Far From Home: The Complete Series (59 page)

10.

Hawk circled above the pyramid as he watched Carn land in the green bordering the pyramid, like a moat, from the encroaching jungle. He didn’t wait for the General to spot him – if he hadn’t already – and selected a site on the opposite side.

His shuttle settled in the long grass with a slight bump and Hawk didn’t waste any time clambering out and using the ship as cover. He peered up at the sky.

“Come on!” he whispered.

* * *

“It’s been a long time since I piloted a ship,” Chief Gunn said as she took over from Commander Greene at the pilot’s station. As they passed each other, their eyes caught and they lingered there for the briefest of moments.

“You’ll do fine,” he said to her.

They kissed, and as he pulled himself away, she grabbed his belt and yanked him back in. “Be safe.”

“I will.”

Jessica was already heading out the door, leaving the bridge in the temporary command and care of Chief Gunn and Lieutenant Belcher.

“Hurry, Commander,” she said.

She broke into a run down the hall, conscious of the slight numbness in her calf muscles and the uncomfortable knot working its way into the bottom of her back.

Not now, she willed it. Please.

* * *

A shot ricocheted off the side of the shuttle, followed by its thunderous report. Hawk flinched as General Carn took a few more shots at him, peppering the facing side of the shuttle with blast holes.

In the quick glance Hawk managed from behind the landed ship, he saw the General firing with one hand. Under his other arm, he held a big egg.

“General! We know what you’re going to do!” he yelled from behind the craft.

“And yet you are powerless to stop me!” came the reply. “History repeats itself. Yet again.”

The General looked up at the sky as the unmistakable rumble of a starship engine blasted the ground from above. The trees blew this way and that. Hawk looked up but couldn’t see a ship.

The cloak,
he thought.

When he looked back to where the General had been standing, the space was empty.

* * *

The door opened, warm air rushing into the ship. Commander Greene tossed the jump cables out over the side of the landing ramp, fastened as they were to the aft bulkhead.

They each took one, attached it to their belts and walked slowly backwards to the lip of the ramp.

“These are tied on tight, right?” Jessica asked him.

Greene nodded.

“Only one way to find out,” Dolarhyde said.

Jessica swallowed. “I hope she flies this baby straight…”

They all went at the same time, allowing the clips in their hands to do the work and slide them down the cables toward the ground. By squeezing the clips together they were able to slow their descent several times so that their landing was a little softer. It was old fashioned, and only ever taught in the Academy as a last minute resort. But here they were, decades after passing their basic ‘Descent From A Non-Stationary Vehicle’ course, and doing so perfectly.

Jessica unclipped herself and looked around. She spotted General Carn’s ship straight away.

“Where’s Hawk?”

“Come on,” Greene said, running ahead and pulling his weapon from its holster at the same time. “He’ll be on the other side.”

Captains King and Dolarhyde followed.

11.

“Where did he go?” Greene asked Hawk.

“Dunno. Fella was there one minute, then he just disappeared.”

Dolarhyde pushed ahead of them to examine the exterior wall of the massive pyramid. After several minutes, Jessica urged him on.

“Any luck?”

Dolarhyde held up a finger to her as he concentrated on trying to find the familiar groove. And then –

“Got it!” Dolarhyde cried. He bent down, ran his finger upward along the seam and then stepped back as the entrance to the pyramid opened before him.

Jessica breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness…”

Dolarhyde turned to them, bathed in the intense white light from the pyramid’s innards, and grinned. “Finally. We’re here.”

A shot rang out. Dolarhyde’s expression changed from delight to one of surprise. He looked down at his sternum, at the ruby red blotch spreading across his clothes. The former Captain staggered backward, steeled himself for a moment, then toppled to the side into the grass.

“NO!”
Jessica yelled. She ran to his side as the mountain sealed itself back up. She fell onto her knees beside him, and lifted his head.

His eyes stared up into the sky.

“Captain Dolarhyde! Stay with me!”

She heard the others crowd in around her.

Dolarhyde’s eyes grew pale, misty. Perhaps it was merely the light blue of the sky reflected in their glassy orbs. Or it could have been the colour draining out of them, their inner light fading away.

His face grew ashen. Blood gushed from where his hands clamped over his midsection.

“So beautiful,” he whispered, his voice quiet as the sigh in the wind. “And I can see it.”

Tears spilled down Jessica’s cheeks. She was sobbing and couldn’t help it.

“See what, Captain? Stay with us.”

“I . . . I…” he stammered in a breathless voice. “I… see the light.”

He died there in the grass, right in front of them. With trembling hands, she leant over and closed his eyes.

“Jess…” Greene said. “We need to get in there. Stop him.”

She couldn’t move.

Commander Greene yanked her up by the elbow, and her training kicked in. She wiped her eyes, found her resolve. Managed to control her grief enough to find the same groove Dolarhyde had used to activate the doorway. And sure enough, it opened for her.

Carefully the three of them stepped inside . . . and the moment they crossed the threshold of the pyramid, everything changed.

12.

“Whoa,” Hawk said. “Any of you feel that?”

Greene held his head. “I don’t feel right.”

Jessica looked about for General Carn, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“Where is he?”

Hawk went on ahead, his kataan at the ready. The inside of the pyramid was the same as all the others. Pristine white, almost clinical in its sterility.

Jessica looked back at the still-open entrance, and felt the breath catch in her lungs.

“Del…”

The Commander turned around too.

Dolarhyde wasn’t there.

“What the . . .” Greene managed to say. “Where is he?”

“I believe I can answer that,” a female voice said from within the pyramid. They both turned back around to see Hawk staring at a woman. She stood there, dressed in a Union uniform.

“Dana!” Jessica said in disbelief.

The former crewmember of the
Defiant
broke into a wide smile. “Hello Captain.”

“You’re really here,” Jessica said, touching Dana’s arms and shoulders to test her physical presence. “Not a spiritual being or anything like that?”

Dana shook her head. “Really here. In the flesh, as they say.”

Commander Greene had turned back to face the entrance, and the patch of grass outside where only seconds before Dolarhyde’s body had lain.

“Dana, can you tell us what the hell has happened? General Carn was in here, now he’s gone. Captain Dolarhyde was killed right out there,” she said and pointed to the spot. “And now his body’s vanished.”

Dana sighed as she readied to tell them what she knew. Hawk came to stand with them as they listened.

“When the General ran in here, he managed to change the timeline. But not in the way he wished,” she said.

“What d’you mean?” Greene asked.

“Well, as you may have already guessed, he wanted to head back to humanity’s past and wipe them out. But the devices are not built for that purpose. There are certain safeguards, and it wouldn’t allow him to wipe an entire species from history. However, it did allow him to choose another part of the timeline to visit. And that’s where he’s gone.”

“So . . .” Jessica urged.

Dana licked her lips. “Captain this is going to be hard to accept, but . . . your timeline – our timeline – doesn’t exist anymore. It’s all been changed. General Carn destroyed the
Defiant
before she could get pulled into the black hole that sent her to this galaxy. He left his former self stranded there, along with Hawk, and then assisted the Draxx in taking one system after another from the Union.”

Greene’s eyes filled with panic. “So Meryl . . .”

Dana shook her head slowly. “I’m sorry Commander. You’re all dead. We’re all dead. The
Defiant
was destroyed shortly after leaving the starbase.”

Greene stepped back, against one of the consoles lining the huge room, then slid down to the floor, his face blank, eyes pale with shock. The entrance to the mountain slid shut, sealing them in.

Jessica looked to Hawk. “Captain, if you wouldn’t mind,” she said and indicated the Commander.

“Yuh, sure thing,” he said and walked to where Commander Greene sat. “Hey fella . . .”

Jessica turned back to Dana.

“How do we fix this?”

“The only way you can,” Dana said. “Go back to a point in time where you can counter the General’s attempts at destroying the
Defiant
. It’s your only hope.”

13.

Jessica knelt in front of the Commander.

“Del.”

He shook his head. “I can’t believe it.”

“Del, listen to me.”

“I can’t believe she’s gone. Wiped out.”

Jessica snapped her fingers in front of his face. His eyes shifted to gaze into hers.

“Listen to me! You need to snap out of it! We can fix this. But I need you. We can save everyone,” she said.

Commander Greene nodded once. “Sure.”

Jessica stood. “Del, why don’t you let Hawk find you something to drink in here.”

Dana cleared her throat. Jessica saw she now held a tray of drinks, somehow miraculously conjured from thin air.

“How . . .”

Dana put a finger to her lips. “It’s a secret.”

* * *

They drank and started to feel a bit better about things. But there were many questions, and Dana did her best to answer them.

“So why weren’t we effected by the change in timeline?” King asked her.

“Because you were in here. It might sound unbelievable, but these artefacts stand separate to time and external forces. They are literally invincible.”

Hawk thumbed back in the direction of the entrance. “And Dolarhyde?”

“Still on the planet where you found him, no doubt,” Dana said. “After all, you were never here to pick him up.”

“And this thing will let us go anywhere we choose?”

Dana nodded.

“But we only get one shot.”

“Yes. Because there are no pyramids in our own galaxy, there would be no way of trying any of this again. One chance, Captain, to restore things to how they were meant to be and stop him. Rebalance the books.”

Jessica drank.

“And, uh, why are you here? Have they kept you prisoner all this time?” Greene asked her, finally coming back to himself. The thought of being able to fix everything was what had done it for him. To sort out the mess they’d gotten themselves into. To stop the Chief from dying along with the rest of the
Defiant
.

“They have transferred my body to a state of pure energy,” Dana explained. “This is the form I have adopted for now, and as you can see it is quite real. But should I want to change, I have only to will it for it to happen.”

“So yuh not human anymore, eh?”

“I guess you could look at it like that,” Dana said. She laughed. “Sorry. It’s just that I was thinking I’m really ‘More Than Human,’ you know, as the saying goes.”

“That doesn’t freak you out at all?” Greene asked.

“Not at all. It feels natural. It feels right. You should try it, Commander.”

“Uh huh.”

Captain King folded her arms. “So, we’re lost in time. What do we do?”

“I have a plan,” Dana said. “And although you’ll only get one chance, if you can pull it off, you might just be able to stop the
Defiant
from getting stranded in the first place.”

14.

It took about half an hour for them to flesh out the plan, working with Dana to perfect it.

“Seems good to me,” Greene said. “I don’t see how anything can fall through.”

“Well, it can,” Jessica said. “We can fail. That’s how it can fall through. But it won’t.”

“There’s only the four of us,” Hawk said.

Dana held up three fingers. “No, only three.”

“Huh?”

“I cannot come. They have other work for me. It seems that the ancient minds of these devices want to correct some problems with their programming. And they realise that they’re desperately in need of a spokesperson, of sorts, to converse with the natives of whatever planets they’ve been left on.”

“I can think of a problem, a pretty big one,” Jessica said. “If you’re not coming with us, who will control the machine? Dolarhyde was our man, but of course…”

She didn’t have to say it. Though Captain Dolarhyde was, right now, on the surface of that planet, they’d still watched him die in front of them. That reality had been overwritten, but it was real to them. As real as his body going lax in her arms as she held him in his final moments. As real as the light leaving his eyes . . .

“Captain, you will know. It’s all there,” Dana said and tapped her own forehead. “Everything you need is in there already.”

“I’m afraid I don’t share your optimism.”

Commander Greene stood next to Jessica and put his arm around her. “We have faith in you, Jess.”

“Don’t get soppy on me,” she warned.

15.

They joined hands, Jessica in the big white chair at the centre of the room, Hawk and Del in front of her, holding her hands and each other’s to form a rough triangle –
pyramid
 – of their own.

To the side, Dana watched them. Jessica noticed the woman starting to fade.