Author's Note: Ha! It's up on time! (And you can't see me, but I'm dancing around the room in triumph. I think I need to check my sugar consumption.)

All right, acknowledgements for this chapter. I took the related story from the Good News Bible, Today's English Version. The song is "Day Is Done," as sung by Peter, Paul and Mary.

Thank you, a lot of thanks, to: Yullia, JA Baker, Desert-Rose, Makura Koneko, darkshadow-23, and Rainbowscape. You guys are wonderful at reviewing! See you in the next (and, alas, final!) chapter!

The Child

Chapter Thirteen: Revelations

By B.L.A. the Mouse

"Okay," Dylan gestured Carmen to the chair across the deck from him, "sit."

"Yes, sir!" The salute was sloppy and irreverent, and the title sarcastic, made as the woman did a graceful slide into the seat. He was surprised; when they'd last seen her, graceful hadn't been a word he'd have used to describe her. Of course, then she'd just had a baby. "So what am I here for?"

The meeting had the feel of a student summoned to the principal's office. He leaned forward, intent, as he said, "I have a few questions."

"Why are you here?" Andromeda promptly supplied, hologram flickering in and looking stern.

Instead of reprimanding her, he added, "Inquiring minds want to know."

Carmen debated, briefly, what to tell them. An outright lie wouldn't be a good idea, but neither would absolute truth. So she went for the middle ground. "I think you already know. I want my son back."

"Why?"

"What?" Carmen was startled.

So was Andromeda. "What?"

"Why do you want him?" Dylan felt himself to be on reasonably firm ground after her reaction. He leaned back in the chair. "A year and a half ago you left him aboard this ship. Two months later, we received confirmation of your death. I'm assuming you faked it, but we can go into that later. Now I want to know why you suddenly want him back. And-" he held up a cautioning hand, "I do not want you to tell me that you discovered parenthood was your true calling, or you need him back to make your life complete, or that you loved him all along and just realized it. We both know that isn't it, so you may as well just save time by not saying it."

"Fair enough. I just got married. My husband wants a son and heir, and while that's old-fashioned I can still appreciate it. But I don't want to have to go through all that again. I told him about the baby I'd already had, and he agreed that if I brought the boy back with me, he'd adopt him instead. If I don't I have to have another. Is that adequate?"

Dylan rubbed at his chin. Somehow dealing with these situations was easier when they didn't involve children, people he knew, or both. "That's part of what I need to know. Now why didn't you report in as a survivor on Pavlov Drift?"

"Ah, the million throne question. Simple. It's easy to avoid people who want you dead by saying you are dead."

"Why do they want you dead?" he asked, smiling fakely.

"They lost a few hundred thrones on a venture and wanted to get the money back immediately. They didn't care that I couldn't help them."

"I'm sure. You didn't have anything to do with the attack?"

"No, I was planning to just quietly disappear and let them think what they would. The fact that they're thinking I'm dead is just a plus. Is that all?"

"One more question. Who's your husband, and what name are you going by now?"

"That's two questions," she replied, smarmy, but answered when she felt the weight of the stares from both the captain and ship. "My husband is Cale Leyner. I'm Carmen Leyner."

"Matching initials," he grinned cheerfully, ignoring her glare. "That's all I need to know. If I think of something, I'll call you back."

Carmen grimaced, "Thanks," before leaving- quickly.

Dylan watched her out, then said, "Andromeda, tell Rommie that she needs to get in here."

This was not going to be fun.

Rommie arrived expeditiously, not letting him get a word out before she started. "You talked to her and she wants Ash, right?"

"Rommie..."

"Dylan." Her tone was severe.

He sighed. "Yes, she wants him back."

Rommie bit her lip. She had hoped she was wrong, but now that she knew she wasn't, she wasn't quite sure how to go about dealing with it. "So what do we do now?"

"Now I find out more about her, and you worry about Asher." He leaned forward on the desk, scanning her features, tense with nervousness. "Relax. We'll find out something. There's a pretty good chance we can put her off on a detail. In the meantime, humor her, since I'm not quite sure what kind of a force we may be dealing with at the moment." He took a deep breath, knowing she wouldn't like his next suggestion. He didn't like his next suggestion. "Introduce them. Maybe that can tell us something."

"What?"

"See how well they interact. If he starts screaming and running away, then that's one more black mark against her." He let his lips quirk up a little, in a display of humor he didn't feel. "Just try it. Please?"

"All right. But try to find something that means she can't have him."

She turned to the door, and was halfway there when she heard him say softly, "I will."

Andromeda watched silently as Dylan toyed helplessly with an icon on his desk- a small plaque that he had been presented with in the first year of his captaincy. It was a recognition of his skillful handling of a situation with one of the few Commonwealth dissenters then that had nearly been fatal for a hundred thousand colonists. They had been threatening to release a biotoxin on the population at large, but hed managed to use negotiation and assault teams to stall the group enough to spare the colonists an unpleasant fate. Now she could almost read his mind as he twirled the small square around his fingers.

Finally, he said, "How did I help them, Andromeda?"

"You used strategic warfare and negotiation tactics as you were taught in the Academy," she answered factually, knowing he didn't want that as an answer.

"But if I'd been able to act faster, I might have spared the people they used as examples. If I'd ignored my orders, gotten there sooner..."

"The inhabitants of New Barbados might have been destroyed because you didn't repel the attack there first."

He ceased speaking for a moment, thinking. He knew that she was right, but he didn't like seeing even those few dying. "How did I help those two planets, millions of people, almost without breaking a sweat, and I can't even help Rommie? She's one of my closest friends, and trusted advisors. She's your avatar! She's taken care of Asher since he was a baby..." His voice slowly faded away as he rubbed at his temples. "Why can't I just do something simple?"

Andromeda stood by his desk, not saying a word. She didn't approve of her avatar taking care of a child- she knew she and Dylan shared that opinion- but like him, she didn't want her avatar hurt. Every emotion the other felt echoed through the link they shared. Even with the impact reduced, the pain Rommie was feeling was intense.

"Isn't there some old Earth story about something like this?" Dylan asked finally.

She checked her memory banks. "The Earth Bible. Book First Kings, Chapter three, verses sixteen through twenty-eight. Shall I read them?"

"No. But refresh my memory."

"King Solomon was confronted by two women, each claiming that a certain child was theirs. One woman's baby had died in the night, and theoretically she exchanged children with the other. Since they couldn't settle it, he gave orders for the child to be cut in half, and one half given to each woman. The woman who protested and said to give the baby to the other woman, not kill it, was deemed the correct mother and the uninjured child was restored to her care." She finished the summarization and stood waiting.

He chuckled dryly. "I suppose I can't give orders to hang Asher out an airlock, or to have Trance bisect him." He sat up straight now. "I just don't know. I'm going to have to check with Beka or Tyr tomorrow, and see if they've ever heard of a Cale Leyner. It sounds familiar, but I'm not sure where it's from. I hope I won't have to revert to what he did."

Dylan knew, really, that if he wanted to get Asher off the ship all he had to do was decide that Carmen should take him back. At the same time, though, he was sure that would be the wrong idea. He may have wanted him off, but he was sure by now that that would only happen if Rommie went with him, and he didn't want to lose Rommie. He could send him back to Carmen, but that wasn't a good idea; he'd finally been convinced that that was a bad idea when she showed up after a year of being dead.

Rommie sat in her quarters later. Asher had gone to bed a few hours before, leaving her alone for the night. She wanted to talk to someone, but everyone else was either in bed or on duty.

She was disappointed in Dylan at the moment. He had no reason to entertain that woman aboard, less to even play with the idea of giving her Asher. She had always known, of course, that he didn't want him onboard, but giving him to Carmen was just wrong. If anyone deserved him less, she did. She had abandoned him, not even telling anyone, just leaving him in her quarters not caring whether he would even be found. Even now it still drove Rommie crazy. She just hoped Dylan would live up to his word.

After what Dylan had said earlier, she'd sent a short, tersely worded message to Carmen requesting her presence the next day. She still hadn't faced her though.

The one thing she wanted least to do right now was see Carmen meet Asher. It was bad enough that Carmen wanted to take him away from Andromeda, from her, but seeing them together would kill her.

She loved him, massively so. She loved his laugh, his games, even when he cried. Ever since he was born, she'd gotten used to putting him to bed, waking him up if she had to, feeding him, and playing with him. She was sure that her arms would literally feel empty, she was so used to carrying his weight. She liked taking care of him. She didn't want to think about what would happen if she had to give him up; she'd been avoiding the thought since Dylan had transferred him into her care, and even now she didn't want to face the possibility.

Her train of thought was derailed abruptly with the advent of the child himself. She hadn't noticed any change on the vid feed, but then, she hadn't been watching. Now he was standing at the door to the room, looking like a perfect picture of a toddler: slightly chubby, with reddened cheeks and sleep-heavy eyes. His dark hair was tousled, standing straight up in one or two places, and he was clutching Blob as he wailed, "Rommie!"

She went over to him. "What's wrong, Ash?"

"Up!" After she had picked him up, he redoubled his wailing. It was fairly sleepy wailing, though, so if nothing was wrong he would pass out fairly quickly once she calmed him down.

"What's wrong? Did you wake up and get scared?" He nodded, burying his face in her neck. It was a fairly stock occurrence every couple of weeks, so she just did the usual routine, pacing the room and crooning one of the songs he liked best. "'Tell me why you are crying, my son. Is there a secret you can't tell anyone?'"

His sobs were already quieting, and she continued, turning to his room. "'Is it the thunder in the distance you hear? Will it help if I stay very near?'" He was drowsing now, and she had reached his bed. She tucked him in as she softly sang the last line of the verse. "'I am here.'"

When the door chime sounded, Rommie actually jumped. It was silly- she was expecting Carmen about then- but she gulped, glancing reflexively at Asher. He was playing with some model of Andromeda Harper had made up for him, blissfully unaware that this wasn't just some visitor they had to be nice to. Since extending the offer for Carmen to meet him- or get reacquainted with him, depending on how you viewed it- her every nerve had been on edge. So far, she'd started doing nervous tidying twice, considered changing clothes five times, and started doing pointless work three times. She was seriously twitchy about this.

The door slid open to admit Carmen, wearing skintight, shiny pants, some sort of synthetic and pricey, too, and a thin sweater that revealed more than it covered. "Where is he?" she said, bluntly and without fanfare.

"In here." If looks could kill, Carmen would be long dead, burnt to a crisp, with the glare Rommie was sending her. She crouched down next to Asher. "Ash." No answer- he was too intent on wrapping Blob into a bundle around the model. "Ash, I want you to meet somebody." This time he actually looked back up at her, his attention caught. She picked him up, turning to face Carmen, still lurking by the door. "Ash, this is Carmen. Carmen, Asher Darrell."

She looked at him coolly, sizing him up and making no attempt to take him. It hadn't been lost on her that Rommie had used his full name in the introduction. "Hi."

"Hi!" He beamed, holding out his arms. "Up?"

Rommie would have sworn she felt whatever circuits pass for a heart snap. For once she wished he wasn't so friendly. She barely prevented herself from smirking, though, when the other woman took him with the air of handling something toxic.

"Blob?" he added; Carmen had no idea what he was talking about, but Rommie retrieved the toy.

"Here you go. You're welcome." He grinned at her, showing off the dimple before focusing on Blob.

Dylan had called Beka and Tyr up to his office, as promised, to ask them. Beka arrived first. "What's up?"

"I'm trying to find something. Does the name Cale Leyner mean anything to you?" He shut off his computer before standing and turning his full attention to Beka.

She frowned. "I've heard it, but I can't remember where. Did you check with Andromeda?"

"Not yet. She couldn't find anything either."

Tyr arrived as he finished the sentence. "What do you need us here for?"

"I already told Beka. Do you know anything about a Cale Leyner?"

At that moment, Beka's eyes widened, and she let out what could best be classified as a squeak.

"What?" Tyr asked.

"What?" Dylan exclaimed.

"Cale Leyner! Dylan, did you read those files on Markio?"

"I looked over them, why?" Dylan was genuinely puzzled. What did Markio have to do with Carmen's husband?

Tyr, on the other hand, was getting an idea. "You mean..."

As Asher clutched the toy, Carmen regarded him with scientific curiosity and tried to keep him as far away from her body as possible. Finally, she looked up at Rommie and asked, "Did you pick the name?"

"Yes."

"Does it mean anything?"

If she'd had her druthers, she would have bitten her tongue. Telling her the meaning could be awkward. "He needed to be called something, and you didn't see fit to give him a name, so I chose his first and middle names. Asher means happy."

"And Darrell?"

"Beloved."

The silence that followed that statement was mildly intimidating. It stretched for several minutes, until Asher broke it, demanding to be put down. That was one that Carmen understood, and within seconds he was down with the model. The woman stared at Rommie, whose gaze was switching between Asher and the lazily scrolling computer screen on the desk. "It means beloved. You knew that when you named him?"

"Yes. I thought he needed something that made it sound like someone cared, at least." She really could have bitten her tongue. That had been sound reasoning when he was a baby that had been left behind when his mother took off, but now- when he had her and an entire ship's worth of crew besides- it sounded a little silly. Probably not to Carmen, though.

Luck happened to be with her. Dylan came on over the comm system right then. "Rommie, Carmen, my office, now."