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5: The Scientist
"It's hard to believe it's already been three days..." Dara looked over at Krenshaw from where she sat in a chair beside her daughter's bed.
"She's healing well." he said, coming over to look at the child's injury. "I'm glad it wasn't any worse. I could never have forgiven myself if I had been responsible for her death..."
Dara smiled at the scientist. "And I'mglad you were there when we needed help."
Garen pretended to adjust the single glass lens he wore over one eye. "Well... I..." he fumbled, his face getting a bit flushed. "I only did what any descent person would..."
"Then you're the only 'descent person' on this ship. That day I came to your door, no one else would help me... Too far beneath them I guess – helping a cargo attendant's daughter..."
"Helping another person should never be 'beneath' anyone..." he knelt down beside Constance's bed to look a little closer at the scabbed teeth marks. "Especially not one so innocent as this..." he looked at Dara, having gotten past his momentary embarrassment. "You've done well with her."
It was Dara's turn to blush, "Thank you..."
How did he do this to her – make her feel like she was worth something?
Dara cleared her throat and looked back at her sleeping child, "Well, thank you for coming again to look in on her. You've been more than kind to us both."
"I will always be glad to help you." he bowed his head to her in a show of respect that surprised the young mother.
"Please, Garen –" she raised a hand in protest.
"What?" he asked, catching the hand with his own, "Am I not allowed to show respect to whom I choose?"
Heat rose into her cheeks again at his sudden boldness, "Yes... Of course you are," she smiled shyly, "It's just – I – You are nothing like Constance's father..."
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" he asked, lightening the mood, but still holding onto her hand.
"It is the highest compliment I have to offer." she replied in all seriousness.
"Then I am grateful for your high estimation of me, though if we are able to... spend more time together, you may come to realize that I am far from perfect."
"So you wantto spend more time with me – with us?" she glanced at her daughter then back at Garen.
"It would be my pleasure." he said.
"You... don't mind that I have a... less-than-savory past?" she tested.
"Why should that bother me?"
"And you aren't trying to sell me anything?" she threw in.
"No." he chuckled.
"So this isn't some sort of cruel joke...?" the tried one last time.
Garen Krenshaw looked straight into Dara's eyes – those wonderful, warm, green eyes of hers, "Never, in all my days, would I do such a thing to someone as wonderful as you..."
He seemed sincere. And she believed him.
The intercom box that had been installed in her small living space squawked, awakening Constance.
Garen and Dara quickly pulled their hands away from the other's an instant before the girl looked their way. But before she was able to say anything, the box trumpeted, "Dara! Got another job for ya!"
She stood up.
"What is it now, Malak?" the young woman replied, just a bit irritated at the interruption.
"Got a load'a frishka fruit here what needs repackin'. One'a the passengers decided to remove some of his cargo by himself last night and didn't secure it properly. Though why he'd wanna eat that stuff, I got no idea. It'll prob'ly take ya at least three hours to do. You got somebody ta watch that lil' princess a yours?"
Dara smiled at the knowledge that her boss might actually care about Connie – at least a little bit. Then she realized that she didn'thave anyone to stay with her daughter... She looked back at the child thoughtfully.
Garen waved a hand to catch her attention. She looked at him, puzzled.
He pointed to himself and nodded at her.
"You don't have to do that," she whispered back to him, shaking her head.
"I want to. Go on now." he urged her.
"Yes, Malak. I have someone." she said to her boss.
"Alright. Come on down and get ta work then!"
"I'll be there in a few minutes."
The intercom went silent.
"I don't know how to thank you. Again." Dara smiled gratefully at the scientist.
"See Galera with me." He offered.
"What? Galera? But that's our next port of call. There'll be cargo t –"
Garen stood up and laid a silencing finger on her lips. "I'll take care of the cargo."
"Please, Amah, can we see it?" Constance's voice broke in.
Dara looked from Garen to her daughter and back again. She took a deep breath, "Well... I suppose." she relented. "But you" she looked back at Constance, "have to be completely well," then she looked at Garen, "and you have to promise that you'll work it out with Malak."
"I'll be well, Amah. I promise." the girl said with such sincerity that it made Dara want to laugh.
"And Ipromise it'll all be worked out." Garen reassured her again.
"Alright." Dara said, "I have to go. I'll be back as soon as I'm finished."
Constance wrinkled her nose, "You're gonna smell bad when you get back."
This time Dara did laugh, "I know Connie." then to Garen she said, "Do you think you can design a frishka fruit that doesn'tstink?"
"Botany is not my forte."
"Oh, why me?"Dara thought to herself as she sifted through the smelly mound of fruit. Thankfully frishka fruit was very hard to bruise.
"He could have called Rishnan to do this, but no, he had to get meto repack the stinky stuff."Her inner grumbling rumbled along as she tossed fruit after fruit into their shipping containers. The stench was almost tangible. It was so bad that someone had closed the air vents in the cargo hold so that the odor didn't drift through the rest of the ship. That was great for everyone else, but it made her life just that much more miserable.
"This stuff should be illegal!"She continued her mental tirade. "Why does the universe hate me?"
Then she turned her thoughts to Garen's offer and she smiled, remembering not to breathe in too deeply. "Galera... Home of the galaxy's most famous and beautiful landmark... Ya'ar Jeshurun*... the floating forest-city, whose many islands also happen to be upside-down."Dara tossed more stinky produce back into their odor-proof prison. "Ah, well. At least Connie will get to see somethingof the galaxy."she smiled to herself, but it disappeared again as she went on thinking, "Not like my childhood... which I can't even remember. And may she neverhave to endure the tender merciesof snakes like Zordar." the poisonous name tasted bitter to her mind, the ever-present memories still plaguing her.
She hated him. He had taken her heart and broken it. He had given her a daughter, only to disown her. He had thrown her out like so much garbage.
"If only she knew who she really is..."Dara thought, "Eldest offspring of the Cometine crown-prince – true heir to his empire when he finally inherits it."she sighed, then coughed as she inhaled the reek. "Life is too full of 'if only's'..." she wiped the stench-induced tears from her eyes with the back of one hand.
"Malak had better be glad my contract doesn't have a 'refusal to deal with excessive odors' clause."she coughed again, almost gagging on the smell. "But when my contract's up, I am definitelyadding one."
"Amah likes you, you know." said Constance, looking up at the man she had become friends with over the past few days.
Garen looked at the child, "And how do you know that?"
"She's myAmah. I'm supposedto know." said the child. Her attempt at sounding like an adult made the scientist smile.
"So what do you do for fun around here?" he changed the subject.
"Amah and I usually just play games and talk." she replied, hauling out an older model holographic game board and setting it on her lap. "You wanna play something?"
Garen pulled up a chair next to her bed. "Sure. But if you pick something I don't know, you'll have to teach me how to play."
"Of course!" the girl said gleefully, turning on the board.
A surprisingly new interface materialized in front of Constance and she chose a game that she thought her supervisor might have at least seen before.
"You know this one?" she asked as two sets of fourteen tiles appeared, one facing him, the other facing her.
On the tiles were the numbers one to thirteen There were four different colors represented: blue, black, red, and yellow.
"I think so..." he thought for a moment. "You need a score of thirty to start, right? Runs and sets: minimum of three tiles per run or set?"
"Yep." came the answer. "You gonna move?"
Garen laughed, "Just because I'm an astrophysicist doesn't mean I'm good with number games. Do I have a time limit?"
"Thirty seconds." the girl replied. "House rule."
"Ah."
"So, are you gonna move?"
"When I can figure out what I have." he said.
"Oh. Yeah, I forgot."
"Forgot what?" the scientist asked absently, staring at his tiles.
"That playing this with a man would take longer."
"Wait. What?" he looked up from his tiles.
Constance laughed. "This is a girl-friendly game."
"How so?"
"It requires multitasking." the way she said it – like multitasking was a big, bad, fangs-bared monster on the loose made him laugh again.
"So you think men can't multi-task?"
"Not usually." she quipped.
"Well, we'll see about that." he replied, determined to prove this eleven-year-old wrong.
An hour later he still had eight tiles left and she was putting down her last one.
"Now why didn't Ithink of that?" he said as he watched her move.
She smirked back. "You wanna try it again?"
"Definitely." he said. "But I have a question."
"What?"
"How do you do keep track of all that re-arranging...?"
She imitated an evil cackle, "You'll never know."
He liked this kid. Life had been cruel to her, yet here she sat, laughing in childish mischief.
"Constance..." he asked, more seriously.
"Yes?" she looked over at him, sensing the mood change.
"I need to talk to you about something very important."
"Okaaaay." she looked at him suspiciously, "Am I in trouble or something?"
"No," he reassured, "nothing like that."
"Oh. Okay then." she said, returning to her carefree state.
"Do you remember anything about your father...?"
"Oh, you wanna know about him. Why didn't you just say so to begin with?"
"I guess I didn't know that was an option." he said, feeling a bit awkward.
"Well, Amah doesn't like to talk about him much, and I didn't really see him a lot when we lived with him, but I remember his girlfriend. She was the meanest person I've ever met!" the girl folded her arms over her chest and made a sour expression. "I don't think she liked Amah and me very much. I don't even know why Aba liked her at all. I mean, just because she was pretty and all, and –"
"Wait," Garen stopped her, "what girlfriend?"
"Jarena." Constance rolled her eyes, "Icalled her 'the witch,' but Amah said that wasn't nice so I never really said it to her or anything."
"Was she like your mother?"
Constance gave him an almost condescending look.
"I mean, did shelooklike your mother? Have her skin-tone? Speak her language? Anything like that?"
The girl shrugged, "Dunno about the language thing. But she had peachish colored skin – like mine. And she had really dark black hair."
Garen nodded, "So, was there anyone else there who looked at all like your mother?"
"No, I don't think... Well, I don't really know." the girl placed a thoughtful finger on her lower lip. "There was someone who visited us once. I'm not sure how old she was, but her hair was like mine," she ran her fingers through her auburn-brown hair, "and so was her skin."
Garen raised an eyebrow, intrigued, "Do you remember her name? Where she came from?"
"No..." the girl sighed, "You might be able to ask Amah about that though."
"I'll do that." the scientist nodded.
"But anyway. Aba was... I guess the best way I know how to describe him is... odd."
"In what way?"
"It was... like he didn't know what he wanted – and I don't just mean which woman he wanted. We traveled the galaxies with him and he conquered a whole bunch of places for his empire, but he was never satisfied with any of it."
Alarm bells began clanging in Krenshaw's military mind. "He had an empire?"
"Uh huh." Constance nodded. "I never really got to see it though. We were always stuck on the ship. It had a funny name. Gal – Galt – Gatlantis!"
Now the sirens were blaring loudly. This little girl was the daughter of one of the Cometine princes. But there were two... He took a chance and said, "Your father's name... Was it 'Zordar' by any chance?"
"Yep. That's his name. But please, don't tell Amah I told you." a slightly guilty look passed over her face, "She told me I couldn't tell anyone," then she brightened a little, "but I don't think she meant I couldn't tell you."
Garen swallowed the dread rising in his throat and said, "Well, shall we start that rematch now?"
"Sure!" Constance readily agreed and started the game over.
This time the match went a bit more slowly as Garen wrestled with his shaken reality. This woman – Dara – who he found that he liked very much, was the former mistress to the most hated despot he had ever heard of. No wonder she was bitter... Who wouldn't be? So this was what she had meant by "a less-than savory past."
"Why didn't she just tell me..?"Garen thought to himself hours later as he sat alone in his suite. He was supposed to be looking over some figures for his newest assignment, but every time he started looking through the numbers his thoughts jumbled into an unintelligible ball of fluff.
"I would have understood..."he thought, gazing out the small viewport on the other side of the room. He could see the distant star that was Galera's sun."She couldn't control what Zordardid, and it certainly wasn't Constance's fault that any of it happened: the terror his father rained on Iscandar all those years ago, the dozens of worlds that have fallen to the Cometines in the past hundred years, the threats that were made against my ownhomeworld..."he sighed and looked back at his work, vainly trying one more time to accomplish something tonight before he went to sleep.
"If we hadn't built ourselves up against them we would all be slaves by now."he thought, remembering the tales he had heard of the Gamilon-Iscandari war with the Cometine forces during his father's time. "At least now we know how to repair a ravaged world..."
"Incoming call." announced his personal communicator.
He dug it out of his pocket and set it down beside the computer he was using. He looked at the credentials of the caller and stood up from his seat. "Accept the call."
"Lieutenant Krenshaw."
"Admiral Talan," he saluted his superior officer.
"None of that, Garen." the admiral said, "This isn't an 'official' call."
"Yes, sir." he let his arm fall back to his side and sat back down in front of the image. "What may I do for you then?"
"I have some things to tell you about that you may not like hearing."
"'Things,' sir?"
You've been away a long time, Krenshaw." said the Admiral. "You should be prepared for some of the... changes... that have recentlyoccurred here."
"Changes? What could have changed so much that you have to warn me about it before I even reenter the solar system?"
"Leader Deun has been deposed. As far as we know... he is dead."
"What?!" the shock was evident on the Lieutenant's face. "But – but how? Who?"
"His own firstborn son..."
"But he would have inherited the throne. Why do this?"
"It was not the throne he wanted so much as the power that would come with it. He made a deal... with the zealots."
Garen's face turned ashen, "The shêd-weilders..." he whispered, dread washing over him. "What possessed him to do such a thing?"
"That I'm afraid I don't know." Talan replied. "But as a result of his play for power, he went after his brother and sought to take his life."
"But that makes no sense. His brother is no threat to him."
"Not under normal circumstances." the admiral said ominously, "But because of his treachery he was disinherited. His younger brother is now the rightful heir to the throne."
"Why don't the people overthrow this usurper? Put the younger brother on the throne?" asked Garen.
"Because they don't know he's a usurper... And even if they did, they fear the Guardiana followers too much to revolt."
This silenced Krenshaw. The lieutenant looked down, a cloud of sadness covering his face.
"We need you, Garen."
His superior's words confused him and he looked up again to find Admiral Talan staring at him.
"'We', sir?"
"My son Masterson took the younger prince, Desslok, before his brother could kill him. Our hope for a resolution to the terror that Deun the usurper will bring lies with my son and his charge.
"I ask you now, not as your commanding officer, but as your friend. Do not return to the palace if you wish to see the rightful heir sit again on the throne of Gamilon."
"What am I to do then, Raymond?" he addressed the man more personally now that the nature of the conversation had clearly shifted.
"Go to the home of a woman named Eliora. She will tell you what to do. I will send you the information on how to find her as soon as there is another outgoing transmission to tag it onto. But in the mean time, trust no one you do not already know. Do not divert from your planned schedule. Stop at every port of call between Galera and the Gamilon-Iscandari orbit, but stay aboard ship as much as possible. If somehow Deun is alerted to your return he will find you and have you watched, so wherever you go, disguise yourself as best as you can."
"Of course, my friend." said Krenshaw.
"I must go. If I stay any longer I will be discovered. You will hear from me again, Garen." Talan bowed his head to the lieutenant, "May the true Leader come to power once again." then he saluted – but not with the usual raised hand. Instead the admiral brought his hand up to his forehead for a few seconds before letting it drop again.
It was a foreign gesture to Garen, but he replied in kind.
"May Adonai go with you." said Admiral Talan. "And may He preserve us all from the terror that is to come."
"May it be so." replied Krenshaw.
With that the call was ended and the scientist sat staring at the communicator, wondering if that whole conversation had really just happened. It was almost too bizarre to believe. Leader Deun dead... killed by his son... the youngest child appointed heir in his stead... young Masterson assigned to guard the true heir-apparent...
He was tempted to pinch himself, but he knew in his heart that this was no dream that he could awaken from.
This was reality. Cold, hard reality, from which he could never escape.
Then he remembered his offer to Dara and his heart sank lower than it already was. How could he endanger her by taking her and Constance with him anywhere?
Then the thought occurred to him that if somehow young Deun's people discovered where he was they would only be looking for one man – not a man, a woman, and a child.
Dara and Constance were the best cover he could ever ask for. But how to tell them...
* Ya'ar Jeshurun: literally "forest of uprightness," "Jeshurun" could also potentially be a reference to Israel