“Robin,” Soleta said firmly, placing a hand on Robin’s shoulder to command her attention. “I have no clue as to what you are referring.”

“When you suggested I go to the holodeck a few weeks back,” Robin reminded her. “And the holoimage of my mother was waiting for me. The one you put together.”

“I put together no such thing.”

“You did! You must have!” Her voice was getting louder, once again attracting attention. “I mean ... why else did you suggest I go to the holodeck if you didn’t have that waiting for me?”

“Because the holodeck can be a diversion. That’s all,” Soleta said. “I had no ulterior motive other than to suggest you engage in some pastime that you might find amusing.”

“So ... so what are you saying? That you didn’t ... ?”

“I believe,” said Soleta with careful patience, “that I have said this far more times than should be necessary.”

“Well then who ...”

Her voice trailed off and very slowly, she looked at the ops station. She felt a pounding beginning in her head as matters that seemed too insane to contemplate began to occur to her. “It couldn’t be,” she whispered.

“What could not be? What are you ... ?” And then Soleta’s mind went in the same direction as Robin’s, and she likewise was stunned at the notion, although the shock did not register as openly on her face. “You ... are not insinuating what I think you are ...”

“Devereaux!” Lefler suddenly called, and she didn’t realize she was standing even as she rose and backed away from the ops station. “Stop fiddling with the computer systems a minute!”

“Fiddling?” He sounded very put out. “I would hardly term what I do fid—”

“Just shut up!” She licked her suddenly dry lips, cast a quick glance at Soleta, who nodded in encouragement, and then called, “Computer.”

“Working,” came the familiar computer voice. Except for the first time, Lefler noticed it sounded a little ... too familiar.

Her mouth started to move, to try and form the next words, but nothing emerged at first. And when it did, it was as a strangled whisper. “Mother?”

Silence from the computer.

All eyes were on Robin as she took a step forward, cleared her throat, and said more loudly this time, “Mother? It’s me. It’s Robin. Mother ... if you can hear me ... say something.”

Another pause, and then ...

“You really need to do something about your hair, dear,” came the slightly disapproving voice of Morgan Primus from the computer console. “Mourning is all well and good, but you don’t have to let yourself go to seed because of it.”

The world went black around her, and for the first time in her life, Robin Lefler passed out dead away from shock.

RUNABOUT

SI CWAN STARTED TO WONDER what was going to get to him first: the damage to the runabout’s life-support system, or the deathly quiet.

Ever since the runabout had torn away from Danter, Kalinda and he had known that there had been systems damage from the farewell shelling they had taken. They had managed to keep the engines going, and between those and the simple tendency of objects in motion to stay in motion, they had continued on a fairly straightforward heading away from Danter.

They had watched for any signs of pursuit for the longest time. It wouldn’t have been all that difficult for anyone chasing them to catch up in fairly short order. The ship was barely able to attain warp speed, and even then it couldn’t maintain it very long without sustaining serious structural damage. No one, however, did. For a time, Si Cwan wondered why, and then it occurred to him: He and Kalinda simply weren’t important enough to go after. It was a harsh realization for him to come to, and irrationally he almost wished that they had come in pursuit and blown them out of space. Better to be dead than ignored. Then he realized what he was thinking and cautioned himself not to repeat his sentiments to Kalinda, lest his sister give him that dead-eyed stare she used to indicate she thought he’d just said something amazingly stupid.

It was not long after they had made their initial escape that Si Cwan realized his ruminations about oblivion being preferable to obscurity might be coming to unfortunate reality. The systems-wide damage they’d sustained was worsening at an exponential rate. The runabout was simply not on par, in terms of quality, with similar Federation equipment.

The first thing to develop problems was the replicator, which would be providing them with food and water for however long they were out in space. Neither Si Cwan nor Kalinda were technicians; nevertheless, they did everything they could to effect repairs with the help of oral computer instructions. This worked right up until the moment when the computer suggested they slam their heads repeatedly into the console, then blow open the hatch and go for a long walk, at which point they realized the computer systems were malfunctioning.

So they eked out what they could from the replicators whenever they could get them to work in some sort of spotty fashion, and that kept them going for quite a few days until the air started feeling thick. It was at that point they realized the air purifiers were going offline. They weren’t running out of air, but the toxins from their exhalations were being filtered out at a slower and slower rate. The Thallonians realized it would be only a matter of time before they were unable to function or even breathe.

They minimized their activities. Both of them were trained in deep meditative techniques, and they reached into that training in order to minimize both their breathing and their movements around the cabin.

Si Cwan had no idea how long this situation went on, because the chronometer had started counting backward. For a while he’d hoped this was indicating that they were, in fact, going back in time. That, at least, would be interesting. Eventually, he had to settle for the realization that something else was broken on the runabout.

Along with the navigation system, of course. Never had Si Cwan so wished for the presence of Mark McHenry. That amazing conn officer somehow always just knew where he was in the vastness of space, with or without guidance systems. Si Cwan, however, was not quite as blessed. He had a general idea of the star systems, but navigation was more than just being able to pick out stars unless one was interested in heading into a collision course with a sun. It meant being able to know precisely where a planet was in its orbit in order to find it. Otherwise solar systems could be mighty big affairs while trying to locate one particular sphere. And that was information Si Cwan simply didn’t possess. Nor did he know where particular man-made outposts or space stations might be.

Besides, it wasn’t as if the ship’s engines would have been up for the voyage even if he knew precisely where to go. They were coasting well enough with occasional warp-speed thrusts, but the aim was to conserve energy in the engines because who knew when those might go?

The com system went shortly thereafter, so any sort of distress signal was moot. There would have been an automatic distress beacon on a Federation runabout, but he didn’t know if a Danteri craft carried such equipment. Ultimately the entire question was likely moot. Even if it did have such equipment, the way things were going it would probably be broken.

And so they sat in the runabout.

And sat. And sat.

Because the Excaliburso routinely interacted with other vessels, and because there was so much to occupy one’s time on the great starship, and because the ship went so damned fast, Si Cwan tended to forget just how gargantuan and empty space truly was. At first he had told himself that they couldn’t possibly travel for too long without running into another ship that would be able to provide them succor. Now, however, so much time had passed that he was starting to wonder if the opposite was true. If they would, in fact, ever see another ship for the rest of their lives ... however long that might be.