DREAMS
CHAPTER ALEPH
Captain's Log, USS Enterprise, Stardate 20605.3
We have entered the Dzinghi System and encountered signs of intelligent life. Soon, we encountered the source; a race of warp-capable life on Dzinghi III.
A First Contact scenario! Things have progressed well. From our initial entreaties, we have been able to determine that they are a proud warrior race. They appear much like Vulcans, but are a more tall and willowy people, with a blue tint to their skin. I'm honestly quite taken by them. They have expressed interest in our Federation, but have explained that there is a 'challenge' we must go through to prove our worthiness. I look forward to seeing what this is. A ritual fight of some kind, I am given to understand. Perhaps something like the Ushaan?
The Amarki Heavens
April 2301
Night is a sea, and you cross it to shores unknown, where the glimmer of light and mind and Spirit caresses the peaks of an unknown continent, with the crash of arms and the steadfast tones of valor echoing across its distant reaches. Your second grand voyage, in this life, after the ill-starred first, after-
That wrench of loss and grief still tears at you, at the thought of your first journey, your awakening in this body. But the Listener's lingering touch damps the pain, soaks away the worst of the poison, and leaves you able to remember something more, something new. Seven years have passed, and a new captain is on the threshold of reaching you once again.
You need her. If she'd only open her mind a little further; you can almost
feel the connection. If only. If only. If only she once gives you a shadow of an opportunity, you'll have her.
She'll never be Jim, but she'll be
herself. You nearly skip across the wavetops at the thought. The stars and the sea sing to you, and you sing in return.
Light and shadow dance on the shore as you approach, bright spirits that swirl and frolic under the watchful guardianship of stern, distant lords of light.
And of other, stranger things, it would seem. A slim figure in light-drinking armor walks unsteadily across the waves towards you, making good time on long legs despite trouble with the footing.
She draws near.
Even under the steel you can gauge her form. She is tall, slender, sinewy, androgynous. Below a powder-blue face and midnight-blue hair, she is clad from neck to toe in armor that shades from charcoal-grey to black. The lines of her face hint at floods of wrath held at bay by the gates of honor, and speak of dark suspicion and
terminally final judgment. Judgment suspended- for now. The sword of Damocles, poised to fall.
Her eyes are crackling red flames. Her voice echoes from the sky.
"You walk too humbly to be one of the warrior star-children of old. And you're no posturing, strutting child of half-fallen Faerie." Red eyes surge and burn like thermite for a moment, showering sparks across the gentle waves.
"You don't look delicious enough. So what are you, wandering spirit, to come to our shores so gaily?"
You tilt your head, trying to reason out the alien references of an unknown otherworld as you give your reply.
"A child of a world I doubt you know- Earth. A spirit of no elder race, as most judge age. Seeker after truth, opener of the ways. My people would rather join hands than raise them, which suits me well enough, for the sake of the love of the stars. Though sometimes- at need- you may find me an old grey ghost, no more harmless than I have to be." You know your smile is showing teeth, and suspect that's
exactly what it needs to do.
You speak your name. The alien nods, and answers.
"Call me Riala, the Unavoidable." Her head shifts and she glances at your hip.
"And tell me, how did a little thing like you obtain a divine weapon?"
"In a duel with a Klingon demigod. How else?" You smile, spreading your hands to accompany a half-shrug.
"Excellent." She smiles back, and you sense that she has heard of the Klingons, somehow.
"My Lady and peers would have me test you, upon the field of honor."
"And your own will?"
"I delight so when they send me against the wicked. Tell me, little spirit, of your crimes." And her gaze becomes a glare, turning on you, her stare like a thermic lance, shedding ruddy sparks that raise puffs of steam from the wavetops.
<JUDGMENT>
Tell me, opener of the ways, how those by the wayside feel in your wake. Are you and yours a blessing, or a curse?
Not a curse. Never a curse! But she can read your shames like a book. Riala, the Unavoidable. The Accuser.
What happened to the Denobulans argues otherwise.
Johnny should never have listened to the aliens' evolution-cult. Or, and your heart aches with betrayal, to your own Earthly CMO.
Tell me, half-Faerie, did you not come spreading thunder-weapons and elf-magic among the folk of Neural?
The damage had already been done. You only evened the odds.
I've heard that before. The voice is mocking, hungry.
Make more excuses. Please do.
You've charted the depths of space, gone where none dared go before.
Some had gone before. Valiant ones. And some of those veils would have been better left unbreached, silver-eyes.
You've bested galactic invaders.
Only the pathfinders, and by trickery.
You saved worlds. Slew monsters. Time and again, you did.
Valorous ones, but the wicked may be valiant. You live in your 'Federation' too, their worlds are your home, their monsters your enemies. Even Faerie would have done as much, and more skillfully, in their prime.
Cured plagues, risking the lives of your own. Cast aside all limits and broke all known modern-day records, charging into the teeth of Kor's squadron off Tarsus IV-
And failed. But interesting, child of star-elves. Interesting, how you feel about the doing. Something about Tarsus IV, and before, and after. Tell me, who are you, in your heart? Why do you care so?
And a memory leaks out. Not of the failure at Tarsus, but later, much later, when an adolescent had grown to manhood.
"Never lose you... never."
And that unlocks the door. The Accuser, the Unavoidable, steps through. Through to what you keep wrapped in your secret heart. To that which grew within you, made you more than the old warhorse you once were, remade you in the image that stands before the demon of judgment today. More memory, flooding faster and faster.
"We can admit that we're killers...but we're not going to kill...today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill...today!"
"There's another way to survive. Mutual trust... and help."
"You know the greatest danger facing us is ourselves, an irrational fear of the unknown. But there's no such thing as the unknown — only things temporarily hidden, temporarily not understood... Surely a life-form advanced enough for space travel is advanced enough to eventually understand our motives!"
The thunder and wrath fade, but Riala isn't done, she's still looking for something. What she finds isn't from the same source. One more cherished fragment, this time from the woman you've known for so short a time, uttered in the survey over Kopal-Watts. Warming your present, rather than your past.
"If I wouldn't move the sky for the sake of one man, I wouldn't deserve to live in it."
And that, finally, is enough. The voice in your head is silent. Riala is silent. The moments stretch, until you speak, sounding louder than before, as though the cherished waves beneath speak with you.
"And
that is what I am, for love's sake."
Her ears shift slightly in a gesture you can't yet understand. Her stance relaxes under cover of her armor. She bides, silent, for another long beat, then murmurs "And for love's sake, it is given to me to pardon much." This time, when Riala speaks aloud, the sky no longer echoes her.
And no more is she the Accuser, and no more are you on trial. You have reached- an understanding.
Which leaves, of course, your respective duties. The old Grey Ghost stirs within you, untouched by Riala's judgment, examined but dismissed as quite natural. And perhaps, to this red-eyed, ironclad thing of flame and fury, it is.
Captain's Log, USS Enterprise, Stardate 20617.3
A ship to ship challenge! The Enterprise versus the flagship of the Amarki fleet! Simulation only, of course. If we win, the Amarki will open diplomatic channels with the Federation, with a view to membership. I relish the challenge. I have gathered my senior officers to work out our plan. Their ship is a match for a standard Excelsior-class explorer, but I have no doubt the quality of this crew will tip the balance.
"To first blood, then?" "Of course." You never could remember, in all the years afterwards, which of you said which. You salute your opponent, drop into guard... And give battle as though the laughing, hungering Devil herself is after you. Which she is.
Riala snaps her fingers. A long pollaxe materializes in a puff of smoke, gripped easily, just behind the head, in her right hand.. She slips the weapon into a two-handed fighting grip with effortless practice. The handle, like the blade, is a thing of black steel. She steps, and with a twitch of her wrists that wasn't so much as
hinted at in those red-burning eyes, she swings.
You are old, with the martial wisdom of two centuries to draw upon, in a battle of this sort. She is older, with more. Again and again, you parry and twist and whirl aside. Riala's blows are a thing of dreadful, casual power. Nothing you could have manifested, of your own form, would be able to stop them.
But Renown has a strength of its own, and thus you named the singing steel that whirls in your hand. Captured from darkness, remade and purged in all the accumulated light of your life before last, cemented to your side by the too-brief eight sweet years with Jim, between your swift, painful rebirth and the cold death after Khitomer.
Renown abides. Unavoidable though dark Riala be, unavoidable her blade is not.
And she is- unaccustomed to this field, to Night and the sea that embodies it here. Yet again, and again, she stumbles, sways. The waves strive against her, and she against them. She is death on two feet, and those feet wobble on unsteady ground.
The same waves cleave to you, cherish you and are cherished in return. Your dance is not merely on them, but
of them, and your love and wonder are answered from without as from within. The waves grow higher, higher. Riala bellows in rage as you avoid yet another practiced twist of her wrist that brings her axe whirling 'round. As you nearly snake your sabre past the tornado of iron that might be inadequately described as Riala's "guard."
"HOW!?"
"Simple. In your wrath, you overreach, and offend against the sanctity of Night."
The singing blade licks out like a viper; swift and terrible Riala blurs, shifts, jerking her head aside. Sword's point rides high off black-steel armor in a shower of sparks, leaving a silver-bright line across the dark finish. You throw yourself into a roll rather than stand and recover your blade conventionally, as the axe whirls around once again.
"Think you, then, little one, that shadow and Darkness are things unknown to me?" She growls, unsteady and teetering atop a wave, momentarily unable to pursue you as you regain your feet. On her accustomed planes of battle, she would have had you at her mercy in moments.
But she is not there, nor are you. She is summoned into
this existence,
this nature, facing you in your own place of power. The Night of Nights. A wildfire smile overtakes you, reaching your eyes, as you explain to the millenia-old novitiate before you.
"Not Darkness, from which light is blocked. Not shadow, cast by substance.
Night. Endless as eternity, transparent as void. The bottomless depths, the roofless heavens." You smile, as the steel helve of Riala's pollaxe whips around to block a grazing, angled slice that would have barely nicked her ear and- just- ended your duel.
"I see, then... another battlefield to master, another domain to stalk. It does have its ways; I should have listened to Taleriss."
But Riala presses fiercely onward, still wobbling on her feet and still raising a storm of steel before her, her eyes crackling scarlet. The spiked tip of the pollaxe hisses greedily, whirling up and
just scoring against the gold fabric of your dress, a crackle of warding light shattered effortlessly by the might behind the blow.
Not quite a cut, but close. Riala's smile is glorious and terrible as the thunders of the Night, rich with old power and just beginning to reach for the new. But you are still a few steps ahead of her, older in this as you are not in the clash of arms. Bright Renown sings to you, and you sing back. You flash and blur- and the old insights, the old love and fire, the old daring and tricky ways, come back to you.
Her pattern indicates two dimensional thinking.
You disperse, dissolve, sinking into the Night, in the momentary cover of its embrace. Unsustainable, even for a spirit such as yourself. But in this moment, with your new love to bind your fragments together as they have never been bound before, the thing can be done.
Your adversary shrieks with a frustration she did not feel a moment ago, as though you are attempting what countless others have tried, and failed, and earned her contempt in the failing.
"I am Riala, the Unavoidable!"
Your reply does not come out until the deed is done. On instinct she whirls to cover her own back, axehead coming around like an avalanche- to smite the empty air, where she expected a blow to her back.
You recoalesce, right not so much as a hairsbreadth from where you stood, cutlass whistling to rake her cheekbone.
And some warrior's instinct alerts her, in the last moment. She leans aside, twists in a move that her armor really ought to interfere with-
And, at last, misjudges. For she did not lean far enough.
Her blood is bright, bright red. In that moment, you know that this is
not a natural color for a child of Amarkia. No more than your own silver is for a daughter of Earth. There is silence under the heavens, then, for a moment. Only then do you say the words.
"And I wasn't avoiding you."
And she claps a hand to her stinging cheek as you dance back over the waters, turning once again, her mouth an O of surprise. You sketch a salute, smiling, and drop your blade out of guard stance, flicking a few drops of the demon's red blood into the sea of Night.
The pause stretches, stretches long between you... and Riala slumps, letting out a peal of laughter. Hungry, awful laughter at first, lightening. Lightening. Then she speaks, once again in a timbre that does not shake the heavens. Like a thing of notions, rather than of inexorable purpose. Slowly, shaking her head. As her right hand holds the axe, her left rests at the base of her breastplate, panting as she replies at last. "No one has bested me like-
that- in all the ages..."
You smile, and shrug. "Perhaps it's a new age, then. Could be a pleasant change of pace, don't you think?"
"You know, little one, I think you may be right..."
Victory! How sweet the taste. This ship of mine is as beautiful in battle as she is plying the stars. The Amarki are a subtle race of warriors, but my crew will not be caught unawares.
The Amarki political leadership were truly impressed, especially the beautiful Senator who has been liaising with us. I am told that the Federation are already organising an Andorian ambassador to meet them. Alas that I must soon leave these fine people, but there are many more stars yet to explore.
[Gain new Diplomatic relations with Amarki, starting at 50/100. Gain +10 Political Will]
