Disclaimer: obviously none of the characters or specifics belong to me.
She sat in darkness. In silence. The same silence she'd maintained for more than an earth day. Her crewmates didn't understand. Her Captain didn't understand. They were angry, afraid, looking for someone to blame. She supposed she deserved it, if anyone did. Trance Gemini wished more than anything that she could explain it to them. But that, like so much else, was strictly forbidden.
Her quarters had no viewport to stare out at the stars of the universe, but Trance didn't need one. She sat on her bunk with her legs crossed beneath her, the room darkened to night around her, and watched the spinning of galaxies in the darkness. She watched as they rose and fell over a course of millennium; suns forming, aging, and dying fiery deaths, their planets blooming with life or fading to cold and inert. Either way, they were nothing but food when the Eater of Stars came.
She closed her eyes, but she could still see it. Would always see it. Unlike the other young ones among her people, Trance no longer suffered the burden of innocence. And the voices of experience would not leave her in peace.
Archaios. Diafthora. Thanatos. Agapao.
Countless more, and none of them would leave her be. Dead, gone, destroyed, and still they whispered to her with the cruel conceit inherent to the elders. She wished with all her heart that they had never come to her, that they had never chosen her. She wanted to be the old Trance again.
Her door chimed and she flinched. Then she sighed. Time to rejoin the living. If only, she thought wryly, I could.
"Yes," she said, and the door opened to allow her crewmate entry. "Hello, Beka." Trance didn't have to look up to know who was at her door.
"Trance..." Beka looked around the darkened room, hesitant. "Am I intruding?"
"No." The other woman stood and gave a small flick of fingers that Beka couldn't see. The lights flickered on. Trance smiled. "Please, come in. I've been expecting you."
"You...have?" Frowning, Beka stepped inside.
"Yes."
That made Beka nervous, though she couldn't have said why. Trance had a habit of saying things a certain way, of veiling her words almost as if a threat no one could see was just underlying them. It was something Beka could not ever remember in the old Trance, but it happened all too often in this newer, and to Beka's mind, less trustworthy version. That lack of trust made this conversation even more difficult. If only it were the old Trance...but it wasn't. She cleared her throat, looked around at the quarters decorated with lush, blooming greenery, and tried to relax.
"I, um, I've remembered some things," she said finally. "I wanted to talk to you about them before approaching Dylan and the others." She'd remembered more than just her conversation with Twinkle in that floating darkness. An hour ago, Beka had remembered everything about her unfortunate encounter with the so called Eater of Stars. Drifting back to pleasant, muzzy sleep beside Tyr, something inside her had shifted, and a cascade of shattered memory had fallen into place.
Trance looked directly at her, hands clasped behind her back, and said seriously, "I'm sure you do." She gestured to a chair. "Why don't you sit down, Beka. We were something close to friends once. It would be nice if we could pretend that were still the case, if only for the duration of this conversation."
Beka didn't reply, didn't return the small smile Trance gave her, but she did condescend to sit. She looked at Trance with eyes that were both earnest and guarded.
"Almost friends, Trance? I thought we were friends. I'd like to think that's still the case."
"Would you?" Trance sat across from Beka, legs folded beneath her again. "Would you really, Beka? Even knowing what you do?"
There was a small silence as Beka considered. That was the question, really. Did she trust Trance? A moment ago, she would have said unequivocally, "no". Now, looking at her golden skinned crewmate, she glimpsed something in those dark eyes, some glimmer of hopeful yearning that struck a resonant cord within her. Trance was afraid, she realized, afraid that knowing what she did, Beka would reject her, permanently.
"Yes," she said finally, "I would. Whoever else you might be, Trance, whatever else you might be, you are Trance Gemini. You are my friend. And I don't believe for a moment that you brought us here to die."
"No, I brought us here to live. I brought us here so that everything might live."
"I know." Beka waited for a moment, gathering her thoughts, and when she spoke, it was slowly and deliberately.
"That thing out there, that thing that got inside my head and...hurt me. It's you, isn't it? Not you, as in Trance, but you, as in something like you, something that used to be like you. Something you could become, if the wrong set of circumstances happened."
Trance looked away. "You're close, Beka. Very, very close. But that's not quite true. I will never, could never, be like that thing. But I understand why you might think so. What do you remember?"
"Voices...images...fragments of things I wish I didn't know. God, Trance, it hurts. How do you...how do you live with it?"
Trance shrugged. "How do you live with the things humans endure? Life, death, grief, joy, love? It's all so intense, so traumatic. I have my burden to bear, just like you. It's what I am, Beka."
Silence settled between them for a moment, and then Beka blurted out the question she most wanted an answer to. "Why are you here, with us?"
"I'm here because I need to be. Because, for the moment, I belong." For just an instant, Trance looked young and innocent again, and lost. "And you, all of you, are my family, or the closest thing I have to it. You don't know how much I envy you, Beka. The mutual respect you share with Dylan. Your friendship with Harper. Your relationship with Tyr." She smiled. "You're not ready to label that, yet."
Beka didn't ask how Trance knew about that. She just hoped that no one else did, yet. She thought of what Harper would say when he found out, and mentally shuddered. He generally disagreed with her relationship choices, and she didn't think having a Nietszchean in her bed was going to improve his opinion.
"Dylan respects you, too, Trance. And Rommie and I are both your friends. Harper...Harper doesn't trust or make friends easily. Your...change threw him for a bit, but he'll come around." Impulsively, Beka leaned forward and took both of Trance's hands in hers. "We'll defeat this thing, Trance, and when we do the others won't be quite so distant. I know what we have to do. I think we both know what has to be done. The problem comes in actually doing it." Beka paused. She didn't have the faintest idea where to begin, but she was hoping Trance would. "If it's all right with you, I think the first thing we should do is tell Dylan."
Trance didn't hesitate. "Now that you know what we're up against," she said, "I finally can."
* * *
Dylan couldn't believe what he was hearing, but it was Rommie who stood beside him, open mouthed. The avatar was clearly dumbfounded.
"Collapse the slipstream?" she asked, incredulous. "Like it's just that simple?" She snapped her fingers. "Right, we'll just drop a Nova bomb into the slipstream corridor and watch it collapse, a couple of nanoseconds before the chain reaction blows us into about a zillion pieces! Or better yet, traps us in our own little pocket dimension with that thing!"
Beka was unphased. "Do you have a better idea?" she asked the avatar. Rommie scowled, crossed her arms, and said nothing. "That's what I thought. Look, trust me, we can't do anything to hurt this thing. Anything we send at it will just be eaten. It will fuel it, not harm it. The best we can do is trap it."
"Beka's right," said Trance quietly.
"Right or not, this is an unbelievably dangerous enterprise, Trance." Dylan looked steadily from her to Beka. "You both realize that even if we're able to do such a thing, the chain reaction could theoretically collapse more than just this pathway."
"Not if we hit it at the right juncture, Dylan," Beka insisted. "I can find us the right spot, just like I can find the correct paths to travel. Give this a chance. Trust me. Trust Trance." She threw that last in for Trance's sake, and caught the other woman's smile when she said it. "At least let me go over the probabilities with Harper."
Dylan drummed his fingers on his desk for a moment. He looked at Rommie, at the avatar's stubbornly set lips as she stood silently awaiting his decision. He knew the idea of being trapped in the slipstream frightened her more than destruction. "Fine," he said at last. He was hoping some other solution would present itself, but didn't really think that would be the case. What the hell had Trance gotten them into? "Go over probabilities with Harper. Let me know as soon as you know anything." On to Part 12