead.

The Scorpion fighter is gone - Caird and her companion should be on their way to safety. The gig is still there. I fumble with my wrist communicator, send a command override to the gig's computer. The access hatch opens, beckoning me, welcoming. I have lost track of time. I move through a strange, empty, cold world, a hollow ache in my chest, a dreadful fuzziness in my vision.

I reach the open hatch, clamber inside, hit the control. The hatch hisses shut. Air and heat surround me as the gig's interior repressurizes. I blink away the encroaching dizziness, stumble to the pilot's seat.

"Combat -" The word catches in my throat, and I choke and cough. "Combat emergency. Immediate lift-off." The main console is a maze of dancing lights before my eyes. One minute. Less.

The gig lifts. I grab the flight stick, aim the nose of the little ship outwards, away from the station. Seconds, only. I push the thrusters to maximum, blink away the tears from my frigid eyes, inhale deeply. Thyvesh's course coordinates. They are still on the autopilot. I engage the reverse sequence, and slump back in the chair. There is nothing more I can do.

Ahead of me, there is only blackness. After a short time, I reach out, activate a viewscreen, call up reverse angle. Behind me, there is also blackness. The station is gone, as if it had never been.

I smile to myself at that. After all, it had never been.

The gig is travelling along the path Thyvesh set, a path that leads through dimensions I was never meant to see. All around me is an infinite and uncaring nothingness. An ultimate trackless waste. We would need.... What would we need, to explore this? Someone who could see as Thyvesh sees, someone who could find the rare oases of reality in this endless desert of unformed space-time.

I try to think how long it took, when we came here... but does time mean anything in this bizarre realm? The autopilot bleeps quietly to itself from time to time. No alarm sounds, but I do not know if that is meaningful - I could be going home, or I could be drifting forever in a space outside the universe. I find I am almost too tired to care.

Then, suddenly, there is light.

The forward viewports fill with stars and grey-green light - there is a world out there, a planet, poor in vegetation, perhaps, but not the blasted ruin of Priyanapari that I left behind me. And there is other light - blue and shifting, and beyond it, a dire green glow pulsing at the heart of a nest of thorns.

Messalina, and she has locked on a tractor beam. I reach for the comms console.

"This is T'Laihhae calling Messalina," I say. "I have returned... I hope."

The Last Treason 25

Carolyn

"There is significant damage to the control relays." T'Laihhae points to a control console, which I have to admit is showing a worrying number of blinky lights. "That may not be important, however."

"Unless we want to keep breathing," Zula mutters. T'Laihhae affects not to hear her. She goes over to another console, one with even more blinky lights - one that looks subtly different from the others in the control room.

"The key issue," she says, "is this control console, here. It interacts directly with Thyvesh's doorway - the time-space artifact that connects Priyanapari to the Suliban weapons cache. I believe I understand how to use it. And I believe I understand how Thyvesh wants me to use it."

"How's that?" I ask. I look harder at the console. "Yon's pretty advanced temporal tech, hen. An' it disnae luik familiar tae me -"

"It should be familiar to me," says T'Laihhae. "Apparently, I built it. In another timeline."

"Och, ye clever wee thing. An d'ye ken how tae work it in this one?"

There is a millisecond flash of smile. "I believe so." Then her impassive face turns troubled for a second. "I understand how it is meant to be used, too. Thyvesh intends me to betray him."

"Say whit?"

"I believe his intention is that I should destroy his life's work and leave him stranded outside the time-space continuum." Her face looks positively bleak. "At some point, Thyvesh learned how to manipulate the doorway without being in its physical presence. This device... replicates that ability. Only it is mechanical, it does not depend on Thyvesh's powers of concentration, and it will not flinch from things he could not do, himself."

"Such as?" asks Zula.

"Destabilizing the doorway. Permanently. It would rip the artifact out of its current location at Priyanapari, and the effect on the other side - the artificially created temporal inclusion that holds the weapons cache - should be cataclysmic. For the contents of that inclusion."

"An' where's Thyvesh? - dinnae tell me. Inside yon temporal inclusion." I look hard at T'Laihhae. "Ye're awfae rough on yer friends, hen."

She doesn't answer for a moment. When she does speak, her voice sounds strained. "I have always trusted Thyvesh - he has always shown himself to be worthy of trust. I feel I must trust him, even now. Whatever he has planned -"

A shrill warble sounds from another console. I turn and look, but Zula is already there. "Alert from the docking bay," she says. "Vessel inbound."

"An' whit are the chances it'll be friendly? - Dinnae answer that." I pick up my sniper rifle and check it. "Let's hear the worst, then."

Zula presses a switch, and a viewscreen lights up. Feed from a security camera in the docking bay... showing a big red thing swooping through the force shield to settle on the hangar deck. The colour, and the organic shapes of the design, betray its origins immediately.

"Na'kuhl assault shuttle," says Zula. "Trying to get a read on life signs now -"

"Aye," I say, "an' they'll be daein' the same, an' their tech is way better than oors, an' anyway they'll hae spotted the Scorpion as soon as they came in range. Crivens." A bunch of Na'kuhl reinforcements, just now, is not something we needed.

"Five of them," Zula says. She frowns. On her, it looks cute. "That's below normal complement for those assault craft - they must have taken casualties."

The shuttle is down, the hatch is opening. Red-armoured shapes are moving. There's not many of them, as Zula says, but at least two of them are carrying heavy-duty chronoplasma miniguns, and all of them will be angry and alert. This isn't going to be easy.

One Na'kuhl strides down the landing ramp, holding something in one hand. It looks like a hypospray. One of their injector operatives, maybe? He raises his other hand, touches a wrist control -

And a voice sounds. "To the two humans and one Romulan now aboard this station. I am Chrog, commander of the Na'kuhl resistance vessel Strange Attractor. Surrender now, and I might show mercy. Make me hunt for you, and I will show none."

The voice comes from everywhere at once. He's using one of those broadcast systems that turn every flat surface in range into a resonating speaker. Showy. And effective.

T'Laihhae is on the comms console. "This is Admiral T'Laihhae of the Romulan Republic," she says. Her tone is completely stress-free - urbane, almost. "We have complete control of this station's facilities. You would be well advised to depart immediately."

Chrog's laughter echoes around us. "That would be most intimidating," his voice says, "if I did not already know all the capabilities of this station. Such as they are. Very well, you have chosen death. I will make it interesting." On the screen, we can see him as he suddenly drives the hypospray into his own throat. "I have often wondered what it would be like to have superpowers."

"Whit's he on aboot?" I ask under my breath.

T'Laihhae mutters something indistinct. "He must have obtained access to the Suliban weapons. That hypo must have contained a genetic enhancement."

My eyes go wide at that. "He cannae ken how tae use it, though, can he?"

T'Laihhae frowns. "It depends on how extensively they have researched the weapons cache. I spent some time there with Thyvesh.... I cannot claim any extensive knowledge, though." Her dark eyes have turned very calculating.

"Aye, weel, we cannae stay here and let him catch us, am Ah right?"

"It would be unwise." T'Laihhae checks her disruptor pistol. "It would also be preferable, I think, to minimize any further damage to the station's systems."

"Tell that tae th' guys wi' th' miniguns," I say. "Right, then. Let's gae break some heids."

I run for the door, followed by the sound of Zula sighing.

---

"I'm scrambling comms." Zula's voice sounds tinny in my ear. "And I've got as much sensor spoofing going as I can, but don't rely on it." Na'kuhl gear is better than ours.

The question is, what do they expect us to do? I thought about that for, well, some seconds. As far as I know, Chrog doesn't know about T'Laihhae's magic console, so they don't know we've got any pressing need to stay on this station... so, they'll expect us to make a break for the docking bay, grab our ships, and get out of Dodge.

So now we are circling around the observation gallery above the docking bay, trying to figure out where Chrog's people are waiting to ambush us, so that we can ambush them. We've split up, using our combadges to talk, and hoping the Na'kuhl aren't good enough to crack our encryption....

The bleak gallery doesn't offer much in the way of cover. I sidle along it, crouching low so I can't be seen from the docking bay. We think at least one of them's stayed with the shuttle. It would be the sensible thing to do. Never bet against your opponent being sensible, unless they're me.

I sidle all the way to the end of the gallery, where it stops at the housing for the docking bay's force field generators. I pause. To one side of me, there's a stairwell, leading to another entrance to the bay. If I were a Na'kuhl, that's the sort of place I might station a sentry, to pick off anyone heading for the shuttles that way.

I peek quickly round the edge of the door. I'm thinking along the right lines; there's a Na'kuhl trooper one flight of steps beneath me, facing away from me, covering the dock-level door with his minigun. I smile. I raise the rifle to my shoulder, take careful aim, and fire.

The tritanium slug hits him between the shoulder blades, and he goes forward on his face. Good.

Then he swears and gets up again. Less good.

I pull the trigger again, and yell, "They've got heavy duty armour on!" into my combadge. Zula and T'Laihhae need to know, and I've already sort of given myself away. Pale green chronoplasma bolts come streaking upwards towards me, and I duck back round the doorway, though not before one of them makes my personal shield flare and waver.

The bolts slam into the wall... the one with the field generators behind it. Sparks fly. Then the lights flicker, and there is a piercing warble of an alarm from somewhere nearby. It doesn't quite cover the sound of heavy Na'kuhl boots coming up the stairs towards me.

He comes through the doorway at a rush, spraying fire in random directions. More sparks fly. I scream "Creag an tuire!", firing the rifle from the hip. More plasma bolts splash off my shield, and I feel the burn as some of the heat bleeds through - and then, somehow, I hit a weak point in the battle armour, and the Na'kuhl goes down in a heap.

The lights are still flickering, and the alarms have gone from a warble to a steady piercing whine. That can't be good.

I kick the Na'kuhl trooper's minigun away from him, in case he's not quite dead, and then take the stairs at a run. Safe bet I've attracted attention here, and need to be somewhere else. I get to the bottom, ignore the door to the docking bay, and take off down an adjacent corridor. I get about a dozen steps before the lights go out completely.

I blink. Emergency lights kick in... not red, pale violet instead. Denobulan eyes must be different from human ones, that way. They don't light up anything I want to see. Chrog is standing at the end of the corridor, flexing his arms, grinning at me. I point the rifle at him.

"I think we can do without that," he says, and reaches for it.

He's a dozen metres away at least, but his hands reach out and grab the rifle, and pull. Even elongated as they are, his arms are still strong enough to pull the gun out of my grip. His grin gets broader. He holds the rifle across his chest, and flexes his arms again. The rifle groans and creaks and bends into a nice neat U shape.

"Aw, jings," I say, and run for the docking bay door.

Chrog's laughter pursues me. "Keep running!" he shouts. I reach the door, and it fails to slide open in front of me. There's a panel on the wall beside it; I slam at what I hope is an override switch.

Air gusts around me, and the door opens, and there is a low keening noise which says atmosphere leak. I dive through anyway, into the docking bay, and a world of cold.

Pressure. The force field at the entrance must have been compromised, air is leaking out. Failsafes should have kicked in - but we don't know how this station works, we don't know how well it works, and the gunfight in main engineering must have done more damage than we'd thought. It is very cold, and the thin air is pulling at my chest and making my pulse hammer in my ears. There's another door, at the other side of the bay - I have to get to that -

I run, and it's like I'm running in a dream; sounds are muffled, and the awful emptiness is pulling at me from all sides. Movement. Nearby. A turret on the Na'kuhl shuttle is turning, the muzzles of plasma guns trying to point at me. I duck down, hope they can't depress far enough to get me in their line of fire. The other door must be thirty metres away. No distance, really, I could cover it in a few seconds - normally - if I could breathe -

My combadge is saying something, I don't know what, I can't hear properly over the buzzing in my ears. And there is something else - a voice behind me.

"Keep running."

I turn and glance back, across the freezing deck. Chrog is behind me. The thinning atmosphere doesn't seem to be bothering him at all. Something else is moving. The shuttle. The access hatch is opening.

I have a phaser pistol in my transporter buffer. Doubt it'll do any good. But I have a few other things besides, and I pull one of them out now.

The assault shuttle's hatch is open, and another Na'kuhl is coming out, a pistol in his hands, a sealed helmet on his head. Should have brought one of those myself. I am maybe fifteen metres from the door, now. I concentrate, summon up whatever's left in my muscles, pick up the pace. Fifteen metres - ten - five.

I spin around and yell, "Catch!" at Chrog, and throw the grenade.

Give him credit, he doesn't try to catch it. He dives to one side, but the neutronic grenade has a nice big blast radius, there's no way he can dive far enough. The grenade goes up in a bright colourless flash. The other Na'kuhl is caught in the blast too, I watch him arc upwards, over the hull of the shuttle. The blast wave is slightly weaker when it hits me, weak enough that my shield can cope. It shoves me hard into the wall, and I fumble for the door controls, and fight the wind as the door opens for me -

I'm through, into the next corridor. My chilled lungs suck in oxygen eagerly, too eagerly - I double up in a coughing fit. The main lights are still off. Somehow, I straighten up, start to stagger down the corridor. I need a weapon. I touch the controls for the transporter buffer, hidden in the braid of my left cuff. The phaser pistol materializes, and drops through my numbed fingers. I swear, and bend down to pick it up.

When I straighten up again, I hear the door hiss open behind me. Wind gusts about me - the docking bay must be nearly in vacuum by now. "I did not appreciate that." Chrog's voice sounds thick. Maybe the soft vacuum and the neutronic explosion have hurt him.

Hey, I'm an optimist.

I turn around and aim the phaser. He doesn't bother grabbing it, he just makes a fist and hits me from ten metres away. Stars explode in my vision, and suddenly I'm flat on my back and don't know how I got there. I've dropped the phaser. I'd like to stand up and get it, but my body doesn't want to cooperate.

Heavy footsteps lumber towards me. I grit my teeth, and see more stars. My body needs to cooperate, whether it wants to or not. I roll over, gather myself, get my legs under me.

Something heavy thuds to the floor beside me. The noise is startling, it would make me jump, if I could jump. As it is, I manage to stagger to my feet.

Dim shapes in front of me resolve into familiar figures. Zula. T'Laihhae. And another shape, lying on the floor beside me. I stare down. Chrog's face is livid and suffused, and beneath his red armour, his body is bulging and misshapen. Zula's hand is on my shoulder, supporting me.

"Ye've got th' ither two, then,"I croak.

Zula nods. T'Laihhae is kneeling by Chrog, a tricorder in her hand. "What got him?" I ask. "The grenade, or the air loss? And why'd it tak' sae long?"

"Biochemical imbalances," says T'Laihhae. "The Suliban genetic enhancements were usually provided by their - future ally. There was always a temporal component in their administration. Very likely, the tailored retrovirals were implanted early in development, possibly even in utero. Simply dosing himself with them was not enough - it has provoked a massive auto-immune reaction to the altered cells. And every time he drew on his new abilities, the process accelerated."

"Should've read the manual," I mutter. I look down. Na'kuhl aren't pretty, by human standards, even at the best of times. The look of this one's face... well, let's just say it's not the best of times.

I take a deep breath. Somehow, I manage not to cough.

"Aye, weel," I say. "That jist leaves us where we were before, am Ah right? We need tae figure oot some way tae get your friend Thyvesh -"

I don't get any further before T'Laihhae draws her disruptor pistol and shoots me in the head.

The Last Treason 21

Carolyn

"I think it's just a skeleton crew," says Zula. She is fiddling with her tricorder and looking intent. "The Na'kuhl evidently came here, left a small force in possession, and went on to Priyanapari. Probably no more than a dozen of them."

"Weel, it could be worse," I say, "but, on th' ither hand, there's nae but two of us."

"We could get back in the Scorpion and head back to the Leacock," says Zula. She has a resigned air, like she already knows what I'm going to say next.

"If the Na'kuhl ken we're here, an' yon station has ony weapons, they'll be shootin' at us all the way, and Ah cannae guarantee we willnae get hit, an' yon Scorpion's no' gannae stand up tae station-mounted weaponry. Nae. We're jist gannae have tae make quality count mair than quantity, hen." I grin at her. "Ye kent verra weel Ah wis gannae say that, am Ah right?"

She rolls her lovely eyes expressively, and checks her phaser. "There's a bit of sensor fuzzing already going on," she says, "but I'm reading at least three of them coming towards this location. I'd guess they heard the shots."

I grunt. Na'kuhl are tricky, and that ship commander will have left some reasonably competent people behind. And this station is bleak, it's not got much going for it in the way of cover - even if I knew the layout, which I don't, I reckon I'd still be pushed for somewhere to hide. "Let's gae in an' say hello, then," I say, and raise my rifle to firing position.

We edge through the doorway, into a long empty corridor. I was right, there's nothing much to hide behind. We play leapfrog from doorway to doorway down the corridor, one covering while the other moves. The doors, when they open at all, open onto bleak little cubicles with virtually empty interiors. Stripped and abandoned. We're coming up on an intersection now -

And three red-clad figures come around the corner with weapons ready and determination in their little red eyes. Zula fires first, the golden beam of her phaser streaking out and splashing away from a heavy-duty personal shield. The Na'kuhl don't even bother with demands for surrender. Pale green bolts of chronoplasma blast from their hand weapons.

Zula suddenly flares and vanishes in a blast of light.

I yell, wordlessly, and fire the sniper rifle. The tritanium slug goes right through the first Na'kuhl's shield and into his head. He drops. The other two are shooting, but I'm already moving. I don't know how they train these Na'kuhl insurgents, but their tactical doctrine evidently doesn't have methods for dealing with a vengeance-crazed Scot coming at them, shouting "Creag an tuire!" and firing a TR-116B from the hip. Holes perforate the wall of the corridor, and two Na'kuhl bodies, and then I'm at the intersection, and the enemies are down on the deck.

And Zula - is nowhere. Damn it.

All right. I have to live through this. And deliver some payback to the damn Na'kuhl, too. I look around and get my bearings. They must have registered us by now, they will be converging on this point - if I was them, where would I start converging from? I sprint down the corridor, to another intersection. I hear booted footsteps on the deck plating, and I crouch down.

A chronoplasma bolt snaps over my head. The rifle sneezes once, twice, three times, and an oncoming Na'kuhl staggers, dropping her weapon as her hands go, uselessly, to the gaping holes in her torso. She falls, but there are three others behind her -

Something whizzes past me along the floor, zips towards the Na'kuhl. Spinning lines of energy slam into them around shin height, tripping them and sending them tumbling to the floor. I shoot one of them as he tries to regain his feet, roll away from a badly-aimed return shot, take out the shooter with my next round. A beam of golden light fixes itself on the last Na'kuhl, clawing at her personal shield. I fire, one last time, and she drops.

I turn to face Zula. "Dinnae iver dae that tae me again," I say.

"I don't think I will." Her eyes are very wide. "Wow, you really laid into them, didn't you?"

"Ah wis highly motivated, hen." My own fault, though, really. I should have known she'd have some Intelligence trickery on her; feigned disintegration and tripwire drones will be only part of her arsenal. "Is there ony mair o' th' wee beggars?"

"Oh, yes." She points. "Looks like some sort of concourse, that way. It'll give us more space to manoeuvre, at least. But they'll definitely have us on scan, now, and no way my tricorder will get through their sensor spoofing -"

I run through the maxims of Sun Tzu in my head, consider whether I'm in debatable ground or deadly ground, decide to settle for "ground where I'm going to kill a bunch of Na'kuhl" instead. "Let's be gaein', then," I say to Zula.

We head down another bleak corridor – and the door at the end hisses open before we even get near it. I send a slug through the doorway on general principles, but there’s no red-clad figure standing there – only movement, some humped shape shuffling along the ground -

“Crawler mines!”

I hit my transporter buffer and pull out a couple of breather masks. I toss one to Zula, and she catches it one-handed while spraying the floor with phaser fire. I jam the mask over my mouth, just in time, as the first mobile gas mine goes up in a cloud of greenish fug. My shield stops most of the blast, and the breather protects my lungs, but a trace of the vile chemical reek gets through, and my eyes sting and burn.

It’s supposed to slow us down. Well, I don’t let it. I toss a concussion grenade through the doorway, follow it while the echoes of the blast are still dying away, screaming at the top of my voice and firing shot after shot. There are confused sounds ahead of me. I barrel through the doorway.

I’m in a big empty-ish space, with consoles sticking out of the floor like random islands, and a whole lot of tubing and piping and wiring decorating the walls. Not a concourse, then, more likely the station’s main engineering section. My spirits lift a little. If we can clear the Na’kuhl out of here, we’ve gone a long way towards taking the station entirely.

Of course, the Na’kuhl know that, and are acting accordingly. Chronoplasma beams stab through the air towards me. I duck and weave, manage to dodge some, take the rest on my shield, shoot back. Phaser light slams into one target as Zula follows me into the fray. I drop that one with my next shot, but the rest of the Na’kuhl have gone to ground, taking cover behind consoles.

There are thumps and blasts of green smoke as more gas mines go up. The smog is making it hard to see. “Ye pin ‘em doon an’ Ah’ll gae after th’ mines guy!” I yell at Zula.

She rakes the consoles with phaser fire – it won’t hit anyone, but it should make them keep their heads down. “You’re still doing the damn accent now?” she yells back at me. The controller for the crawler mines must be somewhere nearby; I crouch down and edge around a console myself.

“Ah’m a wee Scots lassie frae Inverness!”

“Then you should be speaking Gaelic, not Lallans Scots!” The breather mask slightly muffles her indignation. I hear movement. I pop my head over the console and bang off a couple of rounds. Sparks fly from something on the wall, hopefully not something vital. Someone is shuffling, nearby.

“Anyway, your parents moved away from Inverness when you were four years old!” I just hope this is confusing the Na’kuhl. “To the south of England! You went to school at freaking Roedean!”

I duck and roll round the next console, and suddenly I’m face to face with a Na’kuhl, and he has a crawler mine controller in his hands. And then he has the butt of my rifle in his face, hard, and he goes sprawling on the floor. OK, good, if we can take a prisoner, that’ll help -

The blast knocks me off my feet, and the world fills with green smoke. The chemical reek gets worse, and there’s a nasty whiff of something else besides it. I paw at the breather with one hand, making sure it’s still in place. The mines guy fell on one of his own crawler mines, and it detonated. Damn it. So much for prisoners.

“Ye’ve been readin’ up on me? Ah’m flattered,” I call to Zula.

“It’s in your personnel record!”

“Is that th’ one that ends at Caleb IV? Ye dinnae want tae rely on that, hen.”

There’s no immediate answer. I peek out of cover, in the direction where I hope Zula is. She’s there, and so’s a Na’kuhl injector lieutenant, and they are locked together in a grim wrestling match. I swear quietly to myself. It’s going to take finesse, picking off the Na’kuhl without hitting Zula instead -

I needn’t have worried. Zula breaks loose from the Na’kuhl woman’s hold, seizes her right hand and jams it into her throat. The Na’kuhl lets out a despairing wail as the injector blasts her with the toxins she’d meant for Zula, and then she goes limp and lifeless. Zula drops her, ducks back from a chronoplasma bolt, and snaps a phaser shot back. I turn in that direction.

There is a shifting, flickering, half-visible shape there, scuttling from one console to another. Another Na’kuhl, using one of those temporal gadgets to fuzz his position in space-time, so he looks like multiple shadowy images instead of a single solid person. I squint down the rifle, sighting carefully. There’s a way around this, but it needs steady aim and quick reflexes.

The moment comes. I squeeze the trigger. For just an instant, several versions of the temporally-fuzzed Na’kuhl’s head are all lined up, and the rifle slug passes through all of them, including whichever one is temporarily real. The Na’kuhl falls heavily to the deck, shadowy images coalescing into one inarguable corpse. The hole through his head, compounded of several alternate paths the bullet might have taken, is quite exceptionally messy.

There are no more shots, no more explosions. There is no more movement. That was the last one.

I stand up. The air is still smogged with toxic gas, there are holes and scorch marks over the walls and the consoles, there are trickles of sparks and smoke coming from a number of places, there are urgent beeping sounds which are probably alarms. The Na’kuhl are down. I grin at Zula; she can’t see it through my breather, but I grin anyway.

“Wha’s like us?” I ask. “Damn few, and they’re a’ deid.”

---

There’s a control room a couple of levels up. We need to get to that – first, to clean out any remaining Na’kuhl, second, to get a proper idea of how much damage we’ve done to the station and how to go about fixing it.

“My tricorder’s acting crazy,” Zula mutters, as we lope towards the control room door.

“Mair sensor spoofing?”

“I don’t think so. There was, but then there was – some sort of energy release.”

“Whit sort?”

“If I knew, I’d tell you.” Zula gives her tricorder a thump. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m reading – well, it’s hard to tell, but there’s definitely at least one life sign.”

“Och, we can handle one.” I ready the rifle as we come up on the control room door. It’s blank and anonymous like all the other doors in this place. And it isn’t locked; it slides open as I approach.

And I charge through it with another cry of “Creag an tuire!”

I have a brief glimpse of consoles, of a body lying inert on the floor, and then my attention is concentrated on one moving shape, and I am whipping the rifle up towards it, while at the same time finding myself staring at close range into the barrel of a nasty-looking nanite disruptor pistol.

Somehow, we manage not to shoot each other. We just stare, for one frozen moment.

“Captain Caird,” says T’Laihhae. “Jolan tru.”

The Last Treason 18

T'Laihhae

In the deathly silence of the weapons store, the sudden screeching and grating sound is a mind-numbing shock. I clap my hands to my ears, and turn around, trying to identify the source of the noise - but it seems impossible; the noise is everywhere, all about me, echoing off the impossible limits of this space.

Dimly, I become aware of Thyvesh's voice. I concentrate, make out the words he is shouting: "- the door! The door is in motion -"

I have lost my bearings, in among all the glowing columns of light with the deadly devices inside them. Thyvesh, though, seems to know where he is going. I follow him as he runs between the columns -

The sudden silence is almost as nerve-shattering as the noise itself. Thyvesh does not slow down, though. He runs with almost frantic urgency, picking his way unerringly between the columns of light. The artifact - the door - comes into view, now. It is spinning, churning. It rotates on some unguessable axis, aspects of it revolving into view from unknown dimensions.... The sight is disturbing.

"Not yet," Thyvesh gasps. He is out of breath. "Not this time. Not yet."

"Thyvesh." I am panting, myself. "Thyvesh, what happened?"

"He is -" Thyvesh swallows loudly, and a shudder runs through his body. "My counterpart, he is using the Na'kuhl ship's temporal technology to probe the door. To try and interface with it, activate it, remotely."

"As you can?"

He laughs, long and wildly. "Oh, yes. As I can. Very much as I can."

I study the thing. Its movement seems to be slowing. "He did not succeed."

"No. Not this time. But we did not succeed, either. When we tried. Or did not."

His mind must be wandering into alternative timelines again. "When did we try? What did we try?"

"The console. On the station. The console - it is for managing the door."

So much, I had already gathered. "When we - were not here - before," I murmur.

"Yes." Thyvesh clutches at his head. "So many different timelines."

Too many to be helpful to us now. "What can we do?"

"I must - try harder. To keep control. I am here, now, and I can hold the door from this side." But there is doubt in his voice. Whatever his counterpart is trying, it is taking a toll on Thyvesh.

I put my hand on his shoulder, feel his trembling. "Thyvesh. Is there anything I can do to help?"

His tremors increase. With a sudden shock, I realize he is laughing. "Yes," he says. "No. You will know what to do, when the moment comes. You always did."

He turns to face me. His eyes are wild. "You will know. And I trust you. I trust you to betray me."

The shifting metal shapes of the impossible door suddenly speed up, and a faint screaming sound makes itself audible as surfaces grind together. The shapes spin and twist and slide into new configurations -

- and suddenly the door is a door, a rectangular opening, twice the height of a man, filled with a swirling blackness -

Thyvesh moves, quickly, too quickly. I have no time even to think of offering resistance, before he seizes me by the shoulder and thrusts me through the door.

---

I spin into the darkness, and it enfolds me, and for a time I know nothing. I do not even know how long a time - if such a concept can even be said to have meaning....

Then there is light, dazzling my eyes, and weight, and noises, and a foul smell of burning.

I drop to a crouch, rubbing my eyes, trying to get my bearings. Where has Thyvesh thrown me, where and when? - There is smoke in the air, metal deck plates under my feet. The place seems vaguely familiar....

Metal floor - metal walls - metal shapes of consoles. The control room of the Denobulan station - the very place we fled from, when the Na'kuhl ship arrived. The smoke in the air - I gather my wits. There is a release of energy, Thyvesh said, when the door is opened. This room must have been filled with a burst of heat and lightning, just as I arrived.

It has worked in my favour, I think. There is a smouldering shape on the floor nearby, humanoid, dressed in what was once heavy red body armour. A Na'kuhl, blasted down by the force from the door. The only one here, though? I could never be that fortunate.

The equipment - the equipment is rugged, it is superficially scorched, but undamaged. Or perhaps Thyvesh has sufficient fine control to direct most of the energy at the Na'kuhl? - In any case, the most important thing, the console, is still functional. The Na'kuhl have not tampered with it. Not yet, at least.

Somewhere far off, there are noises. Distant, but horribly familiar. The shrill sounds of energy weapons.

Fighting. There is fighting, somewhere on the station. I stand up, turn to the station's control console. I must decipher Thyvesh's purpose, find out why he has sent me here, determine the meaning of his cryptic comments.

First, though, I must find out who is fighting whom, and which side - if any - I am on. The familiar sense of practicality grips me as I engage the internal sensors. First, of all things, I must survive.

The Last Treason 14

T'Laihhae

I did not expect... this.

I turn away from the thing that is the doorway, the jumble of metal parts that seems to have angles and perspectives that the eye cannot follow... and I look out at the Suliban facility.

An expanse of featureless black floor; above it, some four metres over my head, a matching expanse of featureless black ceiling... and if there are walls, they are lost in the distance and I cannot see them. But all around me are... rings. Hollow cylinders, some two metres across, and rising as high as my waist, and in each one is a column of softly glowing coloured light, and in each column some - artifact - hangs unsupported in mid-air.

"It is... not like any Suliban base I have seen," I say.

"It is unique," says Thyvesh quietly. "Even now, I do not know if we made this place, or merely discovered it." He gestures behind me. "Same thing is true of the doorway. Did we make it? It is eternal, outside normal time - maybe we found it, when our temporal fumblings matched its configuration -"

"You mean that it was made by some earlier civilization?"

"Perhaps. Or perhaps - it is outside time, it has always been there - perhaps no one made it. Perhaps it just... is."

A disquieting thought. "But the... devices? The things in the -"

"Oh, yes, in the force cells. Yes, they are all ours." His face, in the coloured lights, looks drawn, haggard. "All of them."

"How many? How big is this place?"

"Large enough. There is a wall, but you could never reach it - the space-time of the lesion distorts at that point. Yes. Large enough." He makes a vague gesture with his left arm. "Replicators, sanitary units, sleeping couches, all are over there, in the white section. It was laid out in sections, once. We gave up keeping them in order, though, after a while."

"Sections?" I ask.

Thyvesh stops. He looks down, at the blank black floor, and does not speak for some seconds. When he does, his voice is as I have never heard it before: hard, flat, controlled. "The devices are colour coded according to utility. White is for conventional weapons - energy beams, explosives and the like. Yellow is information weaponry - two shades; the bright golden yellow is for computer viruses, the lighter one for memetic warfare targeted at sentient minds. Everything from basic propaganda to lethal earworms and basilisk images. Do not study the data carts in a yellow cell too closely, unless you are familiar with the safety procedures. Even so, we lost people."

"Lost people? Thyvesh, who was here? How many of you?"

He ignores the question. "Cyan is for subspace weapons, isolytic devices. Purple is for temporal devices, mostly weaponry, some utility. Green is genetic augmentations and biological warfare."

It is a matter-of-fact recitation, and it is enough to chill the blood. There are dozens, even hundreds, of these columns of light.

"How long were you here? How many of you - how did you make all of - of this?"

He stops still. When he speaks, his voice is soft, and sounds as though it comes from far away. "After the Temporal Cold War effort collapsed, shortly before the founding of the Federation, a dozen of us withdrew... here. Time flows... differently, here. By the time of the current interference, in the twenty-third century, I was the only one left. There were many factors at work. I need not age, you see - my body rejects entropy at the cellular level, if I wish it. And I did wish it... I was so certain, at the time, that I had to persevere. That I could use these things, here, to rewrite time, to change history, in my favour." He shakes his head. "A fundamental mistake."

"You were the last one? What happened to the others?" Though I am not sure that I want to know the answer to that question.

"Industrial accidents. On a philosophical level, sometimes. We tried many different augmentation procedures, and epigenetics is a complex matter. Chaotic, in fact. The smallest change can have immense consequences, usually fatal ones. This is... one part of the problem. The humans are right to reject efforts to improve their genome. Such efforts never go to plan - possibly, they cannot go to plan. Evolution is another chaotic process, it is impossible to anticipate its requirements.... There were other things. Follow me." He turns and strides off, between the columns of light, moving quickly and purposefully. I follow him.

He stops after twenty metres or so, and points to a purple-glowing column. The device floating in it looks like something to be worn, a metal vambrace, gleaming in silver, with a ring of controls surrounding a single large, ominous, red button.

"There is one item," he said, "that led to an... existential accident."

"What is it?" I ask.

"An immediate temporal reduplicator. Suppose you are faced with a decision, with a choice between two or more courses of action... the reduplicator allows you to proceed down all the branching timelines ramifying from that decision, and you can pick the one with the best outcome. You need never make a mistake again."

"I... think I see," I say. Then I shake my head. "No, no, I do not. By definition, surely, that device cannot go wrong... can it?"

"Think. What would happen to you if you used that device?"

"I... would always be successful?" I frown. "Though... if I never made a mistake... would I ever learn anything?"

Thyvesh nods. "You do understand. Wear that device, use it for long enough, and you become a mindless thing, a creature that understands only one concept, press the red button and you get it right. Sibrei... she developed it, she used it... and she came to understand the flaw."

"What happened to her?"

"She used the device. She decided that her fundamental error, the one initial mistake she had to correct... was being born as the sort of person who might use such a device. So she corrected that mistake. I... I remember her. Because that is the way my brain works. But to the rest of the universe, she is gone, she never existed."

"But surely -" My head is spinning. I put a hand to my forehead. "There must be things here that are safe. Things whose - scientific principles - could usefully be studied -"

"No!" Thyvesh's eyes are burning. "The conventional weapons - most of them are already familiar to your era's scientists, there is nothing to be gained from studying those. The same is true for the information weapons, even the wetware hacks - you refrain from those, but it is a matter of morality, not from ignorance of the principles. Even the subspace devices, they are not beyond the reach of your science. As for the temporal weapons -" His voice trembles, and his whole body with it. "They cannot be used for good purposes. They must never be used at all. Nobody, nobody knows this... better than I."

"Very well." I do not know if he is right; I only know that I must depend on him, for the present. "Turning to practicalities - are we safe, here?"

"In among all these weapons of existential destruction? Yes, safe enough." He laughs. "The time flow here is monodirectional and inviolate. The other me cannot enter here while I am present. For the time being, we are safe enough." He shakes his head. "But the time will come when we must leave."

"Well, of course we cannot remain here indefinitely -"

"We do not. We did not. The confrontation is coming. And for the first time in - centuries, perhaps -" He closes his eyes tightly. "The confrontation is coming - and I cannot see what happens after that."

The Last Treason 11

T'Laihhae

The interior of the station lends whole new levels to the word spartan. Bare, bleak corridors, their walls enlivened only by stretches of exposed pipework... there are roundels, regularly spaced at head height along the walls, that emit a dim light... and there are sliding doors that open onto rooms, most of them stripped bare of furnishings or equipment. It is empty, it is desolate....

It is, at least, no longer cold. I make my way up the access ladders - I have not been able to reactivate the turbolifts - to the control room, where I find Thyvesh much as I left him, hunched over the largest of the remaining consoles, studying a data feed that looks like so much random noise to me.

"I have restarted an auxiliary fusion plant," I say. Thyvesh glances round at me for a second, then turns back to his work. "At least we will not freeze, or starve, or suffocate," I say, "while you do... whatever it is you are doing."

He does not respond at first. I shrug and turn around, planning to go to the replicators and obtain food... when he speaks. "I am trying to open the door."

I turn back to him. "What door?"

"Only one door. The door. Exists in multiple time zones, different time streams... even fragmented ones, like this... but there is always only one door." He points to the data on the display. "See."

I look, and I still see nothing. "I do not understand this."

He gives an odd little wheezing laugh. "I was hoping.... You should, really." He slaps the side of the console. "You built this."

"I - what?"

"Before. The last time you were here. Which never happened, now. Was hoping you still might see... the processes, the logic behind it. But no."

The gravity plating is stable, I made sure of that... so the giddy sensation I feel must only be my head spinning. "I built this? When we - did whatever we did, that did not happen?"

"Reads and interpolates chroniton superpositioning signatures." Now he slaps the side of his head. "Like my brain, but mechanical. Objective. Reliable."

I frown. As he says... if I made this, I should understand the methods I used. Except that was not me, that was some past, alternate version of me.... Perhaps it is best not to try to think about these things. "How? I mean -" I think furiously. "You would need to base it around a very precise timing mechanism, so that the temporal fluxes would be detectable."

He nods in approval. "Atomic clock at the heart of it. Yes."

"And then the temporal discontinuities would show... how, exactly?" I am asking myself this question, more than him. There is an inspection panel in the side of the console. I pull it open, and start tracing the intricate web of circuitry. Some things are becoming clearer....

"What is the door?" I ask, as I trace the links between components with the tip of my finger.

"It is a door," says Thyvesh. "Just a door. The hinges, now, they are a little... special. They swing in directions no one else can see. But the door is only a door."

"There must be more to it than that," I comment, though my mind is not entirely on the conversation. "There must be entropy gradients involved...."

"Discharge of energy when moving between different time periods," says Thyvesh, "yes."

The atomic clock is there, and it is positioned under a group of things I recognize - highly sophisticated phase discriminator devices, the sort of thing used for quality control in singularity core production. The arrangement... the arrangement is unusual. But I should expect the unusual. "So," I think aloud, "this door should be detectable, whenever it changes its space-time orientation. Whenever it... swings. On those hinges."

"Yes."

"Who made the door? And why?"

"The Suliban. And security. Needed a place to store... things. A place that was not a place. A place with only one entrance, that we could control. That I could control. So we built a door, and opened it onto the void... and we built a safe place, inside the void."

"A void. Like this? Another unreal timeline?"

"Not exactly. This place might have been. We opened a door to somewhere that never was." He laughs again. "It was very quiet. Peaceful."

And they stored things there. And I can guess what sort of things. The Suliban made a creditable attempt to destroy the Federation before it could even begin - with temporal manipulation, and genetic augmentation. They had help from - somewhere, or someone. But they were an advanced culture to begin with, and they were ingenious and determined.

They must have made weapons that I can only imagine. Or, perhaps, that I should not imagine.

I close the panel and stand up. Now, when I look at the data stream, some parts of it begin to make sense. "Since each movement of the door is non-temporal," I say, "from our position in the timestream, we should see all of them at once. We should be unable to discern... Oh."

Thyvesh positively grins at me. "You see why this place, now? We are outside the normal timestream. We have... perspective."

Someone in Temporal Investigations let slip a remark about "temporal observatories", once. This must be something like one of those - a vantage point from which the flow of time can be seen.

"Do we not need temporal shielding of our own?" I ask, as I try to make sense of the readout. "So that... if there is a new opening of the door... we know it is new?"

"Would help. But not essential. I remember." He taps the side of his head again. "You will just have to trust me." He turns to look directly at me, and his face is sad and serious. "I know that must be hard."

"You have always... helped me. And I have never really known why." I swallow a sudden lump in my throat. "I trust you, Thyvesh."

"Thank you." He reaches out to take my hand for a moment, cold, dry, scaly fingers wrapping around mine. He lets go almost at once. "So. Any of this becoming clearer?"

"I think -" I take a deep breath. "Singularity cores were never my specialty - I know more about the warp fields they generate - but this display is showing spikes in zero-point energy, I think." I indicate a part of the data stream. "And from that, we can extrapolate a function of the chroniton displacement -"

Things are falling into place. Am I understanding this, or simply remembering it? Thyvesh can remember things that never happened - is my brain, too, becoming sensitive to chroniton imbalances? Is that possible, in the abnormal space-time of this aborted timeline? Too many questions.

"Can you open this door?" I ask.

"Always. Isn't wise, but... the door opens from my side. Wherever I am, I am on my side. Trouble is, whoever I am, I am on my side." He touches the console. "This is always on its own side of the door, too. Or should be."

"How do you open it? Do you... summon it, somehow?"

"I need to be in the right frame of mind. Easy enough to achieve. But just because I can do something... does not make it a good idea."

So, this console will be an access point to the Suliban secret cache - one which does not depend on Thyvesh, one which we can use to sneak around behind the back of his alternate self. I can see how that will be useful.... Has it already been useful, once before? In a time which never happened?

Something flickers and changes in the data stream. My eyes narrow. "What was that?"

"Temporal surge. Something shifted in the timestream... but not the door. Nothing to do with me."

"But if it registered on these instruments -" I look around, cross the floor to another console. The design is strange, but the functionality is clear enough. "It must have been close at hand." I touch the controls, tune in the viewscreen -

In this non-space, the viewers have only shown blank blackness - until now. Now, a monstrous scarlet bat-winged shape cruises slowly across the screen. "Na'kuhl battlecruiser. Acheros class."

"Here?" Thyvesh sounds agitated. "Now?"

"Here and now." The Denobulan characters are strange to me, but the scan data is clear enough. "It is closing on the station. It must mean to dock."

"No," says Thyvesh, "no. They must not find us. The station is big, big enough to hide -"

"Not if they make a determined search."

"They do not know we are here -"

"But they will, when they find the gig in the shuttle bay. They will search, and they will take us." I take a deep breath. "We need a bolt hole. And we only have one. You will tell me it is unwise, and I am sure you are right, but we have no other option. Open the door."

The Last Treason 7

T'Laihhae

The change is... faster than instant. I stare at the screen, and half my mind is telling me that this is what I saw, this is what was there from the outset - while the other half reels in shock from this fundamental betrayal, from this revolt by reality itself....

"Scanning," Zdanruvruk croaks. His fingers fumble at his console. "The temporal anomaly has... resolved itself. The planet is there... sort of."

The enigmatic white sphere is gone; now, grey-brown clouds boil in the skies of a solid but desolate world. Even at a glance, I can see that there is still something very wrong. "What happened to it?"

"I'm reading... massive particulate contamination in the atmosphere," says Zdan. "Consistent with supervolcano eruptions... or a substantial meteor strike... or, maybe, heavy bombardment."

"Sir." Ruby's voice; the android is cool and collected. "I am connecting to subspace channels and receiving updates to our database from Republic Command."

Of course; in this new timeline, the history of Priyanapari may be known... I suppose I should be glad if there is still a Republic for Ruby to connect to. "Signal the Virgo, too. Commander Teadoursi may have insights into this development." Time for the temporal specialists to earn their keep, I feel.

"Virgo is hailing, sir." And they are prompt. Well, they are flying a time machine, they have no possible excuse for tardiness....

"On screen."

The image of ruined Priyanapari is replaced by the impassive face of T'Mev's first officer. "Timeline shift," she says. "Disconcerting, if it's the first time you've seen one, I know."

It might be my first time... or it might not. I do not know. "Do you have any idea what happened?"

"We're querying our own shielded datacores and external temporal observatories. It looks like whatever disaster caused the temporal rift... has been averted."

"Averted, or merely... reduced? The planet is still devastated."

"According to historical records on this time-track, Priyanapari was targeted by Romulan forces in the first decade of the twenty-fourth century. It was the property of a Klingon Great House, the House of Karav... which was not a Great House prior to the timeline shift. I think I see what's happened...." She shifts her weight a little. It is not much, but it shows her to be uneasy.

I raise one eyebrow. "Please explain."

"I think...." She pauses. "The temporal rift must have been detected, and reported back to the enemy forces making the temporal incursion in the twenty-third century. They took some sort of measures which prevented the rift from forming. But, in the process, they must have made this place too much of a threat to the Star Empire -"

"That is consistent with the data I am receiving," Ruby interrupts. "Republic records now show that a military installation on this world was targeted by the Tal Shiar in 2402. Further data is only to be found in the Tal Shiar's own classified archives, I am afraid... but the threat was severe enough for someone to order a C-fractional strike. The House of Karav was, at the time, a vocal opponent of any ties between the Klingons and the Star Empire - perhaps that is why they were seen as a threat."

C-fractional strike. A planet buster. The Tal Shiar accelerated an asteroid to near lightspeed and aimed it at this world. The threat must have been extreme - even the Tal Shiar is relucant to deploy world-wrecking weaponry, in normal situations. But there is something else - I frown. "Commander Teadoursi. You say the existence of the rift was reported back in time to the twenty-third century...."

"And those agents made some adjustment that changed the outcome, yes."

"Reported back from when?"

The Rigelian shifts her body again. "That's what's worrying me. The readings we're getting suggest... this time zone. Whatever's happening here in the twenty-third century, the opposition wants to see the results of it... here and now."

"Which implies they have some sort of observer in this system, now," I say.

"Somewhere around this time zone, yes," says Teadoursi. She shakes her head. "It won't be easy to track down. Their stealth technology is centuries ahead of yours, even."

"Then we should start looking," I say, firmly, "carefully and diligently, right now."

"We don't know what this observer might be," Teadoursi points out. "It might be a stealthed remote drone... or it might be a cloaked Na'kuhl battleship. We can't tell."

"Then we shall look very carefully," I say, "but we shall look."

Teadoursi nods. "Commencing scans. I'd better tie in my conventional sensors to yours... I don't think your ship's computers have the protocols to handle the more advanced stuff, though."

"Then you are more likely to find our intruder first." I flash a brief smile at her. "Messalina will be on station to back you up."

I wish I felt more confident about that. My adapted battle cruiser is equal to most contingencies in this century... but if our adversaries come from the future, I might be commanding nothing more than a futile antique; my nanite disruptor beams might be no more effective than simple cannonballs aimed at the shields of a starship....

Teadoursi's face vanishes. Ruined Priyanapari scowls down at me from the viewscreen. I busy myself with other matters, reading the tachyon scans on my repeater board -

"Signal from Virgo. Urgent," says Ruby.

"On screen."

The Rigelian comes back, and she looks concerned. "We've registered a shuttle launch from your ship," she says.

"What?" It is enough to jolt me out of my composure. I glance around the bridge. "Confirm that!"

"Nothing registering on the automatic log," says Aitra in doleful tones. "But I'm reading...." He turns to face me, and he looks even more careworn and hangdog than usual. "Sir, your gig is no longer in its docking cradle."

I snarl. "Run virus sweeps and computer subversion checks, immediately! And find that gig!"

"It will be cloaked," Ruby observes.

"Work with Subcommander Aitra. The two of you know cloaking systems better than anyone - and this is one of our vessels, you know its cloak parameters -" A sudden horrible thought comes to my mind. I slam my palm down on the command console. "Computer! Tell me the location of passenger Thyvesh."

"Working," the computer grunts. "Passenger Thyvesh not located. This person is not aboard the Messalina."

Thyvesh. There are always things he does not tell me, things he dare not tell me - and he has his own agenda, too, that he does not or cannot disclose. I glare at my bridge team through narrowed eyes. "Find me that shuttle."

"Virgo's sensors are at your disposal," says Teadoursi from the screen. "Though even with our sensor suite, one of your cloaked ships won't be easy to find -"

"Got it," says Aitra. The Rigelian looks surprised, and almost affronted. But Aitra is good with cloaking systems, and he knows the gig's cloak intimately. "Looks like it's on a medium orbital trajectory - as if it's heading for something near the planet. I can't tell you what."

"Hail him," I order.

"Sending signals," Ruby says. "No response."

I consider. "Can we get a transporter lock?" Or a targeting lock - but that must be a last resort.

"I've got a fix on the gig itself," says Aitra, "but I can't isolate individual life signs through the cloak -"

"Then we will try another approach," I say, and stand up. "Lock on to the gig's transporter pad - use its prefix codes. Then beam me over, and I will reason with him."

---

Green light wraps around me... and stays, a worryingly long time. I have never experienced such a delay in the matter stream - but this is no ordinary transport; Ruby and Aitra are working hard to keep a fix on the fleeing shuttle -

I try to draw in a breath, but I cannot. I am unreal, a pattern of energies flowing across space, a thing of data only....

The green light fades, and reality returns. I am standing on the gig's transporter pad. Before me, a hunched figure sits at the controls, with Priyanapari looming on the forward viewport. "Thyvesh," I say.

Thyvesh turns. "T'Laihhae," he croaks. "Shouldn't have come. Knew you would, but you shouldn't have - can't stop what's meant to happen -"

I step forwards, off the pad, towards him. "Thyvesh." My voice is firm. "Tell me what you are doing. Explain this."

"Timeline shift." He gestures spasmodically at the viewport. "Planet is back."

"I can see that." My hand goes to the pistol at my hip. I will stun him if I need to.

"Worse things come with it. They opened the door. In the past. They let him out." He licks his lips. "You said it yourself, once. The one enemy with whom it is always necessary to come to terms. But I can't. Not with him."

"You are not making sense. With whom?" But even as I say it, I remember... my own words, to Vorkov, in the cells. No one was there to hear them but Vorkov and myself, but I am used to the way Thyvesh sees and hears without needing to be present....

One's self is the one enemy with whom it is always necessary to come to terms.

"An alternative timeline. An alternative version of you...."

"Wrong one. Mustn't happen. He hid behind the door. I have to hide, too, now." He turns, and makes some adjustment on the control board. The planet seems to roll, in the viewport.

"Hide where? Where are we going, Thyvesh?"

"Not where. Or when. Alternative." His fingers move rapidly across the console.

And the planet rolls, and blurs, and is gone. The viewport is black and blank, empty even of stars. My hand tightens on the gun. "What have you done?"

"Reprogrammed the helm computer." He gives a harsh wheezing cackle. "Any warp drive is a time machine, if you know how to configure the warp field. Includes temporal shielding. Has to."

"Temporal shielding?" A feeling of dread is rising within me. "What have you done?"

"Should be docking with the Union station soon. Will figure it out. He hid. Now I have to. And so do you, since you're here.... You shouldn't have come. You had to, but you shouldn't have."

"Thyvesh. Explain. Please."

There is something in the viewport, now. One solitary - object - in the empty black. Blocky modules arranged in a ring, with a long central cylinder - like a child's spinning top, hanging there in infinite darkness.

"Station of the Union of Federated Planets," says Thyvesh.

"You mean the United Federation of Planets," I say, though without conviction.

Thyvesh laughs again. "If only.... The Vulcan-Andorian War destroyed Andoria as a spacefaring power, but then the Romulans botched their takeover, and what should have been a simple reunification turned into a bloody civil war that shattered all the Vulcanoid worlds. The humans retreated, abandoned deep space exploration, after the catastrophic failure of their NX prototypes. But the Tellarites and the Denobulans had to respond to Klingon expansionism, had to band together, work with other minor powers - Xylarians, Caitians, Deltans...." His laugh is worryingly high-pitched. "Historical forces. Peaceful multi-species federation, it's an idea whose time has come.... All that planning, oceans of blood spilt, starships and cities burned in their thousands... and all they did was move the Federation capital from Earth to Denobula Triaxa. Couldn't even change the initials."

The station - whatever it is - is large, now, and close. "A relic of an aborted timeline." It's the best guess I can come up with.

"Yes. It's not real, it never happened. But we are not real, now, either. Only way to stay safe."

Hangar bay doors are opening in the side of one module. The gig drifts through them, slowing, coming to rest on the deckplates with a dull metallic clang. Thyvesh shuts down the flight systems.

I take a deep breath. My hand is very tense on my gun.

We are here. Now to find out where here is.

The Last Treason 4

Personal log: T'Laihhae i-Kanai tr'Aellih, Admiral, currently assigned as commanding officer, RRW Messalina

Ronnie Grau is uncharacteristically quiet as she follows me back to the transporter room. Perhaps it is the presence of Thyvesh that quells her, as he shambles beside us. It is enough to disturb me, I know.

Thyvesh. My oldest surviving friend, if I have friends.... The Suliban augment has stayed in hiding for years, occasionally calling for meetings, more often sending me information that he has gleaned with his - vision. It has been enough help for me to carve out a substantial career for myself with Republic Intelligence... and to help the Republic itself, in the desperate struggles that have taken place.

But Thyvesh has always remained hidden, in the background. Until now. Until... whatever happened at Priyanapari... appears to be happening again.

So, we are a silent trio, until we are crossing the main concourse on our way to the transporters. Then Ronnie asks, directly, "So what was the big secret at Priyanapari?"

"You never saw it," said Thyvesh. I do not know if it is a question or a statement. Perhaps, neither does he.

"I don't know what I saw," says Ronnie. "Let's face it, my memory could be rewritten at any moment, couldn't it? I know I remember the stuff that I told you, but -" She shrugs. "Someone bobbles something, somewhere in the past... and my memories of that past would change to match, wouldn't they?"

Thyvesh laughs. "Welcome to my world," he says.

"But it's not your world, is it?" says Ronnie. "The difference is, you remember the alternate timelines. Your memories may be jumbled up, but they're not... subject to editing."

"Ah. Not entirely. I do not see everything." Thyvesh slaps the side of his head. "The universe is very big, you know. It won't all fit in. And what I do see... is sometimes... scrambled. Not easy to interpret."

"I guess not," says Ronnie. "So is that why you won't answer my question?"

"Ah." Thyvesh stops in his tracks, his head hanging. He seems to think, and when he speaks, it is only after some internal struggle. "There are at least three possible time tracks for Priyanapari. In one of them, the system is empty and safe. In another, there is a weapon there, one which can unmake time itself. In yet another, there is...." He shakes his head. "Something much worse."

For the first time, I speak, addressing Ronnie. "Which do you remember?" I ask.

Ronnie looks at me, very sharply. I remind myself not to discount the intelligence inside her mutilated and eccentric head. "I wish I knew," she says. "I didn't see everything. And what I did see is... optional, it seems. Conditional. That's why I'm asking."

"Clear answers. Yes," says Thyvesh. "Clear answers, always valuable, much to be prized. It's unfortunate that they're also impossible.... We should go," he says to me.

Ronnie sighs. "Good luck," she mutters.

"You seem perturbed," I say.

"Well, it's the existential uncertainty," says Ronnie, "it gets to me. Also," she adds in sour tones, "the Temporal Prime Directive."

"What about it?" I ask, though I know the answer already.

"T'Mev and her blonde chum have already started their temporal incursion, right?" says Ronnie. "They are in the past, now... if 'now' is the right word. Anyway. They could be going to the Stygmalian Rift, couldn't they, with the chronometric beam Saval worked out, to shut it down... and they could be beaming T'Pia's counter-frequency at me, the one that pulled the Rift entity out of my head. It could all be shut down, way back, a hundred and fifty years ago... no Rift entity, no time warps, no Siohonin invasion, no massacres in the name of Sebreac Tharr...."

"And you would have been dead for a hundred years, at least, when you were urgently needed to defend Andoria from the Hegemony," I point out.

"Point," says Ronnie. She sighs. "That's the trouble with meddling in time, isn't it? You can't cherry-pick the good bits." She shoots a hard glance at Thyvesh. "Can you?"

Thyvesh's voice is as bleak as hers. "If I could choose my life," he says, "do you think I would have chosen this?"

"All right," says Ronnie, "so, we've all got to play the cards we're dealt... know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run. All right. Well, you two make damn sure you know when to run... and try and leave my personal deck in some order I'll recognize, will you?" And without waiting for an answer, she turns and stalks away.

---

I see Thyvesh settled into the guest quarters, and then I go to the bridge.

Everyone stares at me when I walk in. I have changed my clothes, and am wearing the black uniform with gold trim which I affect when I wish to show determination. My crew, who know me, know that uniform means trouble ahead. I see Subcommander Aitra's face, already careworn, sprout new worry lines as he sees me... Zdanruvruk, the Reman science officer, eyes me narrowly... Ril'ell, the waifish tactical officer, rolls her eyes... even the android, Ruby, raises an eyebrow and purses her lips slightly.

"Progress?" I ask.

"Course set for Priyanapari," Aitra reports. "Standard cruising speed only."

The adapted battle cruiser Messalina has a bizarre configuration, like a hollow crown of thorns wrapped around the pulsing green glow of a Borg warp core... she can attain high speeds using the subtranswarp drive, but this time she is staying at conventional warp speeds. Because she must allow her consort to keep pace.

"What of the Virgo?" I ask.

"Commander Teadoursi reports all systems in readiness," Ruby says. "Temporal shielding has been extended and synchronized with our warp field." She calls up an image on the screen. "The Virgo is... as you see, sir."

T'Mev's ship - commanded by her Rigelian exec while she herself is away in the past - is an elegant scarlet shape, like the calyx of some exotic flower. The captured and converted Na'kuhl science vessel has temporal technology, including the temporal shields that would answer some of Ronnie Grau's concerns... subquantum chroniton signature buffers that can support the details of one timeline while a ship, or an individual, is part of another. Truth be told, I am unsure how they work. Technically, some of this technology has not yet been invented....

But as long as it works, now, I suppose I need not be concerned. "ETA at Priyanapari?" I ask.

"Eight hours at current speed," says Aitra.

Messalina and Virgo have passed through the Federation's network of transwarp gates, which includes a secondary hub near the now-disused K-22 station. We have a clear run at Priyanapari, now... and I can only speculate as to what we may find when we reach it.

I am not the only one who is speculating. "Sir," asks Aitra, "what do you expect to find there?" He is one of the few who know there is - or was - something of significance in that system.

"Truthfully," I say, "I have no idea. I have been there before - with Thyvesh - and, at that time, I performed some kind of... temporal intervention. But I had no temporal shielding, at the time. So... whatever I did, it cancelled out the whole timeline - including whatever incident provoked the intervention in the first place."

Aitra looks baffled for a moment. "Thyvesh," he says. "Would he know?"

I shake my head. "Thyvesh sees many alternative futures and pasts," I say. "But he cannot now say which possible past was real before we changed it. All the possibilities - as I understand it - are equally unreal."

"Oh," says Aitra. He looks, if anything, more baffled.

I can hardly blame him.

---

I should sleep, but I cannot. I try to lose myself in details, the minor administrative trivia of running a starship... but I am continually distracted by the approaching star in the centre of the viewscreen.

Priyanapari. An obscure name in some local star catalogue. Also, the name given to the one marginally habitable planet out of six. A class L world, with considerable vulcanism, as if it were much younger than its parent star's age would suggest.... How much interference has there been, to the timelines around Priyanapari?

Priyanapari. I came here, once... and then, I did not. Thyvesh warned me to stay away. He told me the bare bones of the story, claimed that it was all that he could tell me... and he said that he owed me a debt. One I have been collecting on, ever since. But I do not know - cannot know - what it was I did for him.

Do I, now, have to do it all over again? Or is it a different threat that I face?

Questions with no answers. And the star swells and brightens on the viewscreen, until it is no longer a star, but a sun, and I feel the faint shudder as Messalina drops out of warp.

"Commencing standard system-wide sensor sweep," says Zdanruvruk. The elegant scarlet shape of the Virgo drifts slowly across the screen. "Receiving telemetry from our consort," Zdan adds with a grunt. "They've got some pretty fancy chronometric devices... they'd need them, of course."

"Naturally," I say. "Tell me when you have readings on the planet. Let's know what we have to deal with."

"Our arrival in-system was on target," Aitra says. "We're about three million kilometres from the habitable planet."

Zdan grunts again. "Not that habitable - I'm not seeing much in the way of life signs." He leans forward, hunching his shoulders. "That -" He raises his head, and his forbidding Reman features are creased into a scowl. "That can't be right."

"What is it?" I ask.

"These readings -" Zdan waves an exasperated hand over the science console. "This doesn't make sense."

"Three million kilometres?" I ask. Aitra nods. "Well, then. Let's see the problem. Give me a visual."

A featureless disc appears in the viewscreen. "Magnify," I order.

The disc becomes larger... and is still featureless. Zdan is muttering over his instruments. I frown. The planet is showing... as a perfect circle, perfectly white, perfectly unblemished.

"That's..." Zdan swallows loudly. "That's not a planet, sir."

I turn to him. "Then what is it?"

"If I'm reading the feed from the Virgo correctly.... It's a temporal anomaly. A stable anti-chroniton rift, where the planet ought to be." Zdan shakes his head. "Almost stable. It's growing. Incredibly slowly - no more than a centimetre a second - but growing."

"You are saying," I say slowly, "that the planet has been consumed by a rift in time."

"That's... what it looks like, sir," says Zdan.

I nod. I refuse to be shocked. Whatever we found here, it was going to be... disturbing. In one way or another.

"What are we going to do, sir?" asks Aitra.

"Remain calm," I say. "Consult with the Virgo... see what, if anything, needs to be done. A centimetre a second," I add, reflectively. "The universe is expanding faster than that... I am not sure that it constitutes a problem."

Every head on the bridge turns towards me. "Thyvesh spoke of a weapon that destroys time," I say, "and also of something much worse. That -" I point to the featureless circle on the screen "- may, in fact, constitute some sort of victory."