The Returned, Part I, Page 2

  And when it was over, she slumped in exhaustion onto the floor. It was hard, unyielding rock, but she didn’t care about that. Instead her head was tucked onto Mac’s shoulder. She could feel his heart pounding against his chest, only just starting to slow a bit. “Damn,” she sighed, and stroked his chest. “It’s been . . . a while.”

  “You haven’t found anyone else to fill the void in my absence?”

  “I’m a married woman, Calhoun. That means something to me.” She yawned and rubbed his chest, which was remarkably smooth. “I missed this.”

  “Me too.”

  She felt a great fatigue sweeping through her. Her eyes started to close, and for a moment she tried to keep them open, but then she just gave up. She realized that she hadn’t been sleeping all that much lately, and now the exhaustion took control of her mind and, despite her best effort to the contrary, she wound up drifting off into slumber.

  What are you doing? Are you out of your mind?! This is what he wants! Wake up! Wake the hell up!

  Shelby’s head immediately snapped forward as her eyes opened. She thought that she had only drifted for a few seconds, but then she saw that darkness had descended upon them. The blistering sun had set and coolness was drifting across the vast desert of Xenex.

  Mackenzie Calhoun was gone.

  “Mac!” she called, sitting up and looking around. Her heart sank as she saw that the cave was now empty. The few possessions that he had brought with him were gone. He had smoothly extricated himself from her slumbering form, had dressed, gathered his belongings, and departed without rousing her.

  “Son of a bitch,” she snarled as she grabbed her clothes. She dressed as quickly as she could, muttering to herself as she did so. “How could I have been so stupid? He knows I always fall asleep after sex. He knew that I’d be out of it and he’d be able to make his escape without waking me up. Son of a bitch.” As she pulled on her tunic, she hit the combadge.

  “Yes, Admiral,” came the captain’s brisk voice.

  “Scan the area. Find Calhoun.”

  The captain sounded confused. “I thought he was with you.”

  “He got away.”

  “How did he get aw—”

  “Would you just scan the damned area, please?”

  “Hold on, please. Scanning.”

  The seconds seemed to tick by interminably. Finally he came back on. “He’s not there.”

  “Widen the search.”

  “No, you don’t understand, Admiral. He’s not on the planet. He’s left Xenex.”

  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “How the hell did he leave Xenex without you seeing him?”

  “If he departed in a stealth vessel from the other side of the planet . . .”

  “How could he have gotten to the other side of the . . .” Then her voice trailed off as she answered her own question. “He must have a ship with a single-person transporter on it. He beamed himself onto the ship and then left the world.”

  “But where would he have gone?”

  “Knowing him? Back in time.”

  There was a pause as the captain obviously tried to understand what she was talking about. “Did you say—?”

  “Yes, and I hope I’m wrong. Because considering all the damage that Mackenzie Calhoun can accomplish, I’d hate to think what he might wind up doing if he was set loose in time. Fortunately, I doubt he really will be able to convince the Excalibur to slingshot through time, so there’s little chance that he’ll . . .”

  “Admiral? Admiral, what’s wr—?”

  “I know where he’s going,” she said. “Beam me up, now. We need to get word to them before it’s too late . . . which it may already be.”

  Somewhere

  i.

  LIEUTENANT ARRAS NUEVO took his job seriously. Very seriously. Because he knew that the safety of time and space depended upon him and his squad.

  Nuevo was a twenty-year man, having served every one of those years proudly in the corps of the Starfleet Marines. He and his fellows had spent much of their lives being dropped into the spots that were far too hot for the vaunted starships to be sent into. He snorted in derision whenever he had reason to give even the slightest thought to individuals such as Starfleet security guards. As far as he was concerned, starship security was someone who had washed out of combat training and had simply taken a post that would enable him to do something with his life . . . assuming that he lived long enough to accomplish anything.

  The marines were a very different type of individual from security. Their marksmanship was unparalleled: when they fired at something, they always hit it. They had extensive hand-to-hand combat training. And most importantly, they were thoroughly schooled in all of the known offensive techniques that any enemy could possibly throw at them. They were, quite simply, combat elite.

  Which was why Nuevo had initially been extremely put out when he had been assigned to the security detail of the Guardian of Forever.

  Granted, he knew that he had been injured. A stray disruptor bolt during a major firefight on Hangis III had destroyed his right leg. It had been replaced using cloning techniques to grow a new leg, but he was positive it wasn’t as good as the old one. The doctors claimed that it was all in his mind, that the leg was identical to the one that he had lost. Perhaps. Nevertheless, the replacement constantly felt stiff to him and it felt “off.” Ultimately he was removed from combat field assignments. Starfleet had initially wanted to rotate him to a desk job, but Nuevo had balked at the idea. He was a fighter, not a desk jockey. He would sooner have washed out of the force than let himself be stuck behind a desk.

  When he had been placed in charge of security for the Guardian of Forever, he had at first thought of it as an utterly pointless assignment. He was aware of the Guardian’s history, but it didn’t mean much of anything. It was just some massive time portal that squads of scientists were always poking around in and inspecting, using it to observe different time periods of various worlds. What was he, with his advanced combat training, doing there?

  But he had very quickly had his thinking straightened out in a meeting with Admiral Caldwell of Starfleet and a Doctor Periskoff from the Daystrom Institute. Caldwell had been there to emphasize that Starfleet wanted Nuevo for the post, but it had been Periskoff who had driven home the importance of it.

  “You have no idea,” Periskoff had said, in a smooth Russian accent that accompanied the smoothness of his pate, “how dangerous the Guardian can be. If the wrong person climbs into it and travels into the past, such an endeavor can literally unravel the entire space-time continuum.”

  “Unravel how?” Nuevo had asked.

  “There are hundreds of ways that it could happen,” Periskoff had told him. “Ways that we cannot even begin to imagine. The undoing of one event ripples throughout history, to some manner of the Butterfly Effect.”

  Nuevo had heard of that. The notion that killing a random butterfly in some prehistoric era wound up rewriting the entirety of human history. He had never ascribed much worth to the notion, but from the seriousness of Periskoff’s attitude he was starting to think there was something to it.

  “We want you to assemble a top team,” Caldwell said. “The best of whoever you’ve worked with in your career. They will aid you in securing the Guardian. Anyone desiring to inspect it will have to clear all their particulars through you. No one will have the opportunity to inspect it unless you sign off on it.”

  “You are being trusted,” Periskoff said, “to maintain the stability of the universe. There is no more vital job that exists.”

  That was enough to impress upon Nuevo the importance of his job, and he had taken it seriously from that point on. He had contacted other marines that he had worked with, and they had likewise been initially dubious. But Nuevo had managed to convince them, and the Guardian of Forever now had a dozen on permanent assi
gnment to protect the portal from anyone trying to take it over.

  Every day, every night, they switched off, monitoring the grounds meticulously. The twist that Nuevo had developed was that they were not seen. They had no single guard posts that were set up which people might be able to pinpoint and target. Instead they patrolled the area in carefully crafted random patterns that no one could possibly interpret. Thus far the strategy had worked perfectly. Over the past years, since Nuevo had been installed as head of security, they had managed to stop intruders on three separate occasions. None of them had gotten within a meter of the Guardian, and Nuevo had patted himself on the back every time they had managed to corral some new nutcase.

  This evening seemed identical to other evenings as far as Nuevo was concerned. He knew that it was after normal research hours and there would be no scientists hovering around the Guardian, so that simplified his duty.

  As it happened, Nuevo was taking the route that brought the patrols closest to the Guardian. He hated to admit it, even to himself, but he liked this tour. There was something about the Guardian that he had begun to appreciate after prolonged exposure to it. He knew that its origins were shrouded in mystery and sometimes he would simply stare at it and try to grasp the nature of the creatures that had constructed it.

  Or had it been constructed? Was it some entity whose origins were steeped deeply into the very creation of the universe, and a city had risen up around it, determined to both investigate and protect it?

  Nuevo had no idea. Such questions were above his grade. Still, it pleased him to dwell on the Guardian from time to time and just wonder about both it and the type of events that had led to its beginnings.

  Maybe God built it . . .

  He shook his head, rejecting the premise. He didn’t believe the teachings; that some unseen deity had crafted the universe and then took the time to add such things as the Guardian of Forever, that was simply too much for him to wrap his brain around.

  The Guardian had been asked many times about its origins, but the responses had always been maddeningly unhelpful. It had spoken of how it had been there at the beginning and would be there when the entire universe decided to wrap matters up and fade into darkness, which was certainly poetic but didn’t provide any guidance.

  He strode slowly toward the Guardian, not even bothering to speak to it. He was neither a scientist nor philosopher, and so he didn’t think he could comprehend the answers that the Guardian would provide him. Instead Nuevo drew to within five meters and just stood and stared at it.

  The night was amazingly still.

  Too still.

  The thought crept through his mind in a sort of offhand way, but then a greater concern began to build. Although his fellows were as stealthy as he was when it came to their patrols, he was always aware of their presence. He just knew they were out there, sensing on some fundamental level that they were making their way around the perimeter, checking every millimeter of the area, staying on top of their duty.

  Now, for some reason, he wasn’t sensing them.

  Nuevo tried to tell himself that he was exaggerating his abilities. He couldn’t really sense when his detail was around; it was just something that he had crafted in his head.

  But the more he thought about it—and he only thought about it for a matter of five seconds before acting, it should be noted—the more he was convinced that he knew exactly and precisely what he was talking about.

  “Unit Six, report.” Unit Six was Santiago, who was the farthest out of the marines and was also Nuevo’s second in command. “Santiago, I said report.”

  No response.

  “O’Hara, come in,” Nuevo said. “Cullens. All units report in immediately.”

  Still no response.

  For half a heartbeat he thought that perhaps there was some system-wide failure on the communications network, but even as that idea occurred to him, he tossed it aside. He knew perfectly well something far more dire was going on.

  Nuevo’s first instinct was to back up to protect the Guardian. But then he realized that was the worst possible maneuver he could undertake. If he did that, he would be out in the open, a perfect target for whoever or whatever it was that had taken out his men.

  He wished that there were trees, bushes, something in the area that he could secure himself behind. But there was nothing except desert, interspersed with ruins of a city that might once have been extremely grand, but now was nothing save standing rubble. In the distance were the shelters created for the benefit of anyone who came down for an extended period of time. “Useless.”

  The only refuge he could spot was the columns; several towering columns that dotted the landscape and would provide him the cover he needed. He could stake out the Guardian and wait for whoever had taken out his men.

  He scrambled quickly toward the nearest column. As he ran, Nuevo continued to look everywhere, taking in the entire area. He reached the column and hid behind it. It stretched about three meters high; a number of times in the past, he had speculated about the type of building that it had been attached to. However, that was not the case this time. Now he only saw it as a strategic cover that he could hide behind and wait for the intruder to make himself known.

  He tapped his combadge one more time. “This is Nuevo. Anyone who can hear this, report in.”

  And then a voice crackled softly across his badge. “Will I do?”

  Nuevo froze. He didn’t recognize the voice. It wasn’t one of his people. That meant only one thing: the intruder had managed to get his hands on one of their badges.

  “Who is this?” said Nuevo slowly. As he spoke, he swept the area with his phaser, trying to find a target to shoot at. A gentle breeze blew in from the desert. He usually liked the feel of it. Now it was a distraction.

  “I need you to stand down. I need to make use of the Guardian.”

  “You are unauthorized personnel,” Nuevo said. “And you have somehow incapacitated my squad. I am going to ask you to stand down and surrender yourself immediately. If you do that, I can promise that you will not be punished for your actions.”

  “Really. For all you know, I killed your men. You’re offering amnesty for a man who may have committed eleven murders?”

  That sentence was extremely disconcerting. It confirmed for Nuevo that the attacker had disposed of all of them, simply because he knew how many there were.

  How the hell was it possible? Nuevo’s opinion of his men was not diminished by the fact that this intruder had managed to dispatch them. Instead, it elevated his opinion of this man, whoever he was.

  “I’m offering you the chance to surrender,” Nuevo said slowly.

  “Regrettably, that isn’t possible. I need the Guardian.”

  “Yes, so you’ve said. But why?”

  “I need to save a race.”

  “A race? What race?”

  “My race. They’re dead, because of me. And I have to find a way to stop it from happening.”

  Of all the responses Nuevo might have expected, this was not one of them. He had no idea how to feel about it. “I don’t understand how you could be responsible for the death of an entire race.”

  “I underestimated an enemy. Didn’t allow for the steps they’d take. I need to go back in time and stop them. Get an armament ready in anticipation of their attack. Make sure that they fail.”

  Let him. The thought went through Nuevo’s mind unbidden. Maybe he should just step aside and let this guy use the Guardian. If what he was saying was true, then maybe he could use the Guardian. Prevent genocide. Why the hell not?

  Because he could be a madman. Because he could be fabricating this story out of some demented illusion. And even if he’s not . . . if everything he’s saying is true . . . you can’t take the chance. He might wind up doing something that seems totally innocent to him, something that he doesn’t even think abo
ut, and then he winds up doing far worse damage than he’s trying to undo. You don’t get to judge him. You don’t get to decide. This man is an attacker and he needs to be stopped, and that is simply all that matters.

  “Listen, pal,” Nuevo said, “believe it or not, I sympathize. I do. Some bad guys come in and obliterate your people . . . friends, family, whatever . . . and you’re willing to turn back time to stop it. I get all that. But you can’t use the Guardian. I’m under orders to protect it. In Starfleet, orders are everything. I don’t expect you to understand that—”

  “Of course I understand that. I’m Starfleet as well.”

  “Then you have to know that what you’re doing is completely illegal.”

  “I’m aware of that. But considering I’m trying to save my race, how concerned about legalities do you think I am right now?”

  “If you’re really Starfleet,” said Nuevo, “then you will surrender yourself to me right now.”

  “That’s not going to happen, and your repeated requests aren’t going to make it so. I say we turn it around: I’ll offer you a chance to surrender. Right now. Put down your phaser, and put your hands over your head.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “I’ve already dispatched your associates. This is your chance to avoid being knocked unconscious. Help me or go down. It’s your choice.”

  Nuevo’s gaze once more swept the area. There was no sign of the man he was talking to. That meant that he wasn’t close enough to launch an attack. Trick him. Outthink him. Draw him out.

  “Okay,” Nuevo said, keeping his phaser leveled. “You win. I’ve put down my phaser.”

  “You’re lying. That was a mistake.”

  Suddenly Nuevo saw movement off to his right. Someone was behind another of the pillars. He swung the phaser up and fired off a quick blast. It hit his target straight on, and Nuevo cheered to himself right before he saw Cullens slump forward into the light and hit the ground, unconscious.