Tavis might have been confident in his assessment of Volk's situation, but not so with his own. Ever since they'd come in sight of the hills ringing the valley, he'd felt an oppressive sense of dread about it, not unlike his general feelings towards water and everything to do with it.
The hills kept looming darker and larger, and the sky had seemed totally black when he watched Theran take off into the swamp alone, abandoning them to whatever fate had in store for them. The trouble was, he could not be sure if it was just paranoia stemming from the most recent in a string of attempts on the part of his own brothers to end his life, or if he was actually sensing something.
Despite the persistent existence of his sixth sense, Tavis was not reliable like a Jedi, and no amount of training could make him such. The ability was distinct and separate from those of the Jedi, in spite of the intent of the scientists who'd developed the concoction that had done it to him in the first place.
Though he had gradually learned to cope with the myriad thoughts and feelings that seemed to constantly bombard him, he'd also become keenly aware of the fact that they were just vague possibilities, potential truths, little more reliable than gut instinct, which was what Volk was guided by most of the time. Certainly they had done nothing at all to warn him about Onoff. Or help him with Oliana Alzena, for that matter. His sleep was never untroubled, but it was impossible to differentiate the nightmares from the precognition (if one could call it that) until it was too late to do anything about it.
He had only told Rafe part of the truth when he said he would not stand by and watch the squad destroy itself. The possibility that he could not be steady or reliable at all times had crossed his mind. It was possible he was unfit for command. If that was so, then he must do the next best thing, and that was to provide Rafe with all the information and support he needed to become an effective leader for Fortune.
Tavis loved Fortune, and would give anything for them. And that included giving up the thing he wanted most, which was control over their future. Much as it hurt and terrified him, he was wise enough to realize that he might not be best suited to protect them. Even if he could reliably command them, the rest of the GAR would never accept him as a squad sergeant, and Fortune would have to suffer for what he'd done.
If he found himself in charge of the squad and requesting backup, would it ever come in response to his summons? Probably not. He could not allow the squad to suffer for his actions. That was not the way to treat something you cared deeply for. That kind of care (some might even venture to call it love) was putting the needs of who you cared about above your own wants and needs. It was giving your all, and asking nothing -absolutely nothing- in return.
Still, the thought that he was not worthy of Fortune wounded him in a way he could not accurately describe. The thought that he could cause them suffering, or fail them, was unbearable.
Maybe this was sufficient reason for his dark feelings towards the hill. Perhaps it was merely the redirection of his internal turmoil, seeing danger where there was none. But could he trust that? There was not only the success of the mission at stake, but the lives of eight men, including himself. But could he rely on this... this intuition... to tell him what he needed to know?
Though it was not his shift to stand watch, sleep was not possible. Not with these things running through his mind. No, he could not command Fortune. Not with fear and indecision plaguing his every waking moment, and stealing sleep from him by the hour.
He'd been right so far, but what if next time he was wrong? What if the next thought or feeling he acted on was wrong? What if he got them all killed? What if he already had, and just didn't know it yet?
"Why are you so afraid, Tavis?"
Tavis twitched, and realized on some level that -despite his thinking it was impossible- he'd somehow gone to sleep. He knew this because the man who'd spoken to him was dead, and had been for some time. And Tavis did not believe in ghosts (no one had ever told him about Force Ghosts, and he might not have believed them if they had). He'd been addressed by the dead before in dreams. Sometimes they seemed to be just dreams. Other times, like some part of his mind had figured out what his sixth sense was telling him, and decided to explain it to his consciousness in the form of someone familiar, someone he might trust and believe. It didn't make any sense, but it was the best explanation he could come up with.
"You are so trusting, Tavis. And you have so much faith in others," the dead man continued, striding to a boulder and sitting down on it, "Why don't you have any in yourself?"
Tavis rose and went to sit beside the man.
"You know why. You're proof of why."
"Am I?"
"Mother," for that was the nickname which had been given to this clone, the former Sergeant of Fortune Actual, "You are dead. You aren't really here."
"I'm not?"
"You're not. Yet I see you. I hear you. And I believe you are here."
"But you just said I'm not here."
"Because you can't be," Tavis insisted, "You're dead. And dreams aren't real anyway."
"They're not?"
"You don't even sound like the Mother I knew," Tavis grumbled, "My subconscious can't even get that much right."
"If I am a construct of your subconscious, shouldn't that be based off your memories of me?"
"I don't have the energy for this," Tavis said, turning to look off at the hills, which in this dream-scape had become black mountains, topped with a swirling dark smoke.
"And yet, I am here," Mother said.
Tavis moaned, pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to ignore the apparition, and the feelings that seeing Mother again evoked. Mother's death had been brutal, senseless, and Tavis had been powerless to prevent it. He hadn't had the ability to save his sergeant. It was one of many things with which he had to live.
"Look at the mountains, Tavis," in the way of dreams, Tavis found himself looking at the black mountains without having decided to do so, "What do you see?"
"I see... smoke. Jagged cliffs. No safe way over."
"Look at them, Tavis. Look hard," urged the voice of Mother, which was now wavering, fading out, "Look, and remember what you know."
"Dammit!" Tavis whirled, but the dead man was gone, evaporated as though he'd never been, "Why is it always riddles with you!? Why can't you just give me a straight answer for once!?"
He was looking at the mountains again without having turned towards them. The smoke... there was something wrong with it. Something unnatural. It wasn't... really smoke. It was something else. Something far more deadly. Something... familiar. He'd seen it before. He knew it. He knew it, but he couldn't place it. He couldn't remember in his agitated state. He couldn't...
"Tavis!" a harsh whisper jarred his view of the mountains, and they began to blur and lose their shape, "Tavis! Wake up!" someone was shaking him, and he snapped to consciousness abruptly.
"W-what?" Tavis blinked, trying to kick his brain into a functional order.
"You were beginning to shout," Rafe said, his whisper gentler now, "You'd have woken the whole squad with that racket."
"Oh," Tavis said, keeping his voice low and sitting up slowly, wincing as his bruised and weary body protested.
Rafe sat back, resting his arms on an upraised knee.
"Want to talk about it?"
"Not with you," Tavis replied, rubbing his head in the vain hope of reducing the aching in it, "What did I say?"
"Nothing coherent," Rafe said, "You sounded pretty upset. Bad dreams?"
Tavis looked at Rafe sharply, looking for signs in the dark of sarcasm or mockery. But he didn't see any in Rafe's face, nor was there evidence of such in his voice.
"I said I don't want to talk about it," Tavis reminded him.
"You did," Rafe nodded, "But, as you so recently reminded me, it's my job to look out for this squad, and the success of the mission. And, Tavis, Volk isn't the only one suffering stress. You're about as stable as an earthquake, ready to strike out or shatter completely at any second. If you don't find a way to relieve whatever that pressure inside you is, it's going to kill you. Or us."
"What do you care?" Tavis asked irritably, "You want me dead."
"No," Rafe corrected him, "I may have thought I wanted that once, but not anymore. And I think you know it. Now I understand you, and more importantly what you mean to this squad, your death is the last thing I want. But I also won't have you endangering this squad or reducing its efficiency. So unless you tell me what's eating you up inside, I'm going to have to take you out of fireteam one."
"Sergeant!" Tavis nearly shouted, but caught himself and lowered his voice just in time, "Fireteam one currently consists of myself and Phisher –- and nobody else! You take me off that fireteam and you'll leave the squad vulnerable."
"And you think it's safe for you to be stumbling in and out of dazes back there? Don't think I haven't noticed. Tavis, you may know this squad, but your ability to focus leaves something to be desired."
Tavis opened his mouth with a ready retort, but he choked it down. Rafe was right. And not only that, Rafe had unknowingly sparked off a chain reaction of thought in Tavis' mind, which caused him to look up and past the sergeant, at the hills. Somewhere in that darkness was Garm, standing guard over the squad. But that wasn't what Tavis was thinking about. He was thinking about something else, something familiar, something he knew but had forgotten... now at last he had it.
"Suicide Holes," he said, not particularly to Rafe, not really to anyone.
Rafe whirled as though he expected an enemy to be bearing down on them even now. He needed nothing further from Tavis to understand. They'd all heard about the Suicide Holes, been told about the signs to look for. Signs that, now they were looking, stood out like neon signs.
"No wonder Theran went ballistic," Rafe breathed, "He knew. He was trying to warn us."
"And we ignored him," Tavis whispered quietly.
"We need to go," Rafe realized aloud, "Now, before it's light."
"We don't know they're exclusively daytime critters," Tavis said.
"No, but we do know they're active in the daylight. Maybe they're not at night. We'll have to take that chance. I want to be well away from this spot by morning."
"The men are exhausted, you said it yourself," Tavis said, "You push them much more and they'll simply break."
"You think it's better to stay here, knowing what's just over that hill?" Rafe demanded.
"If you're asking my opinion, no, I don't. I just want to be sure you know what you're doing."
"That's right, use your head," Rafe said approvingly, "If you could just hold onto that all the time."
"If I could hold onto it all the time, you would not have become the sergeant for Fortune Actual."
"Well, I guess it's my good fortune that you're a flaky bitch," Rafe laughed.
"Ugh," Tavis moaned, "I could do without your kind of humor in the middle of the night."
"Come on, help me get them up," Rafe said, shoving Tavis' shoulder to urge him to his feet.
Though the source of Tavis' dream couldn't be adequately explained, Kavan didn't have any question about Caden's nightmares. Despite his assurances to Nattan, and the fact that Caden had been lucid in a conversation earlier, he became feverish in the night, and restless, tossing and muttering to himself in clear agitation. Occasionally, something in his mind would wind him up, and Kavan would find himself holding the PFC down to prevent him from hurting himself by thrashing and fighting some unseen demon. Kavan didn't try to wake him, but he did keep an eye on the fever.
B'Lyt stayed throughout the night, but didn't approach. He sat quietly and watched. After Caden's night terrors subsided for what seemed the thousandth time, B'Lyt spoke.
"Shouldn't his condition be improving?" B'Lyt inquired.
"It's this planet of yours. There's so much humidity and bacteria on this planet, even a minor wound is bound to get infected. Infection breeds fever."
"You don't have medicine to treat this... fever?" B'Lyt asked, pronouncing the last word 'fee-vorr'.
"I do," Kavan replied, "But it takes time to bring the infection under control. According to that tank sergeant, his body had probably been fending it off for the better part of twenty four hours before I ever got to him. That's a long time for an infection to spread through a host who's immune system is already overworked by internal damage as extensive as he suffered."
"If he dies? What then?" B'Lyt asked.
"Then we get out, while the getting is good," Kavan replied, "You know as well as I do that, if we go back with these guys, it's both our heads that'll be lost. And this time, there won't be anyone to save either of us. Hell, I've already used up a life time's supply of luck twice over. First Tavis, then you... I've got to be the luckiest guy in the galaxy, stumbling twice into people who'd risk their lives for me."
"I risked nothing I would not have risked otherwise," B'Lyt reminded him in his coldly reptilian way, "I do not believe in what my people are doing, and would not see them succeed."
"I understand that," Kavan said, "But that doesn't explain why you decided to save my life. If you'd been found out, you'd have been executed on the spot for high treason. Don't think I don't know it."
"Both of our races stagnate, and are bound for destruction. I see no reason to hurry the process," B'Lyt said, winking one of his great goggle eyes, the Anuri version of an indifferent shrug.
"I appreciate it anyway," Kavan told him.
"Let us hope we live long enough for you to properly express it," B'Lyt replied.
What neither of them knew was that Caden's nightmare of a moment before had subsided because he had obtained a state of consciousness.
He had heard every word, and now quietly proceeded to process this new information.
