Part 36
Tyr's POV
I regained consciousness on the floor of the now empty and doorless containment cell. I had expected to protect the prisoner from a potential pummeling by Andromeda's pugnacious engineer. The powerful punch of the ruby warrior caught me off guard.
"Andromeda," I snapped as I sat up, "you told me Harper was attacking the prisoner. Is there some reason you failed to warn me about our red intruder?"
"I was surprised by her sudden appearance," the ship admitted sheepishly.
I leapt to my feet as the realization struck me. Trance.
"Computer, status report," I barked.
"My avatar has engaged the intruder in the corridor outside of medical. Harper and the Gorgonyte prisoner have been injured during the course of the battle. The prisoner is attempting escape. Activating internal defenses."
"Belay that. Shut down internal defenses. That's an order." The ship's holographic image glared at me as it complied. "Continue report," I insisted as I headed for the site of the battle.
"Tyr," the AI sounded strange. "We have bigger problems than this red Trance."
Bigger than the crew trying to kill each other? I stopped abruptly.
"I'm losing exotic matter containment."
"How long?"
"Full breach in approximately 30 minutes. Leakage may commence in as few as 15 minutes."
"Cause?" I asked.
"Self-diagnostics suggest a computer virus."
"Rak'han," I swore as I switched directions and headed at top speed for the ship's core.
"My avatar has collapsed," Andromeda reported, "It may also be affected by the virus. Its logic circuits appear to be disrupted. And Tyr, I fear something is wrong with Dylan as well. He has regained consciousness; but he is hallucinating. He has confused me with Rommie."
"I didn't think I hit him that hard," I chuckled.
"You didn't," the ship responded hostilely; "I'm reading elevated body temperature. Temperature elevation began shortly after my avatar confined him to his quarters."
"It just gets better and better," I responded with a slow shake of my head. "Do you have enough control of your systems to lower the ambient temperature in his quarters?"
"I believe so," Andromeda replied.
"Then do it." At the core I made a few manual adjustments to the containment field. I was able to strengthen the field temporarily; but I could not completely halt the progression of the virus.
"Andromeda," I called. She appeared with obvious difficulty. "What are the status and location of Harper, Beka the Gorgonyte and Trance?"
"Harper and Beka remain in medical recovering from their injuries. This red Trance actually treated Harper's injuries and the Gorgonyte's. Then the prisoner helped her correct the problem with Beka's vision. Trance took the prisoner back to the containment cell and returned to Harper and Beka in medical."
"Perfect," I smiled as I raced toward the containment cell.
The prisoner started in surprise when I appeared in the doorless entry to its cell and ordered it to follow me. It moved slowly from its still healing wounds and let out a small squeal when I scooped it up impatiently and proceeded to carry it.
As I loped back to the core, I spoke to it in Gorgonyte. "I am given to understand that you have helped to heal the injuries you caused to Beka despite the harm that has been inflicted on you since you came aboard this vessel."
It nodded, its eyes rolling in fear.
"You have my thanks," I told it, "And an opportunity to earn my trust."
It eyed me suspiciously, like it feared I would eat it.
"You see, I'd like to keep you alive; I'd like to keep us all alive." I explained as I set him down in front of the core's computer console. "But your dead ex-general Rak'han had other ideas. This ship is going to lose exotic matter containment in about 15 minutes unless you can help fix it. Can you?"
As I watched the Gorgonyte reached hesitantly toward the console. 60 seconds later it slowly nodded in the affirmative.
"I'll leave you to get started then and I'll get you some help as soon as I can." I think I was more disbelieving than he was as I exited the core and left him alone there to work.
"Andromeda, are Harper, Beka and Trance still in medical?"
"Yes," came the slow response.
"I'd like you to inform Trance that the Gorgonyte is no longer in his cell. If she asks, you can tell her I took him; just don't tell her where. I need her distracted and out of the way so I can talk to Harper and Beka."
I watched from a conduit as an enraged Trance exited medical toward the containment cells. She was a magnificent vision of passion and power; one I eagerly anticipated testing. But for now she would have to wait.
Slipping through the portal and into the room, I crossed to the closed door. "Harper, Beka, it's Tyr; I'm coming in," I warned.
But Harper thrust open the door and hugged me tightly. "Tyr, Trance is back; but she's wrong," he said as I peeled him off of me.
"I know. Are you and Beka well enough to help me do something about it?" I looked hard at them both to gauge their reactions.
"Of course," Harper responded more confidently than he obviously felt.
"My sight's coming back slowly; but it is improving," Beka chimed in gamely.
"I'm glad to hear it," I said squeezing her hand.
"So what's the plan?" she asked.
"First, I need you both to forgive the Gorgonyte."
"You've got to be kidding!" she exclaimed, snatching her hand back.
"No way!" was Harper's equally adamant reply. "The only good Gorgonyte is a dead Gorgonyte. They are torturing, murdering scum."
I grabbed his chin, forcing him to look me in the eye as I reminded him. "You once felt the same way about Nietzscheans. Do you still want to see me dead little man?"
"No," he admitted as I permitted him to pull away, "but that's different."
"How?" I challenged. "He helped heal the harm he was ordered to inflict on Beka, as well as the harm he committed inadvertently. Right now he is striving to prevent Andromeda's destruction by a virus implanted by one of his own people, Rak'han."
"There you go," Harper interrupted. "You told us not to trust the Gorgonytes when we decided to listen to Rak'han. Seamus Harper doesn't need to touch the hot stove a second time to remember that it burns."
"Harper," I reminded him more gently than I felt, "I was right about Rak'han. I'm right now too. I'm not asking you to trust the Gorgonyte. I'm asking you to trust me."
Finally he inclined his head. "I don't like it," he grumbled, "But I'll do it, if you really believe it will help Trance."
Beka's damaged eyes crackled with rage and betrayal. "I trust you to look after Tyr. I'm even less enthused about your plan than Harper. I don't understand how forgiving the Gorgonyte will bring Trance back to us. That beast tortured me. Don't you care?"
"Beka, I've seen what the Gorgonytes do to their prisoners. Less than 24 hours ago I wanted to see every last one of them exterminated and was doing my best to make that a reality. Of course I care." I reached out and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear as I continued. "But revenge will only drive Trance further away from us. For her sake, I have to ask you to choose forgiveness over vengeance." She pulled away from me. "Damn it Beka," I snapped as I ran out of both time and patience, "what's more important, your revenge or all of our survival?"
"Go on with your plan," she sneered. "You've told us what needs to happen first. Why don't you move on to part two? Perhaps some time will make you more convincing."
"Fine," I snarled and turned to Harper, "Rommie and Andromeda have been damaged by a sleeper virus implanted into their systems by Rak'han before he died. I suspect that the virus may have a biological component as well because Dylan is suffering from fever and hallucinations, symptoms that began shortly after Rommie confined him to his quarters. Harper, I need you to take your tools and Rommie to the ship's core to help the Gorgonyte maintain exotic matter containment and find a cure for the virus. Beka, I need you to take some supplies from here to Dylan's quarters to help bring his fever down and keep him calm. Can you both do that?" Keeping Beka away from the Gorgonyte for a while should give her a little more time to consider forgiveness. "I'll keep Trance occupied."
When they nodded their agreement to the plan, I left medical and headed for Trance's quarters.
Upon my arrival, I checked the room. The bonsai tree remained on the bar with the clippers still sitting beside it where I had dropped them. Cradled in the arms of its guide, the new shoot was growing straight and no longer threatened the other branches. All was already in readiness; I need do nothing further to complete the scene.
"Andromeda, inform Trance that she can find me in her quarters," I ordered. Then I stood, arms crossed awaiting her arrival.
She burst into the room, a crimson fury. "How dare you enter my quarters uninvited? This time I will kill you."
"You are welcome to try," I smiled. My calm response enraged her further.
"I see you learned nothing from our last encounter. Before you die, tell me what you have done with the Gorgonyte," she advanced as she spoke and drew one of her new spike weapons. She moved lithely, more aware of her body than she had ever been during our prior training sessions.
"He's busy. Your presence would only distract him," I spun out of the way of her thrust and trapped her hand just long enough to wrench the weapon from her. Stepping back, I threw the weapon out of reach. "That's no way to treat a guest," I chided.
"I have another," she jibed, drawing it and launching herself at me in one quick motion.
I met her attack with both hands and flowed with the force she exerted, falling easily backward and allowing her momentum to carry her over my head and into the wall beyond. I stripped the second weapon from her as I did so and tossed it out of range as well. "You sound like a petulant child complaining over a stolen toy," I taunted.
She righted herself and attacked again. This time she aimed both feet at my chest in a flying leap. I ducked at the last moments and came up under her, shoving her upward toward the ceiling and then moving out of the way of her inevitable fall. "If you didn't want me here, you shouldn't have invited me," I grinned, enjoying the battle.
"I didn't invite you," she snarled, sweeping a leg at my feet in a misguided attempt to pull them from under me.
Instead, her face connected with my fist as she stood and she rocked back in surprise. "Of course you did," I insisted as I dodged her counter punch. "That's why I'm here."
"You won't be here long," she responded as one of her kicks finally connected with my abdomen.
"Your power has improved," I noted with an elbow to her chin. "I'm glad to see that you have finally begun to pay attention to our lessons. Your anger is negatively impacting your effectiveness, though; you need to think more dispassionately in combat," I taunted her.
With a shriek, she loosed a flurry of rapid-fire punches. I deflected most of them; but one caught me a glancing blow across the chin and another landed on one shoulder. "So just why are you so angry with me anyway? What have I done to deserve such ire?" I demanded as I grappled with her.
She stilled for a moment, craftily before planting a blade from the toe of her boot in my calf. Ignoring the pain, I tightened the muscle and twisted, snapping it.
"You hurt the Gorgonyte," she accused.
"Rak'han? I didn't hurt him. I killed him. But he attempted to destroy the Andromeda and everyone on board. His death was necessary." I told her as I avoided the knife imbedded in the toe of her other boot.
"Noooo," she wailed, attacking me wildly. "I told all of you not to hurt him."
I captured her, trapping her arms by her sides within the circle of my own and lifting her from the ground to limit her leverage. Then I used the strength of my legs, wrapping one of them around both of hers to prevent her from sinking the other blade into my flesh. "Oh, you mean the other one. I'll have to remember to ask his name when I see him again," I teased.
She sagged in my grip, clearly hoping I would loosen it. I didn't. "What makes you think I hurt him? In fact, I distinctly remember protecting him from several other irate members of this ship's crew. So, you got any other reasons for wanting me dead?"
She sputtered like a spitting cat, "You touched my tree."
"A capital crime indeed had you not invited me to do so," I retorted while she squirmed in my grip.
"I did not," I heard petulance in her denial.
"Of course you did. You died needlessly. We had already won the battle. You had already rescued Beka. You could have boarded the shuttle and piloted her home yourself. Instead you sent her back with the Gorgonyte that tortured her and told us not to hurt it. Then you blew yourself up, an absurd, ridiculous, unnecessary action. Why? If you had really wanted to protect it, you could have returned with it. The crew would have listened to you; Dylan would have listened to you. He always had before."
"No," she shook her head.
"Yes," I insisted. "So why? This was the question I asked myself. What possible purpose in the universe could her senseless death serve? That's when I realized that your death was an invitation, calling me here to engage in the one action I would not have considered had you returned to the ship. Your death was a lesson for me."
"Damned, egotistical Nietzschean," she swore, "Not everything is about you."
"In my universe it is. And you stepped into my universe at the moment that you decided to pull a Tyr."
As I spoke I could see that she recognized that thought as an unexpressed description of her prior self's analysis of her previous self's actions. For a moment I was with her in the cockpit of the slipfighter racing toward the ship that held Beka captive and she thought, "I hope I don't mess anything up by pulling a Tyr."
"I never . . . You can't . . . Get your ego out of my past!" she struggled and kicked, but the worst damage she could do from her restrained position was scratch my shin with her remaining boot blade.
I brushed my lips lightly against her ear as I spoke, "You chide me for my ego as you wreak violent revenge upon your friends for not heeding your last words. What an ego you have child. But I am glad for this ego of yours for it is ego that gives spirit and form to flesh. It is ego that drives will. Today, our ego, our will has changed the shape of the universe, yours and mine together."
"Keep dreaming," she snorted. "You and I will never be together."
"Trance, from the moment of your disillusion, you and I, your will and mine have been one with the will of the universe. You are the killer in me and I am the lover in you and we are one." I gripped her more tightly. "Had you not said, 'Don't hurt him," and died for no reason, I'd have killed them all, exterminated them like rabid magog. But for that senseless sacrifice, I'd have slaughtered him. Instead, I thought about your endless babbling about perfect possible futures."
"Babbling," she twisted in indignation; but I did not permit her to escape.
Rather, I squeezed her until she stopped, then continued, "The present you had left behind was unacceptable. In the perfect possible future both the Gorgonyte and Trance live. What choices did I need to make? What actions did I need to take to facilitate that perfect possible future?"
"You are not capable of that." she rolled her eyes in scorn.
"And here I thought you knew that I am capable of anything and that that was the reason for your inability to fully trust me. Understand Trance. Those questions were not unfamiliar to me. Those questions frame my actions every moment of every day. You and I may dispute the content of the perfectly possible future but do not doubt my ability to bring the future that I desire into being."
"You can't force me to agree with you," Trance sneered.
"I can bring into being a context in which you will choose to agree with me," I smiled.
"And I can bring into being a context in which you die. Yes, that future sounds pretty perfect right now." She sank her nails into my arm but I ignored the pain and maintained my hold on her.
"Your perfect future may be devoid of me; but mine includes you. No sooner did I think the question than the answer came to me and I acted in accord with that will. I performed the one action I would not have had you lived. I accepted your invitation. I entered your quarters. I lifted your clippers and I studied your tree. The tree was your metaphor, your inspiration, your perspective. The only way I could guide my actions to create the context of my perfect future was to see the universe as you saw it."
I twisted us both so we faced the bonsai. "Look at it," I insisted, "Look at what I did; see what I saw."
"I did," she growled ferally, "I saw it all."
"But did you understand it?" I whispered.
"I understand that you all betrayed me," she screamed, writhing in my arms once again.
I refused to yield. Her rage excited me and I pressed our bodies closer together until she grew still against me once again.
"You saw what you needed to see then to make now possible," I told her. "See what I saw then, now, to make tomorrow possible."
Without loosing my hold on her I drew us toward the bar. I lifted the clippers and forced them into one of her hands, my fingers pressed over hers, guiding them. "I saw a series of choices. Two branches in conflict. One, established branch risked being choked by a new, young shoot. Whether I chose the branch or the shoot, the implications of the choice were death. I needed a way to choose life. And that, Trance, is what I did to your tree. I chose life. I found a way that permitted both to live. I acted in the only possible way I could act and be in accord with the will of the universe, my will."
"Still not about you," Trance growled.
"No? It is, not. It is about you and your ego and your finding sufficient will to be you again and how I can help you return from the Abyss." Her eyes began to shine as I spoke.
"You know nothing about me. You have no idea how dangerous I am. I will kill you," she said quietly. And her red skin glowed with the strength of her passion.
"Are you so eager for death then?" I taunted and stretched our coupled hands which still held the clippers forward and placed their edge against the bark at the base of the trunk of the tree. "Then let's do it. No half measures. I'm the only one on board who tried to keep your pet Gorgonyte alive; so if you intend to kill me for not hurting him, you are going to have to kill us all. Are you ready for that? Is that really the perfect possible future you wanted? One dominated by death and anger."
As she and I stood, still locked in our violent embrace, the room filled with crimson light until only red was visible as far as the eye could see. "I understand death and rage just as well as you do, child. I know what it means to choose death and express the rage of the universe. I also know what it means to destroy the self, to kill the ego to preserve the self of another."
"Don't you ever get tired of talking about yourself? News flash, normally taciturn Tyr soliloquizes," Trance quipped flippantly. "Now let go of me and get out! You don't belong here!"
"Don't be so sure. No one on this ship experiences their emotions with the intensity I do. Rage, joy, grief, happiness, pain, pleasure, every moment of every day, coded into my DNA, emotion written into the very fiber of my being."
"No!" her whole body shook with her denial. "This is my place, not yours."
I laughed out loud and kissed the cheek of the red Trance cradled in my embrace. "You know," I admitted, "I love you like this. I really do. So full of raging passion. Yes, I find red Trance quite to my liking."
I laughed again and Trances in a myriad of colors suddenly stretched into infinity. "You are absolutely right, child," and I kissed her again. "I belong here, where I can see all of the alternatives and their implications spread out before me. Existing in this place is unity, balance. Action form this place is in perfect concert with the will of the universe, my will."
She stared at her billions of selves. "Not about you," she repeated dully.
"Overwhelming emotion is no excuse for abandoning thought before action. You must find a balance between mind and feeling to survive, child, not be enslaved by them. You know this truth. You always think before you act. You look; you see. Look now and see what happens when you don't. Billions of Trances in a rainbow of colors stretching out into eternity. Multi colored Trances. Every moment of every day a choice, child. You know as well as I the value of continually thinking through the ramifications of one's acts, continually observing one's self and one's contexts. Why have you stopped? Why have you locked yourself in a monologic perspective?" A ripple ran through the myriad Trances.
"Past, present, future, time, space, all are one at the speed of light, child. You were one with the universe then; you are one with the universe now. Every moment of every day you always/already engage in right action if you look, listen, think, learn. All are one. From here we can go anywhere you want to go. From here, the universe has no limits."
"Let me go," she screamed. "I made my decision. I don't belong here."
"Yes," I said, "you do. You still have to decide whether you shall exercise you own will, the will of the universe, as you move forward; or shall you serve the will of the Abyss."
"Choose Trance," I demanded as I released her. "Where will we go from here?"