Shield of the Gods
Author: Christopher L. Bennett
Date: 0101-01-01 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Star Trek
Description: An all new Star Trek e-novella featuring the fan-favorite Federation bureau the Department of Temporal Investigations! The stalwart agents of the Department of Temporal Investigations have tracked down many dangerous artifacts, but now they face a greater, more personal challenge: retrieving a time-travel device stolen from their own vault by a rogue agent of the Aegis, a powerful, secretive group that uses its mastery of time to prevent young civilizations from destroying themselves. Blaming the Aegis itself for a tragedy yet to come, this renegade plans to use the stolen artifact to sabotage
Publisher: Pocket Books/

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To everyone still fighting to save us from our greatest mistakes.

Historian’s Note

The main portion of Shield of the Gods takes place in April 2385, shortly after Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations—Time Lock and approximately four months before the dedication of the new Deep Space 9 in Star Trek: The Fall—Revelation and Dust.

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

—Theodore Parker, “Of Justice and Conscience,” 1853

I

Stardate 62250.5

April 2, 2385 (A Tuesday)

Qhembembem Outpost

Agent Teresa Garcia liked to think she’d become fairly seasoned. She may have only been a field agent of the Federation Department of Temporal Investigations for a little under four years—not quite long enough that she could effortlessly call up the exact time interval like many of the veteran agents—but she’d seen enough extraordinary things that she felt little could shock her anymore.

Still, the traders’ bazaar on the Qhembembem Outpost was enough to make her dark eyes widen and her mouth fall open in disbelief as she looked around. It wasn’t just the visual and aural cacophony of the place, the stalls of various exotic designs where traders from numerous species hawked gadgets, jewelry, artworks, and assorted indescribabilia of even more diverse origins than themselves. That by itself would have been stimulating, the sort of rich sensory experience that she delighted in sharing with her partner. Meyo Ranjea’s Deltan sense of wonder toward stimulating experiences of all kinds was infectious, and it made it easier for Garcia to enjoy what was frequently a plodding and thankless profession.

No, what stunned Garcia was the nature of the goods that were being hawked openly before them. “Look at all this stuff,” she said to Ranjea. “Phasing cloaks. Thought makers. Multiphasic isotopes. Consciousness-transfer devices. Isolytic subspace charges. Practically all of the most dangerous, advanced, illegal technologies I’ve ever heard of.”

“A perfect place for the aspiring time traveler seeking a constructive path integrator,” Ranjea reminded her. “The rest of it is for other authorities to deal with—eventually. For ourselves, we should be grateful to find a supplier so close to home.”

“Yeah . . . grateful,” Garcia muttered with bitter irony.

The Qhembembem Outpost, occupying a borderline-habitable planet around a pair of red dwarfs barely bright enough to be called stars, had once been a hub of slave trading, drug dealing, and other criminal activities of the sort that thrived in lawless space. It had been shut down more than two centuries ago, once the rise of the Federation had brought peace and order to the sector. But the Qhembembem system happened to fall within the vast dead zone left by the cataclysmic Borg Invasion of 2381, and the small outpost that remained had been obscure enough to be overlooked even by a Borg armada determined to assimilate or eradicate everything in its path. Afterward, with the Federation and its neighbors focused on rebuilding the surviving worlds on the fringes of the dead zone, there had been few resources to spare for policing the great void, and criminals had been quick to take advantage. But the new generation of criminals had brought a more modern twist to Qhembembem, making it a hotbed of trade in dangerous, outlawed technologies on the cutting edge of innovation. Why sell abducted slaves when you could sell machines that would let you enslave any mind you desired or create a subservient clone of anyone you wished? Why sell consciousness-altering drugs when you could sell people the means to alter the physical reality around them? Garcia had never been surrounded by so many dangerous creations at once—except in the Eridian Vault, where the DTI stored the most hazardous temporal artifacts it had confiscated over the decades.

Or had stored, in one particular case. And therein lay the problem that brought Garcia and Ranjea to this place.

“Here’s our man,” the Deltan said, gesturing toward a stall positioned before a large, heavy-duty storage container. Garcia noted that the stall was occupied by a lean, aging Ferengi who was currently haggling with a Vendorian over what appeared to be a chroniton field coil. That in itself would have warranted an arrest if the Federation still held enforcement power here. But right now, it was a mere distraction.

Luckily, the agents’ drab gray suits and practiced professional blandness kept them from standing out amid the crowd—even though Deltans almost always attracted attention from nearly every humanoid around them. Perhaps the Ferengi was too distracted by the scent of latinum as he neared the close of his deal. He seemed suitably startled as Ranjea spoke his name. “Lant. Still up to your old tricks, I see.”

The saggy-featured Ferengi gave a sharp cringe at the sight of them and promptly whipped the field coil behind his back. “Agent Ranjea! And the lovely Miss Garcia—even lovelier than before, if such a thing is possible.” She met his reflexive condescension with a hard, silent stare that made him fidget. “Ah, yes, this—this isn’t what it looks like, I assure you.” The Vendorian darted away into the crowd, crossed its tentacles, and began to shimmer, though it was lost within the crush of passersby before Garcia could see who or what it had shapeshifted into.

“Don’t worry, Lant,” Ranjea said. “We’re not here for you this time.” Lant had been on the DTI’s sensors ever since 2376, when he had used an ancient temporal transporter to get rich in Ferenginar’s past. Starfleet had undone his meddling and the device had been destroyed, but Lant had been trying to get back in the time-travel game ever since. If he ever got close to success, something would have to be done about him, but for now he remained in the “nuisance” category.

“We’re actually here to request your cooperation,” the Deltan went on. “We’re pursuing a criminal who’s stolen a dangerous piece of temporal technology. We have reason to believe she needs a constructive path integrator to make it functional. And rumor is that you recently came into possession of such an item.”

Lant gave a nervous chuckle. “You flatter me, Agent Ranjea. Path integrators are an extremely advanced technology, and exceedingly rare. They require benamite crystals to function, you know, and the supply of those has become even scarcer since the Federation began scooping them up for its slipstream drives. If I did have such a device in inventory, I would be entitled to charge quite a hefty sum.”

“We don’t want to buy it,” Garcia told him. “But the woman we’re after does.” She pulled out her pocket padd and showed him an image of the thief, a gray-skinned humanoid female with long black-and-red hair. “Her name is Daiyar. She’s a member of the Tomika, a civilization belonging to the Vomnin Colonial Consortium out in the Gum Nebula.”

“Ah, yes. Vomnin are quite the connoisseurs of advanced technologies, aren’t they? I imagine she’d be more likely to go to them than come here.”

“Except that we already have the cooperation of both the Consortium and the Vomnin Confederacy in watching out for Daiyar,” Ranjea said. “After all, they’re the ones whose history is most likely to be affected if she should succeed in obtaining a path integrator. As you say, such devices are rare, and the whereabouts of most of them are known. And all the major governments with access to such technologies are aware of the risks should they fall into the hands of a rogue actor. They’ve all taken steps to safeguard against attempted thefts.”

“Which leaves places like this,” Garcia said, “where there’s no one to keep an eye on such things. Easier to buy one than try to steal it.”

Lant chuckled. “Except she already stole from you, didn’t she?” The agents’ wordless reactions made him laugh harder. “Oh, yes, I’ve heard the scuttlebutt. That secret vault of artifacts whose existence you don’t admit to was raided a while back. I’m guessing that ‘dangerous piece of technology’ you’re trying to recover is one you failed to keep safe before. Which means you’re, ah, highly incentivized to ensure my cooperation, aren’t you?”

Garcia sighed, cutting to the chase. “What do you want, Lant?”

“Oh, just a little breathing room. Call it benign neglect. You go your way, I go mine.”

She stared. “We’re trying to stop someone from changing history. You’re asking us to let you do the same?”

“You wound me, Miss—ah, Agent Garcia. I learned my lesson the last time. Rule of Acquisition Number 248: ‘The definition of insanity is trying the same failed scheme and expecting different results.’ Trying to change history just gets people like you and Starfleet on my tail trying to change it back. There are subtler ways to profit from movement through time.”

“Such as?” Ranjea asked.

“Ah, that’s my trade secret. But it’s nothing you should have to worry about, providing you agree to my little proposal.”

“I don’t think you get it, Lant,” Garcia said, hardening her tone. “This woman is determined and ruthless, and she has advanced tech at her disposal. She wouldn’t bother to haggle with you. If you’re lucky, she’ll use a hypnotic device on you and make you so docile that you’ll just hand the integrator over to her—free of charge.” Lant shuddered as if she’d spoken a particularly vile obscenity. “Or maybe she’ll just beat you up and take what she wants. She’s a lot stronger than she looks.”

The Ferengi merchant cringed at her aggressive tone and stance. “All right, all right. What is it you want from me?”

“To be the bait.”

Lant stared. “What? After all that, you expect me to voluntarily put myself in harm’s way?”

“We’ll be nearby, watching closely,” Ranjea said in his most reassuring tones. “When and if she comes for the integrator, we’ll be on hand to intercept her—and protect you. All you have to do is maintain your calm and keep her occupied long enough to let us arrest her.”

“You don’t make it sound as if she’ll come easily. You graysuits aren’t exactly Starfleet security, are you?”

Garcia grabbed Lant by the front of his garish tunic, relishing the “bad cop” role. “You’d be surprised at the kind of training we get, Lant. Want an illustration?”

“Ah, no, no. While I’d relish a tumble with you under other circumstances—” She tightened her grip in warning, no longer as an act. “All right, all right, I apologize!”

After one more pointed moment, she released him. As Lant readjusted his tunic, Ranjea asked, “Then we can count on your cooperation?”

“Very well. If it’s the only way to get rid of you afterward.”

“Oh, we’ll never be very far, Lant,” Garcia purred. “As long as you continue with your current pursuits, we’ll be there to keep an eye on you.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Lant sullenly replied. Then his gaze grew more devious. “A hypnotic device, you say? I’ve heard rumors of temporal operatives who use such instruments. This thief wouldn’t be a member of your own little fraternity, would she? Is that why she was able to put one over on the DTI?”

Garcia kept her cool, as she had been trained. She was tempted to go “bad cop” on him once again, but it would simply be giving in to his provocation for no purpose. Besides, it would be as good as admitting that he was right. Inasmuch as the various temporal agencies of the galaxy could be considered a “fraternity,” Daiyar was a former member of it. Worse, the agency that had trained her was the most ancient, advanced, and mysterious one of them all. That put the DTI at a distinct disadvantage in dealing with her.

Unless, of course, her own former employers could be convinced to lend a hand. Garcia knew that her superiors at the Department were working that end of the problem even now. She just hoped their efforts would pay off before she and Ranjea had to confront a renegade Aegis augment with nothing to lose.

DTI Branch Office, Gronim City, Denobula

“All right, folks, listen up.” Marion Dulmur looked around the situation room at his assembled audience. Only a few of them were physically present, including several staffers of the Denobulan branch office that Dulmur led as assistant director—as well as his former partner Gariff Lucsly, whose stiff and stalwart presence by his side was a comfort he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed. The rest were in attendance only as holograms or images on the situation room’s wall screens—either DTI agents listening in from other field offices around the Federation, or members of the temporal agencies of regional powers including the Typhon Pact, Ferengi Alliance, Colonial Consortium, Carnelian Regnancy, and others. Even relatively unfriendly powers tended to cooperate in matters of temporal security—though Dulmur couldn’t help noticing that one of the most important signatories of the Temporal Accords was conspicuous in its absence.

“Many of you have already been briefed on the recent theft from a DTI secure facility and the subsequent hunt for the thief. But just to make sure everyone’s up to speed, we’re gonna go over it again. Agent Lucsly, whom you all know, has the most direct knowledge of the situation and the thief, so I’ll let him have the floor.”

Lucsly stepped forward, not wasting time on preliminaries. “Eight months and twenty-seven days ago, on stardate 61512.7, a radical nationalist group claiming to act on behalf of the Vomnin Confederacy attempted to raid a secure DTI storage facility. I won’t go into details for security reasons, but our safeguards were successful in stymieing their efforts—until five days ago, when their leader succeeded in escaping with a prochronistic temporal drive.”

On a wall screen, the Ferengi temporal investigator, Vlik, spoke up. “When you say ‘prochronistic,’ you mean it came from the future? Or . . . will come from there?” Grand Nagus Rom had only recently organized Vlik’s bureau, so she was still getting used to the terminology.

“That’s correct,” Lucsly replied, “which is why this is a matter of such concern. The so-called time drive, which can theoretically convert any warp-capable vessel into a temporal craft, is extremely advanced and untraceable by any known means. Fortunately, the drive is missing one key component, a constructive path integrator. This technology is very rare, highly advanced, and reliant on scarce benamite crystals. This gives us our best shot at tracking the thief down. Our own agents are already securing the known path integrators in Federation space, and most of your respective agencies have already been notified and taken steps to secure theirs. We have requested, and I now reiterate the request for the newcomers, that you all, in turn, contact any more remote temporal agencies you have lines of communication with.”

The Gororm agent representing the Carnelians spoke up. “But if the theft occurred in Federation territory—”

“The thief is not from Federation space, and she has access to long-range transporter technology. In fact, she is a former operative of the Aegis.”

That provoked gasps, murmurs, and other reactions as the listeners were taken aback. Vlik seemed confused, though. “I’m sorry . . . I’ve heard the name mentioned before, but I’m still not fully conversant. The Aegis are . . . ?”

“The Aegis are the most ancient and powerful temporal agency known to exist in the present era in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants,” Lucsly replied. “The species behind the Aegis is largely unknown, as they prefer to operate through intermediaries. They are reportedly able to move as freely through time as others move through space, though whether this is through technology or through some innate extratemporal ability, such as that of the Bajoran wormhole inhabitants, is unclear. Using this perception, they are able to predict when sentient civilizations may face crisis points that endanger their survival—for instance, nuclear tensions, environmental destruction, genetic pandemics, or the like.”

“And they use time travel to prevent these crises?”

“Oddly, no. Instead, they recruit—or abduct—members of the endangered species thousands of years before the crisis point, take them to their home planet, and spend generations selectively breeding them into genetically superior specimens. Why they rely on gradual breeding instead of genetic engineering is unclear.”

“Although,” Dulmur interposed, “maybe their holistic sense of time means they don’t mind a long wait.”

“In any case, as the point of crisis nears, these operatives are sent to infiltrate the planet and act clandestinely to protect the civilization until it’s deemed mature enough to take responsibility for itself. For instance, Earth was monitored by the Aegis in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, until the alliance with Vulcan and the beginnings of space colonization made the risk of human extinction negligible.”

The hologram of Ronarek, the Romulan agent representing the Typhon Pact, chuckled. “I’m sure it must kill your self-righteous Starfleet that the human species owes its survival to a group that ignored their vaunted Prime Directive.”

“It’s a matter of some moral ambiguity,” Lucsly conceded. “However, the actions of this particular Aegis ex-operative are not.”

He called up an image of the thief, a slender, long-limbed female with subtly tessellated gray skin, hair streaked with black and red in equal proportions, and large black eyes with red irises, matching the shades of her hair. “This is Daiyar. She’s a member of the Tomika, a relatively new member of the Colonial Consortium. Like all Aegis operatives, she has significantly augmented physical and mental abilities. She also has access to an Aegis interstellar transporter.”

“But those can beam through time as well as space,” Ronarek said. “Why, then, did she need to steal a temporal drive?”

“As I mentioned, the drive is untraceable. We surmise that Daiyar plans to take an action in the past that the Aegis would wish to prevent, and therefore does not want them to be able to track her movement in time, as they could if she used their transporter technology.”

“That’s why this is so urgent,” Dulmur added.

“Then why not just ask the Aegis for help?” Vlik inquired.

“We tried,” Dulmur told her. “First thing we did. We just got a polite suggestion to stay out of it and leave it to them. Which we’re not going to do. That drive was in the DTI’s hands, and we let her take it from us, so it’s our responsibility to clean up that mess.

“Now, as for the rest of you, the Vomnin and their allies are the ones most likely to be affected by whatever change she wants to make. But we can’t be sure what she’s actually planning or what ripple effects it might have on galactic history. We all have an obligation under the Accords to try to stop her. The Aegis may not want our involvement, but they’ve got it anyway. All good?” The other agents indicated their agreement. “Great. Thank you all for your cooperation.”

Once the screens and holos had been deactivated, Dulmur left the situation room and headed for his office, with Lucsly keeping in perfect step alongside him. At least, that was what he expected from long experience. But after a moment, he realized Lucsly was lagging behind, gazing out over the railing at the striking architecture of the antique Denobulan stepwell that had been converted into this branch office.

Dulmur turned around and came up alongside his former partner. “You okay, pal?”

It was a moment before Lucsly spoke. “I feel I should be doing more.”

“You’ve reported everything you know. You’ve advised all the various personnel on what they need to know. Your paperwork has been as detailed and meticulous as ever. That’s supposed to be the job, right? To investigate and report on things that, most of the time, are beyond our ability to control. You taught me that.”

“I know. But . . . these past few years have been so . . . eventful. We’ve found ourselves in the thick of things more often than we used to.”

Dulmur gave him a sidelong look. “You’re not starting to develop a taste for it, are you?”

“I sincerely hope not. All these adventures play havoc with my daily routine.” The older agent paused. “Still . . . there is something to be said for being in a position to influence outcomes directly, rather than trying to clean up other people’s messes. It can be . . . more efficient.”

“Maybe,” Dulmur said. “Just don’t forget: this time it’s our own mess we’re cleaning up.”

“No,” Lucsly said. “It’s mine. I let Daiyar get away.”

“Oh, come on, Lucsly.” His ex-partner stared at him. “You are the last person I would’ve expected to go all Starfleet gung-ho on me. You’re not a lone wolf. You’re an asset of the Department. Part of a system. And it’s the system that gets things done, more than any one person within it. We have our best people out there, including Ranjea and Garcia, whom we helped train ourselves. If you trust the Department, then trust them.”

Lucsly contemplated his words for a moment, then straightened. “You’re right, of course, Assistant Director. I regret my lapse.”

Dulmur clapped his shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, pal. Just get back to work.”

Lucsly nodded and strode off with metronome precision. Still, Dulmur frowned as he watched his erstwhile mentor and partner head off. This past week had been the first time they’d worked together since Dulmur’s promotion, and Lucsly hadn’t quite seemed himself. Dulmur knew that taking the assistant directorship had been the right choice; it had given him career satisfaction and brought him together with Cymmen, his fiancée. But it had left Lucsly without a partner for the first time in many years—and Dulmur wasn’t sure that it was good for the man to operate alone, without someone to ground him in something beyond his work.

Every Holmes needs a Watson, Dulmur thought. Doesn’t he?

II

April 3, 2385

Qhembembem Outpost

“I hate stakeouts,” Teresa Garcia muttered. Meyo Ranjea glanced over to see his partner peering out through the one-way window in Lant’s office for the umpteenth time, her annoyed expression confirming that she saw the same view of the Ferengi’s stall and its lack of customers that she’d seen the previous umpteen-minus-one times. “Of all the places that could have path integrators, do we really think Daiyar would choose the Qhembembem Outpost?”

“You know the answer to that already,” Ranjea replied, letting his eyes close again. He’d been sitting quietly for hours, unfazed by her constant pacing. The office, a small shack extending from the side of the storage container where Lant kept his merchandise, was less than three meters wide, so that pacing was hard to distinguish from circling in place, but Garcia did her best nonetheless.

“Sure, I know,” she said. “Qhembembem is a center of the high-technology black market. Qhembembem is in lawless space, so it’s the best place to get something unnoticed and unrecorded. After all, Daiyar wants to hide her actions from time travelers, so she doesn’t want them to end up in historical records. And who’s gonna remember anything that happens in a galactic cesspit like Qhembembem?” She sighed. “Still—if we had to stake a place out for maybe days or weeks, Qhembembem would not have been my first choice.”

Ranjea cracked an eyelid open again. “Admit it, Teresa—you just can’t get enough of saying ‘Qhembembem.’ ”

She grinned. “It’s fun, you should try it. Qhembembembembembem . . . Come on, say it with me.”

“I’m good, thank you.”

Garcia studied him for a moment, then loped over to the bench and plopped down next to him. The bench was narrow enough that she practically had to sit on his lap, but physical closeness was a normal part of their relationship. He could tell from her subtle somatic cues that his pheromonal potency still excited her quite a bit at this range, but she’d had years to get used to it as simply a facet of their friendship. Ranjea was gratified that she could cope with the effects of Deltan physicality so much better than most humans. When their partnership had begun, she had reacted in the usual way, her attraction so intense as to be almost obsessive, but she had found the strength and emotional discipline to control that urge—not to banish it, but simply to accept it and leave it be, to experience the pleasure of attraction as an end in itself without covetousness. In the four years since, they had become comfortably affectionate and tactile in a way that was rich with sexual charge but free of tension or the drive to consummate.

“So are you gonna tell me what’s been bothering you, partner? You’ve been unusually quiet.”

He shook his head slightly. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not like you to get embarrassed,” she said, her dark gaze sharpening. “When was the last time we kept anything from each other?”

He sighed. “It’s not like a Deltan to be jealous, either.”

Garcia pulled back in surprise. “Jealous? Of what?”

“I suppose ‘envious’ is the word, really. Jealousy is the fear of something you have being taken by another. What troubles me is what I don’t have.”

“And that someone else does?”

He nodded, then pushed himself to come clean. “Director Dulmur—his recent engagement to Doctor Cymmen. He always seemed so attached to his work. I knew that he regretted the failure of his first marriage, but he seemed satisfied with—or at least resigned to—his work as his primary focus. Now he has success in both work and love. I certainly don’t begrudge him that happiness, of course. It simply throws my own situation into contrast.”

Teresa stared, on the verge of laughter. “You feel lonely? You’re not exactly a wallflower, kid.”

“Yes, I do maintain a healthy sexual engagement with my Deltan and Betazoid friends, and others who can handle it—when I can find the time. But what I’m able to manage is rather superficial by my people’s standards. I don’t satisfy them or myself as much as I wish I could, because we don’t have time to explore the real depths of intimacy that Deltans thrive on—both physical and spiritual intimacy.”

“You’re translating into human terms,” she replied. “I know you don’t even see those as different things.” She put an arm around his shoulders. “I guess in human terms, you’re saying you’re not satisfied with casual flings and are looking for true love.”

“All love is true, my friend. It’s the essence of all life. That is the problem. To live—and to live on after life—we must give love to others. And my opportunities to give of my love are constrained. My closest, most loving relationship is with you, Teresa, yet it must remain at a careful remove for your own safety.”

She leaned in closer. “I’m not convinced that’s true, Ranjea. We’ve skirted the edge of intimacy for years. We’ve . . . experimented before, pushed the limits of what you thought was safe for me. I’ve been there for you when you yearned for physical connection on long, lonely missions. And it’s made our emotional bond stronger and stronger. I desire you as much as ever, but it doesn’t overwhelm me, just . . . warms me. We’re already so deeply connected on an emotional level—even a spiritual level—that I don’t see it really making that huge a difference if we go all the way physically or not. I think I could handle it.”

She held him close as she spoke, but she did not kiss him or attempt to undress him. This was not a seduction attempt, Ranjea recognized, but a rational discussion of a prospective refinement of their partnership. After all, they were still on a stakeout. The very maturity of her response helped make Teresa’s case for her. It proved to him that she could manage and control her desire while still expressing it, a balance that was difficult for most humans.

“It is worth considering,” he said, smiling gratefully at her offer. “It would be delightful if we could have a complete loving partnership in the Deltan way. Yet we would have to proceed with great care, and there would be risk involved. I’m not sure it would be responsible for us as DTI agents to undertake a step that risked impairing your effectiveness.”

“And doesn’t your isolation impair your effectiveness?”

“Not to the same degree. I love you for being willing to take that risk for my sake, but I could not ask that of you. We can still—” He broke off, hearing something from outside.

Garcia was used to his superior sensory awareness, so she followed his gaze without question, then rose and moved to the tinted window. “Yeah, Lant has a customer. Female, lean—whoa, those eyes. Oh, I love a short stakeout.”

“It’s her?” He moved in behind her, but as always, she hogged the view.

“Right where we hoped she’d be. Qhembembem, I love you.”

“I don’t suppose she has the time drive on her person?”

“Not unless she’s got a dimensional pocket under that cloak. She is from the future, after all.”

“Or we believe her to be.”

Ranjea could hear Lant speaking now, the Ferengi’s sharp, nasal tones more clearly discernible through the door than his customer’s soft, mellow alto. “Yes, the constructive path integrator, a truly remarkable invention. On the very cutting edge of quantum technology. . . . It’s no wonder you heard that. Lant’s Emporium is known for its extraordinary inventory of instruments and innovations difficult to obtain anywhere else— All right, madam, there’s no need to strain that mellifluous voice by shouting. The item you desire can be yours if the price is right.”

Her next question made Lant more nervous. “Yes, yes, of course I would not expect you to pay without inspecting the device first. I, I just happen to have it in my storage facility right back here. . . . If you would follow me?”

Ranjea caught a glimpse of the cloak-clad woman as the Ferengi escorted her into his stall and back to the storage container. Once the merchant and his customer were inside, Garcia and Ranjea drew their compact hand phasers and quietly exited Lant’s office, positioning themselves to block her exit. It was fortunate, Ranjea reflected, that so many of the local merchants were untrustworthy; a transporter jamming field was permanently in place throughout the bazaar to prevent unscrupulous sorts from beaming away other people’s merchandise or body parts. Given the high technology level of many of the bazaar’s vendors and patrons, Ranjea felt the odds were good that even an Aegis transporter beam would be blocked, removing Daiyar’s most effective means of escape.

Once outside the door, Ranjea could hear Lant again. “Excellent, excellent. I’ll just . . . withdraw to my office and retrieve the, ahh, the manual and specifications. You wait here.”

Daiyar’s voice came after a pregnant pause. “Aren’t you going to haggle, Ferengi?”

“Oh, you mustn’t believe every stereotype you hear, my dear. My, my prices are fair, I’m sure you’ll agree. I-I simply want to facilitate the sale a-and not keep you waiting to possess your new acquisition.”

“Uh-oh,” Garcia whispered, raising her phaser. “He’s too nervous, he’s gonna blow it—”

Ranjea touched her shoulder, met her gaze. She nodded, and together, phasers at the ready, they moved to pull open the storage unit’s doors.

But those doors then burst open, kicked outward with startling force. Ranjea was knocked back, the door obscuring his view, and once he recovered his footing and moved clear, he glimpsed a pale-skinned woman with red-and-black hair pushing her way through the crowd. “She stole it!” Lant was crying. “She didn’t even pay for it!”

“Come on,” Garcia called, running off in Daiyar’s wake.

As Ranjea followed, Lant yelled, “This is your fault! I’m billing the DTI for this!”

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Ranjea called over his shoulder as he joined his partner in the pursuit.

Moments later, a beam of energy shot over the heads of the crowd, invisible but searingly hot, judging from the rippling of the air. The alarmed patrons retreated, clearing a path for Daiyar to move freely. The DTI agents picked up their own pace in pursuit, but the Tomika renegade’s augmented strength and speed gave her a clear advantage, and she was too far ahead for Ranjea to get a good shot.

But a Deltan had his own advantages. Ranjea had scouted the outpost beforehand, and by focusing on the sights, sounds, and scents around him now, he was able to get a heightened sense of the surrounding space, anticipating where the bazaar’s streets and alleyways would lead and how the activity of the crowd would funnel Daiyar’s movements. He was able to anticipate where she was headed—and how he might get there first. “I’ll head her off,” he called to Garcia, eliciting a quick nod from her before he veered away. How marvelous to have a partner so attuned to him that explanations were almost unnecessary.

If only she could be even more than his partner . . .

But that was a thought for another time. This was the time for running, for feeling the path to his objective. He reached out with his physical and empathic senses, attuning himself to the anatomy of Qhembembem and the flow of the life and emotion that passed through its arteries. Much of it was dark emotion, inimical to other life, quick to profit from its corruption, subjugation, or destruction—for that was the tenor of this place. These spirits were cut off from one another, crippled by lack of love and failure to appreciate the connectedness of all life. Ranjea pitied them rather than judging them. Yet in their shared isolation, they formed a community of their own without realizing it, a flow of energies that he could sense and maneuver through. So many little uglinesses being peddled in the stalls he passed, yet collectively even this place had its own pointillist beauty.

Ranjea soon emerged into the landing field on the edge of the outpost. Moments later, Daiyar shot through the entry gate and ran toward one of the small ships berthed on the field, a sleek, compact, bronze-hulled craft more advanced-looking than any of the others. But Ranjea had a head start, and he ran to intercept her. “Daiyar, halt!” he called, interposing himself between her and the ship and leveling his phaser. “Department of Temporal Investigations!”

Pulling herself up short, the Tomika reached under her cloak, presumably going for a weapon. Ranjea fired a stun blast, but the phaser did not faze her; she must have had body armor under her cloak. So he darted forward and grabbed her arm before she could finish drawing her weapon. He could see it now, a glinting silver rod the size of a writing stylus—one of the Aegis’s so-called servo devices. It would not kill him—unless she wanted it to—but one discharge would instantly hypnotize him, rendering him docile and suggestible. He couldn’t let her finish drawing it.

“This is none of your concern, Dhei’ten!” she cried, using his people’s own name for themselves. How did someone from so far away know that?

Ranjea’s eyes rose to lock with hers, and the sight of them—those vivid red irises inside black scleras, framed by pale gray skin with fine hexagonal scaling—struck him with unusual intensity. She was beautiful, to be sure, but it was far more than that. She felt . . . familiar. A joy welled up from somewhere inside him, as if he were being reunited with a loved one he hadn’t seen in lifetimes.

“Shaiyu!” The word came out of him unbidden. He didn’t even know what it meant.

But it made Daiyar freeze, her eyes widening. “What did you call me?”

“I—I’m not sure.”

“Only one Dhei’ten has ever called me that. Or . . . ever will.”

Ranjea understood. “Riroa. You knew Riroa Nadamé. You are from uptime!”

“How could you know about Riroa?”

“I communed with her . . . when she died. Her passions live on in me.”

Daiyar was struck silent. Tears glinted against the black.

“Ranjea!” Teresa burst through the gate. Ranjea and Daiyar both turned their heads to see her running toward them, raising her phaser.

Daiyar turned back to him. “I’m sorry,” she said—then shoved the servo before his face and activated it.

Distantly, he was aware of Daiyar pulling him in front of her and retreating toward the ship—of Teresa calling his name and pleading with him to fight back. But he was very calm and content to follow the instructions Daiyar whispered in his ear, to follow her inside the ship and stand in the door and fire at Teresa’s feet until the door slid shut and they took off. And then he was content to follow her instructions to hand him his phaser, then go lie down on the rear cot and take a nice, long nap. He trusted her to know what was best for him.

“I am sorry, my old friend,” he heard her say as he lay down and closed his eyes. “But I have missed you. And I need you to understand what I must do.”

DTI Branch Office, Denobula

Mere hours after Teresa Garcia’s report of Ranjea’s abduction reached the branch office, the Aegis finally deigned to make contact. Assistant Director Dulmur received a report from the transporter station that the platform had been remotely activated by a powerful external beam. By the time he and Lucsly arrived, someone was already beaming in, and the flickering, flowing interference patterns on the field generator matrix panels left no doubt that an Aegis transporter was sending the beam. At least they had the courtesy to use the pad and not just beam into my office closet, Dulmur thought. The Aegis liked locking their transporters onto doorways for some obscure reason.

The figure on the pad solidified into a lean, dignified Cardassian male in a neat, fairly bland suit. Draped over his shoulders was an even leaner, long-headed felinoid with dark green fur. Dulmur greeted the Cardassian as he stepped forward. “Supervisor 341.” He nodded to the Simperian civet. “Meneth.” Dulmur had once seen the civet transform into a humanoid female, apparently a common ability of the companion animals that Aegis supervisors rarely traveled without. Dulmur often suspected the “pets” were the real supervisors, so it was probably wise to be polite to them.

The supervisor, who was otherwise known as Rodal Eight, nodded back. “Assistant Director Dulmur. Congratulations on your promotion.” He turned to the other human in the room. “And Agent Lucsly. Changeless as ever.” Lucsly merely nodded.

“Rodal,” said Dulmur, “I appreciate you coming here, but we’ve been trying to reach you for days. Your office on Cardassia seems to have closed several years ago.”

“Yes—we phased out operations there once the Union joined the Khitomer Accords. That technically makes them parties to the Temporal Accords as well, and we prefer not to interfere in the affairs of other signatories.”

Good to know there’s someone they won’t interfere with, Dulmur thought. “It would’ve been nice to know that before now,” he said. “And if you’d been more communicative before, we might not have had one of our agents abducted today.”

Rodal appeared unfazed by his accusation, though Meneth folded her ears back and gave a faint growl. “You were advised to leave this matter to the Aegis, Director. We are the ones best qualified to deal with our own.”

“As I recall, the last time some Aegis members went rogue, you needed help from James Kirk and the Enterprise crew to deal with them. Your man Gary Seven solicited their help more than once, in fact. And that was Kirk, for God’s sake. We’re actual temporal professionals, same as you.”

“And yet you allowed a single Aegis-trained renegade to steal a dangerous temporal device from your impenetrable Vault. Now your people have further allowed her to obtain the component she needs to render it operational.”

“Neither of which would have occurred,” Lucsly pointed out sternly, “if you had been able to keep Aegis technology out of that renegade’s hands.” Meneth growled more loudly, though Dulmur imagined he heard overtones of embarrassment this time.

“All right,” Dulmur said before this could escalate further. “We’ve both screwed up. Doesn’t that tell you, Rodal, that we’d both be better off working together instead of wasting our energies butting heads?”

Rodal traded a look with Meneth. “She did take one of their own. They have a stake in this as much as we do now.” The civet trilled unhappily, but then fell silent.

“Meneth agrees,” Rodal said to the DTI men. “You are entitled to participate. With that in mind, gentlemen, I invite you to come with us to the Aegis outpost we are using as a staging area in our hunt for Daiyar. I can beam you there right now, if you wish.”

Dulmur exchanged a look with Lucsly. The chance to see an Aegis operation from the inside was a rare thing even for temporal agents. It could answer many questions about the mysterious organization. But right now, that paled next to the urgency of rescuing Ranjea and retrieving the time drive. Dulmur could see in Lucsly’s eyes that he felt the same way.

“Agreed,” Dulmur said. “Just let me issue a few instructions to the staff . . . and tell my fiancée I won’t be home for dinner.”

Aegis observation post, undisclosed star system

When the cloudy blue field of the Aegis transporter faded, Dulmur found that he, Lucsly, Rodal, and Meneth had materialized in a small alcove with crystalline walls. Rodal was already striding out of it into the larger chamber beyond, in which Dulmur could see several individuals of various species operating sophisticated equipment, including glowing cubic computer interfaces and wall consoles with circular display screens. He and Lucsly exchanged a sidelong glance and started to follow Rodal, only to be stopped by an unexpected voice. “Boss? Where the hell am I?”

The two men turned to see Teresa Garcia standing behind them, her wide, dark eyes darting around in confusion. “Ah, yes,” came Rodal’s voice from outside the alcove. “I thought it would save time if I had Agent Garcia beamed here directly, so she could brief us personally on her encounter with Daiyar.”

“Agent Garcia,” Dulmur explained, “this is Rodal Eight, Supervisor 341 of the Aegis.”

“Oh, really?” Garcia strode forward to confront Rodal, undaunted even though he was a head and a half taller than she was and had a sharp-fanged Simperian civet perched on his shoulders. “So my partner getting kidnapped finally got you to come down off your high . . . cats . . . and talk to us, huh? Fine. I’ll tell you anything you want to know—just get my damn partner back.”

Meneth purred, evoking a chuckle from Rodal. “She likes you,” he said. “Such aggression, but in the service of compassion and fellowship. The very qualities that made our employers see such potential in humanity so long ago.”

“Did they also notice we aren’t known for our patience?”

“We have mastery of time, Agent Garcia. Urgency is not required. And you have had something of a recent ordeal. An opportunity to cool down and refresh yourself would only benefit your partner.”

Garcia’s shoulders slumped after a moment. “Fine. So just where are we, anyway?” she asked.

“Looks like an Aegis facility,” Lucsly observed. “But not camouflaged with native architecture or technology, and with multiple species operating openly. This isn’t the Aegis homeworld, is it?”

“No,” Rodal said. “It’s my new assignment now that Cardassian operations have closed down. Come, I’ll show you.”

He led them outside the structure, and Dulmur was struck by a gust of hot, dry air. They were in an arid environment heated by a large orange sun overhead and a dim blue pinpoint of a more distant companion star. At Dulmur’s glance, Lucsly gave a slight shake of his head; he didn’t recognize the system configuration either.

The outpost was near the edge of a fair-sized canyon. As Rodal led them toward the brink, the far wall of the canyon was revealed to be a vertical town. Dozens of dwellings, plazas, pools, and other structures were carved into the living sandstone, with chasms in the rock face spanned by elaborate rope bridges and hanging gardens. The occupants of the village were bipedal, as much avian as humanoid, with orange and gold feathers and compact winglike membranes extending from their arms. After watching them for some moments, Dulmur realized the winglets merely let them glide rather than fly, hence the need for the various rope ladders and bridges. “Don’t worry,” Rodal said, “we’re holographically cloaked from their view.”

“It’s beautiful,” Dulmur said.

“The inhabitants call it Tanka Misata,” the Aegis supervisor replied. “It means ‘The Dream of Yesterday.’ They once lived throughout this portion of the continent, but it has since been invaded by an empire from across the sea. Their people were driven from their traditional lands by conquest and disease, leaving only a minority.”

Garcia looked intrigued, but Lucsly was unmoved. “This hardly seems the sort of situation the Aegis would intervene in,” he said. “You tend to focus on civilizations at the cusp of maturity, developing technologies that threaten species survival. This world is . . . thousands of years from reaching that level.”

Dulmur realized what had given Lucsly pause. “You’re recruiting,” he accused Rodal. “You’re going to abduct these people from their homes and breed them like livestock into future Aegis assets. Just like you did to Gary Seven’s ancestors on Earth.”

“And my own ancestors on Hebitian-Age Cardassia,” Rodal reminded him. “This is the way it has been done for untold millennia.”

“All that time, all that wisdom, and you haven’t found a better way than enslaving primitive peoples?”

Meneth gave a low, warning growl. “You do not know the whole story,” Rodal said, “because you cannot see the whole shape of time. The Aegis can. And that is why we are at Tanka Misata.

“In recent generations, this minority has been allowed to live in peace within the empire in traditional communities like this, so long as they pay regular tribute to the imperial tax collectors. But a new emperor has used them as scapegoats for economic hardships resulting from his own incompetent leadership. He encourages his subjects to hate the indigenes so that they will be diverted from hating him. In recent months, that hate has erupted into open violence, and the leadership has failed to condemn it, implicitly encouraging its spread.

“In a few days, a mob of the colonizing ethnic group will glide down from the clifftop and set this whole village afire. A few dozen Tankans will escape in the chaos, but the rest will be burned alive—as far as this world’s history will record.”

“A Varley extraction,” Lucsly realized. “You’re selecting people who would be doomed otherwise, beaming them out immediately before their death. That way you can collect assets with no impact on the timeline.”

“And rescue hundreds who would have died. This ethnic group is a persecuted minority now, but millennia hence, their descendants will be the ones who achieve this world’s industrial revolution and become its dominant culture. When this world’s existential crisis arrives, Aegis operatives of their ethnicity and cultural background will be in the best position to influence events clandestinely.”

“Nice twist on the Prime Directive you’ve got there,” Dulmur said. “Interfere all you like in a planet’s development, just don’t let them know you’re interfering.”

“Director Dulmur, the entire reason that the Aegis recruits indigenous peoples to become agents is so that the decisions affecting a species’ fate will still be made by members of that species—just with certain extra assets and information to aid in their endeavors.”

“Except,” Garcia put in, “that they’ve been raised for hundreds of generations in your culture, not their own. So how can they really qualify as members of the civilizations they’re intervening in?”

“Our purpose is to bridge the gap between Aegis civilization and our own,” Rodal replied. “To be able to comprehend and connect both points of view.”

“The Ottoman Empire on Earth called it devshirme,” she said. “Kidnapping children, raising them as slaves, grooming them to be administrators over their own peoples.”

“Would you rather we let the Tankans die when we have the means to save them?”

“For a price.”

“Those hundreds of generations that you mentioned will live free and healthy lives under Aegis protection. Some of them, if they wish, may enroll for the augmentation and training program so their descendants may pay that boon forward to others. What you see of Aegis operations merely scratches the surface of our civilization. Would you expect outsiders to have a clear picture of the Federation based purely upon Starfleet? If that were all they saw of it, might they not mistake the Federation for a military dictatorship?”

Garcia and Dulmur traded a sheepish look, aware that Rodal had a point. It was a common attitude among DTI agents, along with many other civilian employees of the Federation government, to resent the excessive attention that Starfleet attracted with its dramatic discoveries and adventures. Sometimes it seemed that the rest of the galaxy—and even some Federation citizens—mistook Starfleet for the whole thing.

Lucsly, though, was not about to concede the argument. “What concerns me more is that you’re casually acting on information received from the future. Knowing in advance when this planet will reach its ultimate survival crisis is a contamination of the timeline.”

Rodal shook his head. “Oh, Lucsly, your view of time has always been excessively linear. Time travel is simply part of the universe. Once it exists, it has always existed and always will. There has never been such a thing as a timeline unaffected by time travel. Even without technological intervention, there have always been natural phenomena that allow the transmission of matter and information back in time—wormholes, cosmic strings, retrocausal waves, and the like. The reversibility and mutability of time are fundamental parts of its nature. The Aegis simply embraces that fact and uses it. We work to protect the timeline from destructive manipulation, as all Accordist groups do, but we also use our insight into time constructively, to give civilizations a judicious amount of extra help in making their own choices and avoiding the most destructive mistakes.

“You Federation types are so self-righteous about intervention in other worlds or in the past. But intervention, like time travel, is a neutral tool. The good or evil that it does is a function of how it’s used. The Federation is so afraid of abusing its power,” Rodal went on, “that it never gives itself the chance to learn how to use that power constructively. If you ask me, that goes beyond taking responsibility for your actions and becomes an abnegation of responsibility.”

“We’re here now, aren’t we?” Dulmur said. “We’re taking responsibility for getting that time drive back from Daiyar. If you’re so all-fired responsible yourselves, then let’s get on with finding Daiyar and saving Ranjea.”

“Very well,” Rodal said. “Let’s return to the compound and pool what we know.” He headed back, Garcia right on his heels.

But Dulmur paused for a moment, gazing out across the canyon at Tanka Misata. A moment later, he noted Lucsly by his side, doing the same. “Could you really leave them to die, knowing what was going to happen?” Dulmur asked.

Lucsly glanced back. “That’s just it. I’m not supposed to know.” He paused. “A history of race hatred . . . a self-serving demagogue stirring up new resentments for his own ends . . . you don’t need time travel to predict where that’s heading. It’s up to their own people to recognize the danger and head it off before it’s too late.”

“And what about the times when they don’t?”

Lucsly had no answer.

III

Lakina II

Somewhere in the Gum Nebula

Ranjea emerged from the scout ship to find Daiyar seated at a folding table covered in various equipment, including the stolen time drive and path integrator. Judging from the faint, high-pitched tone his sensitive ears could detect and the fact that the local insects seemed to be giving the table a wide berth, one of the instruments must be generating a sterile field to let her work in a clean environment. Ranjea assumed at first that this was simply due to lack of working space within the ship.

But then he noticed the view. The ship was parked in a clearing on a large hilltop covered in rich blue-green vegetation. The ground was level here, but it dropped off precipitously not far from where Daiyar worked. Beyond the edge, Ranjea could see a wide river valley surrounded by hills matching the height of this one—a feature most likely carved out by a glacier in some ancient time. The river’s banks were pristine and unoccupied by any sign of civilization, but Daiyar had positioned her workspace before a gap in the trees, allowing a clear view of the valley below, and had seated herself to face that vista. Ranjea doubted this was accidental.

“I wouldn’t recommend trying to attack me,” Daiyar told Ranjea as he approached, though she did not turn away from her work. “I implanted a posthypnotic suggestion with my servo. It inhibits you from touching me or interfering with my work.”

“That’s a shame,” he said. “I have a vivid sense memory of your touch from Riroa. I know that it carried great meaning to her—although you kept her at a greater distance than she desired as well.”

Daiyar flushed. “Not many Tomika are as flexible about the sex of their partners as Dhei’ten are. At least, I’m not.”

“That is your right, of course.” He smiled. “And your hypnotic block should not be necessary. It would always have been my preference to win you over with reason, not force.”

“But what would you be prepared to do if reason failed?” She smirked. “Your colleague Lucsly seemed a very reasonable sort, yet he could not sway me from my goals.”

“That’s true. But I’m far more charming.”

She laughed. “What’s your name, Agent Charming?”

“I am Meyo Ranjea. Please call me Ranjea.”

“Ranjea, then. You know my name is Daiyar. Beyond that, I prefer not to say.”

“That is also your right.”

She spoke hesitantly. “I know something of how your people share of themselves with their loved ones upon death. But how can you have known Riroa Nadamé? She won’t be born for another few hundred years. I know she was a temporal agent, of course . . . but she was alive, and in the future, when I saw her last.”

“I know few specifics,” he said. “But at some point thereafter, she was sent back to Dhei in the 2370s to guard an ancient time perceptor from theft. She failed and was mortally wounded in the attempt. I was a police officer at the time, investigating the theft along with an agent of the DTI. That agent was able to deduce that Riroa was not native to our time, so he asked me to participate in her final sharing to learn what I could.” He lowered his head. “That sharing changed me. It imbued me with Riroa’s passion for defending the timeline. I left Dhei and joined the DTI to carry on her work as best I could. That agent was my first partner.” He hesitated. “My second is the woman you made me fire at on Qhembembem. She is also my dearest friend. I don’t appreciate what you compelled me to do.”

“I apologize, Ranjea. I do hope that, before long, I will be able to return you to her safely. I simply . . . I needed to try to convince you . . . the Riroa in you . . .” After another uneasy moment, she started again. “How much of my old friend is in you, Ranjea?”

“I suppose that depends on your beliefs,” Ranjea replied, stepping closer—though he felt a sudden inhibition once he drew too close, confirming the existence of the posthypnotic block. “I believe her spiritual essence survives in me and in the others who took part in her final sharing, and that I will pass it along with my own essence upon the dissolution of this flesh. But it is not a complete personality transfer, as with a Vulcan katra. Objectively speaking, I absorbed many of her memories, though more on a perceptual and emotional level than a semantic one. I know few of the facts and specifics of Riroa’s life, but I remember her loves, her passions, her commitments, her hopes, and her fears as strongly as if they were my own. Often there are experiential sensory impressions along with them—memories of lovemaking, of magnificent music not yet written, of her favorite meals whose names I do not know, of beautiful vistas on worlds I could not hope to find on any existing chart.

“When I saw you, Daiyar—when I touched you, caught your scent—it triggered many of those sensory memories in me, along with some very warm and beautiful emotions. I know she loved you. I know she felt loved by you, in ways other than the sexual. I have a sense memory of her lips and tongue forming the word Shaiyu when you and she were close, as you and I were when we wrestled.”

Daiyar chuckled. “Riroa and I wrestled more than a few times. Though we were wrestling over a nikai ball on a grassy field.”

As she said it, new sensory memories flooded him. “Yes. It feels like a lively sport. I feel sore at the very mention of it, yet exhilarated.”

“That’s how we both felt. She was a hell of an athlete.”

“And Shaiyu?”

“A Tomika nickname. I’m embarrassed to tell you what it means. Call it a private joke between good friends. Very private—which is why it stunned me so much when you called me that.”

Ranjea studied his foe. “What can you tell me of how you knew her, within the limits of the Temporal Accords?”

Daiyar stared at him. “Agent Ranjea, do I strike you as a person overly concerned with the letter of the Accords?”

“You strike me as a person who would respect my own concern for them.”

She blinked. “Well, then, if you’re so concerned about future knowledge, why even ask?”

Ranjea pondered. “Perhaps I’m trying to understand the remarkable coincidence that we should meet like this. I believe all life is connected, but there are few fatalists in our profession.”

“It’s not such a coincidence,” Daiyar reflected after a moment. “The community of temporal agents is fairly small and well connected. By their nature, our activities tend to overlap quite a bit, even when we come from different centuries.”

“True. But the Aegis—”

“I know. We’re—they’re the aloof, mysterious ones, those who stand apart from the rest and love to keep their secrets.” She shrugged. “I think that’s more the higher echelons, the supervisors and—those they answer to. The Aegis has many levels, many responsibilities.”

“Is that so?”

“Think about it, Ranjea. You know how the Aegis operates. Taking populations from worlds that will one day be endangered, breeding agents to help them through their greatest crises.” He nodded, and she went on, “But consider the size of the population it would take to breed those few elite agents over the course of millennia. The vast majority will never return to their ancestral world, never participate in that work.

“And consider, also, what happens after the world is past its existential crisis. When it’s mature enough to be left to its own devices. All those descendants are still there, part of the Aegis population. Some are content simply to live that way, as members of a marvelously cosmopolitan community that makes your Federation look insular. Others choose to return to the civilizations of their ancestors and simply blend in. But many continue working for the Aegis—as administrators, support staff, scouts in the field . . . or liaisons with other temporal agencies.”

Ranjea nodded. “You were one such liaison.”

“For part of my career, yes. The Tomika homeworld was centuries past its crisis by the time I was born. I retain the augmented abilities bred into my population, but they were not needed among Tomika civilization, so I served elsewhere. I traveled across quadrants, across centuries, to assist in the cultivation of the garden of history. I got to know many of my colleagues in the field, from many different agencies. Riroa was one of the best—and one of the most gregarious. Everyone knew and admired her.” She shook her head. “It’s hard to believe she failed in a mission.”

“The attackers were exceptionally merciless and violent. They had no concern for collateral damage or loss of life. She prioritized protecting bystanders over protecting the time perceptor. She died saving lives. And the insights she passed on to me have helped me carry on her work.”

“And the perceptor? Did you ever recover it?”

“Not I. Reportedly, it was recovered uptime by Jena Noi of the Federation Temporal Agency.”

Daiyar laughed. “Oh-h, yes. The redoubtable Agent Noi. I was certainly aware of her. I’d wager that Riroa knew her too. Perhaps intimately, knowing them both.”

“Interesting,” Ranjea said. “I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Agent Noi. Perhaps I now have some insight into why.”

“Because she knew it might trigger Riroa’s memories in you? Reveal something about the future that you shouldn’t know?” He nodded. Daiyar sighed and shook her head. “So many rules. So many restrictions. It’s why I had to get away sometimes. Ultimately for good.”

Ranjea followed her gaze to the valley below. “Is this where you got away to? This planet, this valley, clearly means something to you. You chose to work on the time drive here. Whatever you’re doing . . . it’s connected to this place.”

She lowered her head, blinking several times. “This is Lakina II. It’s uninhabited now, but it won’t be long, in the grand scheme of things, before the Tomika colonize it. In my own time, it will be a thriving, rich world, a vibrant community known for its art and music and cuisine. Its capital city will be right down there,” she said, pointing toward the river valley.

“A beautiful place for a city.”

“Yes. My younger self will visit there often, growing to love the food, the sports, the night life. The people.” Tears rolled down her pale gray cheeks. “One person in particular. Falling in love with people outside Aegis society is . . . not encouraged. But my younger self will be unable to prevent it. She will love him deeply. She will come to visit him, in his home quite near this very spot, as often as her duties allow. She will be sorely tempted when he implores her to leave her mysterious calling and marry him.”

Ranjea noted her switch to the future tense. While Agent Lucsly or Dr. T’Viss might use it merely for accuracy, he sensed that Daiyar was consciously distancing herself from the memory by treating it as something yet to come. He listened patiently, waiting for the painful twist he knew was coming.

“So she will be here on the day, some thirty-eight decades from now, when the Fethetrit come.” She looked up at him. “Do you know the Fethetrit?”

He mulled it over. “I’m not sure. A civilization from the Gum Nebula, I believe. Associated with the Colonial Consortium?”

“Not quite. They were part of the Pa’haquel alliance that defended the Gum Nebula against dangerous starfaring life-forms. The Consortium participated in that effort as well.”

“Ah, yes. The Starfleet vessel Titan encountered that alliance five years ago. They helped the Pa’haquel find a more peaceful method of protecting the region, herding the cosmozoans away from inhabited worlds rather than hunting them.”

“Admirable enough in principle. But as is often the case with your Federation, the Titan’s crew were overly optimistic about the long-term impact.”

“Do you mean the protection effort fails? These worlds are preyed upon again?”

“Not in the sense you mean.” Daiyar took a breath and sighed heavily. “The Fethetrit are . . . an exceptionally aggressive and brutal race. Predators, cannibals, sadists. They conquered dozens of worlds centuries ago, enslaved their peoples, consumed them as food. When cosmozoan predators fed on their worlds in turn, breaking their power, they joined in the Pa’haquel’s hunts. But to them, it was not about protecting other worlds, merely about having something to fight and kill. The others in the alliance only tolerated the Fethetrit because their ferocity and ruthlessness were useful against a far more powerful foe.”

Ranjea’s eyes widened. “But now that common foe has been contained.”

“Yes. So there is nothing keeping the Fethetrit from resuming their old ways. For now, their surviving population is small, their forces weak. The Pa’haquel, the Vomnin, and their allies can hold them at bay. But over the generations to come, they will grow strong again. They will build their forces in secret, and one day they will swarm across the nebula and dominate, destroy, or devour everything in their path.”

She gazed out toward the colony below. “And I will be here on the day they descend upon this world. I will see cities bombed into rubble, defenders on the ground torn apart by the claws and fangs of blood-red monsters. I will fight the Fethetrit invaders with all the powers of my Aegis heritage. I will be forced to become a killer for the first time in my life. But I will still be helpless to stop them from turning the man I love into a piece of meat.”

Her recitation had remained calm—but it was a frightening calm, the calm of a hunter stalking her prey, of a sniper getting ready to fire. Her hands had moved to cradle the time drive, and Ranjea knew it was her weapon.

“The Aegis wouldn’t let you prevent the attack,” he deduced. “This was after the Tomika had been designated mature and independent, so protecting them from the raid was outside the Aegis’s purview.”

“Yes.”

“So you went rogue. You stole an untraceable time drive so you could use it to change the future without the Aegis stopping you. You intend to prevent this colony’s destruction.”

Daiyar turned to him, a frightening determination in her eyes. “No, Ranjea. I intend to stop the Aegis from preventing the Fethetrit’s destruction.”

IV

Aegis observation post

“Daiyar is not an easy person to track,” Rodal Eight admitted to Dulmur, Lucsly, and Garcia as they sat around a table comparing notes. Meneth prowled restlessly across the surface of the table, occasionally bothering the humanoids for a head scratch. “She spent much of her career as an observer monitoring historical events, and thus she knows all our methods for such monitoring—and how to evade them.”

“She made that clear in her raid on our Vault,” Lucsly replied. “She recruited a band of Vomnin nationalist militants as cover, so that future history would blame them for the theft and her own agenda would be obscured.”

“But we foiled her plan,” Garcia replied. “Exposed her involvement. That must make it easier.”

“Not necessarily,” answered Rodal. “We can surmise that she intends a temporal intervention that the Aegis would wish to stop. But whether she intends to target the Aegis��s own operations or go after some other entity in a manner we would wish to prevent is unclear.”

“You must have some idea what she’s after,” Dulmur said. “Based on Lucsly’s encounter with her, and on our interviews with the captured militants—who were more than happy to share what they knew about her after she abandoned them—what’s driving her is something very personal. Something she feels is connected to her people, the Tomika.”

“Something she considers an injustice,” Lucsly added. “Daiyar has a sense of ethics and a reluctance to do unnecessary harm, but whatever she’s after is so important to her that she’s willing to set both of those things aside.”

“If you ask me,” said Dulmur, “it’s about family. Not much else could motivate an otherwise rational, decent person to break all the rules like that.”

“Her family has lived among the Aegis for dozens of generations,” Rodal said.

“Not all family is biological. I’m engaged to a Denobulan woman.”

“Yes, you mentioned a fiancée earlier, Director. I meant to offer my congratulations.” Meneth made a cooing noise at the Cardassian. “I’m not getting distracted, Meneth; I’m simply being polite.” Another coo. “As a matter of fact, I think he makes a good point. Daiyar was very private about her personal life outside her work.” Rodal turned to the humans to explain. “She was not high enough in the Aegis to warrant a personal companion like Meneth, who would have been privy to her secrets. Still, if she did form personal connections with a Tomika community outside the Aegis, we may be able to narrow it down by reconstructing her movements.”

Rodal spent some time working the console at his end of the table, out of view of the DTI agents. “Interesting,” he finally said. “The pattern of her unofficial travels does appear to converge toward one Tomika colony world. A world that—oh, no.” Meneth issued a cautionary growl. “Yes, I know. But under the circumstances—”

“What is it?” Dulmur asked.

“I know that look,” Lucsly said. “The information you’ve found is from uptime.”

After staring down Meneth for a moment more, Rodal sighed. “Yes. To keep specifics to a minimum: the colony world has not been settled yet. The event she most likely wishes to change is in the future. Which means, regrettably, that we may need to limit your involvement in the investigation from here on, Agents.”

“Hold on,” Garcia said. “Nothing doing. We’ve been through this already.”

“Your reaction is premature, Rodal,” Lucsly pointed out. “Daiyar would not have stolen the time drive merely to travel into the future. There are simpler ways to do that, such as cryogenics and stasis fields.”

“But why travel into the past of a world that hasn’t been settled yet?” Rodal countered. “If she wishes to make some change that could alter its fate—plant some sort of delayed-action device, say—it would be more sensible to implant it closer to the target date, to minimize our opportunities to discover and neutralize it.”

“So maybe she isn’t going there in the past or the future,” Garcia said. “She still needs to install that path integrator in the drive—and they aren’t from the same civilization or even the same era. It’d take time and careful work to make the drive operational again. She’d need someplace out of the way to do it, and where better than a planet that she knows is currently uninhabited?”

Dulmur smiled at her. “Especially if it reminds her of what she’s fighting for.”

“It’s plausible,” Rodal said. “At the very least, it’s worth looking into. But if we do not find her there in the present . . . then we are still no closer to knowing where and when she plans to strike.”

Lakina II

“Think about what you’re saying,” Ranjea urged Daiyar as she continued installing the stolen component in the equally stolen time drive. “I understand your desire to save the ones you love, but there must be a less drastic way. You could forewarn the colony before the attack.”

Daiyar did not look up from her work. “Too direct. The Aegis will eventually deduce that this is my objective. If I target the event directly, they will see me coming and be able to counter my move.”

“That is your only reason? Daiyar, you’re talking about exterminating an entire civilization!”

“No. I’m talking about leaving them free to exterminate themselves—as they would have eagerly done given the chance.”

“You know that’s sophistry. The choice to bring about that fate is still yours.”

Dropping her tools, the slender Tomika shot to her feet to face him. “And it was the Aegis’s choice to doom many more worlds!” She took a deep breath, gathering herself. “When I saw Lakina burn before me . . . I realized something about the work that we do. We pride ourselves so much on saving young civilizations from their own self-destructive natures. But think about what that implies, Ranjea. We’re facilitating the survival of species with an unhealthy proclivity toward violence and irresponsibility—species that might otherwise prove evolutionary failures and remove themselves from the galaxy before they can harm anyone else. The benevolent protection we offer just means that a greater number of dangerous, warlike civilizations succeed in reaching the stars.

“The Fethetrit are a prime example of this. Their heightened aggression and ferocity were survival traits in the fiercely competitive environment in which they evolved. But those traits are maladaptive for a civilized society with fewer dangers or predators to overcome. Without a natural release, their fierceness was turned to war, conquest, brutality, the ruthless enslavement and slaughter of others. Left to their own devices, they would probably have wiped themselves out, or nearly so. Over generations, the more violent ones would have killed each other off and those traits might have been bred out of the species enough to let them become a more functional civilization.

“But instead, the Aegis prevented their self-destruction. We allowed their savagery to succeed, spared them from having to learn from its consequences.” She gazed out at the river valley that would one day be her second home. “And that makes the Aegis responsible for all the destruction the Fethetrit would go on to wreak, in the past and in the future. And not just them—all the warlike races that the Aegis has spared from harsh lessons, like the Klingons and Cardassians.”

“But the Aegis helped other races survive long enough to overcome their violent natures,” Ranjea said, “and go on to become positive forces in the galaxy—Vulcans, Deltans, Tomika, humans. We were allowed to make mistakes that almost destroyed us, but helped to survive the worst of their consequences so that we would still be here to learn from them.”

“That’s the idea,” Daiyar acknowledged. “But it doesn’t always work out that way. And our timeless masters don’t seem to care about the distinction.”

“Is there a distinction? Generally, those entities with the greatest capacity to do harm are also the ones with the greatest capacity to do good. It’s simply a matter of redirecting their energies toward something more positive. Like the way the Fethetrit helped defend the Gum Nebula against the cosmozoans. In so doing, maybe they saved more worlds than they destroyed. Perhaps that’s the potential the Aegis saw in them.”

“You’re not saying you approve of the Aegis’s activities?” the Tomika asked, incredulous. “That’s not exactly the DTI party line.”

“I’m merely saying it’s neither a pure good nor a pure evil. It seems to me that what the Aegis does for civilizations is analogous to what modern medicine does for individuals: protecting those that would otherwise be wiped out by the ruthless winnowing of genetics, allowing them to achieve potential that might otherwise have been wasted. If someone whose life a doctor saves goes on to commit a murder, is the doctor to blame for that?”

Those dark eyes held his intently. “If you were that doctor, could you so easily say no?” Ranjea’s inability to reply provided the answer. Daiyar went on, “You don’t really get it, do you? You think of the Fethetrit’s crisis as being from the past, of me as being from the future. In the Aegis, time is more intertwined than that. We move freely through history, correspond with our ancestors and descendants, work together in mapping out the whole interwoven tapestry of time so that we can know when and how to intervene. My own work as a monitor and researcher provided information to a great many Aegis operations spanning thousands of years, both past and future. The Fethetrit crisis was one of those operations. I contributed information that would help the Fethetrit survive their crisis in the past—so I had a hand in destroying this world, and my one great love, in the future. Along with all the countless other worlds that have suffered horribly at Fethetrit claws, and all that will suffer in centuries to come.

“I cannot let that stand, Ranjea. The Fethetrit were, perhaps, the Aegis’s greatest mistake. Whatever benefit they provided the galaxy is not enough to offset the horrors they inflict. We should have left them to their own fate.” She sat back down to resume her work. “And that is what I intend to do.”

This time, the mists of the Aegis transporter deposited the DTI agents, Rodal, and Meneth in a wooded area not far from where Daiyar’s scout ship had been located, on a world the Aegis files had identified as Lakina II. Rodal sent Meneth on to scout ahead, and Teresa Garcia watched as the bobcat-sized Simperian civet vanished silently into the underbrush, her green fur blending in nearly perfectly with the blue-green vegetation. Garcia hadn’t noticed a blue tinge in her fur back at the Aegis outpost. Was the light different in this environment, or had Meneth actually shifted the color of her pelt for camouflage?

But Garcia was too preoccupied to reflect on alien metamorphic parameters. Her concern for Ranjea had returned to the forefront of her thoughts now that they were close to his abductor, although it had never been far from her attention. She tried to reach out with her mind, hoping to catch some trace of the empathic bond she believed she shared with Ranjea, to send him her strength and reassure him that she was near. But she felt nothing beyond emptiness and fear—her own. The longer the group waited for Meneth’s return, the more Garcia fidgeted and strained to move forward.

“Remember your discipline, Agent Garcia,” came Lucsly’s voice. “You won’t be of any use to Agent Ranjea if you act prematurely or recklessly.”

She threw him a look. “That cold approach may work for you and Dulmur. Ranjea and I have our own way of working. Our emotions, our instincts, they’re our strength. We’re not reckless just because we use our feelings.”

“Just make sure they aren’t using you.”

“Do you have anything to offer besides clichés? What does that even mean?”

Dulmur stepped in. “Garcia,” he said in a gentle but firm voice, catching her eye and giving her a “cool it” gesture. “Save it for Daiyar.”

The young agent nodded sheepishly. “Right.” She glanced over at Rodal. “I’d feel better if we had a larger team. Or at least if we’d been issued some Aegis weapons.”

“The servos are complex instruments,” Rodal said, keeping his cool as well as Lucsly. “It takes time to master them. And supervisors are trained to handle far greater problems than this with little or no assistance. The way of the Aegis is to wield our influence minimally and strategically, not through open force.”

“That’s ironic,” Garcia said. “In our mythology, aegis was the name of the shield or breastplate of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom—who was also a mighty warrior.”

Rodal studied her. “Puzzling—to see war and wisdom as anything but opposites. I wonder why Gary Seven chose that term to represent our name in your language.”

Dulmur answered. “Probably because it’s become a metaphor for the protection or support of someone powerful. A shield they use to protect others, not just themselves.”

“I see. That is a good interpretation. Our benefactors have so much power,” Rodal reflected, “and yet they dedicate it entirely to the protection of others. It is a value instilled in us throughout our lives.” He shook his head. “I cannot understand how Daiyar could have strayed so far from their teachings.”

“Daiyar seems to think,” Lucsly replied, “that what she’s trying to do will be beneficial in the long run.”

“And yet she’s willing to use violence to achieve it—to wreak violence on the timeline to impose her preferred shape of events. That is what we stand against.”

Only a faint rustle of the undergrowth heralded Meneth’s return. Rodal knelt to meet her and brushed her fur clean of small leaves and burrs while she mewled and trilled softly to him. “Daiyar’s repairs on the temporal drive appear to be nearing completion,” he interpreted. “Fortunately, she is working outside her scout ship. I would recommend intercepting her before she reenters the ship, since it will be more difficult to reach her if she does.”

“What about Ranjea?” Garcia asked.

Again, Rodal listened to Meneth for a moment before answering. “He appears unrestrained, but Meneth sees signs that he’s under the hypnotic influence of a servo. He may need assistance in getting away from Daiyar. Meneth and I will attempt to give you three the opportunity to achieve that. But we should move quickly.”

Garcia stepped forward. “Finally, we agree on something! So let’s go!”

“Just one moment more,” Rodal cautioned, removing his slim, silver servo instrument from a pocket and beginning to adjust the dials on its lower half. “She no doubt has perimeter sensors engaged. This setting should mask our approach.” He thumbed a sliding collar on the device into a lowered position, exposing two tiny globes that sprang out to the sides on stiff wires. “But it cannot block her hearing, so I advise we move quietly.”

The group headed out single file, following Meneth’s lead—first Rodal, then the eager Garcia, then Dulmur, with Lucsly bringing up the rear. The sleek, green-furred civet was briefly blocked from Garcia’s view by Rodal’s frame, and a moment later, she had been replaced by an equally sleek, scantily attired humanoid female with golden skin and short, straight hair the same hue as the civet’s. The humanoid looked back, revealing a strikingly beautiful face whose species Garcia couldn’t identify, and gestured to the others to follow her lead as quietly as possible. Garcia tried to take Meneth’s transformation in stride, having been briefed on the Aegis’s mysterious shapeshifting companions, but it was still startling to see it happen—especially since no one ever seemed to catch one of them in the act of changing. Garcia wondered why Meneth had bothered to transform, but it soon became clear that her humanoid form was more effective for showing the other humanoids the best, quietest path down the wooded hillside.

Soon, they reached the edge of a clearing in which Garcia could see Daiyar’s scout ship and two figures—Daiyar and Ranjea. The Tomika woman was already lifting the completed time drive off a worktable, preparing to carry it into the ship. They had arrived with barely a moment to spare.

As Rodal and the DTI agents crept toward the edge of the trees, Woman-Meneth broke away and crept around behind the ship. Once Rodal stepped into the open, Garcia realized their plan: he would serve as the decoy while the shapeshifter came up from behind. Trading a look, the humans moved out into view behind Rodal, hand phasers at the ready.

“Vilaka Daiyar Sem!” Rodal called.

The rogue reacted swiftly, tucking the drive under her right arm while thrusting her servo forward in her left, its globes extended. The servo’s tip waved smoothly back and forth, enough to indicate that she was ready to target any of the four agents. “Stay back,” Daiyar warned. “I have no wish to kill, but that will not stop me if I must.”

“Do those things even have kill settings?” Garcia whispered to Lucsly.

“At their highest level,” he replied, “they can cut through half a meter of tritanium alloy as if it were butter.”

She blinked, wondering how Lucsly even knew that. “Sorry I asked.”

“I do not underestimate your resolve, Daiyar,” Rodal was saying. “But you must not underestimate ours. You hope to save a colony from eradication. We hope to save countless billions from the same.”

“I won’t argue philosophy with you,” she replied. “I don’t need to. Ranjea, protect me.”

Stiffening, the Deltan hesitated for a moment, then strode forward and placed himself between the agents and Daiyar.

“No!” Garcia called. “Partner! You can fight her control! Listen to my voice. Concentrate!”

“I’m sorry, Teresa,” Ranjea replied. “This hypnosis is particularly effective on me. I have a . . . strong incentive of my own to wish Daiyar to remain unharmed.”

Garcia wanted to demand an explanation—but it seemed unnecessary, for Meneth was making her move. The shapeshifter leaped out from behind the ship, again in feline form—but this time as a Simperian panther. Daiyar spotted the supple green-black predator out of the corner of her eye, ducking and rolling just in time to avoid her claws—or rather, her paws; Garcia belatedly realized the panther’s claws were sheathed. Meneth was trying to take Daiyar alive, if possible.

As Meneth landed beside Ranjea and circled back around, Daiyar recovered into a crouch and aimed her servo. Its globes flashed blue, and Meneth bounded away just in time to avoid an invisible but piercingly audible burst that kicked up a sizable divot of semivaporized dirt and grass. Garcia tried to get a clean shot as the Tomika and the panther circled each other, but Ranjea kept himself in the line of fire, a look of apologetic resignation on his face as he held Garcia’s gaze.

Meneth dodged another servo blast, then swerved left to evade another—but then, unexpectedly, a bright orange phaser beam shot from Daiyar’s right hand, spearing Meneth in the side. The panther fell stunned, evoking a cry from Rodal, and Garcia realized that Daiyar must have relieved Ranjea of his hand phaser upon his capture and palmed it during the fight. Meneth had expected the Aegis weapon, but not a Federation weapon, allowing Daiyar to lure her into a trap. Damn, she’s good.

“We’re going now,” Daiyar called, renewing her grip on the time drive and bringing her servo to bear on the agents once again. “Ranjea, with me.”

“Daiyar,” Lucsly called, “think about what you’re doing. You’re a former operative, trained for decades in preserving the stability of time. You’re a lifelong product of a society that values reason, restraint, and patience. Do you really think all this chaos, all this disruption, can lead to anything but more chaos? Are you willing to risk unleashing that?”

“I intend to do just the opposite of that, Agent Lucsly,” she said, backing toward the hatch of the ship. Ranjea began to move as well, keeping pace with her.

“Then prove it,” Garcia called, her voice pleading. “We know you’re trying to save people you cared about. Well, we care about Ranjea. So you know how we’ll feel—how I’ll feel—if you take him from us. Please, Daiyar, let him stay here.”

“I can’t take that chance,” she said as she stepped into the hatch. “I need to ensure a clean getaway. But I promise you, I will set Ranjea free once I no longer need him.”

“This is pointless, Daiyar!” Rodal exclaimed. “You know our methods. You know that you cannot make any change that the Aegis cannot undo. This is a futile effort!”

“Yes, I know your methods, Supervisor. That is why I made sure I had a way to counteract them. Goodbye.”

She vanished into the ship, and Garcia grunted in frustration as Ranjea followed her inside. His big, beautiful eyes stayed locked on hers as the hatch closed, and she prayed that it wasn’t the last time she’d ever see them.

As Rodal ran over to Meneth’s side, a deflector shield flickered into view around the scout ship. The DTI agents moved in, and Dulmur said, “She’ll still need time to install the drive. Is there any way we can storm the ship? Or disable it?”

“Rodal,” Lucsly said, “your servo can deactivate her shields.”

Assured of Meneth’s condition, the supervisor rose. “As a rule, it could. But Daiyar would know how to modify her shields to counter it.” He adjusted his servo and tried it anyway, but with no effect. The three humans fired their phasers at the energy field, but they were low-powered models, ill-equipped to take on spaceship shields.

Moments later, the ship’s thrusters began to warm up, and Rodal called a retreat out of the blast radius. Garcia was unable to move until Dulmur pulled at her arm, startling her into motion. After a few paces, it occurred to her to wonder about Meneth. Glancing back, she saw that the panther had apparently recovered enough to change back into a civet, which Rodal carried easily in his arms as he jogged away from the ship. Some analytical part of Garcia’s mind carped at her about the paradox of shapeshifters and conservation of mass, but she was in no state to pursue the question. All she could do was turn her head and stare as the scout ship lifted skyward and shrank swiftly into the distance, taking her partner along with it. Moments after it had shrunk to invisibility, she caught another brief glint of light, a streak on the edge of visibility that culminated in an actinic starburst. The ship had gone to warp—and probably clear out of the century.

“We must return to base,” Rodal said. “Perhaps our experts can find some way to trace her course. If nothing else, perhaps we can identify the moment of her temporal disruption in time to neutralize its propagation.” He worked his servo.

But nothing happened. Rodal fiddled with it some more. “Observation post 80793, this is Supervisor 341. Come in.” There was no reply, not even a carrier hum. “Director, Agents, can you attempt a hail? We are far from Federation space, but there should be Colonial Consortium ships within range.”

Dulmur activated the comm pin on his collar and spent several moments attempting to raise someone, with no results. Neither Lucsly nor Garcia had any more luck. “What’s going on?”

Lucsly drew out his temporal tricorder and scanned the area. “I’m not getting any subspace readings. Of any kind, on any band. Even the tricorder’s subspace sensors aren’t working. Only electromagnetic bands.”

“I’m getting the same results,” Rodal said, continuing to manipulate his servo, though Garcia was unsure how the silver stylus was communicating its data to him. “I think I understand what Daiyar has done. She must have used the temporal drive to create a localized subspace disruption field, similar to the effect of an Omega molecule detonation, though less extreme.”

“What’s an Omega molecule?” Garcia asked.

“Never mind,” Dulmur and Lucsly replied in tandem.

“All you need to know,” Lucsly went on, “is that within the field’s influence, it’s as though subspace doesn’t exist. Any technology based on subspace phenomena is nullified. Correct?” Rodal nodded.

“So no subspace comms, no transporters, no warp drive?” Garcia asked. “We’re stuck here? For how long?”

“Unknown,” Rodal said. “The field must be large, considering that the planet has already moved thousands of kilometers through space in the past several moments and yet we are still within the field limits. It may be expanding outward from the point of origin at, I would guess, the speed of light. It will probably weaken over time, eventually dissipate altogether, but we have no way of knowing how long it will take.”

“Now that you know what it is, you can’t neutralize it somehow?” Dulmur asked.

“Not from within, certainly. The temporal drive is from the distant future, beyond even the range of history that the Aegis concerns itself with. It’s not something we’re prepared to cope with. I see that Daiyar had a reason for stealing the drive beyond its untraceability.”

“Yes,” Lucsly said. “This may be how she intends to prevent the Aegis from undoing her changes in the past. If she installs the drive on the planet whose history she alters and keeps a disruption field in effect, there would be no way to use a spacetime warp or temporal transporter to reach her and undo her changes.”

“It will be challenging,” Rodal acknowledged. “But do not underestimate the resources of our benefactors.” He stroked the recovering Meneth’s head, evoking a loud, basso purr. “We still have a chance to stop her.”

“If we can ever get off this planet,” Garcia countered. “We could be stuck here for days, weeks. Maybe more. It’s not like anyone can send a ship to us through the field.”

Rodal chuckled, striding forward more confidently as he led the humans back toward the beam-in point. “You still think of time too linearly, young agent. You forget that cause need not precede effect. The solution is simple: once we get back to base, I shall simply arrange to have a high-powered sublight vessel delivered to this planet at some time in the past few days—say, cloaked in the small gully beyond the point where we arrived. That way, it will be waiting for us when we get there now.”

Dulmur stared in disbelief. “A Matheson-Solomon retroanticipation loop? You don’t actually expect that to work, do you?”

“Let’s see, shall we?”

A few moments later, they returned to the beam-in point and kept on beyond it until the bottom of the adjacent gully came into view. As the group clambered down into the gully, Rodal raised his servo and emitted a signal. A moment later, a sleek scout ship rippled into view. Dulmur could only stare for a moment. “Whoa,” he finally said. “It worked.”

“Most excellent,” Garcia said, impressed. “Now let’s get the hell off this rock.”

“It might still take days,” Rodal warned as they boarded. “Perhaps even longer. We are limited to sublight flight within the field, after all, and we have no idea where its boundary lies.”

“We still remember the original history, though,” Lucsly said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be aware of the risk of its being changed. So we must still have a chance to preserve it.”

“Or maybe Ranjea managed to stop her on his own,” Dulmur countered.

“I hope so,” Garcia breathed. “And I pray it’s in a way that will let him return to us.”

V

1807 CE

Skalat star system

When Daiyar’s scout ship emerged from the temporal warp, Ranjea saw a wide binary pair of M-class planets through the forward viewport, illuminated by the ruddy light of what was presumably a red dwarf star. The first thing the Tomika renegade did was to consult an instrument that Ranjea believed to be a temporal scanner. “Excellent. The drive appears to have performed as advertised: no temporal trace, no sign of pursuit. I’m grateful to your Eridian Vault staff for maintaining it in such good condition.”

“Then perhaps you will reconsider the use to which you intend to put it,” Ranjea replied. “Give me a chance to assist you in finding a healthier response to your grief.”

She chuckled. “Well, that’s one difference between you and Riroa. She was never quite so corny.”

“But I share her sincerity. And her concern for your well-being, Daiyar.”

“It’s a sweet offer, Ranjea, but I’m afraid we don’t have time. I must not have set the drive as precisely as I’d thought—I have a deadline that’s a few hours closer than I’d hoped. So we have little luxury for conversation.” She rose from her pilot’s seat beside Ranjea’s and stepped back toward the aft compartment, stopping before a covered bed of sorts that Ranjea believed to be an automated medical unit. Working controls to initialize and program the unit, she said to Ranjea, “I’m going to need you to get into this chamber. I trust you don’t mind disrobing first? I’d rather not make that part an order. I’m taking more than enough advantage of you as it is.”

“Of course I don’t mind,” he said as he began to undress. “But may I ask what you intend to do with me?”

“We need a bit of cosmetic adjustment to blend in where we’re going. The medical unit will apply the prosthetics and pigmentation, as well as making a few tweaks to our metabolic readings. It can only do so much with your Dhei’ten pheromones, though, so I expect you to keep them reined in.”

“Does it need to be such a thorough change?” he asked, now completely nude.

Daiyar was smiling at the sight despite herself. “We . . . we may be there for a while, and we need to be able to convince Aegis sensors.” She cleared her throat. “Please get into the med unit now.”

The cosmetic procedure didn’t take long. In addition to a series of injections to alter his pigmentation and metabolism, Ranjea felt the tickle of a transporter effect applying prosthetic pieces to his forehead, ears, and scalp, including what felt like a narrow strip of hair running from his forehead to the nape of his neck. Once the medical unit’s lid hinged open, he could see that his dark brown skin had been subtly reddened, with a pattern of slightly darker, mottled stripes slanting inward along his torso and converging along its centerline, as well as running nearly straight down his arms and legs to terminate at his digits.

Daiyar, now nude herself, greeted him with “Sorry about this” and a burst from her servo to renew its hypnotic influence. Dazed but conscious, Ranjea observed himself obeying as she instructed him to rise and present himself. The slender Tomika woman walked around him, inspecting the transformation both visually and with her servo in scan mode. “Excellent. You make a convincing Rikeen, albeit an unusually tall one. But then, I will be as well. Oh, I’ve prepared some wardrobe for us,” she added, gesturing to a small table across the compartment. “You may get dressed now.”

Obediently, he moved to the table and reached for the larger set of garments, which were fairly drab and utilitarian. As Ranjea dressed, Daiyar knelt to reset the med unit for her own transformation. He appreciated the opportunity to observe her body’s strong, graceful movements without clothing in the way, feeling an echo of Riroa’s pleasure at the same sight. Once the initial shock of the servo blast had subsided, he managed to speak again. “Rikeen? I thought your quarry were the Fethetrit.”

“The Fethetrit are brutes,” she said. “Little more than wild animals. They never could have developed an advanced civilization unless they’d stolen the means from someone else.” The hatred in her voice made her suddenly far less attractive.

She rose, continuing as she waited for the unit to complete its reset. “The larger planet out there is Feth. The smaller is Keekuwa, the Rikeen homeworld. The Rikeen were an inventive, inquisitive people, inspired by the sight of a living world in their sky to develop science and space travel in nearly record time. They traveled to Feth with great eagerness to discover who lived there—and their first scouts were hunted down and devoured. By the time the second expedition came, some smarter-than-average Fethet—that’s the singular—had realized that it would be better to keep one or two of the astronauts alive and torture them for information.”

She climbed into the bed. “To shorten a long and extremely grisly story, eventually the Rikeen decided they’d had enough and attempted to conquer the Fethetrit, hoping to tame them enough to let the Rikeen study the rest of the planet and cultivate its resources. But the Fethetrit were nomadic hunters by nature, too large and ferocious to control and too adept at surviving in the planet’s dangerous wilds where the Rikeen couldn’t follow. They went to ground, then eventually turned the tables on their occupiers, killed and ate most of them and enslaved the rest, and took control of the civilization they had built, including the means to travel between planets.” She lay back, and the lid began to close. “I’ll let you imagine what they did to Keekuwa in retaliation.”

While Daiyar underwent the change, Ranjea went to the cockpit and checked the ship controls, but his attempt to unlock them proved futile. The most he could do was take a scan of the nearby planets. Both were industrialized and polluted, and both showed evidence of radioactive contamination, either from poor nuclear containment or from the deliberate, localized use of nuclear weaponry. Yet both planets were largely intact and supported sizable populations, cities, and infrastructures—more so on Keekuwa than Feth, though Feth seemed to have a wider distribution of smaller settlements, plus indications of localized power usage and fossil-fuel pollution scattered through the wilds and deserts in between. It was consistent with a semi-nomadic civilization whose permanent settlements produced food and resources to support a migratory population.

He mentioned as much to Daiyar when she emerged from the med unit, now red-brown and striped like himself but a few shades lighter. Her strip of hair, he saw, was bright red and a hand’s span in length, and her protruding orbital ridges stretched back to connect to the tops of her enlarged, cuplike ears, vaguely suggesting a Ferengi’s physiognomy in a more streamlined and elegant way.

Daiyar clarified the matter as she dressed in the other set of garments. “Oh, they didn’t destroy Keekuwa completely. They may not be inventive geniuses, but they have a gift for exploiting other life-forms. Their war priests recognized the benefit of letting Rikeen civilization survive unconquered, free to continue creating technologies, goods, and wealth that the Fethetrit could periodically plunder—not to mention continuing to breed so that they could be hunted down as prey.” She shuddered, looking nauseated. “Understand, Ranjea, I am not exaggerating about their brutality. You need to know that for when we go down among the Fethetrit in Rikeen guise. This will not be a particularly safe operation.”

“Just what is the operation?”

“I’ll tell you what I need from you at the appropriate time. What you need to know now is that you and I will be impersonating a pair of midlevel Aegis agents. The Fethetrit themselves were too . . . unmanageable for the Aegis to cultivate as operatives, so we used Rikeen instead. Normally we prefer to draw on members of the ethnic or cultural group that will be dominant at a planet’s time of crisis, but that was not an option here.”

“I take it there’s already an Aegis presence on Feth?” he asked, and Daiyar nodded. “How do you plan to convince them of our bona fides?”

“By intercepting the actual pair of agents who are about to beam in, sedating them, and taking their place.” She moved over to the transporter booth at the rear of the compartment and powered it up. “Don’t look at me that way. You knew I was committing a crime.”

“I didn’t expect you to attack your own people so directly.”

She went on entering commands, setting the transporter to receive mode. “They won’t be harmed. You know firsthand that we have gentler ways of making people do what we want.” She gave a wry smile. “I’m actually lucky you came along. It would’ve been harder to explain why only one agent arrived when two were expected. That’s why I used a hypnotic block on you—I need you free and servo-equipped to pass muster, but I need you obedient.”

“I must nonetheless register my formal disapproval of this plan.”

“Noted, for the record.” She sighed. “If we had a record. The less history knows about what I’m planning, the better.”

“You plan to ensure the Fethetrit’s self-destruction at their moment of greatest peril. Are you really so confident the Aegis couldn’t track you to this time?”

“Have you heard anything I’ve said about the Fethetrit? They live to kill. They have no fear of death and very little restraint. And they have access to nuclear energy. What makes you think there was only one occasion when they almost destroyed themselves? They kept the Aegis busy for generations. I had plenty of crisis points to choose from, which should make it harder for my pursuers to anticipate my target.”

The transporter powered up. “Ah,” the Tomika said, entering some final commands into the console. “Our guests are arriving.”

Ranjea understood what was about to happen. The crew of James Kirk’s Enterprise had first discovered the Aegis (though not yet learned its name) during an experimental time journey to 1968 CE, when their transporter had accidentally intercepted the beam of the Aegis agent known as Gary Seven, causing him to materialize in the starship’s transporter room instead of his headquarters on Earth. Daiyar no doubt intended to intercept the incoming agents in the same way, then beam herself and Ranjea to the surface of Feth in their place.

But foreknowledge did not give him power, so long as Daiyar’s hypnotic block still held. He could only watch helplessly as the two Rikeen agents, a man and a woman, emerged from the blue energy mist on the pad. He urged himself to move forward or shout some warning, but he remained outwardly passive as Daiyar stunned the agents with her servo before they could recover from their surprise.

The frustrating thing was that, as Ranjea had said to Teresa back (or forward) in 2385, he had an inbuilt affinity toward Daiyar. Riroa had loved her and wanted nothing more than to make her happy. Ranjea had never regretted taking Riroa’s essence and memories into himself, but now they worked against him, amplifying the hypnotic compulsion to cooperate with Daiyar. Normal hypnosis was a voluntary submissive state in which the subject chose to trust in another’s guidance completely, becoming highly relaxed but remaining fully conscious, contrary to popular belief. Thus, its subjects could not be compelled to obey any order they did not feel comfortable obeying. There were various forms of telepathic and technological mind manipulation that could compel actions against the subject’s will, but they could be resisted by a disciplined mind. Ranjea had been subjected to mind control before, on his mission to the Axis of Time, but he’d been able to resist it then by drawing on Riroa’s sense of duty and on his bond with Teresa Garcia. But now he was centuries away from Teresa, and Riroa’s love for Daiyar was interacting with the servo’s compulsion to put him in a state of willing submission. He intellectually recognized his duty to resist her, but he could not bring himself to want it enough to take action.

So when Daiyar handed him the servo she’d taken from the stunned male agent, he took it unresistingly. And when she ordered him to join her on the transporter pad, he did so readily. Still, he hoped that, by staying at her side, he could find an opportunity to say or do something that would prevent her from bringing about the death of an entire species.

Feth

They materialized in an office of some sort, in a transporter compartment that became concealed behind a sliding wall section once Ranjea and Daiyar had exited it. Looking around the austere office, Ranjea saw a set of large windows overlooking what appeared to be an industrial farming operation, its fields stretching for some distance. A small, haphazardly assembled city was visible beyond the fields.

The diminutive Rikeen female who was the office’s lone occupant greeted them with a puzzled expression. “You’re not 121 and 168,” she said.

“Agents 864 and 879,” Daiyar announced. “Sorry you weren’t informed of the change in assignment, 143. It only just happened.”

Agent 143 frowned. “I don’t remember ever seeing either of you back in the enclave.” Her eyes roved up and down Ranjea’s body. “And I think I would’ve remembered you.”

“We’re from a future generation,” Daiyar replied with surprising casualness. “Miknee and Versekk happened to have some information needed for an investigation in our era, so we took their place in return.”

“It’s somewhat irregular,” the Rikeen agent said. “It means our Beta 4 won’t have your voice patterns on file. You know the drill: give me the nature of myself and our mission here.”

“Your name is Tseechin,” Daiyar recited, “descendant of Rikeen ancestors taken from Keekuwa some three thousand years ago. The problem your lineage has been trained to address is that the acquisition of Rikeen technology by the Fethetrit has accelerated their industrial and military development far more rapidly than their social order, endangering the survival of both species.

“Your specific mission, and ours, is to prevent the assassination of Vanthralak, a Fethet conqueror in the process of uniting Feth under his rule—at least to the extent that unity is possible. By dismantling the old tribal confederacies and creating ethnically mixed military and political units whose loyalty is strictly to him, he is suppressing most of the planet’s intertribal warfare and reducing the probability of a global nuclear conflict. Should he be assassinated, the old tribal divisions will reassert themselves forcefully, which, in combination with the drive for vengeance from Vanthralak’s remaining loyalists, will likely trigger a war that escalates into a global conflagration.”

“All right, close enough,” Tseechin said. Her dark golden eyes shifted to take in Ranjea. “The big one doesn’t say much, does he? They breed us tall in your era, it seems.”

Ranjea wished he could speak out and reveal the truth to the unsuspecting agent. All he found himself able to say was, “I’m merely surprised that this office is so far from the city. Doesn’t the Aegis prefer its agents closer to the heart of events?”

Tseechin shrugged. “We’re Rikeen living on Feth. Little better than slaves. The Fethetrit need us to build their machines and weapons, to grow the crops that feed the livestock they prey on. But they keep a close watch on those nearest to their centers of power. Here, in an agricultural complex, I can assume a position of midlevel authority and freedom while mostly being far from Fethetrit scrutiny, since they have little interest in the growers of plants.”

Looking out the window, Ranjea noted a cloud of dust and combustion exhaust moving along a roadway from the city toward this complex. “It seems ‘mostly’ is the key word there.”

Tseechin moved alongside him, grimacing at the sight of what was now visible as a convoy of vehicles of various sizes. “Damn. I should have known. With Vanthralak’s court on its way to the city for the big gathering, naturally the local chieftain wants to inspect his facilities and intimidate everyone into giving their best. I’d hoped to have more time to prepare you for this. A Rikeen’s first encounter with the Fethetrit is always unnerving. Humiliating. We are livestock to them. But whatever you do, you must not show defiance. They welcome any excuse to torture and kill Rikeen—and, yes, to eat us. They’ve even built organized sports around it—but sometimes they hunt and kill us just for fun.”

Tseechin speared them both with her piercing gaze. “So whatever you do, do not give them an excuse to notice you.”

The Fethetrit did not arrive at the farm complex so much as descend upon it. A pack of about a dozen of the massive, furred bipeds roared in on a collection of crude three- and four-wheeled motor vehicles emitting a ferocious din and spewing toxic-smelling black fumes. The riders themselves roared almost as loudly as their vehicles, making several posturing circuits around the front of the complex until the entire Rikeen staff had come out to meet them. Their appearance certainly matched Daiyar’s tales of their ferocity. They were giants, over two and a half meters tall, with carnivorous faces that suggested a cross between a bear and a wolf, bracketed by large, cupped ears whose rims extended from their brow ridges, like Ferengi ears crossed with those of certain Terran bats. Ranjea could see a few evolutionary features in common with the Rikeen, suggesting a panspermic exchange of genetic material between the companion worlds or perhaps parallel evolution due to similar planetary conditions, but the Fethetrit were far less humanoid. Their hands were four-fingered and double-thumbed, with scimitar claws extending from their middle four knuckles. Their simian-tailed bodies were covered in thick fur in various shades of red and orange, allowing them to go mostly nude save for heavy leather kilts and equipment belts, and long, thick manes of unruly hair blew behind them as they rode. The group was exclusively male, presenting a contrast to the Rikeen staff, whose highest-ranking members were overwhelmingly female.

On debarking from their vehicles, the predators closed swiftly on the Rikeen laborers and began barking commands and threats, harrying them inside like dogs herding a flock of frightened sheep. The laborers, along with the Aegis agents and Ranjea, were commanded to strip and collectively hosed down with forceful streams of cold water. “Filthy animals, grubbing in dirt!” the pack leader snarled. “Just because I have to stay here year-round to tame you vermin, that doesn’t mean I have to endure your stench!” Ranjea realized that the leader must resent his low status that forced him to stay in one place tending farmers while the elites were free to exercise their nomadic hunting instincts, so he compensated by demeaning and humiliating those of even lower status. Could it be, Ranjea wondered, that this brutality was atypical, a consequence of being forced to live in opposition to the Fethetrit’s nature? Or was Daiyar right that the culture of abuse was the societal norm?

Afterward, the naked laborers were lined up for inspection, forced to endure pawing and rough handling at Fethet hands. The forepersons were commanded to report on productivity, and those laborers deemed weakest and least productive were dragged away screaming, no doubt to be hunted down and devoured. Ranjea closed his eyes and tried to remind himself that this was history, that every one of these people had died centuries before he was born. It didn’t help.

When one of the Fethetrit inspectors reached Daiyar and Ranjea, Tseechin was forced to step forward. “They are new, master,” she said, her eyes submissively lowered. “They have no work record as yet. But you can see, they are large and strong and well fed. They will make us very productive—”

“Do not tell me what to think!” the Fethet snarled, cuffing the side of her head and knocking her to her hands and knees. “I remember you. Always so smug, like you know more than you should. You need to be taught your place.” Dragging Tseechin forward by her hair, making sure she was in view of the rest, he began to kick at her and beat her with closed fists. He kept his knuckle-claws bent backward for now, but Ranjea feared that might change at any moment.

Deltan empathy let him sense Daiyar’s visceral terror and rage at witnessing the Fethetrit’s brutality, at even being in their presence. But she kept her outward affect tightly controlled. “She’s Aegis,” she whispered to Ranjea. “She’s more durable than she looks. She’ll survive.” Still, a tear glinted in her eye.

Once the Fethetrit deemed they had sufficiently cowed the workers into submission and roared away on their smoky vehicles, Ranjea and Daiyar carried Tseechin back to her office. The complex had a medical clinic, but the office had Aegis technology that could heal her faster and ease her pain better. Still, Ranjea was concerned that the limited aid the office could provide was not sufficient. Once Tseechin was sedated and he was free to speak, he asked, “Can’t we take her back to the ship and use the med unit?”

Daiyar shook her head as they put their clothes back on. “We don’t want her to heal too quickly, or it would be suspicious. Besides, we can’t get to the ship now. The time drive your agency so thoughtfully provided has another use—one I already employed uptime to prevent your colleagues from following us. It can damp subspace activity within a sizable volume of space—including spacetime warps and transporter beams. That’s how I plan to prevent the Aegis from undoing my change to history. Just before we beamed down, I set the field to block all further long-range and temporal transports as well as warp effects. We can still use the office’s transporter to travel around Feth as needed, but even if I signaled the ship to deactivate the field, it would take days to dissipate and allow transport.”

“I thought you wanted to keep a low historical profile so they couldn’t tell where and when you would strike. A systemwide subspace disruption field is a rather significant footprint, isn’t it?”

“My goal was to keep them from intercepting me before I could complete my plan. Once I’ve achieved a change on this scale, it shouldn’t be hard for them to track down the point of divergence. So my priority now is to keep them from intervening directly at that point—both by blocking their access and by minimizing their ability to discover exactly how I made the change.”

“What’s to stop the Aegis from sending agents back even earlier to await your arrival?”

“There are hazards to too much repeated tampering with a single event in time,” she replied. “I believe your colleagues experienced that at the Rakon IV conference a few years ago, when a Temporal Cold War battle escalated out of hand and almost tore a rift in spacetime with all the competing alterations.”

“Yes. I was not a participant in those events, but I was fully briefed afterward.”

“Given that risk, there’s a resistance to changing an event too many times, at least among the older and wiser time agencies. If I succeed in making this change and preventing its immediate alteration, the Aegis should be reluctant to intervene further back. Failing that . . .” She gave a shuddering sigh. “Well, now you’ve seen how savage those monsters are. No less so toward one another. As I said, there were many instances when they almost destroyed themselves. If I fail to change this one, I can try again elsewhen.

“Besides,” Daiyar continued more intently, “ending the Fethetrit here means that dozens of other civilizations will never be conquered or eradicated in the future. Countless billions will be spared from the brutality you just witnessed. It will be a better timeline for the galaxy as a whole. I hope that once the Aegis sees that, they’ll accept that it would be a mistake to change it back.” Her eyes locked pleadingly on his. “I hope that you can see that now, Ranjea.”

He needed several moments to find a reply. “I see that they are damaged, lost. Their way of life was disrupted, and the disruption has propagated. It does not mean they cannot be redeemed. You said this Vanthralak united his people despite their history of tribal conflict. Doesn’t that prove they have the potential to outgrow violence?”

“Only by directing it against others. Vanthralak cares only about the more complete subjugation of Keekuwa, and of other worlds in generations to come.”

“What about their future role in defending the Gum Nebula against cosmozoan threats?”

“Any of the civilizations they slaughtered could take their place and do just as well, if not better.” Catching the look in his eyes, she stepped closer. “I know what you’re thinking. The vaunted Federation ideal that every species has value. It’s an ideal the Aegis shares, or they never would have protected the Fethetrit in the first place. But there are exceptions. You’ve seen that now. At this stage of their evolution, the Fethetrit are simply too predatory, too irrational, to be permitted the power of a spacefaring civilization. And that evolution needs to be allowed to run its natural course, weeding out a culture too dangerous to be unleashed on the galaxy.”

“At the cost of billions of lives.”

“Fethetrit throw their own lives away almost as casually as the lives of others. This just ensures they don’t take so many others with them.”

“Would you be so compelled to save those lives if they did not include ones you loved? Do not pretend your motives are not selfish, Daiyar. You are doing this because you seek to reunite with a love you lost.”

“Is that what you think?” She shook her head. “You misunderstand, Ranjea. I have no intention of going back. Even if I do restore the ones I lost, that does not erase my own culpability in their death. I do not deserve to be with them anymore. And I came back here with the full knowledge that I might have to give my life to save them.”

He held her gaze for a long moment. “And yet you still chose to bring me back with you. Do you care so little for my safety?” He paused. “Or is your determination to be alone not as absolute as you insist?”

Daiyar looked away. She had no answer for him.

VI

April 12, 2385

Interstellar space, unspecified sector

It took nine days for Rodal’s scout ship to reach the edge of the subspace dead zone. After less than half that time, Rodal and the DTI agents were able to calculate the location of the zone’s edge by comparing incoming lightspeed-delayed pulsar signals with their latest FTL readings from before the field was initiated. But knowing the length of their wait had not made the waiting any easier. Dulmur missed his fiancée more with each passing day; the best part of his choice to accept promotion to a desk job had been the chance to enter into a stable relationship and go home to Cymmen every night. As good a rapport as he and Lucsly had always had as an agent team, it was anything but a substitute for that.

Indeed, Lucsly had been quieter than usual on this trip, probably out of unease toward Teresa Garcia’s anxiety. To her credit, the young agent had striven to discipline her emotions, recognizing that there was no way she could direct them usefully as long as she was stuck on this scout ship. She had presented her fellow agents and Rodal with as meticulous a report as possible on her team’s investigation into Daiyar and the Tomika’s actions during their confrontations, and she had participated gamely in their strategy and planning sessions as they constructed contingencies for what might come next.

But Dulmur could tell that her separation from Ranjea, along with her uncertainty about his fate in the distant past, was tearing her up inside. He’d never seen a pair of agents form such a close personal bond while still maintaining an effective level of professional discipline. He’d never seen a human get so close to a Deltan of their preferred sex without becoming overwhelmed. Garcia and Ranjea had managed to build something special through years of hard work and mutual trust, along with some alchemy that DTI training didn’t qualify Dulmur to define. He cared deeply for Garcia himself; he had sponsored her application to the Department and mentored her ever since, and he felt a fatherly pride in her accomplishments. But what she and Ranjea shared went beyond that. He kept up a confident front for Garcia’s benefit, much as she did for his, but in his private thoughts, he feared for what would become of her if Ranjea never returned. He trusted that she had the strength to recover from the loss, but she might not be willing or able to continue in this work if it took her dearest friend from her. Assuming, of course, that history didn’t change in such a way that she forgot him altogether. Some traitorous part of Dulmur’s mind sometimes thought that might be a blessing.

In an odd way, Lucsly’s growing reserve in reaction to Garcia’s sorrow had been to her benefit. She seemed to look to his stoicism as an example to emulate. It wasn’t something Dulmur would recommend for a long-term response; Garcia was nowhere near Lucsly’s end of the human psychological spectrum, so for someone of her emotional flexibility, embracing her feelings openly was healthier than suppressing them. But if it helped her remain focused on her work, that was something she and everyone around her needed in the current circumstances.

As for Rodal, he remained as reserved as Lucsly, resisting the agents’ attempts to grill him for more secrets of the Aegis. In his view, they’d penetrated the veil too much already. Meneth, of course, remained an enigma. There were moments when she let Dulmur catch a glimpse of her humanoid form for a brief moment, only to revert to civet form once his gaze was diverted even for an instant. He was certain she was toying with him. Once, he could have sworn he was awakened by the sound of Lucsly and Meneth carrying on a mutual conversation in low tones, but when he’d sat up and looked over at them, he’d seen only the civet stretched languidly across the seat opposite Lucsly’s. The older agent had professed to know nothing about it when Dulmur asked later on.

On the ninth day, the tension mounted as the ship neared the edge of the subspace damping zone. The agents had deduced, and Rodal had confirmed, that if history had been altered in the universe outside, they would not feel its effects until they left the zone. Quantum-state changes in one part of the universe did not affect other parts until they interacted and became correlated. Normally, thanks to the tachyonic, tetryonic, and other signals that propagated at hyperlight velocities through subspace, a timeline convergence’s effects would spread rapidly through the galaxy. But in this zone, isolated from subspace, the occupants of the ship would have been insulated from such a change. This had given the agents time to prepare. Lucsly’s temporal tricorder was phase-shielded and loaded with a streamlined version of the DTI’s master database of historical events, and he’d taken care to upload historical records from the Vomnin nations and other known Gum Nebula civilizations as well. If the scout ship’s occupants underwent convergence with an altered timeline upon their emergence from the damping zone, then they would forget the original history, but Lucsly’s tricorder would register the discrepancy as soon as it pinged the available databases, alerting them to the change. Rodal confirmed that the Aegis-provided ship had its own equivalent warning system—as did Meneth, though Rodal would not elaborate upon that.

But knowing about the change was one thing. Being able to change it back was another. And what if the change were radical enough that one or more of them no longer existed in their current form? Would they or the scout ship even be here once the temporal convergence overwrote their current quantum state?

Even though there was nothing they could do, the entire team was on tenterhooks as they neared the border of the dead zone. Even Meneth was restlessly pacing the floor and stress-grooming her fur almost nonstop. Dulmur and Garcia clasped hands and squeezed their eyes shut as the seconds counted down . . .

And nothing happened. Nothing bad, anyway. The scout ship’s computer emitted some optimistic-sounding beeps, and Dulmur heard a surge of power from the rear. “Warp engines show ready status,” Rodal announced after a moment. “Subspace sensor readings incoming. Transporter carrier signal positive. We are clear of the damping zone.” Meneth’s ears perked up, and her head darted around as if she were seeing something invisible to human eyes—which she probably was, now. Dulmur idly wondered what that said about all the other cats in the galaxy who seemed to act the same way.

“Any sign of changes?” Garcia asked.

Lucsly checked his tricorder. “Database pings under way.”

Rodal checked a reading. “Our systems register no aberrations.”

Once Federation issue caught up with Aegis issue, Lucsly nodded. “No discrepancies in evidence. The timeline appears unaltered.”

Garcia sighed. “Then Ranjea must’ve stopped Daiyar. Oh, I never should’ve doubted you, partner.” Her relief was incomplete, though. “But where is he? Did he get back?”

Rodal rose. “We can find those answers more swiftly back at the outpost. We no longer require the ship; I’ve requested that the Aegis beam us back to the Tanka Misata observation post. Stand by.”

Moments later, the ship that had been Dulmur’s entire world for the past nine days dissolved into a cloud of electric-blue mist. Dulmur was deliriously happy to see it go.

Aegis observation post

The timeline might not have changed, but that didn’t mean there were no surprises awaiting the group once they returned to the Aegis outpost. One of the Aegis agents—a six-limbed, spidery arthropod of roughly humanoid size, with a green carapace and an elongated, six-eyed head—scuttled up on its rear four limbs to meet Rodal and the others once they re-entered the complex. “Welcome back, Supervisor. You were missed. The attack on Tanka Misata occurred several days ago. As predicted, only a few dozen Tankans escaped the city. Thirty-three, to be exact, mostly mothers and children.”

Rodal grimaced. “Thank you, 1652. Did you succeed in transporting the rest to safety?”

“As many as we could, sir. It was to our advantage that the attackers’ firebombs produced abundant smoke. I gambled that our transporter beams would be mistaken for smoke, and thus rescued a larger percentage of the community than we predicted. Our probes gave no indication that the attackers recognized our intervention for what it was—just a few confused accounts that were dismissed by the other attackers as imagination. Most of them were quite intoxicated as it was.” The technician lowered her head. “We rescued one hundred ninety-three, including nearly all of the remaining children. They’ve been treated and sent on to the homeworld. Confirmed death toll was fifty-six adults . . . seven children.”

Garcia tamped down on her eagerness to ask about Ranjea, respecting the Aegis members’ moment of silence for those they were unable to save. Finally, though, Rodal asked the question for her. “Has there been any success in tracking Daiyar in the past? Any anomalous regions of subspace interference consistent with the effect of the temporal drive?”

Agent 1652 hesitated, tapping together the small digits at the ends of her long, spiky forelimbs. “There was one such anomaly registered, Supervisor, in the Skalat star system during a crisis intervention. But that situation appears to have been resolved on site. Further transtemporal intervention proved unnecessary.”

Garcia’s heart raced at that. “Was it Ranjea? Did he stop her? Did you get him back?”

The arthropod agent dithered again, her multiple eyes darting between Garcia and Rodal. “We were notified just hours after you left, sir—ma’am—that a message has been waiting in the Aegis’s file system for over five centuries, coded to be unlocked and decrypted upon voice command by Federation Department of Temporal Investigations Agent Teresa Garcia. With your permission, Supervisor?”

Rodal nodded, and the agent led Garcia over to a wall console whose black surface flickered with colored bars of light. At the agent’s prompt, she addressed it, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “Ah-h, this is Agent Teresa Gabriela Garcia, Federation Department of Temporal Investigations. Agent number—” The Aegis operative shook her head, indicating that was unnecessary. “Um, please unlock and decrypt the message coded for my receipt.”

The console bleeped, and a circular inset screen lit up. Only a text file appeared on the screen, but the voice that spoke over it was one Garcia had feared she would never hear again. “Teresa. This is Meyo Ranjea. If this works as I have been assured, you should be receiving this message shortly after I last saw you. Much has transpired for me since then. You may take this as my official report on the incident. After Daiyar abducted me on Qhembembem, she took me to the planet Lakina II, where your team later found us. I was placed under the hypnotic influence of an Aegis servo device, but I was able to converse with her and learn her motives . . .”

Ranjea’s voice proceeded to give a concise yet thorough account of his and Daiyar’s conversation on Lakina II, their flight to the Skalat system in 1807, their impersonation of a pair of Aegis agents, their meeting with a Rikeen agent named Tseechin on the surface of the planet Feth, the revelation of Daiyar’s plan to prevent Tseechin from rescuing a Fethetrit conqueror named Vanthralak, and the subsequent torture of Tseechin for speaking in their defense. Though Ranjea did not have a hateful bone in his body, his description of the Fethetrit’s brutality was uncompromising enough to make Garcia understand Daiyar’s conviction that the Aegis had been wrong to unleash them on the galaxy.

“Vanthralak’s royal court descended on the city the following day,” Ranjea’s voice went on. “The cities were designed to accommodate the large migratory populations of Fethetrit that roved between them seasonally, with estates reserved for the elites and barracks for their soldiers and slaves. The ruling courts would devour the resources of whatever communities they descended on, requiring months if not years of hard Rikeen labor for the economy to recover between visits. But this time, the city was even more densely crowded, for Vanthralak had brought factions from across the planet together to pay tribute and obeisance to him and petition his court for favor—a way of asserting his dominance and solidifying his power. It was no wonder that this was when the attempt against his life would occur. No doubt many of his enemies were on hand, and there was much activity and confusion to conceal the assassins’ plans.

“Tseechin had learned that large amounts of fertilizer, solvents, and fuel had gone missing from her agricultural complex and others, suggesting that the assassination weapon would be a high-powered chemical explosive. Since the imperial estate was too well-protected to allow the smuggling of such a large device, her conclusion was that the bomb would have to be placed somewhere along the route of Vanthralak’s parade through the city. The need to search such a large volume was why she had called in extra agents. An Aegis computer can lock onto nearly any location on a planet, but only if it knows where to look. Tseechin was not yet fully recovered from her injuries, but the search demanded all hands. Thus, she made a valiant effort to lead us into the field . . .”

1807 CE

Feth

The pre-parade sweep by Vanthralak’s own security meant that the bomb could not be emplaced until just before or during the parade. However, the delay due to Tseechin’s injuries meant that the Aegis team was unable to take to the field until roughly the same time. It would be a tight window, increasing the risk of failure. Ranjea wondered briefly if they had already altered history simply by being here. More likely, he realized, Tseechin would have stood up the same way for the real Aegis agents and endured the same punishment. Still, the risk of failure was high enough that Ranjea could understand why Daiyar had chosen this as the best mission to intervene in.

The parade was meant for Fethetrit only, so those few Rikeen allowed out on the streets were expected to avoid the main thoroughfare along which it would travel. Thus, the Aegis team had to stick to the back roads and alleys as they searched for the bomb, their servos set to sniff out the chemical signature of the stolen fertilizer and fuel. Still, Ranjea was able to catch glimpses of the diverse Fethetrit making up the crowd, their fur in various shades of red and orange and occasionally white, their bodily adornments and mane stylings denoting their origins in different tribes and ethnic groups. According to Tseechin, in the past they would have stood apart in their own separate, often feuding groups, and mass gatherings like this would have been fraught with intertribal clashes and duels to the death. But Vanthralak’s army and bureaucracy had forcibly desegregated the tribes, imposing a rigorous new order that rewarded loyalty to the state and the service over blood ties. So far, it seemed to be working, at least to a point. While some degree of tension was inevitable, the gathered Fethetrit contingents currently seemed united in their fervor to celebrate Vanthralak and the spoils he had brought back from his latest raid on Keekuwa.

“These raids are the key to his success,” Tseechin had explained back at the office. “What industry you see here is limited and crude next to what the Rikeen have on the homeworld. The majority of the Fethetrit’s material wealth and high technology is taken from Keekuwa, either as tribute or as plunder. Over the years of his reign, Vanthralak has shown that his unified force is able to stage larger raids and force the Rikeen to surrender more of their wealth. Feth has prospered as a result.”

“At the Rikeen’s expense,” Daiyar had added grimly.

“In the short term, yes. But this is a step toward the Fethetrit’s development into a starfaring power. Once they use up Feth and spread into space, Keekuwa will be left relatively alone, able to recover. As uptimers, you should know that better than I.”

Ranjea could sense the comeback Daiyar had wanted to make: But what of all those they prey on instead? Still, she had kept her counsel at the time, not wishing to hint at her true agenda.

Now Daiyar might be free to act on that agenda. Splitting up to search the parade route could give her total freedom to act, with Ranjea unable to do anything about it—assuming he was able to resist the hypnotic effect enough to try. What if she found the bomb before the others? All she would need to do was keep its discovery to herself.

Luckily, the call came from Tseechin. “I’ve detected the bomb signature. But there are life readings nearby. I need backup. Beam here at once.”

Daiyar had not given Ranjea enough instruction in servo use to let him access the Aegis transporter himself, but fortunately the Tomika renegade set her device to beam them both to Tseechin’s side at the rear entrance of a large building. No doubt she wasn’t ready to raise Tseechin’s suspicions by leaving him behind. But what would she do now to prevent Tseechin from disarming the bomb?

For the moment, it seemed, she would do nothing. “Are you positive?” she asked the genuine Rikeen.

“As much as I can be from out here.” Tseechin was breathing a bit hard, weakened by her injuries.

“We should go in. We have to see it to be certain.”

Was this merely her usual careful planning, Ranjea wondered, or perhaps hesitation? Could some part of her be reluctant to let the assassination happen?

“There are Fethet biosigns inside,” Tseechin pointed out. “Guards left to protect the bomb until it blows.”

Ranjea frowned. “That seems . . . like a very unrewarding duty.”

“Their war priests have no doubt assured them of rewards in the afterlife. Fethetrit, as a matter of cultural conditioning, are rather casual about getting themselves killed.”

“Their one redeeming feature,” Daiyar muttered.

“And what if the guards are nonbelievers?” Ranjea wondered.

“There’s an old Fethetrit saying. ‘Beware the war priests, for they are reasonable. Dispute them on the nature of the Maker, and they will send you to meet Him so you may learn the truth for yourself.’ ”

“Charming. And that’s who we’re about to confront?”

Tseechin smiled and held up her servo. “They haven’t seen what our makers can do.”

That same servo made short work of the lock, but the efficacy of it and its siblings against the Fethetrit guards they found in the building’s basement was more mixed. Daiyar and Ranjea took down the first two with ease, but Tseechin was panting from the descent and missed her shot, allowing the guard to close in and swing at her with his knuckle claws. The Rikeen dodged, but she sustained deep gashes across her arm before Daiyar took the guard down. Ranjea stunned the fourth guard, apparently the last, then joined Daiyar in jogging to Tseechin’s side.

“You’re hurt,” Daiyar said. She applied her servo to the Rikeen’s wounds on a setting that appeared to stem the bleeding. “That will hold for now . . . but you’ve lost a fair amount of blood, and you’re weak as it is. You need to go back to the office for treatment.”

Tseechin nodded. “I can handle that. You two disarm the bomb—I’ll monitor from the office and beam you back.”

“All right,” Daiyar said. Ranjea heard the determination in her voice, but he was still unable to speak up.

Tseechin twisted her servo to signal for transport, and Daiyar circled behind her. Just as the sphere of cloudy blue light began to form around the Rikeen agent, Daiyar drew Ranjea’s hand phaser from her pocket and fired a brief, low-power burst. Tseechin collapsed and vanished along with the energy cloud.

“Was that necessary?” Ranjea asked.

“She’ll be all right. The rest might even do her good. She’ll recover in a while and assume she simply fainted; the beam energy should scatter any phaser signature.” She strode past Ranjea resolutely. “But by then, it will be too late.”

They found the bomb in a corner of the building’s basement, a set of large drums and detonators placed around a heavy support column, with sandbags lashed tightly around the perimeter to direct the blast inward. Ranjea studied the column and its placement in the building, putting it together with what he’d seen of the building’s construction on the outside. “If I’m right, this could bring down the whole front of this building into the street. Hundreds could be crushed.”

Daiyar looked almost relieved. “And all we have to do is nothing. Just step back and let history play out the way it was meant to.”

“Daiyar, Tseechin and the others are native to this time. Don’t pretend this is about the purity of history.”

“It isn’t. It’s about the morality of it.” She checked the timer, then took a servo reading. “Vanthralak’s convoy is right on time, and we don’t have long. Come on, let’s go.”

She led him out of the building. Once outside, she headed in the direction of the approaching imperial procession. “We can get a good view from the roof of the adjacent building. There should be enough space between them for us to be safe.”

“You actually want to see them suffer?”

She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I just want to make sure this works. And be close enough to deal with any Aegis intervention.”

Daiyar used the servo to break into the adjacent building, which was closed and vacant due to the parade. From the roof, Ranjea could see the dense, diverse crowd of Fethetrit pushing closer and growing excited as the imperial convoy rolled toward them on the wide thoroughfare. The convoy was like a larger version of the horde of motor vehicles that had descended on the farm complex the day before. Dozens of such vehicles rode at the front and along the sides, bracketing larger, open-roofed ground cars carrying the various elites of the imperial court. At their rear, a large, high float, heavy-walled and armed, tapered upward in a series of gold-plated steps to a heavy throne on which sat Emperor Vanthralak himself—a massive, burly Fethet with blood-red fur and a mane of pure white, adorned in an ornate codpiece and jeweled bandoliers. Flanking and following the royal float was a chain of large, motorized transports whose flatbeds displayed the spoils of the emperor’s latest raid on Keekuwa. Several transports carried rockets and cannons, others jet-propelled aircraft, others piles of precious metals or plundered artworks.

But as the emperor’s own float drew nearer, Ranjea and Daiyar saw that the transports immediately around it carried a different cargo. Kneeling or splayed flat on the platforms, naked and chained by the necks and wrists, were dozens of Rikeen slaves.

“No,” Daiyar said. “Oh, no. The plunder . . . Why didn’t Tseechin say it included live captives?”

“No doubt because such things are a routine part of the Rikeen’s existence here,” Ranjea replied after a solemn moment. “She assumed you already knew.”

Daiyar’s breathing was hard and fast for several moments, but then she brought it under control. “It changes nothing. Those prisoners . . . They’re not for labor. They’re tonight’s royal feast, Ranjea. They’re doomed either way. At least this way it will be quick.”

“And it will be the result of your choices, Daiyar. Your actions.”

“No! I’ve merely removed an obstacle to the Fethetrit traitors’ own actions. This is necessary, Ranjea, to prevent . . . that”—she gestured weakly at the prisoners—“from happening to countless others from dozens of worlds across the Gum Nebula.”

He took her shoulders, speaking urgently but not harshly. “I don’t believe you can live with this, Daiyar. You began on this path because of guilt. You felt that, as part of the Aegis, you were responsible for the tragedy that befell Lakina II and other worlds like it. I understand that. I feel it in Riroa’s memories. She admired your sense of ethics, of duty to others. And she knew how hard you could be on yourself when you fell short of the Aegis’s standards. No wonder you would be so outraged when you believed they had fallen short of their own.

“But that guilt will not go away if all you do is trade one set of deaths for another. This is not the answer you seek. You cannot let that bomb go off—not if you hope to live with yourself.”

“And how can I live with myself if I just accept the decisions that led to the Fethetrit being unleashed on the galaxy?”

Ranjea realized that his ability to touch her meant that the hypnosis was wearing off. He could try to stop her physically if he chose. But he believed there was a better way. “That was not your decision, Daiyar,” he went on. “You spoke to me of how the Aegis values the self-determination of the civilizations it helps. It assists where it can, but with the goal of preserving a civilization’s ability to make its own choices about its future—by ensuring that it still has a future in which to choose.

“But the freedom of choice does not, cannot, guarantee that those choices will be good or devoid of harm. The Tomika, the Dhei’ten—our peoples used the chance we were given to grow into healthy, adult starfaring civilizations. But sometimes adults who go out into the world meet terrible fates. There is no avoiding that in every case.”

“And sometimes they go out and choose to inflict terrible fates on others.”

“Yes. That cannot be helped either. Once they are given the choice, the choice is theirs, and that means there is no guarantee that it will be the one you wished for. That is the self-determination prized by the Aegis, and by the Federation in its own way: The right, not only to succeed, but to fail. Not only to make the right decisions, but to be free to make the wrong ones. There cannot be one without the other. But what matters, what both our civilizations prize, is that all beings have the right to choose for themselves. To take responsibility for their own fates, and the fates of those they affect.

“That is the choice you face, Shaiyu. Blame whomever you like for Lakina II—the Fethetrit, the Aegis—but you and you alone are responsible for what you do here and now . . . and what you become as a result of it.”

She stared at the captives, paralyzed. Only minutes remained before the bomb went off and buried them under tonnes of rubble. “How can I live with not acting?”

“You were a victim, Daiyar. One of many. We cannot rid the universe of tragedies. We cannot avoid being shaped by them. The only thing we can choose is what we let them turn us into.”

Tears glistened in her eyes. “All that has been in me for so long has been this quest. I don’t know what my life would be without it.”

He took her hands, turning her toward him. “You had a life before this quest. Not all of it is gone.”

“Yes. All of it. My trust in the Aegis. My friends and lover on Lakina. Riroa—who so often made me wish I could return her love in the way she wanted. All of them are gone.”

“Their legacies live on in you, Daiyar.” He touched her cheek gently. “And Riroa’s love lives on in me.” Sensing her consent—her need—he leaned in and kissed her. It was a deep, Deltan kiss, connecting them in flesh and mind alike. He felt the void within her spirit, and he let the part of him that was Riroa flow into it. It was not enough to fill the chasm of her pain . . . but it was a beginning.

Though it felt like a day, the kiss was over in moments. Gasping, weeping, Daiyar recovered and headed for the stairs. “I’m going to disarm the bomb.”

“There are only moments left,” he said, jogging after her. “You could be caught in the blast if you’re too late.”

“I know that. But this is my responsibility. You don’t have to come with me.”

But Ranjea stayed with her all the way down the stairs. Just before they reached the other building’s rear entrance, he clasped her hand. “I’m not going anywhere, Shaiyu.”

With one, quick nod, she accepted that commitment. Together, they went through the door and headed down toward the bomb . . .

April 12, 2385

Aegis observation post

Teresa Garcia swallowed a gasp at the sight of Ranjea’s face as it now appeared on the monitor. His beautiful, flawless dark skin had become heavily lined and leathery—but they were lines of smiling, of contentment lived in long and well. “This is a . . . revised draft of the original report I recorded for you and the Department, my dear Teresa. Edited and amended with the additional perspective of sixty-one standard years.

“In case you’re wondering, I was not stranded in the past. Daiyar and I succeeded in disarming the bomb. We made sure Tseechin was well, then disabled the subspace suppression field and returned to Daiyar’s ship once it dissipated. She beamed the two captured Aegis agents back to headquarters safe and well—after informing them that we had completed their task for them, so that no corrective intervention would be needed. After that, there was nothing to prevent Daiyar from bringing me back to my time and releasing me.

“But this is why I have felt the need to explain this to you personally, Teresa. Why I have redrafted and re-recorded this message so many times over the years, trying to get the words just right. I may not have another chance to do so, however, so this will have to be it, for better or worse.

“I could not abandon Daiyar to her grief. The part of me that is Riroa still loved her, and now she was finally willing and able to accept that love. It was what she needed in order to heal. And, yes, as an agent, I felt the need to stay with her so that her grief would not drive her to tamper with history again.

“Daiyar and I remained in the nineteenth century and settled on an Aegis colony world, an enclave for those rescued populations—Deltans, Tomika, and others—that did not volunteer to be bred into agents and merely chose to live peaceful lives under the Aegis’s protection. Our Aegis sponsors knew the full story, but our friends and neighbors did not. I suppose it was a prison sentence of sorts, with me as her warden; we did have Aegis monitors watching over us, occasionally showing up in the form of neighborhood cats, pestering us for food and sitting on our laps as we sat and read outside. I have earned enough of their trust by now to have seen their true forms, to know their kind’s true name—but of course that trust prohibits me from revealing it, and besides, in many ways I prefer the cats. It’s a role that suits them well.”

Ranjea was quiet for a long moment before taking a deep breath and resuming his narrative. “Daiyar came to her bodily end a few days ago. She allowed me and my Deltan lovers to commune with her in our way, so her love, her spirit, and her memory live on in me, and in others. The same will be true of me when my time comes, which I feel will be soon. And we live on in another way—in our daughters, Riroa and Teresa.” Garcia bit her lip to keep from crying out.

“So do not weep too heavily for me, dear old friend. I have had a wonderful, long life, and the love I created and shared with others will live on in the universe. You gave me so much of that love, even though we never experienced each other in full. And a very large quantity of my love resides in you, though we knew each other for so brief a time. Carry it with you always, and keep it alive by giving your love to others. Not only in your personal relationships, but in the love that drives your work to keep the timeline safe.

“Oh!” After a few moments, he blinked, realizing something. “In my later drafts, I tend to forget this part. You and dear old Gariff and Marion are no doubt wondering about the time drive Daiyar stole from the Eridian Vault. My mission was to retrieve it, after all. Don’t worry, I succeeded in that. With some Aegis assistance—Gary Seven’s grandmother, in fact, although her surname isn’t Five—I arranged to conceal the time drive on a cometary body in the Sol system’s scattered disc. Its orbit should bring it fairly close to Eris by 2385. Its exact orbital parameters are encrypted in this message, set to upload directly into your temporal tricorder, Teresa, and be decrypted by your optical biometrics.” He sighed. “I always thought you had the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen on a human. It seemed a fitting tribute.”

A sleek, smoke-gray cat jumped into Ranjea’s lap and meowed at him. “Yes, my friend, thank you. Best not to drag it out too long.” He turned back to the visual pickup. “Thank you for being my partner, Teresa. I learned as much from you as you did from me. Now go out there and keep doing our good work.” His eyes crinkled in one last, beautiful smile. “Goodbye, dear friend.”

It was a long time before she could speak. Finally, she said it very softly: “Goodbye.”

Dulmur found Rodal outside, holding Meneth in his arms and stroking her head as he gazed over the burned-out ruin of Tanka Misata. “We do what we can,” Rodal said once he registered Dulmur’s presence. “Bad things happen anyway. When the Aegis was young, it tried intervening more aggressively, but it usually made things worse. Sometimes far worse.”

“That’s why we have the Prime Directive,” Dulmur replied, but without judgment in his voice.

“The Aegis could not be so passive either. We have honed our methods over ages to find the best balance. To intervene with the lightest possible touch, to help others help themselves as much as possible. Maybe the Federation will find that balance one day, and not have to hold yourselves back quite so much for fear of your mistakes.

“But the cost of that light touch is the same as the cost of the Prime Directive: you can’t help everyone. Giving a society the freedom to live gives it the freedom to make bad choices or to harm others. Letting go of a mature society to function on its own means that, sometimes, it will be harmed or destroyed. All we can do when the worst happens . . . is to keep trying. To do what good we can.”

Dulmur furrowed his brow, thinking. “Still . . . Maybe it’s my narrow human sense of time, but it seems to me that Lakina II is in the future. That means it’s just one possibility. The timeline branches going forward.”

“Yes—but you know that branches created by time travel have a way of overwriting their originals in many cases. Lakina II’s future is someone else’s past. That is how the Aegis sees it. We cannot recklessly tamper with those others’ history. Your own personal timeline, and Lucsly’s, would be altered without Daiyar’s theft.”

“True. I don’t know if things would’ve gotten so serious with my fiancée if I hadn’t needed her support getting through the time-lock incident.”

“And what of Ranjea’s long and happy life as a consequence? Do we have the right to efface that?”

“To save tens of thousands more, he’d be the first to say yes.”

“But he is just one of billions whose worldlines could be altered. We cannot risk it.”

Dulmur looked across the gorge at the ruins of the cliffside town. “What about what you did here? You saved everyone you could in a way that wouldn’t be noticed by history. That wouldn’t change anything significant. Maybe you can’t save Daiyar’s loved ones on Lakina . . . but there must be some you can . . . recruit, like you did with the Tankans.”

“We save such interventions for nascent civilizations that need our help. It is too risky to use them more broadly. The Tomika are a mature starfaring race. Their fate is in their hands now.”

“And you don’t feel you bear any responsibility for the victims of the Fethetrit? Or any of the other warlike races you’ve ‘helped’? Not even when the victims are other charges of yours?” Rodal was silent—and so was Meneth, who usually did not hesitate to express disapproval. “I mean, one thing I’ve learned about the Aegis is that you have other jobs to fill besides field agents. I know all about that. The DTI is perennially understaffed and overworked. I’m eternally grateful for our clerical staff and the hard work they do. I sure wouldn’t mind having more of them around to help.”

Rodal and Meneth exchanged a long look, with some mutual murmurings Dulmur couldn’t make out. “Perhaps,” Rodal finally said, “we underestimated how disruptive our policies were in terms of staff morale. If Daiyar was disaffected, there could be others. You may have a point that some . . . reconsideration of our policies is worth taking under advisement.”

Dulmur looked between the Cardassian agent and the shapeshifting enigma purring in his arms. “Does that mean you’re going to help the Lakinans or not?”

“It means, Director Dulmur, that telling you our decision would entail revealing information about the future. I think we’ve strained the Temporal Accords enough as it is, don’t you?”

Rodal Eight turned and started back toward the outpost. “Now, come. Your work here is done, and we need to begin dismantling the outpost in any case. I shall see you and your agents off and send you back to Denobula.”

“All right,” Dulmur said, catching up. “But could you make it Eris? It sounds like we have a misplaced item to pick up . . .”

Epilogue

April 13, 2385

Dwarf planet 136199 Eris, Outer Solar System

Teresa Garcia had hoped she would feel some satisfaction in returning the time drive to its rightful place in Bay H26 of the Eridian Vault. But without Ranjea to share the emotion of the moment with, it felt cold and empty, much like Eris itself. At most, the successful completion of her last mission with Meyo Ranjea brought a mild sense of closure. But once that sense had passed, it left only the open question: What next?

Behind her, Dulmur spoke up with forced cheer, perhaps sensing her emptiness. “At last. Everything’s back where it belongs.”

“Except the path integrator,” Lucsly pointed out. “Doctor Warain tells me that Lant has filed a grievance with the Department, demanding either the return of his stolen integrator or compensation for its full value.”

“Oh, joy. That’ll probably land up on my desk.”

“And of course, we’re still looking into relocating the contents of the Vault, now that its location has been compromised. So this may not be the drive’s final resting place.”

“Nothing lasts forever,” Garcia spoke up. “ ‘Final’ is relative. We should know that better than anyone.” Unable to look at the time drive any longer, she spun and retreated to the far side of the aisle. “Maybe we should just destroy all these damn things. Look at the damage they’ve done just in the past year. What good does it do to keep them around?”

“We keep them so we can learn from them,” Dulmur said. “There are a lot of factions out there who understand time better than we do, and we need to study these things so we can have a chance of catching up.”

“And destroying them wouldn’t do any good anyway,” Lucsly said. “It wouldn’t do anything about the countless threats that are still out there—cosmic anomalies, ancient artifacts, reckless scientists, temporal extremists, all the rest. The Vault is a tangible reminder of the dangers we face.”

Dulmur put a hand on Garcia’s shoulder. “More than that—it’s a memorial to those we’ve lost along the way. A tribute to their work. This job takes its toll on all of us. This is where that toll is recorded—even if the rest of the galaxy never knows about it.”

Garcia contemplated his words for a time, then nodded, blinking away tears. “You’re right, boss. No matter what . . . we have to remember. And keep on doing the work in their name.”

Lucsly fidgeted, uneasy with the emotion behind her words. “Well. Speaking of work, I need to finalize the updated provenance records with Warain.” He caught Garcia’s eye for a brief moment and nodded. “Exemplary job, Agent Garcia.” He turned stiffly and strode off.

Dulmur stared after him. “Wow,” he said once the older man was out of sight. “That was downright effusive of him.” He turned to Garcia. “I think that’s the closest he’s ever going to come to an outward show of sympathy. He really does care, in his way.”

“Yeah . . . I guess I get that. It’s just that his emotions are kind of . . . minimalist, after four years with Ranjea.”

“I’ve never known a pair of DTI agents as sentimental as you two. But somehow, you made it work.”

“We did. It was . . . he was a . . . we were like two halves of the same person. If you can imagine what that means.”

“You kidding? That’s the definition of a partner.”

She stared up at him. “Even Lucsly?”

“Even Lucsly. He made me the agent I am today.”

“And Ranjea made me the agent I am.” She sighed. “So what do I do without him?”

“What every agent does when they lose a partner. You get another partner.”

She gave a humorless laugh. “Like who? The two trainees who made it through this year’s program have already been paired off with other agents. So who’s left without a partner? Lucsly?” She laughed again.

“Why not?”

Her eyes grew wider. “Are you serious? Me and Lucsly?”

“It’d be different, I know. For both of you. And maybe that’s what you both need. A clean break from the past. A fresh start.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “Besides—don’t tell him I said this, but I think he’s lonely.”

“Lucsly thrives on solitude.”

“He thrives on having a purpose. And I think he’s a bit lost with the change in the status quo. Maybe passing on his experience to the next generation, so to speak, will help him feel relevant again.”

Garcia thought it over. “I suppose . . . maybe . . . maybe I need to recover a bit of my objectivity about my partners. Maybe Lucsly would be just the cold shower I need? Maybe. I don’t know. Have you even talked to him about it?”

“I brought it up earlier. He’s open to it if you are.”

Fourteen seconds of silence followed. “I’ll think it over.”

“Good.”

She put a finger on her chin. “You know, maybe it would give me the chance to ask about something that’s puzzled me. I noticed that Lucsly seemed to know a lot about Aegis procedure and technology. He even seemed to have insight into their culture.”

“Sure he does. He’s been with the Department a long time, and he’s dealt with the Aegis as much as anyone has.”

“Yeah, but I can’t help thinking about what we learned. About all the populations the Aegis takes and breeds into agents.”

“Mm-hm?”

“And about how the Aegis closes up shop on a world once they decide it’s no longer in danger. Like how they left humanity alone once we achieved global peace.”

“Yes.”

“So what happened to all their human agents after that? Sure, some work other jobs, logistical support and such. Some just go back to those protected enclaves, I assume. But when Ranjea was filling us in on Daiyar’s account, he mentioned her saying that some of them went back to their ancestral homeworlds to blend in.”

Dulmur gaped as her implication sank in. “You’re not saying you think Lucsly . . . ?”

“I dunno. It would explain a lot, wouldn’t it? I mean . . . couldn’t it?”

They stared at each other for a moment, then laughed and shook their heads. “Nah, it couldn’t be,” Dulmur said.

“No way. Couldn’t be.”

“Of course not.” He frowned again. “Could it . . . ?”

Acknowledgments

Once again, thanks to the various writers of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for creating the Department of Temporal Investigations and Agents Lucsly and Dulmur, particularly Ronald D. Moore & René Echevarria. Gene Roddenberry and Art Wallace introduced Gary Seven and his unnamed organization in the 1968 Star Trek episode “Assignment: Earth,” and Howard Weinstein fleshed it out and named it the Aegis in DC Comics’ Star Trek, Volume 2, Issue 50 (“The Peacekeeper, Part Two”), a number of whose events and elements are referenced herein. More of James Kirk’s interactions with Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln have been depicted in the novels of Greg Cox (Star Trek—Assignment: Eternity, Star Trek—The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh) and Dayton Ward (Star Trek—From History’s Shadow, Elusive Salvation). My thanks to both Greg and Dayton for their input on this novella.

Lant was introduced in Star Trek: S.C.E.: Buying Time by Robert Greenberger. The Borg Invasion of 2381 was depicted in Star Trek: Destiny by David Mack. Most of the other continuity references herein are to my own earlier work; in addition to the earlier DTI installments, the events of Star Trek: Titan—Orion’s Hounds are of particular significance.

I also want to thank my editors Ed Schlesinger and Margaret Clark for their patience and support.

About the Author

Christopher L. Bennett is a lifelong resident of Cincinnati, Ohio, with bachelor’s degrees in physics and history from the University of Cincinnati. He has written such critically acclaimed Star Trek novels as Ex Machina and The Buried Age; the Star Trek: Titan novels Orion’s Hounds and Over a Torrent Sea; the two Department of Temporal Investigations novels Watching the Clock and Forgotten History; and the Star Trek: Enterprise—Rise of the Federation series, so far including A Choice of Futures, Tower of Babel, Uncertain Logic, and Live by the Code. His shorter works include stories in the anniversary anthologies Constellations, The Sky’s the Limit, Prophecy and Change, and Distant Shores, as well as the DTI novellas The Collectors and Time Lock. Beyond Star Trek, he has penned the novels X-Men: Watchers on the Walls and Spider-Man: Drowned in Thunder. His original work includes the hard science-fiction superhero novel Only Superhuman and multiple novelettes in Analog and other science-fiction magazines, several of which have been compiled in the ebook collection Hub Space: Tales from the Greater Galaxy. More information and annotations, plus the author’s blog, can be found at christopherlbennett.wordpress.com.

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Table of Contents

- Dedication
- Historian’s Note
- Epigraph
- Chapter I
- Chapter II
- Chapter III
- Chapter IV
- Chapter V
- Chapter VI
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Copyright