Against a Dark Background

Posted on Thu May 14th, 2020 @ 1:46am by Lieutenant JG Jaya Maera Garlake & Lieutenant Calderon Jarsdel & Lieutenant Commander Gwynne Emberly

Mission: S1E4: The Hills Have Eyes
Location: Nowhere
Timeline: MD 2

The moment of their clash in the Sickbay of Overwatch Station came and went like a daydream. Jaya looked around now, not knowing fully what had happened, when it had happened, or where she currently stood. Somewhere in her thoughts lingered a thought that something was off, but she could not place what. Looking around, she took in the environment.

At first the room looked the same. Station grey walls, beds, all the usual medical trimmings. It was the little differences though, the subtle shifts in perspective as the light adjusted and highlighted angles not previously seen. Then there was motion, a myriad of motion. Slowly trickling water that slid down the walls to the floor and pooled at Jaya's feet. Bugs, cockroach sized critters with long antenna that batted at the air, seemingly at random as they ignored gravity and spread out across walls and ceiling.

A short, sharp cough announced the presence of someone more complex and where there had been no one but Jaya herself, there was now a second person, a human, sat on a bed. His features were handsome, brown hair shaved short, beard scruffier than it might once have been and blue eyes focused. Focused on Jaya.

He coughed again, and smiled. Not a pleasant, friendly gesture but a warning. And below the Deltan, the floor shifted form, splintering into fractions that threatened to collapse at any moment. The seated man - no longer in his guise of a station Marine, gave a little wave and uttered a single word.

"Goodbye."

Jaya furrowed her brow at the coughing man. Everything was so confusing. Something about him seemed familiar, but Jaya was sure she had never encountered him before in her life. "Goodbye? Have we met before? Where are you going?"

He pointed to the ground beneath her feet and chuckled dryly. "We have not," Jumik said. "And I'm not going anywhere."

From behind Jaya came the merest tiniest sound of a squeak, and as the ground began to break up under her feet revealing a deep drop to swirling molten orange, she felt something leap from the ground to her shoulder. It was a chocolate brown mouse, its eyes not the default brown, but a clear, dark blue.

Jaya did not appreciate rodents, but something about this mouse stood out to her. She took it from her shoulder into the palm of her hand. "What are you doing, little fella'?"

The seated man stood up in an abrupt gesture, scowled darkly and stamped his booted foot on the ground. "That belongs to me," he said, simply, as it that ought to be obvious. His eyes scoured the ground, mildly confused as to her persistent ability to remain standing in place.

In Jaya's hand, the mouse canted its head to the side and silently gazed deep into her eyes. No words followed, but there was a clear transfer of emotion by the gaze alone. Fear, cut with the faintest hint of hope.

"You..." Jaya was captivated by the mouse. "You are the saddest creature. Do you know why he's so sad, Mister...?" She looked up at the seated man.

Jumik chuckled, a swift change of mood as if something genuinely amused him. "I do," he answered simply. "He's weak. Not tough and strong like you. Just how strong are you, I wonder?"

Around them all, the scene shifted. No longer a corridor at all, but endless white sand dunes leading to a tranquil pale green ocean. Above them, two suns bore down with an increasingly unbearable heat. Jumik, his expression oddly amicable now, stepped in closer to Jaya and reached out to grab the tiny rodent from her hand. "That belongs to me," he said again, and behind him the still ocean began to ruffle with white-horse waves.

"No," Jaya said, still confused but confident in her feelings. "I don't think he does." He? But it seemed like the truth. This mouse did not belong to... to whoever this was. "I think you should leave."

The tide turned, cool water rushing softly in to sweep about their feet. Jumik shook out his shoulders and stretched as if readying for a fight. "You just got here," he pointed out. His voice filled with a darker aggression now. "You don't understand. Give it back to me." He lunged forward, aiming to grab the tiny rodent, but the mouse shifted form as it leapt upward, becoming a fledgling seagull that fought to stretch out its wings.

At the man's intrusion of her personal space, Jaya released the mouse turned seagull and raised her hands in a defensive position.

"Wait! Let's think this through," she said. "Listen to my voice. I am not here to harm or rob you." But why was she here? And where was she exactly? Those mysteries added sincerity to her next question. "What don't I understand?"

Above their heads, the seagull grabbed air beneath its wings and attempted to distance itself from those two bipedals below. The Lethean that looked like Cal scowled as he reached lazily upward and caught one webbed foot in a rough hand.

"I don't care how calm you sound. Understand this. This. Is. Mine," Jumik told Jaya, his tone level even as the gull screeched and the ocean rapidly deepened about them. The water already reached to their knees by the time he'd ignored her question and raised his own. "What do you want?" He asked, head canted to the side, eyes searching. She wasn't alone, this Deltan. She was in company of the most precious kind.

About Jaya's calves, she felt the firm brushing blow of something reptilian. Jaya looked down and gasped at the sight of eel-like creatures coiling around her legs. The bulge in her midsection became heavily pronounced as the three unborn lives within began to stir, possibly awaken, in that fearful moment.

"Get off!" she screamed, trying to kick the eels away to no avail. They began swarming her in greater numbers, threatening to drag her down beneath the ever-rising waves.

Splashing came from behind her. A voice, booming with conviction, called out. It carried a strong compulsion to do whatever it said. "Unhand her, fell creatures, and get thee hence!"

Jaya turned around and saw a knight in shining armor, clad with white raiment and gold crosses, astride a white horse. The saddle was burdened with weapons of every kind -- a chain flail, a longsword, a... ballista? Surely no man could even lift such a humongous object, much less wield it.

"And who are you?" Jaya asked.

The knight planted his banner pole in the sand and removed his thick helmet and smiled. "Hello, vrue. Are you in need of assistance?"

Storr???

"I, uh..." Jaya felt more confused than ever.

"Do not fall prey to the wiles of that vile fiend!" Sir Storr had taken up his banner and thrust it in Jumik's general direction. As he did so, the area around him became just a little bit brighter. It was like the sun shone only for him.

None of this made any sense, but Jaya gave up trying to understand. She splashed her way through the surf toward her husband and his... noble steed.

"Impressive." Jumik paused in hatred and admiration as he regarded this manifestation of chivalry and mounted violence. Very impressive. Not simply this defence mechanism called into existence for her protection, but the way in which she addressed it - him - as if she had no idea this was from herself.

It had to be. Because it definitely hadn't come from Jumik's brain. Hatred rose up within the Lethean, a controlled rage for this interruption of her beautiful, delicious screams. Her intoxicating fear.

Events shifted at his command, the world he had cast them into moulding to his will and the sky above them darkened the world below with a vast shadow. A shadow that stretched outwards with wide, leathery wings, a scaled neck and a fierce horned face. It blasted the air before and below itself with a icy promise of death, catching the seagull in its periphery and sending it crashing heavily into the chill ocean. The main target of this gorgeous sky blue dragon however, was the knight.

Frost rimed over his armour and weaponry, arctic pain brutally soaking into his form and that of his equine companion even as the immediate surface inch of the ocean froze about them all. The dragon banked for a second pass.

"Vile fiend," said Jumik with a lopsided smile twisting his features. "Maybe. But, what idiot put you in charge?"

Sir Storr descended from his horse and hid himself and Jaya behind his tall tower shield. The grim wrath on his face said it was taking all his might merely to hold his ground. As brave as he was, how could any man stand against such an otherworldly terror.

"Turn!" cried out another voice.

Peeking around the frosted rim of the tall tower shield as far as she dared, Jaya saw an unusually dressed man standing on the far end of the shore, perpendicular to the evil stranger who seemed to have summoned this ice dragon and herself and Storr. He held up a staff of some kind in his hand which began to glow a spectacularly bright white as hot as the sun.

The dragon turned its attack away from Jaya and Storr, choosing instead focus on this intruder who had challenged it. Rather than step forward, the man in white robes and miter with vestments of blue and gold dug his heels into the sand and held up his staff over his head, chanting all the while.

“I adjure you, by the pure and holy angels Michael, Gabriel, Shuviel, Ahadriel, Zumtiel, Yechutriel, Zumtziel and all 72 holy names, I adjure you with all the retinues of spirits in the world! I adjure you by the utterance of the watchers and the holy ones by HaShem! With these names I adjure you!"

At first Jaya was certain she had never known the man, but his voice sounded so familiar. By the end of his... blessing? By its end, Jaya realized it was Akiva, though speaking as she had never heard him before. Such confidence. Such conviction. With each word, light gathered around him like a corona until it seemed he would be obscured by it, until at last he thrust his staff toward the ice dragon.

"I say TURN!"


What was this now?! Jumik’s brow furrowed as he wrestled for a tighter control of his emotions, as he sculpted his fury and hatred before him. The names called out into his headspace, hissed in his mind, unpleasant but powerless to harm his true self. His dragon, however, reacted with a swift recoil of his scaly head, turning away from the heated staff and the growing halo of brightness that surrounded this new threat.

As the glare cleared and a distant screeching sound permeated the air, Jumik saw the dragon beat its wings unevenly now, wounded by this power trip. He swore. But there was something else boiling up between him and the cursed woman invading his space. Information. Face and body, heart and mind. He left the dragon to occupy this conjured mage and refocused his own attention on her.

Perhaps there was more mileage to be had from her own imagination than from his at the point, the Lethean realised swiftly. Yes. Right… there!

Dark skin, tall pointed ears showing through long, thin white hair that caught in the sea breeze whipping up from the melting ocean, the drow arrived without fanfare as if he had merely stepped from some unseen doorway. He approached from Jaya and Storr’s left side, while from the right, strode another.

It was Mrazak as Jaya had never seen him before.

This second appearance wore a mix of features drawn from the sketchbooks of some deeper hell, broad shoulders, confident scowl and uneven, crooked pale curves of horns that swept tightly about his ears like a bastardisation of a mountain goat. A reptilian tail marked with an arrow point, orangey-red and furtive, moving out of sync with the rest of him. Sure footed and with hands nonchalantly weaving spells in the air as they strolled effortlessly across the upper surface of the choppy water.

To Jaya's eye, he was an even more devilish apparition of Karna, the insane Betazoid who was a ruthless, cold-blooded killer. Now his charismatic features were overtaken by twisted horns as black as the abysses of his eyes.

It seemed then that their power crashed together, focused on one place, on two people.

That shield behind which man and wife sheltered, it immediately melted from top to bottom and pooled at the knight’s feet, bobbing impossibly on the salt-water. Lava-like fire caught at his horse’s saddle and licked across the beast’s hide, sweeping swiftly from tail to mane as the creature whinnied and stomped, burning to ash before their eyes. Unseen fingers pulled each weapon from that destroyed saddle and flung them all at once, a myriad of inbound threats that circled in towards the specific space that Storr and Jaya occupied.

"To me, m'lady!" Storr cried out in resonant bravado. He planted his tower shield in the sand to be a bulwark for Jaya's protection, then withdraw a short sword to dual wield opposite his heavy flail and its spiked mace that dangled on the ground. He pointed his sword at Drow Mrazak and Tiefling Karna. "I will fight by myself if I must!"

While Jaya hid behind the shield, she watched Cleric Akiva hold the dragon at bay while Sir Storr took on the two fiends who resembled two of her least favorite people ever. His flail was a cyclone of holy wrath that glowed with the same light as his shield behind him. The two fiends kept him subdued but neither could they advance on Jaya's position. Part of her wanted to run, but where would she go? And would she abandon her loved ones?

As the battle raged before and around them, it seemed both Jaya and Jumik stood as spectators to the mighty clash of powers. A dragon arcing and sweeping, lopsidedly, ice blasts still aimed at its tormentor, a seemingly equal power to its majestic attempt at dominance. Dark elf and tiefling engaged in a stand-off with the powerfully present knight, and, at Jaya’s feet the water parted to release a soggy capuchin monkey.

The little creature shook its head and reached out to grab handfuls of her sari, making its swift way up her legs and side to cling lightly to Jaya’s shoulder with tiny hands. Wide eyes - blue like the mouse before it - gazed horrified at the war before them before the monkey uttered a worried squeak and placed its own hands over its eyes.

With Storr occupied now, Jumik smiled and unleashed the next step in his personal mission to bring down this female threat.

Barely enough flesh remained on this creature’s skull to determine its Vulcan race, and what little stretched across visible bone was grey and backlit with a purple tinge from its undead eyes. It rose up from a prone position beneath the water at Jaya’s feet, like a vampiric awakening, slow and stiff and with a deeply resonant cackle bubbling in its mouth even as it spat saltwater. There was no direct contact, however, just an extended spindly bone finger that called for the pregnant Deltan to cast her eyes to the left, while that unsettling gaze remained focused on her face.

“He loved you,” spoke a papery voice. “And you killed him.”

Chattering from the monkey on her shoulder as it shifted position to peek between his fingers intensified as it saw what the necromancer wished Jaya to see. A fresh, but exhausted, soulful looking corpse, a familiar face from the past.

"Nooo!!!" Jaya fell to her knees in the crashing surf, hands grasping her face. She wanted nothing more than to shield her eyes from these visages, but she could not look away. No one else haunted her dreams as they did.

It was the ghost of Hallan, the Betazoid counselor from the USS Renown whose unrequited love toward her had driven him to take his own life. And it was summoned by none other than Saalkan, that mad Vulcan who had mutinied against their former vessel and single-handedly murdered hundreds of Starfleet officers in his twisted pursuit for immortality.

"You're dead!" she screamed. Pleaded, even. "Both of you!"

A crossbow bolt narrowly missed her face and struck the monkey in the throat. It disappeared into the turning tide.

"Then we'd better keep them that way."

Jaya turned around to see who else was joining the fray, this utterly confusing clash of her worst fears and regrets. Standing in a row, Jaya saw three hooded figures: one bore a tome glowing with an arcane purple hue, another held an orb that danced with starlight, and the third held a crossbow in each hand. It was the last who had evidently fired on the monkey, as she was resetting for her next shot.

"Who are you?"

The figure with the tome kept her distance, though she began chanting some obscure language that Jaya could not understand, but she knew the voice anywhere. It was Riswan, her older sister who had come to her defense more than once. The starlight figure cast her orb to the ground, which then raised a fog bank which crackled with electricity. Ghost lights came from out of the fog and began encircling Jaya's foes. Jaya could make out the green flesh of her hands and wrists. Laena?

"Sorry we didn't get here sooner, mate," the ranged figure said, having moved to Jaya's side to back up Storr with her crossbows. It was Arianna.

"Am I dreaming?" Jaya said aloud. "I must be dreaming."

But the battle was all too real. Swords and sorcery clashed in an epic confrontation of good and evil where no quarter was asked and none was given.

For a second or two, as the monkey fell, the scene seemed to glitch. A dragon caught in a repeated furling motion of spread wings, an eclectic mixture of assorted fiends temporarily caught in a ripple pause effect. And Jumik himself sucked in a vast gasp of ocean air with an expression of mild surprise caught in his chiselled features.

It didn't last long, that miniature shockwave pervading the fantasy scene for only the blink of a normal eye. He looked a little more worn now though, his features a touch more strained and tired. His hands formed fists, knuckles white as he forced strength from within. He paused to exhale. Then Jumik reached out to a lower level of heinous malevolence and sought the three youngest minds present. Jaya's unborn triplets.

In the amniotic fluid around them, he conjured tiny, writhing threats. Serpents small and agile enough to imply danger of the most invasive within that sacred, innocent sanctuary, their teeth pale knives and they sought sustenance.

The flutter within Jaya's womb turned to cramping. She could sense the creeping intrusion of a foreign sentience within the precious sanctuary of her nascent offspring. "Get out!" she screamed as she grasped in futility at her abdomen. "Leave them alone!"

Yet they did not listen.

Amidst the walking dead summoned by the equally undead Saalkan, the Druid Laena and Ranger Arianna continued to fight, but Mage Riswan halted. She rushed to Jaya's side. "You know what you must do," she intoned, ever the wise, older sister.

"No, I don't!" Jaya screamed in both agony and terror. "My babies! They're hurting my babies!"

"You alone can stop them," Riswan said. "Only you."

At that, she opened her glowing tome and held it to her forehead. A brief incantation summoned a flash of light which enveloped her. Riswan was gone, her cloak propped up on something jutting out of the sand. Jaya reached for her sister's fallen cloak and found it hung upon the hilt of a sword sticking out of her grimoire. On the blade were etched as if by fire the letters FERROBURNUS.

"You've got to be joking," Jaya said.

"Huhm... one might think so," the sword said in the voice of Ferrofax. "And yet is seeing not believing? Do not doubt what you see. Only merge it with what you cannot."

The little leviathans continued to burrow ever deeper inside her, their intent as clear and vicious as a pack of wolves. Jaya shook her head and cried. "What? I don't understand!"

"TAKE ME IN YOUR HAND, YOU FOOLISH MEATSACK!"

Hesitantly Jaya did so. At first the hilt was cold to the touch, but once she made her grip sure Jaya felt a resolute conviction that she had not before. Deltans were known by their passion even before their mental abilities. That was what this insane summoner had been preying upon. With the blessed sword Ferroburnus in hand, a frigid fire burned through Jaya's mind and cleared away the fog of confusion that had beset her. This was not a dream. It was so much more.

"Enough!" she shouted, noting a reverberation to her voice that had never been there before. She pointed Ferroburnus directly at Jumik, the man whose name came to her as clearly as a recovered memory. For now, she knew, that their minds were commingled. "No longer will you stalk me in darkness and use my fears against me." With the sword held aloft, Jaya found herself pulled aloft with it. Through the air she sailed in a long jump over the battle that had frozen upon her awakening. She landed in a half crouch at arm's length from Jumik. "Now I shall show you the meaning of fear as only a counselor may," she said, staring at Jumik down the upraised shaft of Ferroburnus' blade.

"Superhero landing," muttered Jumik as his foe/prey/fellow combatant appeared to metaphorically grow a pair.

The air of casual humour faded swiftly though at the stark presence of the potent sword. That was interesting. It rose above the other constructs in her mind, and his, and shone like a nuclear deterrent gifting a definite sense of malevolent superiority. This was no ordinary personality, this was drawn from a power he had not been able to crush. Maternal instincts perhaps, or the kernel of the team he had been bastardising, drawing from her mind in order to disturb, torment and weaken.

This partnership resonated strength. This woman was not going to surrender easily. Such awoken passion, such beautiful energy.

Fuck.

For the first time, Jumik took one half step backwards and internally regrouped as the scene paused about them, leaving only the three of them in stark coloured presence. A Lethean in a human suit, a pregnant Deltan and a sword with an AI in command.

"Oooh," Jumik deadpanned. "A counselor? Yeah, colour me terrified." But the sword and its wielder did invoke a certain amount of concern. Hidden fear even. From the air above him, Jumik plucked a weapon of his own - a claymore with fused vertebrae for a hilt. It didn't taunt, speak or sing as it clashed with Ferroburnus, instead it screamed with the high and unmistakable pitch of a dying child.

Each clang of swords pierced Jaya's soul with the cry of misery from the innocent, but the cleansing fire of pure reason that she drew from Ferroburnus kept her afoot. The hell-forged double-handed sword in her adversary's hand more than symbolized death. That sword sought to reignite her fear, but Jaya was determined to win.

Block, block, parry, thrust, parry, riposte. Each stroke of Ferroburnus pressed against his mental barriers. Jaya used these advances to search for breaches in his mind into his core self. The mind... Lethean. While Jaya was not intimately familiar with the species, she knew them to be natural predators. She also realized that with every attack, she was also bringing harm to the host mind which the Lethean had hijacked.

At the realization, Jaya jumped backward and held Ferroburnus overhead in a defensive position. "I know your mind now. You will not goad me into tormenting your captive any more than I will let you touch my unborn children. Now that I finally see the stakes, I know what I must do..."

Turning to face her small army of supporters, Jaya pointed the glowing sword at each in turn. And, one by one, each one faded into luminous wisps that the sword sucked into itself like a cigar burning in reverse. Just as Riswan had vanished, so did Laena, Ari, Akiva, even Storr, all of them absorbed into the singular focus of Jaya's will. Ferroburnus turned from frigid cold to a blindly hot light. Jaya did not let go of it. Instead, she fell upon the sword. Rather than die, she allowed it to penetrate her unconscious identity and transform her self-image. No longer was she a frightened and confused mother of unborn triplets. Rising back to her feet, free from wounds, from clothing, from fear itself, she was bathed in light that made her hover off the ground in weightless epiphany.

"I... am...here..." The power of her words necessitated their prolonged enunciation. "... and... you... are not."

The incandescent radiance of Jaya's being condensed into a laser-like pillar of energy that erupted from her entire torso, face to waist, and crashed into Jumik like a star's coronal mass ejection.

He'd felt her searching, her mind dipping into his like a harsh stare from an unwanted observer. Jumik let Cal take the brunt of that intrusive survey, his own personna wrapped around that inner core like barbed wire. A wire that bent and stretched as necessary to protect himself, imperfect but extant.

Her transformation was unexpected, brutally potent as she pulled her mind's minions back within herself and burned his retinas with her damn sword's light. Her light. Liiiiiiiiiiigggggt.

Cursing was denied him as Jumik felt the crashing destruction of his innermost sanctuary. A bright salvation that reached strong fingers deep into Cal's self and bombarded the unwanted passenger, that brain-driven parasite who had conquered his mind and stolen his form. There was no scream of pain, no inhale of breath, no sound or motion that could possibly stand against the sheer untamed potency of her power in that supernova display.

He felt... nothing...

Thoughts remained, disjointed and confused, alone in a space with out boundaries or definition.

That had to be bad.

Silence yelled without words or voice, darkness drowned and Lethean consciousness lay bare and paralysed, vulnerable, still and pinned like a butterfly in some monster's collection.

---

Disorientation came over her again, but this time it lacked confusion. Jaya could feel, subliminally and unconsciously, the disentangling of minds.

A starship corridor? Cool, internal airflow. And a weight that reached up from floor to broad shoulders and dragged him to his knees like a stone.

"Thank... you..." whispered Cal as he barely held his chin up from his chest, as he sucked in a real breath with his own lungs and as he felt the tears flow freely down dry cheeks.

"Who are you?" Jaya asked. This time, however, the question was asked not out of ignorance but out of knowledge. She knew this man from the touching of minds. What she wanted to hear was his own declaration.

The unmistakable scent of blood permeated his nostrils as they came back online. Pain - so much pain - pervaded his nervous system, and Cal looked down the length of two arms that now appeared to respond to his commands. Arms that ended in hands, but at the wrists the flesh showed definite trauma, injuries that were undoubtably the cause of most of the pain signals. There was more, so much more. A growl in his belly, a fear in his heart and everything was soaked in bewilderment. Who was he?

"Cal..." said Calderon Jarsdel. "I think my name is Cal."

"A pleasure to meet you," Jaya said with a weary grin. "It is good to see your mind reasserting itself to neurological control of your body. You may require therapy after so long. I cannot think of any cases similar to yours off the top of my head." She tried to be as comforting as possible despite the circumstances. "You will be detained, but I will make sure the full story is known. Your story. Now rest..."

Everything assailed him at once, input too varied, copious and intense to control and understand in this moment alone. Cal slumped from knees to a fetal position on the ground and let her words flow over his eardrums as he remembered what they were for. Direct communication with the outside world, no longer modified and controlled by the fucking Lethean. But was this real? He couldn't be absolutely sure. He mumbled something that ended with 'okay' in response to Jaya's words, then lay still and pulled his knees up as close to his chest as he could muster.

"It was a Lethean," Jaya said to Gwynne. "I saw his mind. This man has been under its control for some time."

Gwynne, who after blasting this non-Lethean Lethean had taken a moment to recover nodded. As Jaya was enveloped in the mental battle with the assailant, the betazoid had hurried to help Doctor Wilson stabilize and save the Marine, Mayhew's life, as he was now distinctly lacking a larynx. Gwynne shuddered at the though as she remembered Wilson explaining it to her.

There was a point, where she'd felt Jaya's resolve and strength faltering. While her hands were busy following Wilson's instruction, she did her best to project a sense of strength and stability at Jaya, hoping it would help the deltan re-affirm her mental defenses.

Now, she was looking at was clearly not a lethean. "We'll need to place a block in his mind of some sort to prevent this from happening again," Gwynne said finally, then turned to Jaya. "Are you ok? I felt you almost falter at one point."

Jaya gave a solemn nod. The mental block was a given. Without it restorative therapy would be impossible to even attempt. "I think so..." Jaya said in answer to Gwynne's question. Her hand went to her womb, though, which was where the bulk of her concerns rested. "The... thing inside him. It tried to harm me in the worst way. And I nearly let it." She looked to Gwynne with a wan smile. "He nearly subdued me. I'll be forever grateful for all you did."

The redhead betazoid nodded, "I'm just glad it all worked. I wasn't sure of anything after I blasted him, to be honest." She looked over at the prone Mayhew on the bio bed. "Still not sure about that poor soul."

From what Jaya could sense, Mayhew's life-force definitely felt touch and go. "We did what we could. Now we trust in Dr. Wilson to do what he can." Looking at Cal, all Jaya could think was one thing. "Who was he? How did he come to be here?"

"Good question." Gwynne nodded, "I'll see what I can find out."