The Thief and the Commander : 05
Jan. 7th, 2001 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
manicdakChapter 05: A Father's Betrayal
Earlier:
"I don't like this," Yaretzi said softly to Feliu so as not to arouse the suspicions of the rest of the team.
"What?" Feliu said. "Looks like business as usual to me."
"Yeah," she murmured. "It's just a sense."
"Your amphibi-sense?" Feliu chuckled at her. "C'mon, Yaretzi. It's par for the course. We steal from the Dysprosians for the Utopians, and vice-versa all the time."
"Don't make fun." She frowned at him. "This is serious. I can taste the unease in the air. Will you please be careful? Keep your guard up?"
Feliu nodded sagely. "Always do; Always am," he said.
Ganix arrived in their midst then, garnering their attention as he rehashed the plan. When he was finished they were to depress the button on their issued TTDs but when Yaretzi pressed hers nothing happened. There was no blinding light, and no sense of nothingness. She was as solid and present as she had been a moment before. She glanced worriedly around at the other equally confused crew.
"What's going on?" One of them reluctantly spoke up to Ganix Viernes.
"Sorry. Change of plans." He chuckled, softly at first, but his mirth gradually took on a more sinister tone.
"There is a diamond supply ship headed to quadrant four two years ago that we are going to hit instead. Everybody to your stations."
He marched from the room, followed one by one by the still confused yet obedient crew until only Yaretzi was left in the port-room: her own station.
She scratched her head and frowned. There was something tugging away at the corner of her mind, begging for her attention. She didn't realize exactly what it was until she sat down at her console. Her stomach lurched and her gills flared as soon as she realized what had happened.
She spied a small handful of blinking signals on her console, marking the departure of the outgoing time signals. Those few crew members had faded from her perception as if they had never been there in her time stream to begin with. While the majority of the crew's TTDs had been jammed a few had not, and among them was Feliu Viernes.
****
Feliu found himself inside the Golden Utopia Council Tower with far less crew than had been in the Darkness' port room. None of the men he'd count as his allies were anywhere to be seen, including Yaretzi. Her words of warning rang in his ears, and he knew he was going to have to be on high alert with the highly untrustable crew that he had been left with.
The crew leader, a craggly old man with one eye, approached him and informed him in no uncertain terms that they would be splitting up.
Feliu was left on his own to find the vault and remove the temporal compaction device that was the goal. He vaguely wondered why he needed an entire crew for the mission and why they needed to split up further, but he shrugged off the notion quickly enough. His father often had more than one iron in the fire and most of them were too classified for Feliu to know about. He liked it that way. He figured the less he knew about his father's more sinister operations, the better off he would be.
He sighed to himself and took a glance at his time piece. It flashed zeros at him. He shook it and held it up to his ear even though he knew it was useless. It had been broken in the jump.
"Piece of shit," he murmured to himself.
He put his malfunctioning equipment out of his mind and concentrated on the task at hand. He glanced around the deserted building as he walked.
He had walked those very halls what seemed like a thousand times before as Robin's friend and guest. This was a mission he hadn't wanted to accept when his father had first come to him with the proposal. Feliu knew it was one betrayal too many. He had hoped to keep his professional and personal lives separated from the point of his most recent capture going forward.
As the conversation with his father progressed, however, it became clear that his father was going to make his participation mandatory.
He traveled silently through the golden hallways, carefully avoiding the guards until he reached the vault. It was easy enough for him to bypass the outer security. It was a simple matter of hacking into the security system and setting the video on a loop, then teleporting into the outer vault.
The inner vault was another matter entirely. The Golden Utopia Treasure Vault was temporally locked. He couldn't just use a TTD or a port-key to transfer his matter into the inner vault. The lock was designed to bounce any incoming signals away. It was a very real possibility that even trying it would get him killed. He wasn't well versed enough in the mechanics and theory of time travel to figure out how to bypass such a lock. He was going to have to tackle the job the old fashioned way.
"This is why a temporal engineer would come in handy," he complained to himself as he eyed the physical locking mechanism in front of him.
He set his bag of tools down in front of him as he concentrated fully on his task. Yaretzi's warnings had slowly leaked out of his mind, and he had stop wondering what the rest of the team was up to. He knew he had to make up for his most recent indiscretion, and for that to happen he was going to have to give it his full attention.
It took him two hours work to break through the security protocols to open the door and retrieve the device; a temporal compactor, one of the most devastating weapons in the known galaxies.
He held the innocuous looking item in his hand and gave it a cursory inspection. Like the time travel device and many other devices, it looked like nothing more than a small flat metalic box with a few buttons and outputs.
Feliu shook his head and wondered if winning his father's approval was worth the risking of the lives of billions by liberating the device from its Utopian prison.
"Why don't they just destroy the fucking thing?" He muttered to himself, knowing that there was only one in existence and the inventor had long since ceased to exist, taking his research with him.
Feliu briefly contemplated dropping it on the marble floor in hopes of causing it irreparable damage, thereby alleviating the responsibility of choice. He quickly decided that it wasn't worth the risk. For all he knew, jarring the device might cause it to spit out a singularity which would be the end of him, the GU Council building and possibly the entire Zharan Galaxy if not the universe itself.
He sighed again, glanced back at the door he had spent so many hours working on, and carefully placed the device back on its shelf.
His father would have to remain disappointed in him. He wasn't going to destroy the world.
He slowly made his way out of the vault and past the security. He trudged down aimlessly down the familiar hallways, wondering what he was gong to say to his father about his failure, until his ICD began bleating at him.
He pulled the communication device from his pocket and depressed the button on it. An unfamiliar voice directed him to a set of coordinates inside the building. Feliu was immediately suspicious. He slowly made his way to the instructed point with his hand poised over his laser gun in its holster. There was nobody there when he arrived at what he found was the council meeting chamber. He frowned and sat down at the vacant assistant's desk that was positioned outside of the room.
Feliu was just about to return to the rendezvous spot with the Darkness when a presence made itself known. From behind the desk, the door to the council chamber swung open and a man he had never seen before emerged.
"Who are you?" Feliu said as he grabbed for his weapon and stood from the seat.
He remained frozen in a halfway position with his laser gun still holstered as the man already had a gun pointed at his head. It was an old fashioned mechanical pistol; a sure sign that the man was from an old world planet. Judging by the accent, which had a similar ring as a certain Earthian Feliu had the misfortune of meeting on his last ill-fated trip to see Robin, Feliu was guessing that the man before him was either an Earthian himself or, more likely, a Naturian.
"That is none of your concern," the man said. A demented smile adorned his smooth face. He was dressed in a suit and tie with his hair slicked back; sunglasses perched upon his nose to keep out the offending Utopian light that shown down from the multitude of skylights and windows that adorned the building.
"Like hell it's not," Feliu growled. "Who sent you?"
His maniacal laughter echoed through the hallway.
"Oh, well." He shrugged. "Your father gave me no instructions to keep you in the dark about who hired me. It might even be better this way. 'till twist the knife a bit more, should think. Please follow me, and bring that compactor you were kind enough to steal for me."
Feliu's eyes widened at the mention of the device that he had thought was the main objective. He grabbed the first thing on the desk that most closely resembled it, glancing down on it only long enough to discern that it was a holo-book with the word 'Atlas' etched upon it in Utopian. He knew his father would be enraged to find that his only son had done nothing more than to steal a glorified map, but he had a feeling that his father was the last thing he was going to have to worry about. He could only hope that the Naturian stranger hadn't bothered to study beyond the intergalactic standard he was attempting to speak.
"Give it here," he said, and Feliu handed the device over.
The man turned over the Atlas in his hand then pressed the on button. Feliu cringed.
"What is this map?" He said as the three dimensional image of Utopia spewed forth from the information output and materialized holographically before them.
"It has maps," Feliu said, doing his best to think on his feet, "So you, like, know where to send the black hole, right?" He laughed nervously, hoping that the man would believe that the holo-book was indeed a doomsday device. "You don't want one to open up right on top of yourself. Y'know?"
"I see," he replied dubiously. "We'll be sure to test that theory. Now. Follow me."
"I don't think I want to do that," Feliu said.
The Naturian sighed impatiently. "Do you want to die right now?"
"Uh...No?" Feliu said.
"That's what I thought." He motioned with his gun towards the council room door, and Feliu was left with no choice but to follow instructions.
He was in shock when he found the Utopian council in chambers, backs to the door as they were held at gun point by another man that Feliu didn't know. His own crew was nowhere to be seen. He hastily turned around, only to be greeted with the barrel of the Naturian's pistol directly in his face.
"There wasn't supposed to be anybody here," Feliu mumbled as he turned back around. "It's late."
"Is it?" The Naturian laughed again.
Feliu knew in that moment that his time-piece had probably been broken before he had even woken up that morning. The teleportation from the Darkness to the Council tower had not been the cause after all. There was no judging the time of day on Utopia either, and Feliu had not spent enough time there to distinguish the subtle differences between the four suns.
"Nobody's supposed to get hurt," Feliu said. "What is the point of this? What do you want. What does my father want?"
The Naturian ignored his question.
"Hands on your head," he said.
Feliu did as commanded and the man ordered one of his minions to keep an gun on him. The hostages remained silently facing the far wall as the Naturian set the real plan into motion by pulling out a pair of gloves and applying them to his hands.
"You know what these are, right?" The Naturian grinned at him as he approached Feliu and stood, pressed fully against him. One gloved hand feeling its way roughly up and down Feliu's torso.
"G-g-gloves?" He ventured a guess as he tried not to succumb to the nattily dressed man's touches.
"Yes." He said as his wandering hand snaked around Feliu's hip and slapped him on the ass. Feliu's surprised gasp caught in his throat and then the bottom of his stomach fell out as he realized that the Naturian had pulled his own weapon from its holster with his free hand.
"And what is this?" He asked as he stepped away; a insidious smirk upon his face.
"My gun," Feliu said. "No."
"Yes!" The Naturian crowed happily and leveled the weapon at the nearest Council member and pulled the trigger. The old man crumpled to the floor as soon as the stun beam hit him.
"Shit!" Feliu gasped. "What..."
"Stun?" The Naturian giggled. "Your father is right. You are a fucking useless mound of sentimental mush."
"I'm not sentimental. I don't see the point in ending a life for no reason," Feliu growled. "I don't kill people."
"You do now," The Naturian whispered. "As far as the electronic paper trail is concerned, you are under contract as an assassin for the Dysprosian government."
Out loud he made a show of yelling out Feliu's name as if he he were trying to wrest the laser weapon from his hands. Feliu could do nothing but stand there and watch as any attempt to protest was met with the reminder of one of the Naturian's associates guns poking him in the back. The Naturian gave him one final grin of malicious glee and made a show of silently miming "Eenie-Meenie-Miney-Moe" at two particular captives.
If he had any colour to speak of in his complexion to begin with it would have drained from Feliu's face the instant he realized the target of the Naturian...and his father's game. Aina and Galiana Grey stood with their hands clasped together; the barrel of Feliu's gun in the Naturian's hand bobbing from one to the other.
The Naturian flicked the sensor on the laser from stun to kill and as soon as the quiet blirp that signified the switch sounded in the near silent room, one of the male captives who had been standing in a far off corner turned around in an obvious set up and called out.
"Don't do it, Viernes!"
In that split second Feliu made up his mind that he had to do something aside from standing there impotently even if it meant his own death. He lurched towards the Naturian and knocked him to the ground, but it was a split second too late. The weapon had been fired, and all chaos broke loose as Aina Grey collapsed. The hostages no longer cared for their own safety as they immediately dove for cover; their screams resounding in Feliu's ears. He jumped up from the ground and found that the Naturian was nowhere to be seen and neither was his crew. It was almost as if they had never existed there at all.
Feliu cursed the Time Travel Device and the confusion that resulted in the wake of somebody using one. He took a moment to gather his wits about him then bounded over to where Galiana was crouched over the inert body of her wife.
"She's okay, right? Please tell me she's okay." Feliu looked on worriedly and crouched beside them. He reached out in a panic when Galiana did not reply and tried to apply pressure to the wound even though he could tell just by looking that it was a useless gesture.
"We can go back," he babbled. "We can go back. We can change time. We have to go back. This didn't happen. It never happened. I..."
Galiana didn't give him a chance to finish his stream of incoherence. She looked up, her eyes wet with tears and reached back. Her hand curled in an angry fist, she swung her arm forward and connected directly with Feliu's jaw. He fell backwards in a daze. She lay Aina gently down and closed her eyes with gentle care then she stood and glared down at Feliu. He cowered before her.
"You cannot change time. Not that way," she said. Her voice was low and strained as if she could barely hold her words together.
Feliu hardly noticed the two council members that had emerged from their hiding places to restrain him. He had no intentions of running anyway, and his full attention was focus on Galiana.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I didn't...my father..."
"You did this!" Her voice broke then as she was unable to hold back her scream. "How could you do this?"
"I didn't," Feliu whimpered. "I..."
Galiana dismissed him with a wave of her hand and turned her back. Her shoulders shook as she knelt before her fallen lover once again.
Feliu was given no more chance to explain as he was forcibly dragged from the room and passed off to a freshly arrived squad of Utopian law enforcement officers. He remained silent, for he knew that any protest he made at that point would be summarily dismissed. It had been orchestrated so that an entire cache of unimpeachable Utopian witnesses had been made to believe that he had fired the two shots.
He had no idea that his father hated him so much that he would go to such great lengths to destroy everything he ever thought he knew about life in one fell swoop.
****
Lieutenant-Commander David looked tired and strained when she called Ehren into Robin's office the next morning. He made himself at home in the visitor's chair, a look of worry etched on his face.
"Where's Robin," he asked quietly. "He was in the communications room yesterday... When Utopia was attacked. He looked upset."
"Yes," Beatriu replied solemnly. "That is why I called you in here today. Robin is going to be taking some time off."
"Time off?" Ehren slid forward and perched on the edge of his chair with his hands gripping the desk in front of him. "Why? I thought he was cleared of all wrongdoing? I thought he was just waiting out his probationary period now. What did he do?"
"Relax." She smiled fondly at him. "He is taking personal time off. That is why you are here. You are aware of the assassination perpetrated against the Utopian government yesterday, correct?"
Ehren blanched. She was well aware that he knew most of the details. He had been training in the communications room when the distress call had gone out across the galaxies. They had been unable to scramble together much video or audio from the security systems in the Utopian council building, and what they had was corrupted and in need of rebuilding, which took time. The assassin had been thorough in deleting most electronic footprints.
"Yes."
Her smile turned back into a sad frown and she sighed. "It is a tragedy for our planet, Ehren. Moreso for Robin. The Minister of Alien affairs is his mother."
Ehren paused for a moment, his brow furrowed in confusion.
"How is that possible?" He said.
"It is, I assure you," she replied. "I have been appointed as temporary leader of this squadron while he is away. I have been instructed to find an officer to accompany Grey back home. You are aware of the suspect we have in custody?"
"No." Ehren frowned. "The Vice-Admiral came down and told the High-Commander to dismiss the unnecessary crew. We were sent to quarters and I haven't heard anything since."
"I see." Beatriu narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "I suppose that leaves it up to me to inform you that the man we have in custody is Feliu Viernes."
Ehren's eyes widened in shock and he was speechless.
"So you see why this is tricky," she said. "I've known Robin since he was a child, and this is destroying him. I and the powers that be are afraid he is going to do something...drastic. Your assignment is to accompany him and report back to us any violations of probation that Robin may engage in."
"Wait." Ehren frowned. "You want me to babysit him? You want me to babysit him while he goes home to deal with his mother dying? Then you want me to spy on him and write it up in a little report for you? You've got to be kidding. I'm not doing it."
She glared at him, and he returned the glare defiantly.
"Ma'am."
He slammed his palms down on the table and stood up.
"If you'll excuse me."
Beatriu only chuckled at him in an amused fashion from behind the desk.
"I can see why he likes you," she said.
"Please?" He paused in his dramatic departure and turned back to face her, expecting her to repeat herself and provide further explanation.
She stared uncomprehendingly at him for a moment then laughed again.
"Sorry, I'm not used to your Earthian turn of phrase," she said. "You are one of Robin's most trusted...well, officers now, Ensign. Robin told me himself. That is why I'm giving this assignment to you. I trust you enough to be able to deal with him and talk him down from the ledge if he needs it. I have no doubt you will do the right thing. What that is, I do not know. I'll leave it up to you what to include in your report."
Ehren shifted uncomfortably then settled back in his seat with a resigned sigh.
"This isn't a request is it?"
"No," she replied. "I'm sorry it has to be this way, Ensign, but with Feliu Viernes involved... I'm afraid it is unavoidable considering Robin's past with him. You understand?"
"Yes, Ma'am," Ehren replied. "I'm still having trouble understanding why I am the most qualified person for this task."
"You'll understand soon enough," she said. "You are dismissed, Ensign. Be sure to pack for the week. You will be leaving within the hour."
"Yes, Ma'am." He stood, saluted and marched away.
***
His next encounter with Robin came outside the teleportation room. Robin was stone-faced as he stood in the hallway, staring at the entrance door and fumbling a TTD in his hand. Ehren observed him for a moment and noticed instantly that he had shaved off his entire beard. No longer was the well-trimmed facial hair obscuring his jawline, and Ehren had to fight back the urge to stare or reach up and touch the commander's smooth cheek. He knew that would be out of hand entirely. It wasn't the right time to admire Robin's appearance, if it ever was. He knew he should just march up to him, salute, and assume a rigid stance beside him as they waited for the port-keeper, but his Earthian nature was pulling him in another direction.
He walked to Robin, set his duffel bag down and touched his commander's arm.
"How are you doing?" He said.
Robin turned slightly and lofted a curious eyebrow at Ehren.
"You are the most inappropriate creature in the known galaxies. You do know that, don't you?" Robin replied.
Ehren removed his hand from Robin's arm, self-consciously folded hid arms behind his back, and assumed a more formal posture.
"I apologize, sir," he said.
They stood side by side in silence then, awaiting the teleportation technician's arrival.
"You know..." Ehren ventured to speak after several long minutes. "...If you ever need a sympathetic ear..."
He trailed off as soon as Robin turned to glare at him. The flush of hot anger was rising in his cheeks and Ehren shrunk away from him involuntarily.
"I do not want to talk about it. Get it through your stupid Earthian head, Recruit. I especially don't want to talk about it with a fucking I-GAS appointed SPY."
Ehren's eyes widened at Robin's epithet, and he momentarily considered standing up and snapping back. He took a deep breath to calm the indignation that was rising in his chest, and addressed Robin.
"I see. If you change your mind..."
"I won't," Robin grumbled and turned back to door. "Let's just make one thing clear, Ehren; I don't want you here."
Ehren sighed in frustration and leaned against the wall. "It's Ensign, Sir. Ensign Behrendt. I don't particularly want to be here either."
"Fine," Robin said. "Don't speak to me then. Agreed?"
"Agreed." Ehren nodded.
They waited for the technician who arrived shortly thereafter. Ehren was feeling a little bit rejected. Where others had marked him down, Robin had recognized his potential and pushed him forward. Having the Commander call him stupid was a hurt that he hadn't expected. He shoved it to the back of his mind and trudged along behind Robin who strode purposefully into the middle of the room. He flicked on his TTD, which already had the proper coordinates entered, and Ehren obediently placed his hand on Robin's shoulder without having to be told. He figured it was the most neutral place possible, and contact was required to transport them both with one device. Ehren was a long way away from earning back the right to carry his own TTD.
"Hold your bag," Robin muttered at him; his finger wavering over the single physical button on the device.
"Yeah," Ehren said. "Oops. Don't want to forget that. Don't think your clothes will fit me!"
His attempt at lightening the mood failed miserably as Robin's glare of annoyance and resentment was unrelenting. Ehren chuckled nervously and reached down to sling his duffel over his shoulder.
"Ready," he said.
As soon as the words were out of his mouth they were gone. It was like they had never been there at all.
Previous || Next
Earlier:
"I don't like this," Yaretzi said softly to Feliu so as not to arouse the suspicions of the rest of the team.
"What?" Feliu said. "Looks like business as usual to me."
"Yeah," she murmured. "It's just a sense."
"Your amphibi-sense?" Feliu chuckled at her. "C'mon, Yaretzi. It's par for the course. We steal from the Dysprosians for the Utopians, and vice-versa all the time."
"Don't make fun." She frowned at him. "This is serious. I can taste the unease in the air. Will you please be careful? Keep your guard up?"
Feliu nodded sagely. "Always do; Always am," he said.
Ganix arrived in their midst then, garnering their attention as he rehashed the plan. When he was finished they were to depress the button on their issued TTDs but when Yaretzi pressed hers nothing happened. There was no blinding light, and no sense of nothingness. She was as solid and present as she had been a moment before. She glanced worriedly around at the other equally confused crew.
"What's going on?" One of them reluctantly spoke up to Ganix Viernes.
"Sorry. Change of plans." He chuckled, softly at first, but his mirth gradually took on a more sinister tone.
"There is a diamond supply ship headed to quadrant four two years ago that we are going to hit instead. Everybody to your stations."
He marched from the room, followed one by one by the still confused yet obedient crew until only Yaretzi was left in the port-room: her own station.
She scratched her head and frowned. There was something tugging away at the corner of her mind, begging for her attention. She didn't realize exactly what it was until she sat down at her console. Her stomach lurched and her gills flared as soon as she realized what had happened.
She spied a small handful of blinking signals on her console, marking the departure of the outgoing time signals. Those few crew members had faded from her perception as if they had never been there in her time stream to begin with. While the majority of the crew's TTDs had been jammed a few had not, and among them was Feliu Viernes.
****
Feliu found himself inside the Golden Utopia Council Tower with far less crew than had been in the Darkness' port room. None of the men he'd count as his allies were anywhere to be seen, including Yaretzi. Her words of warning rang in his ears, and he knew he was going to have to be on high alert with the highly untrustable crew that he had been left with.
The crew leader, a craggly old man with one eye, approached him and informed him in no uncertain terms that they would be splitting up.
Feliu was left on his own to find the vault and remove the temporal compaction device that was the goal. He vaguely wondered why he needed an entire crew for the mission and why they needed to split up further, but he shrugged off the notion quickly enough. His father often had more than one iron in the fire and most of them were too classified for Feliu to know about. He liked it that way. He figured the less he knew about his father's more sinister operations, the better off he would be.
He sighed to himself and took a glance at his time piece. It flashed zeros at him. He shook it and held it up to his ear even though he knew it was useless. It had been broken in the jump.
"Piece of shit," he murmured to himself.
He put his malfunctioning equipment out of his mind and concentrated on the task at hand. He glanced around the deserted building as he walked.
He had walked those very halls what seemed like a thousand times before as Robin's friend and guest. This was a mission he hadn't wanted to accept when his father had first come to him with the proposal. Feliu knew it was one betrayal too many. He had hoped to keep his professional and personal lives separated from the point of his most recent capture going forward.
As the conversation with his father progressed, however, it became clear that his father was going to make his participation mandatory.
He traveled silently through the golden hallways, carefully avoiding the guards until he reached the vault. It was easy enough for him to bypass the outer security. It was a simple matter of hacking into the security system and setting the video on a loop, then teleporting into the outer vault.
The inner vault was another matter entirely. The Golden Utopia Treasure Vault was temporally locked. He couldn't just use a TTD or a port-key to transfer his matter into the inner vault. The lock was designed to bounce any incoming signals away. It was a very real possibility that even trying it would get him killed. He wasn't well versed enough in the mechanics and theory of time travel to figure out how to bypass such a lock. He was going to have to tackle the job the old fashioned way.
"This is why a temporal engineer would come in handy," he complained to himself as he eyed the physical locking mechanism in front of him.
He set his bag of tools down in front of him as he concentrated fully on his task. Yaretzi's warnings had slowly leaked out of his mind, and he had stop wondering what the rest of the team was up to. He knew he had to make up for his most recent indiscretion, and for that to happen he was going to have to give it his full attention.
It took him two hours work to break through the security protocols to open the door and retrieve the device; a temporal compactor, one of the most devastating weapons in the known galaxies.
He held the innocuous looking item in his hand and gave it a cursory inspection. Like the time travel device and many other devices, it looked like nothing more than a small flat metalic box with a few buttons and outputs.
Feliu shook his head and wondered if winning his father's approval was worth the risking of the lives of billions by liberating the device from its Utopian prison.
"Why don't they just destroy the fucking thing?" He muttered to himself, knowing that there was only one in existence and the inventor had long since ceased to exist, taking his research with him.
Feliu briefly contemplated dropping it on the marble floor in hopes of causing it irreparable damage, thereby alleviating the responsibility of choice. He quickly decided that it wasn't worth the risk. For all he knew, jarring the device might cause it to spit out a singularity which would be the end of him, the GU Council building and possibly the entire Zharan Galaxy if not the universe itself.
He sighed again, glanced back at the door he had spent so many hours working on, and carefully placed the device back on its shelf.
His father would have to remain disappointed in him. He wasn't going to destroy the world.
He slowly made his way out of the vault and past the security. He trudged down aimlessly down the familiar hallways, wondering what he was gong to say to his father about his failure, until his ICD began bleating at him.
He pulled the communication device from his pocket and depressed the button on it. An unfamiliar voice directed him to a set of coordinates inside the building. Feliu was immediately suspicious. He slowly made his way to the instructed point with his hand poised over his laser gun in its holster. There was nobody there when he arrived at what he found was the council meeting chamber. He frowned and sat down at the vacant assistant's desk that was positioned outside of the room.
Feliu was just about to return to the rendezvous spot with the Darkness when a presence made itself known. From behind the desk, the door to the council chamber swung open and a man he had never seen before emerged.
"Who are you?" Feliu said as he grabbed for his weapon and stood from the seat.
He remained frozen in a halfway position with his laser gun still holstered as the man already had a gun pointed at his head. It was an old fashioned mechanical pistol; a sure sign that the man was from an old world planet. Judging by the accent, which had a similar ring as a certain Earthian Feliu had the misfortune of meeting on his last ill-fated trip to see Robin, Feliu was guessing that the man before him was either an Earthian himself or, more likely, a Naturian.
"That is none of your concern," the man said. A demented smile adorned his smooth face. He was dressed in a suit and tie with his hair slicked back; sunglasses perched upon his nose to keep out the offending Utopian light that shown down from the multitude of skylights and windows that adorned the building.
"Like hell it's not," Feliu growled. "Who sent you?"
His maniacal laughter echoed through the hallway.
"Oh, well." He shrugged. "Your father gave me no instructions to keep you in the dark about who hired me. It might even be better this way. 'till twist the knife a bit more, should think. Please follow me, and bring that compactor you were kind enough to steal for me."
Feliu's eyes widened at the mention of the device that he had thought was the main objective. He grabbed the first thing on the desk that most closely resembled it, glancing down on it only long enough to discern that it was a holo-book with the word 'Atlas' etched upon it in Utopian. He knew his father would be enraged to find that his only son had done nothing more than to steal a glorified map, but he had a feeling that his father was the last thing he was going to have to worry about. He could only hope that the Naturian stranger hadn't bothered to study beyond the intergalactic standard he was attempting to speak.
"Give it here," he said, and Feliu handed the device over.
The man turned over the Atlas in his hand then pressed the on button. Feliu cringed.
"What is this map?" He said as the three dimensional image of Utopia spewed forth from the information output and materialized holographically before them.
"It has maps," Feliu said, doing his best to think on his feet, "So you, like, know where to send the black hole, right?" He laughed nervously, hoping that the man would believe that the holo-book was indeed a doomsday device. "You don't want one to open up right on top of yourself. Y'know?"
"I see," he replied dubiously. "We'll be sure to test that theory. Now. Follow me."
"I don't think I want to do that," Feliu said.
The Naturian sighed impatiently. "Do you want to die right now?"
"Uh...No?" Feliu said.
"That's what I thought." He motioned with his gun towards the council room door, and Feliu was left with no choice but to follow instructions.
He was in shock when he found the Utopian council in chambers, backs to the door as they were held at gun point by another man that Feliu didn't know. His own crew was nowhere to be seen. He hastily turned around, only to be greeted with the barrel of the Naturian's pistol directly in his face.
"There wasn't supposed to be anybody here," Feliu mumbled as he turned back around. "It's late."
"Is it?" The Naturian laughed again.
Feliu knew in that moment that his time-piece had probably been broken before he had even woken up that morning. The teleportation from the Darkness to the Council tower had not been the cause after all. There was no judging the time of day on Utopia either, and Feliu had not spent enough time there to distinguish the subtle differences between the four suns.
"Nobody's supposed to get hurt," Feliu said. "What is the point of this? What do you want. What does my father want?"
The Naturian ignored his question.
"Hands on your head," he said.
Feliu did as commanded and the man ordered one of his minions to keep an gun on him. The hostages remained silently facing the far wall as the Naturian set the real plan into motion by pulling out a pair of gloves and applying them to his hands.
"You know what these are, right?" The Naturian grinned at him as he approached Feliu and stood, pressed fully against him. One gloved hand feeling its way roughly up and down Feliu's torso.
"G-g-gloves?" He ventured a guess as he tried not to succumb to the nattily dressed man's touches.
"Yes." He said as his wandering hand snaked around Feliu's hip and slapped him on the ass. Feliu's surprised gasp caught in his throat and then the bottom of his stomach fell out as he realized that the Naturian had pulled his own weapon from its holster with his free hand.
"And what is this?" He asked as he stepped away; a insidious smirk upon his face.
"My gun," Feliu said. "No."
"Yes!" The Naturian crowed happily and leveled the weapon at the nearest Council member and pulled the trigger. The old man crumpled to the floor as soon as the stun beam hit him.
"Shit!" Feliu gasped. "What..."
"Stun?" The Naturian giggled. "Your father is right. You are a fucking useless mound of sentimental mush."
"I'm not sentimental. I don't see the point in ending a life for no reason," Feliu growled. "I don't kill people."
"You do now," The Naturian whispered. "As far as the electronic paper trail is concerned, you are under contract as an assassin for the Dysprosian government."
Out loud he made a show of yelling out Feliu's name as if he he were trying to wrest the laser weapon from his hands. Feliu could do nothing but stand there and watch as any attempt to protest was met with the reminder of one of the Naturian's associates guns poking him in the back. The Naturian gave him one final grin of malicious glee and made a show of silently miming "Eenie-Meenie-Miney-Moe" at two particular captives.
If he had any colour to speak of in his complexion to begin with it would have drained from Feliu's face the instant he realized the target of the Naturian...and his father's game. Aina and Galiana Grey stood with their hands clasped together; the barrel of Feliu's gun in the Naturian's hand bobbing from one to the other.
The Naturian flicked the sensor on the laser from stun to kill and as soon as the quiet blirp that signified the switch sounded in the near silent room, one of the male captives who had been standing in a far off corner turned around in an obvious set up and called out.
"Don't do it, Viernes!"
In that split second Feliu made up his mind that he had to do something aside from standing there impotently even if it meant his own death. He lurched towards the Naturian and knocked him to the ground, but it was a split second too late. The weapon had been fired, and all chaos broke loose as Aina Grey collapsed. The hostages no longer cared for their own safety as they immediately dove for cover; their screams resounding in Feliu's ears. He jumped up from the ground and found that the Naturian was nowhere to be seen and neither was his crew. It was almost as if they had never existed there at all.
Feliu cursed the Time Travel Device and the confusion that resulted in the wake of somebody using one. He took a moment to gather his wits about him then bounded over to where Galiana was crouched over the inert body of her wife.
"She's okay, right? Please tell me she's okay." Feliu looked on worriedly and crouched beside them. He reached out in a panic when Galiana did not reply and tried to apply pressure to the wound even though he could tell just by looking that it was a useless gesture.
"We can go back," he babbled. "We can go back. We can change time. We have to go back. This didn't happen. It never happened. I..."
Galiana didn't give him a chance to finish his stream of incoherence. She looked up, her eyes wet with tears and reached back. Her hand curled in an angry fist, she swung her arm forward and connected directly with Feliu's jaw. He fell backwards in a daze. She lay Aina gently down and closed her eyes with gentle care then she stood and glared down at Feliu. He cowered before her.
"You cannot change time. Not that way," she said. Her voice was low and strained as if she could barely hold her words together.
Feliu hardly noticed the two council members that had emerged from their hiding places to restrain him. He had no intentions of running anyway, and his full attention was focus on Galiana.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I didn't...my father..."
"You did this!" Her voice broke then as she was unable to hold back her scream. "How could you do this?"
"I didn't," Feliu whimpered. "I..."
Galiana dismissed him with a wave of her hand and turned her back. Her shoulders shook as she knelt before her fallen lover once again.
Feliu was given no more chance to explain as he was forcibly dragged from the room and passed off to a freshly arrived squad of Utopian law enforcement officers. He remained silent, for he knew that any protest he made at that point would be summarily dismissed. It had been orchestrated so that an entire cache of unimpeachable Utopian witnesses had been made to believe that he had fired the two shots.
He had no idea that his father hated him so much that he would go to such great lengths to destroy everything he ever thought he knew about life in one fell swoop.
****
Lieutenant-Commander David looked tired and strained when she called Ehren into Robin's office the next morning. He made himself at home in the visitor's chair, a look of worry etched on his face.
"Where's Robin," he asked quietly. "He was in the communications room yesterday... When Utopia was attacked. He looked upset."
"Yes," Beatriu replied solemnly. "That is why I called you in here today. Robin is going to be taking some time off."
"Time off?" Ehren slid forward and perched on the edge of his chair with his hands gripping the desk in front of him. "Why? I thought he was cleared of all wrongdoing? I thought he was just waiting out his probationary period now. What did he do?"
"Relax." She smiled fondly at him. "He is taking personal time off. That is why you are here. You are aware of the assassination perpetrated against the Utopian government yesterday, correct?"
Ehren blanched. She was well aware that he knew most of the details. He had been training in the communications room when the distress call had gone out across the galaxies. They had been unable to scramble together much video or audio from the security systems in the Utopian council building, and what they had was corrupted and in need of rebuilding, which took time. The assassin had been thorough in deleting most electronic footprints.
"Yes."
Her smile turned back into a sad frown and she sighed. "It is a tragedy for our planet, Ehren. Moreso for Robin. The Minister of Alien affairs is his mother."
Ehren paused for a moment, his brow furrowed in confusion.
"How is that possible?" He said.
"It is, I assure you," she replied. "I have been appointed as temporary leader of this squadron while he is away. I have been instructed to find an officer to accompany Grey back home. You are aware of the suspect we have in custody?"
"No." Ehren frowned. "The Vice-Admiral came down and told the High-Commander to dismiss the unnecessary crew. We were sent to quarters and I haven't heard anything since."
"I see." Beatriu narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "I suppose that leaves it up to me to inform you that the man we have in custody is Feliu Viernes."
Ehren's eyes widened in shock and he was speechless.
"So you see why this is tricky," she said. "I've known Robin since he was a child, and this is destroying him. I and the powers that be are afraid he is going to do something...drastic. Your assignment is to accompany him and report back to us any violations of probation that Robin may engage in."
"Wait." Ehren frowned. "You want me to babysit him? You want me to babysit him while he goes home to deal with his mother dying? Then you want me to spy on him and write it up in a little report for you? You've got to be kidding. I'm not doing it."
She glared at him, and he returned the glare defiantly.
"Ma'am."
He slammed his palms down on the table and stood up.
"If you'll excuse me."
Beatriu only chuckled at him in an amused fashion from behind the desk.
"I can see why he likes you," she said.
"Please?" He paused in his dramatic departure and turned back to face her, expecting her to repeat herself and provide further explanation.
She stared uncomprehendingly at him for a moment then laughed again.
"Sorry, I'm not used to your Earthian turn of phrase," she said. "You are one of Robin's most trusted...well, officers now, Ensign. Robin told me himself. That is why I'm giving this assignment to you. I trust you enough to be able to deal with him and talk him down from the ledge if he needs it. I have no doubt you will do the right thing. What that is, I do not know. I'll leave it up to you what to include in your report."
Ehren shifted uncomfortably then settled back in his seat with a resigned sigh.
"This isn't a request is it?"
"No," she replied. "I'm sorry it has to be this way, Ensign, but with Feliu Viernes involved... I'm afraid it is unavoidable considering Robin's past with him. You understand?"
"Yes, Ma'am," Ehren replied. "I'm still having trouble understanding why I am the most qualified person for this task."
"You'll understand soon enough," she said. "You are dismissed, Ensign. Be sure to pack for the week. You will be leaving within the hour."
"Yes, Ma'am." He stood, saluted and marched away.
***
His next encounter with Robin came outside the teleportation room. Robin was stone-faced as he stood in the hallway, staring at the entrance door and fumbling a TTD in his hand. Ehren observed him for a moment and noticed instantly that he had shaved off his entire beard. No longer was the well-trimmed facial hair obscuring his jawline, and Ehren had to fight back the urge to stare or reach up and touch the commander's smooth cheek. He knew that would be out of hand entirely. It wasn't the right time to admire Robin's appearance, if it ever was. He knew he should just march up to him, salute, and assume a rigid stance beside him as they waited for the port-keeper, but his Earthian nature was pulling him in another direction.
He walked to Robin, set his duffel bag down and touched his commander's arm.
"How are you doing?" He said.
Robin turned slightly and lofted a curious eyebrow at Ehren.
"You are the most inappropriate creature in the known galaxies. You do know that, don't you?" Robin replied.
Ehren removed his hand from Robin's arm, self-consciously folded hid arms behind his back, and assumed a more formal posture.
"I apologize, sir," he said.
They stood side by side in silence then, awaiting the teleportation technician's arrival.
"You know..." Ehren ventured to speak after several long minutes. "...If you ever need a sympathetic ear..."
He trailed off as soon as Robin turned to glare at him. The flush of hot anger was rising in his cheeks and Ehren shrunk away from him involuntarily.
"I do not want to talk about it. Get it through your stupid Earthian head, Recruit. I especially don't want to talk about it with a fucking I-GAS appointed SPY."
Ehren's eyes widened at Robin's epithet, and he momentarily considered standing up and snapping back. He took a deep breath to calm the indignation that was rising in his chest, and addressed Robin.
"I see. If you change your mind..."
"I won't," Robin grumbled and turned back to door. "Let's just make one thing clear, Ehren; I don't want you here."
Ehren sighed in frustration and leaned against the wall. "It's Ensign, Sir. Ensign Behrendt. I don't particularly want to be here either."
"Fine," Robin said. "Don't speak to me then. Agreed?"
"Agreed." Ehren nodded.
They waited for the technician who arrived shortly thereafter. Ehren was feeling a little bit rejected. Where others had marked him down, Robin had recognized his potential and pushed him forward. Having the Commander call him stupid was a hurt that he hadn't expected. He shoved it to the back of his mind and trudged along behind Robin who strode purposefully into the middle of the room. He flicked on his TTD, which already had the proper coordinates entered, and Ehren obediently placed his hand on Robin's shoulder without having to be told. He figured it was the most neutral place possible, and contact was required to transport them both with one device. Ehren was a long way away from earning back the right to carry his own TTD.
"Hold your bag," Robin muttered at him; his finger wavering over the single physical button on the device.
"Yeah," Ehren said. "Oops. Don't want to forget that. Don't think your clothes will fit me!"
His attempt at lightening the mood failed miserably as Robin's glare of annoyance and resentment was unrelenting. Ehren chuckled nervously and reached down to sling his duffel over his shoulder.
"Ready," he said.
As soon as the words were out of his mouth they were gone. It was like they had never been there at all.
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