SHUTTLE ORBITER CHALLENGER , OV- 99
COMMANDER FRANCIS R. “DICK” SCOBEE
COMMANDER MICHAEL J. SMITH, PILOT
RONALD E. MCNAIR, MISSION SPECIALIST
ELLISON ONIZUKA, MISSION SPECIALIST
JUDITH A. RESNIK, MISSION SPECIALIST
GREGORY B. JARVIS, PAYLOAD SPECIALIST
S. CHRISTA MCAULIFFE, PAYLOAD SPECIALIST
“THIS DAY”
SEVEN EXPLORERS
SAILED ON A FLAME OVER
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
The words struck Vaughn like a punch to the face. He felt dazed and sad and alone. His knees wavered beneath him, and he thought for a second that he would go down. He looked skyward, the gray launch tower pushing up toward the gray clouds above.
“Stop it,” Vaughn yelled, elongating the vowels. “Stop it.” Somehow, he kept his feet. He dropped his head back down, and said, “You have a mission. Stop feeling what you’re feeling.” He peered to his left, at the road as it headed away. “You have a mission,” Vaughn said. “You have a mission.”
He repeated it another fifty times before he was finally able to get himself moving again.
Vaughn walked on.
He walked through a section of battlefield on Beta VI, where he and his team had been unable to do anything but watch as more than eleven thousand men had beaten each other to death with rocks and sticks. Today, he saw only one member of his team, and perhaps only a dozen men attacking each other, their boots sloppy with the blood of the corpses lying at their feet.
He walked past the dark, stale cell—not much more than a box—in which the Breen had once kept him for seven weeks. He had survived only by licking at the damp stones of the walls, and by killing and eating the aurowaqqa—furry, ten-legged creatures, larger than his hand—that had occasionally found their way into his prison. He killed an aurowaqqatoday, beneath the heel of his boot, unable to stop himself, and then felt…diminished…for having done so.
He walked down the streets of Pentabo, on Verillia, amid throngs of emaciated children, orphaned by war and living in the wreckage of their world. The desperate, hungry faces he saw today reflected more sorrow and pain than should have been possible for young people to feel. The scene broke his heart anew.
He walked along the corridors of Kamal,the old Cardassian freighter lost in the Badlands. Bajorans, whose gaunt bodies betrayed their horrific lives under the Occupation, sprawled dead throughout the ship, their Cardassian oppressors dead beside them. He looked for the Orb, speculating about a connection to this haunted planet, but his experience did not extend to that portion of the freighter.
And finally, as the already pale sky faded toward the onset of night, Vaughn stood on the bridge of T’Plana-Hath,staring at the viewscreen, living again that terrible moment when he had first known for sure that Ruriko was gone. Part of him died with her. Again.
Vaughn walked on.
The light would be gone soon. Because of the amount of the energy interference, the tricorder could not tell Vaughn how far he had traveled today, but it did not matter. Either he would reach the pulse, or he would not. Less than a day remained now before the next destructive wave would launch into space.
Vaughn’s legs, very tired now but still strong, had held up remarkably well to this point, and he felt confident that he would not falter physically. On an emotional level, though, his strength had waned greatly. That the people and places he had seen on his journey had been re-creations and not precisely genuine was irrelevant, because his reactions to those people and places had been genuine—both whenever they had first occurred and again today.
As Vaughn marched up another rise, he dreaded what he would find on the other side. The experiences of his past had been appearing closer together, and he expected another incident shortly. “You have a mission,” he said, despite the uncertainty of his emotions and of his ability to control them.
As he reached the top of the rise, Vaughn tried to brace himself for whatever lay beyond it. It did not work. He stopped, his eyes narrowing as he regarded what he saw before him.
In the distance, a complex of neglected structures spread across the landscape. From this height, Vaughn could see into their midst. No buildings stood in the center of the complex. There was only a circle of darkness.
The site of the pulse.
52
The wardroom hummed with the sounds of many voices. Kira stood near the doors and surveyed the reception. The Bajoran, Alonis, Trill, and Andorian delegations, all clad in formalwear, continued socializing warmly with each other. Kira had earlier decided to stop speculating about what the future would hold, but if the smiles among the guests were any indication, then Bajor would be a member of the Federation within the next couple of minutes. The mood here had been so positive throughout the evening that even the normally austere Akaar seemed to be enjoying himself. That had seemed like a breakthrough for the unapproachable admiral, and Kira elected to take it as a promising sign. Overall, she thought, the event had been a rousing success.
Not typically enthusiastic herself about mingling with government figures, Kira had actually spent time tonight doing just that. She had moved about the room with relative abandon, drawing both the ambassadors and their staffs into conversation. She supposed that she had wanted to put on Bajor’s best face, though she of course knew that her behavior here would have no bearing on the talks. Still, she liked being positive.
A few meters in front of Kira, Shakaar, and the Trill ambassador, Gandres, were speaking with one of the two officers Kira had introduced as her aides. The two—Sergeants Etana and Shul—were actually Lieutenant Ro’s deputies, and the only signs visible to Kira of what she knew was incredibly tight security. As she watched, Shakaar, Gandres, and Etana moved to one side, allowing Tel Ammanis Lent, the Alonis ambassador, to float past them in her antigrav chair. Lent thanked the trio for their courtesy as she went by, and then glided over to Kira.
“Ambassador,” Kira greeted her, smiling. “I hope that you’re having a pleasant evening.”
“I am, thank you, Colonel,” Lent said, her words passing through a level of conversion even before reaching Kira’s universal translator. The water-breathing Alonis, when not in an aquatic environment, wore formfitting suits that held a layer of water suspended against their scales. The helmets they wore contained a device that transmitted the sounds of their underwater voices out into the air. “And the food,” Lent went on, “is the best I’ve had at a foreign facility.” Kira did not know exactly how the Alonis ate while wearing their environmental suits, but obviously they somehow managed the feat.
“I’m glad you like it,” Kira said. “It’s just Bajoran hospitality.”
“And you are certainly very welcoming,” Lent said. “By the way, the kelp is truly delicious.”
“Good,” Kira said. “I’d heard it was flavorful.” While it surprised her that Quark had actually been telling the truth about the exorbitantly priced kelp, what intrigued her more were the Alonis themselves. They physically resembled the creatures of myth that possessed the head and upper body of a Bajoran and the tail of a fish. The silvery bodies of the Alonis were not precisely like that, but similar; their head and torso were more or less humanoid in shape and function, but they had a long tail structure instead of legs, and short fins in place of arms. They had no opposable digits, but had developed an advanced civilization via their short-range psychokinetic ability, which they used to manipulate water into essentially solid tools. They had joined the Federation forty years ago, and were widely regarded as a kind and peaceful people.