Mercy Flight

by Alicia McKenzie

Home. For decades, it hadn't been a concept Christopher Summers had spent much time worrying about. He ran a hand along the back of his captain's chair as his gaze moved across the Starjammer's bridge, station by station. This ship had been the only home he'd had for a very long time now. More years than he liked to remember, if he were going to be scrupulously honest. He knew every system, every bulkhead, every square inch of its hull intimately, as if the ship was an extension of his own body, and his crew was his family, in all the ways that counted.

But he'd had another home once, and no matter how many years he spent in space, how completely his taste for adventure had transformed into a wanderlust that felt almost like second nature, he'd never been able to forget Earth. If he thought back, Chris could remember each time he'd returned, what it had been like to see his homeworld from space--the blue of the oceans, the white of the polar caps, the familiar lines of the continents, all overlaid by a constantly shifting pattern of clouds. It had been a beautiful sight, one that had never failed to stir something in him. He'd masked it, of course - getting misty-eyed at the sight of home wasn't 'in character' for Corsair, leader of the Starjammers - but he'd always felt it.

What he felt now, at the sight of what Earth had become, was indescribable. The panoramic view on the forward screens showed a giant, seething cloud of energy, countless snake-like silver strands knotted into one monstrous whole. It shifted constantly, individual strands disappearing and being replaced by others. Every few minutes, the odd strand would writhe free of the knot at one end and flutter almost obscenely through the cleanness of space before vanishing.

If he stared straight at one spot for long enough, Chris could almost make out the outlines of Earth and the moon, lost in the light. But he could only watch for a short time before he had to look away again, fighting vertigo. Human--hell, humanoid brains (the Shi'ar scientists had the same problem) weren't meant to process something like this. What they were looking at was a rift in the multiverse, an implosion of space-time. Reality itself had torn, and the mind simply couldn't deal with the sight.

"A painful sight," a soft voice observed from behind him. "In more ways that one."

Chris gave a soft, humorless chuckle. "That's one way to put it," he said, and gestured at the chair as Lilandra came up beside him. "Have a seat, Lil."

"'Lil'? I see it was a wise choice to leave my protocol officer on the flagship," the Majestrix of the Shi'ar said with only a trace of dryness in her resonant voice as she seated herself gracefully. "Although it is somewhat refreshing to see that time hasn't dulled your unique charm, Corsair."

Chris couldn't help a smile at the attempt at banter. Lilandra's protocol officer would have had the Shi'ar equivalent of a coronary if he'd caught his Majestrix flirting, even jokingly, with a Terran who was on the wrong side of Shi'ar law more often than not, even these days. Personally, Chris found her attempt to lighten the atmosphere sort of touching. Even a little endearing.

And the atmosphere could use a little lightening. Both of them had their reasons for grief, looking down on what had happened to Earth. Lilandra wasn't the type to share such thing - frankly, neither was he - but there was something comforting about having her here, knowing she understood. His crew had never been anything but sympathetic, but they had no ties to Earth. What had happened affected them because it affected him, but beyond that--

Chris heard Hepzibah hissing and muttering to herself at the weapons station, and crossed the bridge to stand behind her chair. "Settle, Zee," he murmured, laying his hands on her slender shoulders. "You could relax, you know. We're not liable to need our weapons anytime soon."

"Sure of that I am not, Chris," she hissed softly, tapping her screens with a finger. She'd been 'playing', he saw immediately. One screen displaying sensor readings on each ship of the Shi'ar squadron in orbit with them, including Lilandra's flagship, while tactical options scrolled across another. "Outnumbered, we are. Trust them to keep their word, you might, but I say better to be ready."

Chris sighed. He had to admit that he wasn't any more comfortable about this than she was - their relationship with the Shi'ar hadn't been openly hostile for a while, but neither was it particularly friendly - but Lilandra had gone to some lengths to prove her good faith. He hadn't asked her to transfer from her flagship to the Starjammer before they'd come through the Sol stargate; she'd done it of her own accord, and the gesture was meant to be reassuring. Certainly, none of the ships of the squadron would fire on the Starjammer while the Majestrix was aboard.

"Just--keep that itchy trigger finger of yours under control," he murmured. Hepzibah bristled at him and jerked sharply around in her chair, giving him a very deliberate view of the back of her head. Chris sighed again and turned away, his gaze moving back to the forward screen. "Any word from the monitoring station yet?"

"Nay, Captain," Raza reported, shooting Hepzibah an amused look before he went on. "Though communications are oft chancy in this system since the disaster, or so the Majestrix's scientists do report."

"They're most likely on the planet's nightside, Christopher," Lilandra said, staring fixedly at the forward screen as if she was searching for something in the shifting patterns of energy. The only sign of discomfort he could see was a faint, pained tension around her eyes. Testing herself? he wondered vaguely. He wouldn't put it past her. Lilandra had very clearly formulated ideas about how tough you had to be to rule the Shi'ar. The funny thing, Chris reflected, was that she was right. "Their orbit should bring them closer to our position shortly, and the interference should cease to be such a problem."

"Optimistic," Chris muttered. Besides, he was sure that several other problems would crop up as soon as that one ceased to be an issue. *I am getting pessimistic in my old age--* "We are going to dock with the station, right? I don't think I want to try teleporting in, given the circumstances." Just the idea of what chrono-spacial distortion could do to your molecules on route was enough to make him feel a little ill.

"The station's docking facilities should be able to accomodate the Starjammer," Lilandra said with a slow nod, still not looking away from the sight of Earth wrapped in its deadly shroud. "Though my advisors will have to take a shuttle from the flagship."

"There," Keeyah said, pointing. Chris squinted, and saw the monitoring station appear from 'behind' the energy cloud. The station seemed so tiny, so fragile at this distance. "Cutting it awfully close, aren't they?" the helmsman observed, sounding concerned. "Wouldn't a higher orbit be safer? What if one of those--shifts broke loose and crossed their path?"

"It happened once," Lilandra said, finally looking away. She touched a hand to her forehead for a moment, shivering. Chris saw her jaw clench, and realized she was fighting back nausea. "The station was badly damaged and several of its personnel killed." She managed a weak smile at Keeyah's baffled look. "They must cut it close, as you say. Otherwise the distortion makes it nearly impossible to get accurate sensor readings of the phenomenon."

The phenomenon. Chris wasn't sure he liked that particular euphemism. It made what was happening so damned innocuous, a curious cosmic event to be investigated and studied. "Hail them, Raza," he said, a bit more harshly than he'd intended. Lilandra's gaze flickered to him, questioning and concerned, but he looked away. "Let's get on with this."

***

They wound up having to wait while the station ascended to a higher orbit to receive its guests. Chris had expected something of the sort, of course. For the station's commander to risk his life and those of the scientists under his command in order to perform their duty was one thing, but putting the Majestrix in peril was another. Once the station had risen to a safer distance, Chris ordered Keeyah to begin docking manuevers. The docking itself was completed with gratifying smoothness, especially given the turbulence that could only be expected in such a massively unstable area, and Chris made a point of giving his helmsman an approving clap on the shoulder before he accompanied Lilandra to the docking bay.

"Hepzibah didn't like being left behind, I'm gathering?" Lilandra murmured ironically as they stepped into a lift tube and the capsule began to move smoothly downwards.

"You noticed?"

"I noticed the large amount of glaring going on, yes."

Chris laughed a bit tiredly. "Zee's mellowing in her old age. Ten years ago she would have been threatening to slice off choice pieces of my anatomy for being so stupid."

Lilandra arched an eyebrow. "For coming over to the station with me alone?" He nodded, andhe sighed, her expression almost sad for a moment. "How far we've come, Christopher."

Chris shrugged, very deliberately not going any farther down that particular road. This wasn't the time to be rehashing old choices and old grudges. "I suppose," he said, and then changed the subject. "I didn't ask you how the family is."

"Much as they generally are," Lilandra said with a soft laugh. "Deathbird still makes the occasional half-hearted attempt to seduce J'var. I believe she's doing it for old times' sake. Fortunately my esteemed consort still solemnly swears that he would rather mate with a rabid syh'ndaro beast, and I'm inclined to accept that."

Chris managed a smile at the mental image. He actually rather liked J'var, although he knew Lilandra's council had thrown a collective fit at the idea of their Majestrix marrying a 'simple teacher', even if that simple teacher was the foremost historian at the Imperial Academy on Chandilar. "And how is the heir to the Shi'ar Imperium?"

"Char'lenna is well," Lilandra said with a motherly little smile that nevertheless had a trace of sadness in it. "The despair of her tutors, but quite well."

"I'm glad to hear it," Chris murmured. He hadn't seen Lilandra and J'var's daughter in--seven years? Damn, the kid had to be getting big. The door of the lift opened onto the docking bay, and Chris gestured for Lilandra to precede him. "After you, Majestrix," he said, managing a grandiose gesture. She gave him a quizzical look, but said nothing.

The station personnel had already opened their side of the airlock, so it was the matter of a few moments, just enough to do a pressure check, before Chris followed suit and he and Lilandra were being welcomed aboard by the station commander, a tall, strangely emaciated-looking Shi'ar commander by the name of Ken'doran.

"Majestrix," he said with a deep bow. "Corsair. If you'll both follow me, we can move to the briefing room. Admiral Jen'tath and the others have just departed the flagship. They should be docking in a few minutes."

They were shepherded to the briefing room and introduced to the station's chief scientist, a very elderly Shi'ar woman. Chris found himself rather liking Dr. Sirella, who exhibited both a wry sense of humor and a deep compassion for the people of Earth when she talked about the tragic planet they were orbiting. It would have been more heartening if she'd given them any sign that she had any good news, but part of Chris appreciated the fact that she didn't make any facile attempts to reassure them.

The party from the flagship soon arrived, and Chris stolidly ignored the suspicious looks he recieved from a couple of the Shi'ar commanders. The Shi'ar military had no reason to love him, especially after the Starjammers had fought for the Clench during the last uprising two years ago, but he was here at Lilandra's personal invitation. If they didn't like it, they could go jump out an airlock. He wouldn't shed any tears for them.

"If I may have your attention," Sirella said firmly, and immediately the room fell silent. "We are honored by your presence, Majestrix, and that of your military and civilian advisors." She hesitated, eyes flickering to him for a moment, but didn't add him to the list. Chris supposed she was being tactful, not rubbing his presence in. Smart old lady. "You'll forgive me if I don't dwell long on formalities," Sirella continued, a dry note entering her voice. "Time may have lost most of its meaning on the planet below us, but there's no point in wasting it up here."

She brought up the holographic display, and Chris grimaced at the image. It was bad enough to see it all from outside, but at least that way a tiny part of your mind could pretend that the chaos was just a shell, that somehow Earth was tucked away within, safe and sound. Sirella's illustration made it painfully clear that such wasn't the case. The rift was a solid, three-dimensional thing. The 'strands' shifted and waved and appeared and disappeared everywhere within the boundaries of the rift, moving through the planet's crust and mantle and core as if Earth wasn't there. Chris could only imagine what might be happening on the planet's surface.

"This is as accurate a visual representation as we can manage," Sirella said. "Which is to say, barely accurate at all." She shook her head slowly, eyes lingering on the holo-image. "We have been studying the rift for twelve years now, and I speak for both myself and my colleagues when I say we question our own perceptions more and more as time passes."

"That's not particularly helpful," Admiral Jen'tath said, sounding slightly disgusted.

Sirella gave him a weary smile. "No, Admiral, it isn't." She paused, her dark eyes going almost flinty for a moment. "And it is equally unhelpful for you to interrupt me. Please wait until my briefing is concluded."

Jen'tath opened his mouth, looking outraged, but Lilandra gave him a quelling look and he stayed silent, looking more than a little mutinous about it. "Please continue," Lilandra said quietly, turning back to Sirella.

Sirella nodded. "What we see when we look down at Earth," she said slowly, "is by no means what is truly there. It is certainly not the true physical manifestation of this catastrophe." She hesitated, as if struggling for words. "It is merely what our senses, our minds are able to perceive. We see entirely different faces of this--horror, when we see with mechanical eyes."

Sirella proceeded to speak for nearly thirty minutes, pausing only for the occasional sip of water. She detailed the course of the station's research for the last year, doing her best to explain to them the wildly contradictory sensor readings the station had been gathering recently. Chris tried his very best to pay attention, but started to get lost as she moved from "unpredictable and instantaneous reversals of the magnetic poles" to "mass and density readings that fluctuate into negative values and then return to normal" and "paradoxical continental drift on the regional level". By the time she started in on the "participatory anthropic principle of the multiverse" he'd given up completely and just kept watching the constantly changing holo-image. He didn't even understand what half the images were trying to illustrate, although he shivered every time it turned into a black abyss. Which it did far too often.

"What is the point you are trying to make?" Lilandra asked, once Sirella paused for longer than a moment. The Majestrix looked almost dizzied, but was better off than some of her advisors, Chris noted. A few of them had opened their mouths fifteen minutes ago and forgotten to close them again. "From what you are saying--what I can understand of what you are saying," Lilandra amended, "you seem to be telling me that your research has--run into some difficulties?"

Sirella arched an eyebrow, smiling wryly. "That would be putting it very mildly, Majestrix. Our research no longer allows us to come to any conclusions about the course of the collapse," she said. "Every pattern that was once observable in the phenomenon has decayed and vanished." Sirella leaned back in her chair with a sigh. "We can no longer even rely on our mechanical eyes to give us an accurate picture of what's happening."

"So what you're saying is that your job here is done?" Jen'tath said bluntly. "If there's no further point to researching the phenomenon--"

"That's not what I'm saying at all!" Sirella said acerbically. "Would you let me finish, Admiral, or are you that fond of the sound of your own voice?" Jen'tath flushed, and Sirella continued in a more moderate tone. "The collapse has progressed to a new stage, one that we cannot observe reliably. This is not a positive turn of events!"

"Doesn't sound like it," Chris observed, and got a nasty 'you have the gall to speak, Terran?' sort of look from Jen'tath, who was clearly disgruntled over Sirella's rebuke. "So where do we go from here?"

"No," Lilandra said very quietly, folding her hands together on the table in front of her, "the question is, where does the phenomenon go from here?" She straightened in her chair, giving Sirella a very direct look. "I am assuming this is why you called us here."

Sirella's shoulders drooped, and she looked twenty years older, all of a sudden. "It's all very hypothetical," she murmured almost tiredly. "It would be dishonest to be definitive. After all, it's not as if we've ever had to deal with this situation before."

"Answer to the best of your abilities," Lilandra said, almost kindly, although her expression was still troubled. "Our best is all any of us can do, Doctor."

Sirella pursed her lips, then took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, as if finding some inner reserve of determination. "Of course, Majestrix," she said, and changed the holo-image. "All of the scientific staff here agree that this is the most plausible possibility we've modeled." It was the first holo-image again, the one that showed the Earth in the midst of the energy cloud. "The phenomenon cannot simply continue to grow more and more random indefinitely."

Chris blinked as the energy strands started to collapse inwards, layer by layer. "The system will self-organize," Sirella went on, her voice growing more neutral as she continued to regain her composure. "It's just a matter of when, and how."

The energy strands continued to collapse inwards, and Chris flinched violently as the collapse reached Earth and the planet started to--contract. It happened slowly, the progression almost stately, but in the end Earth was gone, and all that was left was a black hole in space, limned in an unearthly light.

It made him feel sick, just looking at it. Yet he felt no shock, no denial. It was as if part of him had expected that this was how it would end.

"There is always a--limit, an edge to chaos. What we're looking at is a phase change of some sort," Sirella said quietly. "As for what will remain afterwards--it's impossible to know."

"But you have some possibilities in mind," Chris said. The words came out in a rasp, and he swallowed, ignoring the sideways look he got from Lilandra.

"A few," Sirella said. "We may see some sort of--multiversal wormhole develop, where the terminus fluctuates between dimensions." She smiled thinly. "Or we could be looking at a gateway to nowhere at all. We aren't precisely equipped to determine what may lay beyond the multiverse."

"Or?" There was definitely something she wasn't saying, Chris thought. He hadn't imagined that pause.

Instead of answering, Sirella leaned forward and adjusted the holo-image one more time. The black hole seemed to ripple, the light around its edges fading to almost nothing.

Then light exploded outwards from the core of the darkness, blotting out the stars. The perspective changed, and they watched as the wavefront consumed the entire Sol system.

And kept growing.

"Or," Sirella said quietly, "we could be looking at the birth of a new multiverse. What's that charming phrase the Terran scientists used--a 'Big Bang', but on a multiversal scale." She shook her head and deactivated the holo-display entirely. "The consequences would be catastrophic," she told them, her voice staying perfectly steady. "At the very least, we'd be looking at the same phenomenon we see here in the Sol system on a grand scale." She paused; for dramatic effect, Chris wondered dully? "In the worst-case scenario, both multiverses would be destroyed. Mutual annihilation." She smiled, an expression without the slightest trace of humor. "Personally, I lean towards the latter. I think it's more likely."

The silence that greeted her statement was absolute, yet strangely fragile, as if it were begging someone to break it, to say something. Chris tried vainly to think of what to say - something productive, since trying to lighten the atmosphere would not be particularly appropriate given what Sirella had just dropped on them - but nothing came to mind.

Lilandra finally took a deep breath and let it out on a sigh. "This is unacceptable," she said heavily. "Even the possibility--" She took another breath, straightening in her chair and focusing on Sirella. "Something must be done," she said, a bit more firmly. "We cannot simply sit by and hope that one of your more palatable options comes true."

Chris was very suddenly seized by a rush of anger. Of course they had to do something; wasn't that what setting up the monitoring station had been about in the first place? Or did Lilandra not give a damn about Earth, now that she had a consort and heir? She'd moved on and put Xavier behind her, at least in some ways. If he'd been the only reason she'd concerned herself with Earth's fate--

"We have some time, at least," Sirella said almost soothingly, folding her hands together on the table in front of her. "Our models predict that it may be a matter of several Earth years before the situation reaches the critical point." Her words provoked a ripple of relief among Lilandra's advisors, but Chris sat there stiffly, not feeling reassured in the slightest. "My first suggestion, Majestrix, would be for you to declare this an Imperial emergency, and speak to the Science Council about having more resources devoted to the problem."

"Done," Lilandra said immediately. "I'll dispatch the message as soon as we're finished here."

"We should also continue our operations here on the station, of course," Sirella went on. "And--I had an additional idea." There was an odd note in her voice on that last bit, an almost defensive edge that shook Chris right out of his bleak reverie.

Lilandra's mouth quirked oddly. "Go ahead," she said.

Sirella took a deep breath, visibly steeling herself, and leaned foward in her chair. "These are my own thoughts," she said carefully. "Strictly speaking, they have no evidence to back them up, but as I've just finished showing you, science as we know it is not able to fully comprehend the phenomenon." Lilandra nodded, and Sirella continued, those sharp dark eyes going curiously distant. "It occurs to me that there's perhaps one very good reason we're having difficulty finding a solution to the problem," she said. "We're looking at it from outside. Our perspective--our access, is unavoidably limited."

"Are you suggesting sending people down there?" Chris asked, and was startled by the vehemence of Sirella's response.

"Absolutely not!" She hesitated, then amended that. "Not unless it becomes absolutely necessary as part of a final solution to the problem. It would be extremely dangerous. Their physiology would be completely out of temporal phase. They could be suspect to rapid aging, chromosomal damage, any number of things." She stopped, pursing her lips. "No, best not to send anyone from our--frame of reference into the phenomenon unless absolutely necessary. Electronic visitors, on the other hand--if we could adapt some of our probes to carry a large amount of data, say, the sum of our research for the last twelve years, and dropped them into the atmosphere--" Sirella trailed off with a sigh and a shrug. "If there's anyone down there attempting to solve the problem from within, what information we've managed to gather may be valuable. They should know, too, what will happen if the damage isn't repaired."

"Dropping probes into the atmosphere," Chris muttered, his mind racing over what he knew about what the disaster had done to local space. "You'd have to do it from the edge of the upper atmosphere, to make sure the probes landed somewhere useful. It wouldn't do any good to shoot off twenty probes to the bottom of the ocean--" And there'd be shifts where the layout of the continents was completely different, and ones where Earth wasn't there at all. He bit his lip and tried to sort out the logistics. It could be done, they'd just have to get a little creative.

"This seems like a waste of resources to me," Jen'tath declared, sounding hostile again. Jarred out of his train of thought, Chris glared across the table at him, wondering if anyone would really object if he broke a chair over the Admiral's head. "What are the chances that anyone is alive down there, let alone working to reverse this catastrophe they've caused?" He emphasized his last two words, shooting a spiteful look at Corsair.

"You shouldn't underestimate my people, Admiral," Chris said harshly, disgusted. Maybe Jen'tath held a grudge over the Starjammer's activities 'against' the Empire, but that was no excuse for being willfully stupid and petty when decisive action was called for.

"Oh, I don't, Corsair," Jen'tah said contemptuously. "They've managed to do this, haven't they?"

"That will be enough!" Lilandra snapped.

"Yeah," Corsair said, looking away from the Shi'ar admiral, back at the elderly scientist watching him with her hawk's eyes. "I think that's more than enough from the peanut gallery. Doctor, it so happens that I own a reasonably fast ship," he said briskly. "Certainly more manueverable than anything else in orbit at the moment. How long will it take you to whip up these probes?"

Sirella smiled, and Chris knew, just by the sparkle in her eyes, that she'd fully expected him to volunteer. Ah, well. Everyone had to have their predictable moments, he supposed. "Seventy-five of them are fully programmed and sitting in the cargo bay," Sirella said. "They're just waiting to be delivered." Her expression went serious again. "You're right about the altitude from which you'd have to drop the probes. It's very dangerous, Corsair. Certainly you'd have less exposure to the space-time distortion than if you were to go right down to the surface, but it's possible that your crew could suffer from the effects I mentioned earlier. If you have only a brief exposure to the upper atmosphere, the chances are less, but that certainly doesn't mean they're non-existent."

"I understand that, but this needs doing," he said, much more casually than he felt. "The Starjammer's the ship most suited to do it. It's that simple." To him, at least. He was very aware of the fact that he still needed to talk to his crew.

"Thou are proposing a very chancy enterprise, Corsair," Raza said thoughtfully.

He was the first one to respond. Chris had just spent the last five minutes laying out Sirella's plan to them, going over the possible risks. He hadn't tried to bluff his way through it; the thought hadn't even occurred to him. He trusted his people, and they trust him - that was the only reason they'd all survived this long - and he wasn't going to try and trick them into doing this just because it was something he wanted. Even when it was something he wanted this badly.

"I know," Chris said, when they all just sat there watching him measuringly. He shrugged irritably, wishing he didn't feel like such a selfish bastard for asking them to do this. "It would take some pretty fancy flying to get us close enough to drop these probes into shifts where they might actually get to someone who could use them, and a whole lot of luck to get us back out intact."

Hepzibah made a noise that sounded like a laugh, and Ch'od patted her on the shoulder. "Luck has always favored us," he rumbled cheerfully. "Hasn't it?"

Chris blinked. Okay, that wasn't what he'd expected. They'd been so quiet, so watchful while he'd laid out the situation. He'd expected them to tell him that he wasn't thinking clearly, that he was letting guilt dictate his choices.

"Skill, not luck," Hepzibah said haughtily, and then darted a challenging look at Keeyah. "Up for the flying involved, cub?"

Keeyah smiled ruefully. "Am I ever going to grow out of being 'cub' to you, Hepzibah?" She shrugged elegantly, and he turned back to Chris, his smile broadening into his usual cheerful grin. "To be honest, Captain, I'm not sure I could do it and leave the ship ENTIRELY intact. But I'm reasonably certain I could do it without killing us all."

"'Twould undoubtedly be preferable, thus," Raza said very dryly, drumming his fingers on the table. He still looked thoughtful. "'Tis certain that some of these probes wouldst not survive the trip through the atmosphere--"

"Which is why we send many," Ch'od pointed out. "This Shi'ar scientist has the right idea."

"I suppose it would only take one probe, getting to someone who could put the information to use," Keeyah mused. "Seems like a gamble--"

"Gamble, yes, but when the situation demands it, you gamble," Hepzibah said calmly.

They were in the mess room, the usual place they went to discuss missions, options, and his occasional insane plan. The only member of his crew absent was Sikorsky, who'd quite calmly told him that he'd go along with anything they decided, and be there to "injuries repair, when necessary."

When, not if. Chris felt his mouth quirk in a smile. Sikorsky knew them too well.

"So," he said, when the banter had wound down. "I'm not hearing anyone asking me if I'm insane. Should I take that to mean we're seriously considering this?"

"Do you honestly think it will help, Chris?" Ch'od asked, a bit more gravely than Chris was used to hearing his saurid friend speak. "We all have eyes. What are the chances that there's anyone alive down there, let alone anyone who could make use of the information?"

"Aye," Raza said, something close to compassion in his expression. "It hath been a dozen years, Christopher."

Chris swallowed, forcing himself to loosen his grip on the arms of his chair. "I honestly don't know," he said, wishing he could at least lie to himself. "I want to believe that there's still someone alive down there, still fighting--but I don't know." He took a deep breath and looked around at his crew. At his friends. "If you decide--whatever you decide, I'm all right with it. I've never been much for the autocratic approach, and I'm not going to start after all these years."

Hepzibah slipped out of her chair and moved around behind his, twining her arms around his neck and purring. "Being silly, you are," she murmured in his ear. "Why not just admit to us how much you want this?"

"Aye," Raza said with a chuckle. "Thy words are casual, but thine expression is anything but. Dost thou truly believe we do not know thee? After all these years?"

"It's been a while since I've had a really challenging bit of piloting to do," Keeyah said brightly.

"And miss my targets, I do not," Hepzibah purred in his ear. "Do our best, we shall."

Chris looked helplessly around at them all. "You're sure about this? All of you?"

"It would seem so," Ch'od said, baring all his teeth in a fearsomely mischievous smile. "So we should be about it, before anyone changes their mind."

***

"Are you certain about this?"

Chris reflected almost fondly on the honest concern he could hear in Lilandra's voice, even over a comlink. Her expression as she stared back at him from the forward screen was neutral enough to satisfy the requirements of Imperial dignity, but her voice gave her away. He appreciated it, and hoped she knew it, as he didn't dare drop his own, very different mask to tell her so.

"We've done more insane things," he said flippantly, giving her a rakish grin. Hepzibah smirked at him from the weapons' station, and Lilandra almost smiled.

"I'm aware of that. Still--" She hesitated, as if debating what to say, but then shrugged, an ironic little half-smile flickering on her lips. "Safe journey, Corsair," she said simply.

"Catch you on the flip side, Empress," Chris said, and deactivated the comlink. "All right," he said. "Let's do this. Zee, you ready?"

"Probes are loaded, targeting online," Hepzibah said, checking her harness and then donning the gunner's headset. She gave him a flirtatious smile and a quick wink. Chris debated blowing her a kiss, but decided against it. The atmosphere didn't need lightening that much. They all knew the dangers of what they were about to do, and a devil-may-care attitude taken too far was just self-deception.

"Keeyah?" he asked, turning to the helmsman. "Ready?" He'd toyed briefly with taking the helm himself, but that would have been an incredible slap in the face to Keeyah. He'd trusted the former Kree refugee to fly his ship for him for better than a decade; he had no excuse to be getting all grabby and possessive now.

"As soon as you say the word," Keeyah said promptly. "Course is plotted--I might have to do some dancing about if any of the shifts break loose in our path." That was directed at Hepzibah, Chris knew; course corrections, particularly if they were abrupt, could throw off the targetting system.

"On manual anyway, cub," Hepzibah hissed reassuringly. "Worry only about not crashing us, yes?"

"Oh, yes," Keeyah said fervently. "Believe me, I've got my mind very firmly on that."

Ch'od roared with laughter. "Good to hear!" he proclaimed.

"I'll second that. Take us in," Chris ordered, eyes fixed on the forward screens and the image of Earth lost in the chaos. "Insystem drive to full."

The Starjammer dove from orbit, and Chris closed his eyes for a moment, not understanding why he felt so calm. He hadn't expected fear, but he should have felt tense, at the very least. He was putting his ship and his crew in incredible danger doing this, and the fact that they'd so wholeheartedly supported him didn't change that. Didn't remove the responsibility from his shoulders.

But as they headed towards the upper atmosphere, he felt--peaceful. Oddly serene, even though he was gripping the arms of his chair hard to keep himself in his seat. They hit something, like running into a wall, and the whole ship shuddered violently. Raza shouted out damage reports, and Chris felt his head snap backwards as Keeyah abruptly hit the thrusters and they started moving forward instead of down.

He opened his eyes. They were somewhere else now, streaking through a hazy glowing borderland where the very fabric of space rippled, reacting to some unfathomable stress. Everything seemed--strained and stretched, as if time had slowed down to a crawl. Chris raised a hand and saw the way the motion blurred, leaving an afterimage that lingered for an eternity.

"LLLLaaaauuuunnnncccchhhhiiiinnnngggg---" he heard Hepzibah shriek from her station, the sound so long and drawn out that it was painful to hear.

The ship shuddered, and Chris could feel the first probe launching, feel it as if the Starjammer was an extension of his own body, part of him. But it was, wasn't it? It always had been--

A shift tore free from the silver mass seething below them, and Keeyah swerved the ship violently to avoid it. Chris grabbed the arms of his chair with both hands, and wondered where his harness had gone, that he felt like each movement of the ship was trying to throw him to the floor. He'd put it on, he remembered doing it, but he couldn't feel it restraining him. Couldn't feel much of anything, besides his ship, fighting the forces trying to tear it apart.

"LLLaaauuunnnccchhhiiinnnggg--"

The Starjammer bucked wildly, and time returned to normal, then sped up further, everything happening in fast-forward. Raza screamed something about "massive destabilization" in a surreally tinny, high-pitched voice.

They flew right through the sparkling energy trail of the shift, and time slowed again. There was something happening to the air on the bridge, gauzy curtains of energy fluttering everywhere he looked, obscuring his view of his friends at their stations.

"Zee--" Chris shouted, or tried to. His voice sounded like an instrument played under water, like--

"Launching!" Hepzibah called out, and her voice hung like silver in the air, pure and clean and so beautiful that the part of Chris that was still so insanely calm wanted to go over to her station and tell her that he loved her. He'd never said it enough, not in all these years, and he'd wasted so much time. Time--

Another shift tore loose, and Keeyah didn't react quite quickly enough. They caught the edge of it, and the Starjammer screamed. Chris reeled in his chair as a bulkhead exploded, showering half the bridge with shrapnel. Keeyah jerked sideways in his chair but clung to the helm, and Chris watched as the blood from the wound in his helmsman's arm started to drip down and onto the deck.

And then the dripping blood reversed and started to fall upwards.

"Launchinglaunchinglaunchinglaunching--" Hepzibah's voice chanted over and over again, as loud as if she were shouting in his ear, not on the other side of the bridge entirely.

Raza's voice, still impossibly high-pitched, chittered something about catastrophic failure, and Chris clung to his chair, feeling his ship shuddering beneath him, trying to tear itself apart. Strange lights, colors he couldn't put a name to, danced at the edges of his vision, but he could still see the forward screens and the horror they depicted. This close, the energy cloud was like a sea, a raging silver ocean of energy. Shifts as waves, rising before them with a malevolence he could taste.

And still, he was calm. Because he could see through the water at this distance, could see Earth, like Atlantis lying beneath the waves. Lost, and waiting to be saved.

"Launching!" Hepzibah's voice cried out again, or maybe she'd never stopped. Maybe she'd been calling out that same word ever since they'd begun, launching probe after probe even as the Starjammer was battered and broken by the tidal forces of the shifts. Her voice rose and fell like a dying bird, trying to struggle back towards the light.

"Structural integrity is failing!" Ch'od bellowed over the strange chiming in the air. Bells, Chris thought. Where were the bells coming from?

The Starjammer cried out again, the scream of an angry hawk, and Raza's console exploded in a shower of sparks, throwing him to the deck. Through the haze, Chris saw his cyborg friend struggling back to his feet, apparently unharmed. But of course he was. Raza was hardy, he could survive most things, even hard vacuum for a time. Chris wondered for a moment how well he'd survive down there, on the surface of the planet.

"Brace yourselves!" Keeyah screamed, and Chris turned back to see the mother of all waves, a shift so huge it dwarfed the Starjammer as the ocean dwarfed an ant.

It wasn't a shift, he saw, as it crashed down on them. It was the atmosphere itself, opening up and swallowing them.

Welcoming him home, Chris thought distantly. Then the chair beneath him was gone and he was hurtling forward.

Everything went black.

***

Chris fell to his hands and knees on the sand, gasping for air. "What the hell?" he muttered weakly, raising his head and looking around him. Sand dunes, as far as his eyes could see. Above, the sky was pitch-black and starless, but somehow it was full light down here on the sand.

This wasn't right. He'd been on the bridge of the Starjammer, in Earth's upper atmosphere. There was no way any of the Shi'ar ships could have teleported him out through the energy distortion. Besides, if they had, he'd have been ABOARD a Shi'ar ship. Not--wherever this was.

Chris got up, swaying. Something weird was going on here, he thought, scanning his surroundings, searching for some clue as to where he was. But there was nothing, just sand and black sky.

At least, that was what his brain was telling him he was seeing. Chris grimaced. He'd lived in space long enough that he could tell when he was on a planet. There was a palpable difference between real and artificial atmosphere, between genuine and simulated gravity. Sand or no sand, this place didn't feel like a planet. Didn't feel quite real, when you got down to it--

He swayed again as a wind blew up out of nowhere, strong and cold. "I must down to the seas again, to the lonely seas and the sky," a familiar voice whispered to him on the wind.

Something clenched painfully in Chris's chest. "Scott?" he whispered hoarsely, turning in place, searching for the source of the voice. "Son--"

The voice laughed softly. "And all I ask is a tall ship," it murmured, "and a star to steer her by."

The pain in his chest came back, swelling into anguish. It was Scott. He knew that voice. "Scott," Chris called out, more desperately. "Where are you?"

"Where am I? Where are you?"

"Scott--"

"Why are you here?" And Scott was there, striding out of empty air, visorless and livid with anger. "You don't belong here," he growled, advancing on Chris. His eyes glowed red, but somehow his optic blasts were in check. "You shouldn't have come. Go away!"

Chris swallowed, backing away as Scott got closer. "Scott, please," he said, his voice breaking. If this was a hallucination, it was too cruel. He was going to have a serious talk with his subconscious when he woke up. "I came to help," he said, not knowing why he was explaining himself to what had to be a figment of his imagination, or something along those lines. "That's why I'm here--"

"To help?" Scott laughed bitterly. There was a restless energy about him, something Chris had never associated with his son before. It didn't fit, yet another thing that didn't, that made him think this couldn't be real. "You think you can HELP? You chose different seas, Corsair. You've got no place in this storm."

Chris stared at him, not understanding. "I want to help," he started again, not knowing what else to say. "Scott, I--" *I should have been there, should have helped somehow--*

"No!" Scott bellowed at him, and before Chris could do or say anything else, Scott was changing, growing and twisting into something huge and obscene, unrecognizable as human, let alone as his son. It loomed over him, huge and gray and full of hatred. "Anger holds the world together!" it roared at him. "I will not feel guilt! I WILL NOT!"

Chris continued to back away as it raised fists like boulders, preparing to crush him. "I'm sorry," he said raggedly. "I'm sorry--"

"Sorry has no meaning," a different voice, deep and rough and sad, murmured in his ear. "Wake up, Chris. Before it's too late."

Chris looked up wildly, and saw the others. Eleven shadowy figures, standing on the crest of the dune behind the creature, watching--grieving, he thought suddenly, in a moment of recognition that came out of nowhere. He couldn't make out more than outlines, but they seemed so familiar, all of them--

"Don't feel guilty, Chris," a third voice, gentler, unmistakably female, whispered to him. "You are here, you know. And even there, you're trying to help--"

"Don't grieve," the second voice said more firmly.

"Just live."

The creature whirled away from him suddenly, crimson light lashing out from its single enormous eye. "You DON'T BELONG HERE!" the creature roared at the others. "You're dead, you're only shadows! To the victor goes the world!" And they stood there, not resisting, not even attempting to flee, as it used its optic blasts to destroy them one by one.

"Stop!" Chris shouted, before he could stop himself. "You can't--"

It whirled back to him again, and Chris shuddered as Scott's face took shape on the thing's head. "Do you want to see?" it mocked him, and Chris heard laughter beneath the words. Women's voices and men's voices, high and deep, sweet and harsh, winding together in a desperate, mirthful harmony. "Do you want to stay, Corsair? Do you want to die, Father?"

Chris took a step back, but the sand suddenly vanished beneath him, and he was falling, falling off the end of the world.

***

Purring. It was the first thing Chris registered as he struggled back to consciousness; the purring, then the feel of the deck beneath him. Then the pain. Rather a lot of it, actually. His head ached fiercely and his chest hurt enough that breathing was harder than it should be.

He remembered--an explosion, or something, throwing him out of his chair. Then the desert. A hallucination, it had to be--

Chris forced his eyes open and saw Hepzibah bending over him. Which explained the purring, he thought disjointedly. He managed to raise a hand - his arm felt so heavy it took all his strength to move it - to try and wipe away whatever was making his vision so blurry. Hepzibah caught his wrist and hissed at him reprovingly.

"Lie still," she said. "Coming, Sikorsky is."

Chris opened his mouth to ask if they were at a safe distance from the shift-field, but couldn't manage any more than an unintelligible croak. Hepzibah shhed him angrily, but Chris swallowed and tried again.

"Situation?" he rasped.

"Out of the shift-field," she said curtly, clearly recognizing that he wasn't going to leave it alone until he got an answer. "All probes dropped. Only you, hurt, but major systems damage. Bringing us back to the birdies' station, Keeyah is."

The ship was limping along on manuevering thrusters; Chris could feel it, just by the vibration in the deck beneath him. Major systems damage, Hepzibah had said. At least everyone was okay. He closed his eyes, mustering his strength, and then pushed himself up to a sitting position. Hepzibah hissed, but shifted around to support him. Chris appreciated the gesture, but didn't have the breath to tell her so for a few moments.

"Hail the station," he croaked, telling himself that his head wasn't really exploding, it just felt that way. It would be nice if his vision would stop trying to go dark, though.

The station commander, Ken'doran, appeared on the forward screen. The image wavered and fragmented - *at least I hope it's the image and not my eyes,* Chris thought tiredly - but it was just clear enough to show that the Shi'ar officer looked like he'd just had a vision of Sharra and Kyth'ri.

"Commander," Chris said weakly. "You can tell Doctor Sirella we delivered all her packages." Ken'doran opened his mouth and then closed it again, and Chris frowned, then winced. Even moving the muscles in his face hurt, damn it.

"Corsair," Ken'doran said, still looking at him as if they'd never met before, or as if he'd seen a ghost. Chris really couldn't tell which it was. "Doctor Sirella is--"

"Captain," Raza said, and his voice sounded odd. Chris started to look around at him, but stopped as his neck protested the movement. *Sikorsky's going to have a good time lecturing me today,* he thought hazily.

"What, Raza?" he asked, and the words came out just a little bit too slurred for his liking.

"We doth appear to be alone in orbit, save for the station. The Shi'ar squadron, Lilandra's flagship--"

"Gone?" Chris asked, not understanding. Surely Lilandra wouldn't have just left. It didn't make any sense. Kind of funny, though. "They didn't--want to stick around and find out what happened?" He gave a weak laugh and then winced, a hand going to his ribs. "Not very nice--"

Ken'doran's expression was strangely resolute as he jumped back into the conversation. "Corsair," he said quietly. "They waited."

"Yet they aren't here," Ch'od said, sounding baffled and more than a little suspicious.

Ken'doran's expression tightened. "They waited as long as was reasonable. You don't understand--"

"Enlighten us, then," Hepzibah hissed, her voice flat with hostility.

"We thought your ship had been destroyed, when you didn't re-emerge from the phenomenon."

"Time was--strange," Chris muttered, remembering. "Suppose that's not--too surprising, under the circumstances--"

Ken'doran seemed to be struggling for words again. "Stranger than you think," he finally said, his voice heavy. "Your ship began its orbital run and disappeared from our sensors completely. We scanned for--for a time, hoping to discover what had become of you, but eventually we assumed the worst."

"Eventually?" Hepzibah asked sharply.

"After a few months," Ken'doran said. "Then Doctor Sirella passed away, and our new chief scientist decided that the time was better spent on other tasks--"

Sirella was dead? Chris thought dully. "How long?" he asked. "How long have we--"

"Two years," Ken'doran said, as Chris's mind reeled from the idea. "You've been gone for two years."

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