Chapter 13 - Last Moments

"Impossible!"

Jack took a cautious step toward his father, realizing it was a being far more powerful than perhaps he could imagine that he had to convince of his sincerity. "It's only impossible if you wish it to be."

"You have no idea what this conflict is about, human," Setacvas said.

"I don't have to understand it to know I don't want to fight the battles of the Ancient Progenitors," Jack told him. "All it takes is the two of us to say we won't fight this pointless war any longer."

"We attempted peace once before, but to no avail. At every turn we were deceived. My kind was hunted down until only sixty of us now remain. Then, to save that last remnant, we transformed ourselves into what we are now, beings who must feed off the life energy of others--- whole worlds. Your kind gave us no other choice! And now you once again hunt us, you once again, with the Vedala, who betrayed us in the hour of our greatest need, attempt to exterminate us! How else should we react?! Don't we have the right to defend ourselves? The right to survive?"

"Of course you do," Jack said as calmly as he could. "I'm asking you to help me secure the survival of your kind and my own."

"Why should I concern myself with the survival of my enemy," Setacvas said with a sneer. "Your kind was never meant to cover this Galaxy like the plague it now is!"

"Your fight was with the Ancient Progenitors, not us," Jack pleaded.

"We have lived with this dream for billions of years. We're not going to give up on it now that we're so close to fulfillment. You know how important a dream can be, Jack. Yours was being a starship captain."

"You're wrong. That was my father's dream."

"No, it was yours." The tone of the voice was different.

Jack stepped closer, hoping it was his father that he was addressing. "No, Dad, it wasn't. I'm never going to be a great starship captain. Cadets a century from now won't be studying my tactics. That's not who I am. I'm just Jack, and that has to be good enough."

Setacvas regained control. "You may have walked away from your father's dream, but we shall not forget ours."

"All I'm asking is for you to realize you no longer face the same enemy. We are not the Ancient Progenitors."

"You are more than you know," Setacvas said. "You are their dream of galactic conquest fulfilled."

"We aren't bound by whatever destiny the Ancient Progenitors imagined for us. We have our own lives to live, our own destinies to find." Jack took a step toward Jeremiah. "We aren't your enemy. We can find an end to this war you've fought for so long."

Setacvas hesitated. "We could never submit to humanoid domination of this Galaxy."

Jack couldn't hold back the smile that came to life on his face. Finally, they were talking about what might come afterward. "This Galaxy belongs to all the beings who live here, not only humanoids."

"We were here before you, Jack McCall."

"What matters is that we're all here now," Jack told the Volmvas. "It's up to all of us to make this a place where we can live together in peace."

"It would be so difficult," Setacvas said, his earlier fire replaced by an acceptance he still appeared unsure of. "So much that should never have been has happened."

A sensation entered Setacvas's consciousness, drawing his attention away from the conversation with Jack. He beheld space beyond the hull of the ship and witnessed his greatest fear coming to pass. The Vedala, in the form of glowing clouds of energy, sailed around the Abdiel toward Nybiros where the last of the Volmvas had arrived shortly before he left. Setacvas had called them to help the G'voda. Now they had fallen victim to the plans of the Vedala. He doubted the sixty of them could hold out for long against the millions of Vedala he watched soar toward the planet.

All was lost.

"You have deceived me, Jack McCall! Everything you spoke was a lie to allow the Vedala time to destroy us!"

"No!" Jack said. "We still have time to stop this!"

"The time for talk is over!"

Setacvas allowed his full energies to come forth. He would destroy this small ship, then join the other Volmvas against the Vedala.

No! I won't let you kill them, Setacvas!

Jeremiah McCall's mind exerted all its strength against Setacvas and finally, he broke through. He staggered a moment as he regained control of his own body. "Jack... he's gone mad. I can't hold his mind back much longer. He'll destroy you all. Kill me now while you have the chance."

Jack pointed a phaser at the one person he never would have imagined he'd have need to. "Dad, I..."

"The phaser isn't strong enough." Jeremiah fought intense pain. "The transporter... into space. He'll have to use all his energy to escape, he won't be able to hurt you."

"No! Dad there has to be another way!"

Melissa was already at the Ops panel, but instead of coming to life, the controls remained dark. "Jack, the transporter system is still down!"

Hank Evans slid a hand into his pocket and felt the small chip he carried. He pulled it out and held it in his hand. It was all they had left. He set the controls for maximum distance.

"Dad, keep fighting him!" Jack shouted. He turned to Melissa. "Try rerouting power through the auxiliary subsystem! We should be able to separate them using the filters in the pattern buffer!"

"I can't get it online!" Melissa said, still fighting with the controls.

"Dad, when we transport you, you have to force him out of your mind. Can you do that? Dad?!"

But if Jeremiah had another response, it never came. Setacvas won the battle between their minds. "I refuse to die this day!"

Hank Evans leaped toward Jeremiah McCall and fought to attach the dimensional transport chip to the admiral's uniform, but the being who inhabited his body grabbed Hank's hand and held it with the grip of a vise.

"You've failed, Hank Evans!"

Hank stared into eyes filled with madness beyond measure, but instead of retreating from the being he wrestled with, Hank Evans smiled. "It depends on how you define failure." His finger tapped a control on the chip. A flash of light filled the bridge of the Abdiel. When the light evaporated, Hank Evans and Jeremiah McCall were gone.

"No!" Jack howled. "No, damn it, no!" He spun about to Melissa. "The transporter! Find where they went and bring them back!"

"They're fifty meters away... outside... in space." Tears slid down Melissa's cheeks as Jack ran up to her at the console. "I can't get it to power up! I'm sorry, Jack."

Unwilling to listen to the truth, Jack McCall's hands went to work at the Ops panel. Though his mind knew Melissa was right, his heart refused to accept that Hank Evans and his father were gone.

***

In one sense, Jack's heart was right. They weren't gone, at least not yet.

Hank Evans watched Jeremiah McCall's body tumble slowly away from him in the vacuum of space. However, his vision had already started to cloud. He knew it was the fluid in his eyeballs freezing up and crystallizing. Soon, his blood would do the same. He just hoped his brain would stop functioning before it all got too painful.

He wished the dimensional transport chip had been designed to hold more than one charge, but bitching about it certainly wasn't the best use of what little time he had left. Who would hear his complaint anyway? Certainly not the Levalum engineer who'd built the device.

His fingers were numb. It wouldn't be much longer. He wondered what would be next to lose sensation. He'd have thought his toes would have gone before his fingers, but then he didn't know that much about anatomy.

He had to laugh at himself. Here he was dying and all he could do was think analytically about which parts of his body would fail when.

Now everything was a dull blur. He wished he could turn himself to the sun. He used to know how to maneuver in zero-g, but... when did he learn that? Was it the Academy? No, it was after that.

He'd made love in zero-g several times. That's what he'd think about in his last moments--- a good memory. He deserved that. Too much of his life had been about pain. It was time for him to have a little joy.

But even at the moment of his death that simple wish was denied Hank Evans, for one name danced across the last functioning neurons of his brain.

Loftus... Loftus… pl... please forgive me, Loftus. I love you so very... I'm so... sorry... Lof... Loftus… L...

And with that final thought, Hank Evans's mind went silent.

***

Not more than thirty feet away, Jeremiah McCall's body hung in space.

I can easily escape this, Jeremiah. Your plan has failed.

After a moment, No, I don't think so. If you leave my body in your true form, you will be noticed by the Vedala who will capture you just as they have the other Volmvas on Nybiros.

Nothing.

Your choice is simple, Setacvas. You can either let them destroy you, or you can spend your last moments here, with me.

I could save us both, Jeremiah, if you would but let me.

No, I made the choice to stop you and I'm willing to live with it. If you wouldn't take the chance for peace that Jack offered you before, I doubt you would now.

Then I made the right decision. Your kind is as deceptive and evil as your progenitors. They gave themselves up to stop us just as you do now. You have destroyed my people, Jeremiah. All has been lost.

Both Jeremiah and Setacvas could feel the body they shared failing. Their time together was nearing its end.

Jeremiah, I do have another choice. I can escape this fate you have conspired to condemn me to. As you once told me, it is what I want.

Jeremiah's thoughts, now no more than mere whispers in the void, rose to reply. Good... good.... Perhaps... perhaps it will give you the understanding you lacked before...

Jeremiah McCall went silent, the damage to his brain had ended his life.

For a brief moment, the energy field that had inhabited Jeremiah's body strengthened, but only by the merest fraction. Then it too was gone.

***

Jack McCall closed his eyes. The sensor display confirmed the deaths of his father and of his friend, Hank Evans.

Melissa put her arm around him. "Jack, I'm so sorry."

"It didn't need to happen," Jack said. "None of it did."

"We've got company," Mei-Wan told the rest of them.

Jack, Melissa, and Falco looked toward the front of the bridge.

"You!" Jack shouted at the Vedala who now stood before them. "Haven't you caused enough misery?!"

"I do not have much time, Jack McCall," Kalasita told him. "You must leave this system immediately. I have just spoken to Admiral Grant. He has ordered the rest of your forces to retreat."

But Jack couldn't hear through the rage in his soul. "You used us to lure them here, didn't you? This was all a trap designed to allow you to finish the job the Ancient Progenitors started long ago, isn't it? You're going to destroy the last of the Volmvas."

"We do not know if that is even possible, but we will make certain that they can never again harm the offspring of the Progenitors," the Vedala said.

Jack was near his breaking point, but something nagged at his mind. He'd hold himself together a little while longer. He'd have time to grieve later.

"You've been around for billions of years, since the Ancient Progenitors disappeared," Jack said. "Yet here you are still playing around in the realm of we lesser beings. Why is that?"

"This is a pointless discussion," Kalastia said. "Events are moving quickly."

"No, it is the point," Jack insisted. "Other higher beings like the Organians, have reached a stage of non-corporeal existence. Why aren't they here to help against the Volmvas?"

"The Organians are blind."

"Take a good look in the mirror and say that, Kalastia." A smile came to his face along with a realization. "You haven't reached a truly non-corporeal stage yet, have you? After all these billions of years, you're still stuck here with the rest of us lesser creatures."

"We had responsibilities! We had a duty, a charge to keep! After all the Progenitors had done, after all they had sought to give the Galaxy, the Wubon, the Thasians, so many others turned away, but not the Vedala. We were the only ones who remained true!"

Jack McCall finally realized part of the madness fueling the destruction around him resided in the being in front of him. He had to try to cut through the fog in the Vedala's mind, to help it find the sanity that was in such short supply this day. "Let it go, Kalastia. This fight ended when the Ancient Progenitors died out."

"No, they made certain it wouldn't end when they seeded thousands of worlds and gave birth to you and all those like you. They didn't want it to end. They knew it could never end." The Vedala seemed to sway with each word, caught in a trance that had lasted for billions of years. "And now we follow the same path as they because we know the greatness that lies ahead."

The Vedala looked away for a moment, as if communicating with some unseen companion, then its attention returned to Jack. "Remember us."

A blink of an eye later, the Vedala was gone.

"Oh my god…" Melissa said with dread. "Look at the long range scanner, Jack."

Jack did as she asked, but found it hard to believe what he saw. "Three cube-shaped..." That was all the information he needed to tell him who the new arrivals were. "What the hell are they doing here? Can this day get any worse?"

***

"What has happened to your might now, Syronus?" the Borg Queen asked, smiling from ear to ear. "Your ships are nonfunctional. Your masters are confined on the planet below. And your own kind are in despair at the truth of their own existence, or rather the lack of their existence. What happened to your plans for this day?"

"I can still kill you before it ends."

She laughed. "Even that small pleasure will be denied you."

"Do not torment him," a new voice said.

Syronus and the Borg found the Vedala had joined them.

"Kalastia!" Syronus shouted. He lunged toward the Vedala, but a moment later, found himself frozen in place. "Release me!"

"I do this to protect you, Syronus." The fur covered Vedala motioned to the Borg. "Your ships have arrived. It is time for you to leave."

Confused, Syronus watched the Borg step through the restraining field. "You are free?! How?!"

"It was a simple matter to disable the field without your finding out," the Borg Queen told him.

"But why stay? Why? Why? Why?" Syronus demanded.

"For the same reason we allowed you to believe you had captured us," the Borg said with a smile. "To observe you. To see if there was some way for us to assimilate your technology."

"But the drones killed on the ships we destroyed?"

The Borg seemed confused. "Killed? They are not dead. All who are assimilated live on. Their thoughts, their dreams, their spirits live in the collective."

"What are you?!"

"I am the beginning and the end, the voice of the many that brings order out of chaos." Her eyes widened. "We are the Borg."

A full second later, a green energy pattern surrounded the Borg Queen. Then she was gone.

The Vedala walked up to Syronus. "Our time has come to an end. It is right that you and I are here together once more."

***

"Most of the fleet is already out of the system," Falco said as he handed Jack the diagnostic device. "The three Borg cubes are gone too."

Jack opened the engineering panel. "If we can say the same thing about ourselves in the next thirty seconds, I'll consider us lucky."

"I think we're going to need something more than luck," Melissa said. "It's not a control problem that's keeping the warp drive off line."

Jack and Falco glanced up at her. "What is it then?" Falco asked.

"Evidently when we set that device off, it fried some of the intermix subsystems."

Jack walked over to Mei-Wan who sat at the communications station. "That happen in the other timeline?"

"What the hell's all this about another timeline?" Falco demanded. "I miss something?"

Rather than address Falco, Mei-Wan directed her answer to Jack's question. "No, it didn't. But the device was on the planet and the Chamberlain was in orbit. It could be a result of the device's proximity to the primary systems of the Abdiel. That may explain the comm and transporter problems too."

Jack had to make a quick decision. The two shuttles on board were the impulse drive only variety, due to the Progenitor device being in the main shuttlebay. And with their comm system out, they couldn't ask for help.

However, Paul Falco had his own opinion. "This ship won't do us wrong, McCall. We'll get her going."

That wasn't the kind of answer Jack was looking for, but it wasn't as if they had many other options. "Okay, Melissa, go over the warp systems again. Check all the backups and…"

"Jack, I don't think we're going to have time for that," Mei-Wan interrupted, pointing at the main viewscreen.

Jack watched the surface of Nybiros turn bright with the light of a thousand suns. The Vedala appeared to be getting the upper hand in their battle on the planet against the Volmvas. It wouldn't be much longer before the energy being released exploded forth across the Nybiros system. But instead of capitulating to the obvious result that catastrophe would have upon the Abdiel and its occupants, Jack went to work with Falco and Melissa at giving them some slim hope of escape.

***

The Vedala regarded Syronus. "We have but mere moments left to us. Is there nothing you wish to say to me?"

"I said all I had to say to you when you left. You were a G'voda, you knew our duty. But you became a traitor, as did all the others who followed you and called themselves Vedala. I have seen nothing to suggest you have changed."

"I told you what the Volmvas would lead you to, Syronus. Look at what you've done to yourself, to our people! You are a machine!"

"Don't judge me! You took on a new body as well. At least I held to the ideals we G'voda had cherished for millennia." Syronus struggled to release himself from the unseen force holding him in place, but to no avail. "You turned your back on that and became a servant of the greatest tyrants the Galaxy has ever known."

"They were not tyrants. They offered a better way. A way you refused to even consider."

"I knew from whence the Ancient Progenitors had come. I knew what had been done to the Volmvas. How could any G'voda ignore the injustice done to them?"

"Even at the risk of all we knew and loved? That's what you asked our people to sacrifice for the Volmvas," Kalastia said, taking a step nearer to Syronus. "You were even willing to sacrifice the life you and I had together."

"You and I were G'voda!" Syronus told her. "It was our duty to do what was right no matter the cost!"

"I had a higher duty. The Volmvas had to be stopped."

The Vedala watched a bright light pour through the windows. Kalastia knew there was little time left. The plan she and the other Vedala had put into action was near its fulfillment. The Volmvas and the G'voda would be stopped this day. Finally the Galaxy would know the peace the Ancient Progenitors had labored so hard to achieve.

She returned her attention to Syronus. "I had been told I could meet you again either in battle or face to face, Syronus. I chose to be here with you now."

"To gloat?! To tell me how wrong I was?!" Syronus's voice had become a shrill scream. "I will never admit to being wrong!"

"No, those were not my reasons." Kalastia put her arms around Syronus. "I wanted to be here to comfort that part of you that used to be the one I shared a life with."

"You could free us from this fate." Syronus pleaded as light from the windows became a blinding glare. "You have that power!"

"It is time for this war to end," Kalastia said. "Join me in our final moment, Syronus... my love."

***

Jack smiled as the engineering panel came to life.

"I think that's got it!" Falco shouted with glee. He rushed to the conn station and began activating the controls.

"Everyone get to a seat and prepare for warp!" Jack ordered.

But instead, Melissa joined the man she loved at the engineering station. "You got room for one more?"

"It just so happens I do." He pulled her into his lap.

Mei-Wan watched Jack and Melissa hold each other tight. She saw the hope in their eyes that they'd get to live another day, just for the joy of being together. For the first time, she was pleased that two people she still cared so very much for had each other at a moment like this.

Mei-Wan touched a control on the communication station just as Falco was engaging the warp drive. A sensor scan of the area showed a subspace energy wave heading their direction.

They were too late.

Two seconds later, the Abdiel spun about like a piece of straw caught in a whirlwind. It reminded her of a story she'd read long ago, but before she could think of its title, Mei-Wan lost consciousness.

TO BE CONTINUED...

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