After the Fall Read online

“Gods almighty….” She rose to her feet, seemingly not of her own volition, but rather as if a puppeteer had grabbed hold of strings trailing from her body and hauled her up. “You…it’s…it’s you…”

  Tiraud was on his feet now as well. He was disliking the situation more and more. He was suddenly wishing that he had some heavy armament upon him, because the closer this man drew, the less he liked it. Fortunately enough, one of his rank always carried a dagger. It was more ceremonial than anything, harkening to a more savage, fearsome time in the history of his family. But antique or not, it cut just as efficiently as if it had been forged yesterday, and he was now grateful for the weight of it hanging from the back of his belt.

  “It’s me,” agreed the newcomer. His eyes flickered toward Tiraud, looked him up and down, then turned back to Kalinda as if Tiraud’s presence was a nuisance at best. “This him?”

  “Him?”

  “Your betrothed. I was told you were engaged.”

  “Yes…yes I…”

  Then she moved quickly toward him, Tiraud apparently forgotten. Reflexively Tiraud reached for her to hold her back, but she was already away from him. And she was crying out, “Xyon! Gods, Xyon!,” which led Tiraud to conclude, unsurprisingly, that the intruder’s name was Xyon.

  She threw her arms around him, clutching him eagerly, desperately, continuing to call out his name. He embraced her as well, holding her so tightly that Tiraud thought she might break in half. Obviously she did not, but Tiraud’s brow furrowed and he felt a distant thudding in the base of his skull. Some fundamental, primal, inner sense of warning told him that this “Xyon” was not someone he wanted to confront capriciously, but the more his anger was growing, the more he considered just how handy his dagger was.

  “You were dead!” Kalinda was crying out, although her voice was partly muffled by the fact that her face was buried in Xyon’s chest. “You were dead! Your ship…they said you used it to lure the Black Mass…”

  “Black Mass?” Tiraud was unable to keep silent any longer. “That…that mythological creature they tell children about to scare them into submission?”

  Xyon stared at him pityingly as Kalinda said, “It’s no myth, Tiraud. The Excalibur faced it down. I was there. I saw it, this huge mass, it was so…so…”

  “Black,” offered Xyon. “Hence the name.”

  Xyon’s voice appeared to startle her back to reality. Like an absentminded party hostess, Kalinda said, “Tiraud…this is Xyon. The son of Mackenzie Calhoun. Xyon, this is Tiraud…the son of Fhermus, of the House of Fhermus.”

  Tiraud forced a brief smile. Xyon didn’t even bother, which irked Tiraud all the more.

  “And there was this black hole in space, and the Excalibur was trying to lure the Black Mass into it,” Kalinda was continuing, even though Tiraud would happily have forgone the rest of Xyon’s riveting tale if it meant getting rid of him that much sooner. “And at the last moment, Xyon and his ship swept in, and decoyed the Black Mass to its death, except Xyon was lost, too…except,” and she regarded him incredulously, “except he wasn’t. You weren’t.”

  “No.”

  “You weren’t pulled into the black hole.”

  “No. It was a near thing, but I managed to shake loose from the gravity field before it was too late.”

  “But the area was scanned. We scanned it. There was no sign of you.”

  “The Lyla has cloaking technology. A little antiquated by today’s standards. About half the ships nowadays can pick us up if they know what to look for. I was planning to update it…”

  “Wait. So you…” Still trying to comprehend all the facts that were being presented to her, Kalinda paused. “So you…are you saying the cloak…malfunctioned?”

  “No.” He looked perplexed. “Why would you think it…?”

  “You weren’t stuck being cloaked.”

  “Stuck? Why would I have been stuck?”

  “Because…if you weren’t stuck,” Kalinda said slowly, “then…you were hiding.”

  He sighed. “Yes.”

  “Deliberately.”

  “Yes.”

  “You went out of your way to let me…and your father…believe you dead.”

  “That’s…yes, I suppose that’s one way to look at—”

  She slugged him.

  Kalinda was not huge, but she was wiry and strong and worked out regularly, and when her fist slammed into Xyon’s solar plexus, it caught him off guard. He let out a stunned gasp of air and staggered back, almost losing his balance but rallying at the last moment.

  Tiraud, who had been about to insert himself forcibly into the proceedings out of growing jealousy, suddenly decided that things were proceeding apace just fine. He stepped back, leaned against a tree, and folded his arms, grinning.

  “What did you hit me for…?” demanded Xyon, rubbing his chest where she’d struck it.

  “What did I hit you for?” Her face was purpling…which, considering her face was normally red, didn’t require that much shift in coloration. “What do you think I hit you for, you great lummox!”

  “Be…cause I let you and my father think I was dead?”

  “You have to guess at that?” she fairly bellowed. “That’s something that you’re not one hundred percent sure of? You think there’s some latitude? A vague chance that I might be angry about something else?!”

  “I had my reasons, Kally.”

  “Your reasons?!” She was getting angrier and angrier. “Oh, this ought to be good! Impress me, Xyon! Dazzle me with whatever the hell was going through your mind at the time, if anything. Explain to me why you decided to let your father and your lover believe that you were dead!”

  “Lover!” snarled Tiraud, who suddenly was back to not liking the situation at all. “You were his lover?!”

  “She was referring to someone else,” Xyon said quickly. “Weren’t you, Kally.”

  “No, I was referring to you, and I can be honest in front of Tiraud because that’s what people in love are! Honest!” she said in a defiant voice, and turned to Tiraud for confirmation. “He won’t be upset! He knew I’d been with others when we got together!”

  “Actually, I kind of thought you hadn’t,” Tiraud admitted.

  Fortunately enough for Tiraud, Kalinda didn’t hear him. “And he would never run out on me!”

  “I didn’t run out on you!” Xyon protested. “I just…I knew you’d be better off without me than with me.”

  “Oh, you got to make that decision entirely on your own? My opinions didn’t factor in at all?”

  “No, they didn’t!” He put his hands to the side of his head as if dealing with a pounding headache. “You know, I had a mental picture of how this was going to go, and it’s amazing how little resemblance to that this bears.”

  “Well, that’s just too bad, Xyon. Not everything goes the way you imagined it would. And do you know why?” She advanced on him, continuing to thump him with her pointing finger. “Because the universe exists of people possessed of free will. We think what we’ll think, do what we’ll do. And most of the time, we get to utilize that precious free will in order to decide the nature of our future.”

  “That’s what I did,” Xyon said defensively.

  “That’s not what you did! You decided not only your future, but mine and your father’s, without giving us a voice.” She reached over and shook him, snapping his head back and forth as if he were a rag doll. “You decided, all on your own, what was best for our futures without giving us the slightest consideration.”

  “Consideration?”

  “Yes, consideration! About how we felt! About our mourning for you! You should have returned to the Excalibur…!”

  “Right, right. That would be the ship that blew up not all that long after I departed. Is that the ship to which you’re referring?”

  Kalinda was thrown for a moment by that observation, but then rallied. “Yes, that’s right. And who knows? If you’d been there, with your ship, able to take on passenge
rs…you might have made things better! All of us thought that Captain Calhoun had been killed when the ship blew up. If you’d just returned to the Excalibur and been there for the emergency, then…then maybe you could have saved him and we all would have known he was all right!”

  “Well, that’s just terrific, Kally,” snapped Xyon. “Is there any other blame you’d care to heap upon me? The grief I caused you, the inconvenience of my father’s apparent death. Perhaps you’d like to assign me the responsibility for the Selelvian War as well. Come on!” and he spread his arms. “My shoulders are wide enough. I can support whatever you care to heap upon them.”

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “I’m being ridiculous?!”

  “Well, at least we agree on something!” she said with mounting frustration.

  Xyon pivoted in place, looking as if he wanted to walk in three directions at once. As if he had so much energy combined with so much frustration that he literally didn’t know what to do with it all. “I have to say, Kalinda, this has been a thrill for me. A genuine thrill. I am so damned glad I came back…”

  “Why did you come back?” She folded her arms across her chest. “I mean, if you’d already decided that our lives were going to be so much better with you not in them, then what possible purpose was to be served by showing up now, out of the blue?”

  “I told you! I heard you’d gotten engaged.”

  “Right. To Tiraud.”

  Feeling as if he’d been silent for long enough, Tiraud said, “No doubt you came to offer us your heartiest congratulations?”

  Xyon looked him up and down with an air of such insufferable superiority that it made Tiraud want to wipe the look off his face. He restrained himself only because he knew that women’s sensibilities were not like men’s. As angry as Kalinda was at Xyon, Tiraud knew full well that—like any woman’s—her sentiments could turn 180 degrees on a moment’s notice. If Tiraud attacked and killed Xyon, as would undoubtedly be the case during any such altercation (because, ultimately, whatever fierce characteristics Xyon might possess, Tiraud was still nobility while Xyon was some…some brigand, as near as Tiraud could tell), then the martyring of Xyon could turn Kalinda completely against Tiraud.

  “No, milord,” Xyon said, his use of the honorific dripping with sarcasm. “To be perfectly honest, no. Not congratulations. I thought I’d come and try to stop Kalinda from making a mistake.”

  “A mistake?” Kalinda gasped it out, and then her mouth moved speechlessly for a few moments as she tried to regain her breath. “Xyon…you’ve been gone! For years! Hiding!”

  “I wasn’t hiding!” Xyon informed her. “I was doing things. Important things.”

  “Oh? Like what?” she said with challenge in her voice, but then shook her head. “No, on second thought, don’t even tell me. Don’t tell me because I don’t want to know, because it doesn’t matter. I’ve changed, Xyon. I’m not the same girl I was when you knew me.”

  “You look much the same.”

  “Looks can be deceiving,” Kalinda pointed out. “For the last few years, for instance, it looked like you were dead. Not only that, but hasn’t it occurred to you that I might actually be in love with Tiraud?”

  This time Xyon didn’t even bother to glance at him. “No.” He shrugged. “Never crossed my mind.”

  “All right, that’s it!” shouted Tiraud. “I’ve had all I’m going to take—!”

  He started to advance on Xyon, and Xyon stepped back with a grim smile of amusement. “Oh, but I have so much more to give.”

  Tiraud’s hand started to move back toward the dagger, but suddenly Kalinda was between the two of them, facing Tiraud, her back to Xyon. “Step back, Tiraud,” she said. “I mean it.”

  “He has insulted me!”

  “And what do you think of him?”

  “He’s an idiot! A lowborn idiot!”

  “Then why should you care what he says? What matter the words of a lowborn idiot?” she demanded.

  Xyon’s smile spread. “Seems she has you there, milord.”

  “Stop calling me that!”

  “My humblest apologies,” said Xyon, apparently having come to the conclusion that the best thing he could do would be to treat Tiraud with heaps of mock respect. “Would you mind telling me what is the proper title with which you should be addressed?”

  “Well, it’s…” He shifted uncomfortably. “It…is ‘milord,’ but…that’s not the point!”

  “It’s not?” asked Xyon with polite confusion. “Then what is?”

  The point is in my blade, thought Tiraud, but before he could put action to words, Kalinda came between them once more. When she spoke, however, it was not with the anger and hurt that had pervaded her tone only moments earlier. Instead it was with sadness and even a sense of regret.

  “The point is, Xyon…you’re too late,” she told him.

  He tried to laugh. “Too late?” he said. But it was a pathetic attempt at joviality and not at all convincing.

  “Xyon…you have to understand.” She took his hand in hers, which boiled Tiraud’s blood, but he kept his peace. “The fact that you’re here…now…everything we’ve been saying over the past few minutes, all my reactions, the arguments…has completely obscured the fact that I’m thrilled to see you. You were…are, I mean, I guess I’ll have to get used to referring to you in the present tense again…are a daring, courageous individual. I owe you my life. He saved my life, Tiraud.” She tossed the comment to her fiancé.

  “Much obliged,” said Tiraud, who could not recall a time in his existence when he was less interested in how someone had saved someone else’s life.

  “But the thing is, Xyon,” she continued, “I think I’ve outgrown you.”

  “Out grown?” There was incredulity on his face.

  “Yes. It’s as if you’re…you’re frozen in time from another part of my life. I loved you, I mourned your loss, and then I moved on. And you’re standing here in front of me now, absolutely unchanged, and expecting me to move backward to be with you.”

  “No, I don’t…”

  “Yes, you do! You don’t even really, fully comprehend why what you did was wrong. How it was selfish and self-centered. That’s unfortunate and limiting, but I realize that it’s…well, that’s just the way you are. You haven’t grown up. But I have.”

  There was a frostiness in his entire manner as he said, “This is the first time you’ve seen me in years, Kalinda. There is absolutely no way you can just…just judge me like that.”

  “What else did you expect me to do? Xyon…I couldn’t keep my life, and myself, in deep freeze, until you were ready to deal with it. The universe doesn’t conform to your schedule. Can you really be so selfish as not to see that? Then again, you’re the one who refused to let any of us know you were alive for years, so I guess the answer to that is, yes, you can be just that selfish.”

  “I…”

  He seemed to want to say something, but he didn’t. Instead he straightened his shoulders, standing upright in such a way that Tiraud realized for the first time just how tall Xyon was. Or perhaps he was just trying to make himself look bigger.

  “This was a mistake,” he said finally. “I should never have come back to you. I should never have expected you to understand.”

  “Oh, it’s my fault now, is it?” There was no anger in the way she said it. Just regret. “And what was I supposed to understand?”

  “What it took for me to come here.”

  “Xyon…”

  He paid her no mind. Instead he turned his back to her and walked away. Kalinda started after him and Tiraud reached out to her to try and prevent her from following Xyon. But it wasn’t necessary, because she stopped on her own.

  “Tell your father!” she called after him. “Let him know, at least! It’s cruel to leave a hole in his heart just because it suits you to skulk around the galaxy pretending you’re dead. He still mourns you!”

  “Oh yes,” Xyon shouted back with
out bothering to turn around. “I’m sure I’m uppermost in his thoughts.”

  She started to say something else to him, but her voice was drowned out by a roar of engines. A small space vessel had risen from behind a hillock, and it was angling down toward Xyon. For a heartbeat, Tiraud hoped that it was an enemy vessel or, even better, that it would simply land atop Xyon and squash him flat. Instead it descended until it came to rest a few feet away from Xyon, and a hatch irised open. Without a backward glance, Xyon stepped in. Then the door shut and the ship lifted off.

  Kalinda watched it go, dry-eyed, stoic.

  “He was your lover?” Tiraud demanded as the ship receded into the sky.

  “Tiraud,” she sighed, “do we really have to discuss this now…?”

  “Yes, we really do.”

  She turned to face him and there was mild surprise on her face. “Actually, no. We really don’t. I get a vote in this and I say we don’t.”

  “Lind…”

  “And I hate that you call me ‘Lind.’ It’s Kalinda. Or Kally. Not ‘Lind.’ Got it?”

  She walked away from him, leaving an irritated Tiraud saying, “Right. Got it.”

  Tiraud had never hated an individual so quickly and thoroughly as he hated Xyon of…of whatever damned planet he came from. As for Mackenzie Calhoun, who was apparently Xyon’s father…he’d never met Calhoun, but already he wasn’t too wild about him, either. Then again, from the things his father had told him about the Federation in general, he didn’t think he’d be especially thrilled about any UFP starship captain right about then.

  U.S.S. Trident

  Kat Mueller still wasn’t entirely certain what to make of Commander Desma.

  That much had apparently become clear to Desma as well, for she was standing in the doorway of Mueller’s ready room with a look of concern. Outside, on the bridge, Mueller could hear the brisk conversation between her crew members as they continued their mind-numblingly boring assignment to search for particles characteristic of transwarp conduits. Science officer M’Ress was overseeing the operation, working closely with Mick Gold at conn and Romeo Takahashi at ops. If there was anything out there, Mueller was confident they would find it.