I have a message from another time... Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presents UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT - SYMPHONY OF THE SWORD No. 5 - Prelude in A Minor Benjamin D. Hutchins (c) 2005 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2409 INTERNATIONAL POLICE STATION BABYLON 6 BAJOR SYSTEM, CENTAURUS SECTOR Susan Ivanova was having one of those days. She would have thought life would get -easier-, not harder, with the Valiant's summer tour over, the IPO's space fleet back under flag command, and Operation Counterweight underway. And indeed, none of her current problems could be traced to anything involving the IPO at all. Instead, the -local- situation was causing her tsuris. She wasn't sure exactly what was going on - as she was a good and upstanding mostly-lapsed Jew, the complexities of the Bajoran religious establishment were quite beyond her - but whatever it was had the planet's airspace hopping as vedeks and prylars and ministers and whateverthehell else flew in from all of Bajor's various nearby colonies. It also had the liaison office and most of the Bajoran personnel stationed aboard Babylon 6 acting kind of squirrelly. Ivanova gathered from fragments of conversations she'd caught in the corridors and on the Zocalo that it had something to do with some kind of war-crimes matter relating to the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, which began during the War of Corporate Occupation and ended in 2400. Whatever it was about, the cacophony it was causing was getting up her nose. Between that and the fact that what seemed like about half the damn Klingon Defense Forces were staging through Babylon 6 en route to a fleet exercise at Krodath Minor, she was busy enough to make her mildly peevish at the best of times. As it was, she also felt like hell today, and the combination was making her quite hard to deal with. She had just finished informing the captain of a Klingon bird-of-prey that if he didn't keep to his assigned flight path and speed, she would have the station's tractor array explain it to his helmsman directly when she became aware of an unfamiliar presence next to her command station. "Excuse me?" this presence said in a quiet, pleasant voice. Ivanova turned. "Yes? What?" she asked, a trifle more harshly than necessary. The young woman standing there blinked, taken slightly aback by the reception. She was small, almost childlike, with a round, open face and jet-black hair cut short and tucked behind her ears. She had big, honest blue eyes and appeared human except for the band of brown speckles that began at her forehead and ran down both sides of her face and neck to disappear into the collar of her uniform jacket. The uniform belonged to a Starfleet ensign, with the blue jacket panel indicating that its wearer was a science or medical officer. It included a holstered tricorder but no weapon. The girl inside it had a USS Ticonderoga duffle bag slung over her shoulder and looked slightly nervous, but also very eager. She was so damned cute and earnest-looking that Ivanova was struck by the sudden, irrational desire to punch her on the nose. Fortunately, she had long experience repressing such urges, so she did nothing of the sort; she just narrowed her eyes and repeated, "Yes?" "Uh - Ensign Ezri Tigan, reporting for duty, Commander," the girl said. Ivanova gave her a skeptical look. "Nobody told me about any new science officers coming in, and you're too young to be a doctor," she said. "No, sir," Ezri replied. "I'm a counselor. Well, I will be. That is - I'm in my third year of the Academy. I've been posted here for my field internship." "Your field internship," Ivanova repeated, her voice flat. "Yes, sir," Ezri replied, nodding. Ivanova gave her an exaggeratedly judicious look. "So let me get this straight. You have no field experience whatsoever; you're not even a real ensign; you're in training to be a -counselor-; and your Academy faculty advisor sent you -here-." "... well... yes." Ivanova threw her hands up. "Bozhemoi. What are they -thinking- in San Francisco these days?" Hesitantly, her eager expression fading, Ezri asked, "Do you not -need- an assistant counselor here, Commander?" "No. No, Mock Ensign, we do not," Ivanova replied. "We are, as it happens, all -quite incurably mad- here, and as such we have no need of a counselor of any kind. Besides, what would we need a counselor for?" she went on expansively. "We have Mr. Garibaldi. Whenever any of us is feeling down, we can always count on Mr. Garibaldi to do something to cheer us up. Like filling our underwear drawer with oatmeal, or billeting visiting Klingons in our quarters." "I thought you liked General Martok," said Ivanova's deputy operations officer. "I do, actually, but that's not the point. He had no business crashing on my sofa when we have all those empty rooms in Red Sector," Ivanova grumbled. Then, returning her attention to Ezri, she went on, "Anyway, kid, I'm up to my commbadge in traffic and His Excellency the Captain is sleeping off Taco Night, so I really don't have time to handle you right now. Odo! Take Little Miss Bright Eyes here down to Medlab and see if Dr. Charming has any legal use for her." A tall, thin man with slicked-back blond hair and a brown uniform turned from a conversation he'd been having with the station's Bajoran liaison officer, gave Ivanova a momentary puzzled look, then nodded, stepped to the young woman's side, and guided her from the command deck. In the corridor, Ensign Tigan looked as though the only thing preventing her from bursting into tears was the fact that she was with a stranger in a public place. "I... don't think Commander Ivanova likes me very much," she observed after a minute's walking, trying to make her voice light and mostly failing. Odo's voice was gruff but not unkind. "Don't take it personally, Ensign," he said. "Commander Ivanova doesn't like anyone very much." She glanced at him sharply, as if unsure she'd heard him say it; he smiled very slightly and added, "Besides which, she and Captain Bacon were Captain Krontep's guests for dinner last night, and I don't believe blood wine is entirely compatible with the Russian constitution." Ezri blinked, startled. "You mean she's -drunk-? On -duty-?" Odo shook his head quickly. "Oh, no, never that. It's just that she was drunk OFF-duty, and now she wishes she were dead. When Commander Ivanova wishes she were dead, her tolerance for the continued existence of -other- lifeforms is marginal at best." "Well," Ezri said after a moment's reflection, "I don't think she was very professional." "You caught her at a bad time," said Odo with a faint shrug. She thought about that for a second, but didn't offer any comment. Instead she asked, "Who's Dr. Charming?" Odo chuckled darkly. "Commander Ivanova's pet name for Julian Bashir, MD, the station's chief medical officer. She finds it hard to forgive him his excessive savoir-faire." "This is a very strange place," Ezri observed. "You don't know the half of it," Odo remarked. "She was right about one thing, though: The station doesn't need another counselor." Ezri's shoulders slumped. "So now what? I go back to the Academy? That'll look good on my record. Rejected by command staff at my internship posting. Time spent in posting: 11 minutes." "Not necessarily," Odo said. "The station doesn't need a counselor, but it happens I know a place in the neighborhood that does. You'd need to be put on detached service by Dr. Bashir, but I'm sure he would agree to that, especially if you would trouble yourself to bat your eyes at him," he added dryly. "Well... " Ezri mustered a slightly wan smile. "I guess I could give it a shot, if it means finding something worthwhile to do." "That's the spirit. And don't worry about Commander Ivanova. She'll transmit a formal apology for her treatment of you by the end of the week." Odo smiled tightly. "I'll see to that." The meeting with Dr. Bashir went about as easily as Odo had predicted, and now Ezri Tigan found herself aboard a runabout with her unexpected benefactor, bound for one of Bajor's moons. They hadn't spoken much since leaving Medlab. Odo seemed preoccupied with something, and Ezri was trying to absorb how strange her day had become. After chasing that around in her head for a while, she gave it up as a useless pursuit and turned her attention to her pilot, who sat with his eyes intent on the orbital navigation system. Ezri had initially taken him for a human, but now that she looked more closely, she wasn't so sure. Odo wore the uniform of a Republic of Bajor Department of Public Safety officer, but he didn't look Bajoran either. His ears were odd, just featureless ovals on the sides of his head, and he had deep-set eyes made even deeper by the flat, heavy bridge of his nose. If he was a Bajoran, he'd received some clumsy burn treatments or something at some point, clumsy enough to eradicate his nose ridges and the structure of his ears. He seemed to feel her staring at him and turned to look back at her. Unconsciously, she shrank away slightly, but he only smiled his tight little smile again. "Don't bother trying to place my species," he said. Turning his attention back to the viewer so she had his profile again, he added, "I'm trying to look Bajoran, but I've never been able to get it quite right." Before her eyes, his face changed a little - the heavy bridge of the nose and brows receding slightly, the ears settling back a little - and a band of dark spots appeared on the side of his face. "I can do your species a little more effectively, but I still can't get the -ears- right," Odo went on conversationally. He held the Trill-like appearance for a moment, then reverted back to his original face, looked at her again, and chuckled dryly. "I've gotten accustomed to looking as much like a Bajoran as I can manage, since I've lived here all my life, but the fine details still elude me." "Are you a Durlan?" Ezri asked, but Odo shook his head. "I don't know what I am," he said, "but I know what I'm not, and that's any species on record." He shrugged. "I'm a citizen of the universe. It's enough for me." She took that in for a moment. He didn't sound entirely convinced, but she decided if it was good enough for him, she wasn't in a position to question it. Instead she asked, "Where are we going? You told Dr. Bashir something about 'the Institute'." Odo nodded. "I'm chief of campus security for the Deedlit Satori Mandeville Memorial Institute on Jeraddo. Surely you've heard of it... " "The prep school. Of course. A few of my Academy classmates graduated from there. And of course there's Capt - er, -Commodore- Tenjou. I -do- watch the news occasionally." She eyed him. "That's a strange place to be taking a Starfleet counselor." "You need field experience, the Institute needs an assistant counselor," Odo replied pragmatically. "Your immediate local superior's approved the arrangement. I don't see the problem." "It's not a problem," Ezri said. "At least not to me. But given the tension between Zeta Cygni and the rest of the Federation right now, I'm not sure my uniform's going to be very welcome at a place like Satori Mandeville. It's no secret which side Bajor's on, after all." Odo gave a short bark of laughter. "'The rest of the Federation'," he said. "You may watch the news from time to time, but it's obvious you're no political scientist." "OK, so, it was an oversimplification," Ezri said, a trifle defensively. "You see my point, though." "I do," Odo allowed. "But I don't think you have to worry. DSM's students are a pretty even-handed bunch. They tend to judge people on their actions rather than their allegiances. Your uniform may be a handicap, but it won't be a crippling one. Now, if you were a member of the Psi Corps... " He let it hang. Ezri shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She well remembered the day, during her application process to Starfleet Academy, when she'd had to face the inquisition of the Psi Corps liaison to the Admissions Board. It hadn't been a pleasant experience; in fact, it had left a bad taste in her mouth that lingered faintly to this day. The whole experience had seemed so contrary to the ideals Starfleet was supposed to represent that... She pushed it out of her mind and said simply, "Well, I'm not." Odo nodded. "And so," he said, "you stand a chance of being accepted on Jeraddo. Not immediately, and probably not easily, not by everyone... but all in all, you'll find it a reasonably welcoming environment." A moment later, almost under his breath, he went on, "They've accepted -me-, after all... " Ezri might have been young, naive, and in the middle of a disorienting day, but she was still a trained counselor, and the mixture of wistfulness and bitterness in Odo's voice was unmistakable. She hesitated for a moment, then patted his arm and gave him a reassuring smile. He glanced sidelong at her, gave another dry chuckle, and turned his attention back to the piloting controls. Odo parked the runabout behind the Campus Security building in the middle of the DSM campus. Ezri got her first look at the famous institution as they walked from there to the administration building. It was a handsome campus, more so than Starfleet Academy, and the Academy was not unattractive. If there was one thing wrong with it, it was the weather. Ezri had been expecting to stay aboard Babylon 6, so she hadn't brought any warm clothes, and it was an unusually crisp, almost Octoberish day out; her uniform just wasn't cutting it against the biting chill of the wind today. She was shivering a little when they got to the admin building, something Odo only noticed when he got the door for her. Tsking at himself, he guided her into the blessedly warm entrance hall and up a flight of stairs to an old-fashioned half-glass office door with painted lettering on the window: COUNSELOR OF STUDENTS A. HAINELEY Odo knocked; a mellow voice with an English accent bade him enter. The office beyond the door was even warmer; it was an old-fashioned study with a fireplace, and in that fireplace was a lovely crackling wood fire. There was a big desk over by the windows, but no one seated at it. The room's lone occupant, an elderly white-haired human gentleman, was sitting in a leather armchair by the fire with a book in hand. "Ah, Odo," said he - A. Haineley, apparently. He put his book aside, got to his feet, and extended a hand. "Julian told me you would be by bearing gifts." Odo smiled slightly and indicated his companion. "Arthur Haineley, meet Ezri Tigan." Haineley bowed and said he was pleased to meet her. Then he gave her a curious look, reached into the top pocket of his tweed jacket, produced a pair of spectacles, put them on, and looked her over again. "My, my, you're even younger than I would have expected," he mused. Ezri felt her cheeks get a little hot. "I look younger than I am," she said. "I'm twenty." "Ah," said Haineley, his eyes twinkling, "but how many times have you -been- twenty?" "Oh, no, sir," she said hurriedly. "I'm not Joined." Then she tried out a grin and added, "What you see is what you get." Haineley nodded. If he was disappointed - a lot of humans were when they learned she was just a regular old ordinary humanoid - he didn't show it. His kindly smile remained unchanged. "Ah," he said. "Sit down, sit down, both of you. You must be about frozen, my dear, crossing campus with nothing but that uniform to keep out the wind. It's been unseasonably brisk for the last couple of days. Take my chair by the fire." Ezri tried to protest, but Haineley would have none of it; he went and sat at one end of the couch by the wall, with Odo at the other end. "Well," said the counselor after they were all situated. "They tell me you need a job." "In a manner of speaking," Ezri said. "My orders are to gain real-world experience in my field until next May, then return to Earth for final exams before summer break. If all goes well, I'll spend my senior year in a full field posting, and then my commission will be confirmed the following June and I'll get my first standard duty assignment." She shifted uncomfortably. "I expected that I'd be working in a Starfleet installation, but there's nothing in my orders that says I have to." Haineley nodded. "And they sent you to Babylon 6. Not the wisest choice of postings for a Starfleet cadet nowadays, but tact never was young Carcatera's strong suit." Ezri was puzzled by that remark, then surprised to realize that he was talking about Admiral Carcatera, the Commandant of Starfleet Academy. It was the first time anyone had ever called the grizzled admiral "young" in her presence. "I'm... sure he had his reasons," she said hesitantly. "No doubt," Haineley said, his expression making it clear what he thought of Carcatera's reasons. Then he brightened and said, "Well, you've come along just in time for me, at any rate. I need an assistant to handle a job here on campus, and it'll take a particular sort of person to do it right. I need someone young, energetic, accustomed to dealing with bright and independent-minded young people. "As someone who's in her junior year at Starfleet Academy, you strike me as all of those things. The question is, would you rather just go back to Earth and try again? I'm sure Command will recognize that it wasn't your fault that the senior staff on B6 had nothing for you to do." "What -is- the job?" Ezri asked. "One of our residence halls is in need of a counselor, what we call a House Guide," Haineley began, and he could see Ezri's face fall, though she tried hard to hide it. He smiled, his eyes twinkling again, and said, "Ah, but this is a very... special... residence hall." Well, Ezri thought, he was certainly right about -that- part. She'd heard, of course, of the Interscholastic Duelists' Federation. There had been talk of starting a chapter at Starfleet Academy, but relations between the Earth Alliance and the Republic of Zeta Cygni made such a thing problematic at best. She had heard that there were small chapters aboard a couple of Starfleet ships, vessels whose captains were experienced and influential enough to absorb the political inexpedience of such a move, but she didn't know whether that was true. She did know that DSM was its seat, the place where it was founded, and she'd heard that the "mother chapter", the DSM Institute Duelists' Society, had a very impressive clubhouse they called "the Castle" - but she had never seen a picture of the place. It really -was- a castle - a big, solid building of beautiful cream and orange and dull-red stone, like a sunset rendered as a fortress, with a golden dome in the center and a flat-roofed tower a level taller than the main building at each corner. From its position at the top of the highest hill on campus, it had a commanding view of the school in one direction and the lake in the other, with the low skyline of Port Jeradar nestled against the mountains in the distance. Ezri and Odo went through the entrance hall, Odo in the lead, and through a door off to one side. Beyond it they found a well-appointed, comfortable-looking library with a fireplace - currently in service - and several overstuffed leather chairs and couches. A group of young people were gathered before the fire, listening with grins and eager eyes to a lanky brown-haired youth, who was in the middle of telling a story. "... so Jason says, 'Boba Fett? Boba Fett? Where?!' and spins around - remember, he still can't see - and accidentally jams his force pike into Boba's backpack!" he said, making appropriately illustrative gestures. "Oh, no," said a dusky-skinned young woman with the ridged forehead of a Klingon, shaking her head with a smile. "I see where this is headed... " "The impact sets off the thrusters," the brown-haired fellow continued, barely able to hold in his glee and continue the story, "and Boba goes SHOOTING across the pit, TOTALLY out of control, AAAAAAAAAH _WHAM!_ into the side of Jabba's sail barge, BOUNCES off, and then - " " - oh NO - " interjected a younger girl, a pretty blonde who looked like a first or second-year student, covering her face with her hands. " - _SHWOOP!_ RIGHT INTO THE SARLACC!" the storyteller finished, then dissolved into chortling laughter, as did most of his audience. "Ooh," the Klingon girl said with a wry grin. "THAT must've been fun." The burly young man with the black buzzcut who sat next to the storyteller snorted, arms folded. "Oh yeah," he said dourly in a voice with a marked accent - Concord Dawn, Ezri thought, or maybe New Brisbane. "I had a GREAT time. In the Sarlacc." "Oh, don't be such a baby," the brown-haired youth said, slapping his compatriot - the eponymous Boba Fett, apparently - on the shoulder. "You were only in there for an hour." Fett was unmoved. "Tom, you remember what it smelled like on the OUTSIDE?" he asked. The blonde girl recovered from laughing enough to wave a hand and asked, "Wait, wait, was that before or after the Trandoshan stole the Slave 1?" The Klingon girl goggled at Fett. "You LOST your DAD'S SHIP?!" "We got it back!" Fett protested. "And I could tell you some things about Tom, too. Like the fact that we were only away from the ship that day because -he- thought those two twi'lek dancers wanted to -party- with us." "They -did-!" Tom said. Fett threw up his hands. "They thought we were musicians, Tom! Not quite the same thing." "Did they, or did they not, think we were hot?" Tom asked. Fett shook his head. "No. They thought -it- was hot. As in the weather. And since we were in Mos Espa, that made perfect sense. You and your stupid 'How To Read Lekku' chip." "OK, so, there are still a few glitches in it," Tom said with exaggerated dignity. "I still think it'll go platinum once it's ready for the mass market. And come on. Pub crawling Mos Eisley with the Solos was fun." Fett relented with a grin. "Yeah, OK, that I'll grant you." "Jane totally dug you," Tom added with wagged eyebrows. "Shut up," Fett said, but he was still smiling. "She's old enough to be my mother. If I had one." "So? She's half-Salusian." "You're not helping my credibility with the underclassmen here, Tom," Fett noted, gesturing to the blonde, who was helplessly giggling at their byplay. Odo cleared his throat diplomatically, having waited quite long enough for them to notice him. Fett turned his head. "Oh, hey, Odo," he said, standing. "What's up?" "Who's your friend?" the Klingon girl added, looking mildly surprised at the sight of someone in a Starfleet uniform. "Allow me to introduce Ensign Ezri Tigan," Odo said, making the appropriate gestures. "Here we have some of the officers of the Institute Duelists' Society. Tom Palmer; Boba Fett; B'Elanna - it's O'Brien now, isn't it?" The girl with the Klingon ridges smiled and nodded. "And Lindsey Willows," Odo finished, indicating the blonde. "The rest of them will have to shift for themselves," he went on. "I can never keep the whole crew straight." "Nice to meet you, Ensign," B'Elanna said. "What brings you to Jeraddo?" "Ensign Tigan is a counselor-in-training assigned to the med-sci department on Babylon 6. Since they have something of an embarrassment of medical personnel up there, Dr. Bashir has been kind enough to loan her to Mr. Haineley. She's your new House Guide." Tom Palmer raised his eyebrows. "No kidding? Well, hey. Welcome to the Castle. We never actually had a -counselor- before. Hey, Boba, we've still got that spare office down the hall from yours, don't we?" Fett nodded. "I think so," he said, "provided Lindsey hasn't turned it into a crime lab," he added with an arch glance at the youngest officer. "I haven't touched it!" Lindsey said. "I don't even have a key." "I don't recall that keeping you out of the records office," Fett replied. "I was just looking around!" Lindsey protested. "Well, I'll leave her to you, then," Odo said. "I'm sure I must have... -something-... to do elsewhere." He turned to Ezri. "Good luck, Ensign." Ezri smiled. "Thanks, Odo," she said. "For everything." Odo harrumphed. "I just can't stand to see a resource wasted," he said, but there was a twinkle in his eye as he nodded to her and left the room. "C'mon," said Palmer, gesturing. "I'll give you the tour." FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2409 THE CASTLE, JERADDO The Vulcan entered the Castle's main dueling room and stood, hands folded behind his back. He was watching a sight that must have surprised him at least a little, though being a proper follower of the Way of Surak he would never have shown it. He knew, of course, that Ezri Tigan was a fencer. It was in her file: She'd been on the Starfleet Academy fencing team both years she'd spent in the regular curriculum, before being posted to the advanced field training program. Still, it never would have occurred to him that he might find her at a high-powered private high school in the Bajor system, having a swordfight with one of the students. However, expectations must always give way to reality, and the reality was that that was just what Spaldek was seeing. Ezri, dressed in black warmup pants and a Starfleet Academy Athletics tank top, had a slightly curved dueling saber in her hand - and, curiously enough, a rose pinned to her top, about where the commbadge would be on her Starfleet uniform. The student she was engaged with was a teenage Cardassian, probably a first- or second-year student. He, too, had a rose pinned to the front of his T-shirt, and he wielded a pair of tajiran. Spaldek had to search his memory momentarily for the word. The tajir was a Cardassian dueling weapon, forearm-length with an offset perpendicular handle - shaped rather like a riot baton, but with a double-ended blade where the baton part belonged. The young Cardassian had his tajiran crossed in front of his face when Spaldek entered the room, catching Ezri's saber in between them. Grimacing with effort, he twisted his body, let the saber slide down until it caught against one tajir's handle, then freed his other weapon, reversed it, and drove the shorter end of the blade toward Ezri's chest. She responded by shoving his blocking weapon aside, then ducking back as though doing the Limbo, which allowed the strike to pass cleanly over her. She lost her balance in the process, but rather than fall straight back, she twisted into a sideways roll and came up on her feet. The Cardassian chuckled - it had been a nice move - and moved to attack her off-hand flank while she was recovering. She responded immediately, altering her countermove to block. Spaldek knew this was a mistake; the Cardassian's attack was a feint. A moment later he pivoted, swept his right-hand blade out, and came within inches of cutting the young Trill's throat. The tip of his blade passed barely over the modest slope of her upper chest, caught the rose pinned there, and swept it away. "Not bad, Counselor," he remarked, his voice surprisingly deep for so young a man's. "You're improving." Ezri grinned. "So are you," she said. She went to the far wall, hung her saber up amid a large display of other melee weapons - Spaldek even saw an ahn-woon up there, of all things - and then picked up a towel from the table by the wall to mop sweat from her face. "Phew!" she said, shaking her head and draping the towel around her neck. "You'd better get going, Dukat. Don't you have class this afternoon?" Her erstwhile opponent grunted an amused laugh as he put his blades away in a hardshell case not unlike that of a musical instrument. "Introduction to Galactic Political Science," he said, then added with grave amusement, "Spending the first twelve years of my life on Cardassia Prime was introduction enough to -that- subject, I assure you." "All the same, you can't be missing classes because you were sparring with me," Ezri said with a grin. "Get a move on!" Dukat tucked his weapon case under his arm and bowed to her in a way that struck Spaldek as slightly, but not maliciously, mocking. "Yes, ma'am," he said. "You'll be in your office later?" "From three to five, barring some kind of emergency," she said. Then, as they turned to leave the room, she noticed the uniformed Vulcan standing by the doors for the first time. "Oh!" Ezri said, surprised. "Commander Spaldek! What are you doing here?" Spaldek arched an eyebrow slightly. "I could ask you the same question, Ensign," he said dryly. Ezri gave him a puzzled look. "In fact, you may consider it asked," the Vulcan went on. "I expected to find you on duty aboard Babylon 6, not at play on one of Bajor's moons." Ezri didn't bristle at this, for the simple reason that Spaldek didn't mean anything by it. A lot of Vulcans masked overbearing, superior attitudes behind statements of fact and expectation like that one, but she knew Spaldek. He'd been her faculty advisor for her entire time at the Academy, and she'd come to realize early on that when he said things like that, he really was just stating the fact, not trying to make something out of it. "I -am- on duty," Ezri told him. "This is my duty station." Spaldek looked around the dojo with an expression of faint interest. "Not just the dueling room, the Castle as a whole. I'm the House Guide for the Institute Duelists' Society," she explained. Spaldek didn't seem to know what to say about that for a moment; then he blinked slowly and said, "Fascinating." He didn't seem inclined to say anything else for the moment, so Ezri gestured to her young companion and said, "This is one of my students." The young Cardassian bent in a precise bow and said, "S.G. Dukat, Esquire, at your service, Commander Spaldek." Spaldek raised an eyebrow again, then said, "I must speak with Ensign Tigan privately." Unfazed by the Vulcan's bordering-on-rude bluntness, Dukat grinned and said, "And I must get to class. Our goals overlap quite nicely, n'est-ce pas?" Bowing again, he raised his hand in the split-fingered Vulcan sign and added, "Live long and prosper, Commander." Spaldek returned the salute and replied impassively, "Peace and long life, Mr. Dukat." Then he waited for the young man to leave before turning to Ezri and saying, "If you please, Ensign?" "My office is this way, sir," she said, leading him from the room. For all his easy cheer in the dueling room, Dukat was thinking about the Vulcan as he went up to his room on the third floor, stashed his weapons, changed into his uniform, and then bundled his heavy overcoat around him and headed down the hill toward campus and Professor Nilsson's class. He knew that Ezri's assignment to the Castle was unconventional, and the appearance of her faculty advisor on campus, unannounced, on a Friday afternoon struck him as ominous. He wondered whether Spaldek had come to cause trouble for Ezri, and if so, whether he could remove that trouble without causing more in the process. He wasn't seriously considering the assassination of his House Guide's advisor, of course; but he was Cardassian, so the unexpected arrival of a severe-looking authority figure automatically triggered the response in his brain. It was more a thought exercise than anything else. He was so wrapped up in that exercise, he didn't notice at first that he'd acquired a shadow. No - make that shadows, he thought, as he realized that not one but several other people had fallen into step around him. That wasn't good, but it was familiar. The same sort of thing had happened to him a few times before, but never since he came to Jeraddo. What made him most certain of what was about to happen was the fact that none of these people seemed to be students. They weren't uniformed, but none was old enough to be attending the Institute's university division, where the uniforms weren't required. His's suspicion was confirmed when another appeared in front of him. This was a Bajoran teenager, looked a couple of years older than Dukat, and he stood with his arms folded and a scowl on his face, blocking Dukat's path. Hmph. Surly townies. What was Jeraddo coming to? "You've got a lot of nerve showing your ugly face around here after what you people did to Bajor," said the one who'd blocked him. Dukat sighed. He knew what was coming, and he was fairly sure he wasn't going to be able to talk his way out of it, but he might at least postpone it for as many seconds as possible. "Think for a second," he said reasonably. "If I were one of 'you people', would I -be- here, and not on Cardassia Prime? Bajor is my homeworld too; I was born in Dahkur." "I don't care if you were born in B'Hala," the spokesman snarled. "You're a -spoonhead-." Dukat felt at the spoon-shaped ridge in the middle of his forehead. "I suppose I am," he said with some resignation. "And if I had a wrinkled nose instead? Or spots? Or Klingon ridges? Would everything be all right then? Because I have to tell you, they wouldn't really make much difference to who I am. I'm -not- an enemy to your people." "All Cardassians are enemies of the Bajoran people," the leader said. "My father died fighting to drive you scum -out- of our star system, and now you think you can just come -back-?" "I'm a Bajoran citizen!" Dukat protested, but one of them hit him before he could get it all out, and the next thing he knew, he was on the ground and it was raining blows. A fine situation for a Duelist to be in, he told himself with faint peevishness as he did his best to protect his vitals. He wasn't sure how long it went on - consciousness became an iffy thing when one was undergoing a stomping like this one - but after a while he became faintly aware that something had changed. He was still hearing the sounds of a furious beating... but he didn't seem to be receiving one any more. Slowly, painfully, he uncoiled from his defensive posture and opened one eye. What he saw surprised him on several levels. He wouldn't necessarily have expected to see someone doing battle with his assailants at all - even this close to the Castle, they had been clever about their choice of spots for the attack, and the building couldn't actually be seen from here thanks to a windbreaking wall. Even if he had, though, he'd have expected his defender to be another Duelist, but she wasn't. He didn't know who she was. Most surprising of all, though - she was Bajoran. She had something in each hand, but Dukat's vision was blurring in and out and he couldn't tell what they were. Sticks, perhaps? They made a harsh whipping sound as they cut through the air, and a painful-sounding whack whenever they met flesh and bone. She was skillful with them, too, whoever she was - able to hold off the lot of them. One of them drew a knife. She didn't see him, busy as she was beating down the leader. Dukat tried to warn her, but nothing much was working. "WHAT is going on here?!" a familiar raspy voice demanded. The girl didn't let it distract her; she finished neutralizing the leader before she turned to see who had asked. The interloper saved her skin, though. The knife-wielding tough whirled at the sound, instinctively striking out at the speaker. His blade sliced into the chest of Constable Odo - followed by his hand, since Odo allowed his malleable body to go liquid at the point of impact, resulting in much less resistance than the knife- wielder had been expecting. Then, once the teenage assailant's hand had plunged into his chest up to the wrist, Odo made his body solid again, trapping the hand within him. The young man with the knife had had no idea the chief of DSM's campus security force could do any such thing as this; like most people, he'd assumed that Odo was just a Bajoran with some kind of medical deformity. He screamed in terror and tried to pull his hand free, but Odo didn't let him go until he had a firm grip on the youth's collar. "I'm only going to ask once more," Odo said patiently. "What is going on here?" Ezri did her best to explain to Spaldek just what the deal was with her assignment to DSM, but she had to admit to herself as she spelled it all out that the truth did seem rather improbable in this case. Spaldek certainly seemed to think so. He sat across from her in her smallish but pleasant office on the second floor of the Castle, at the end of the hall containing all the dueling club's administrative offices, and gave her the old Vulcan eyebrow trick again as he digested what she'd told him. "That is most illogical," he observed at length. "It is," Ezri agreed, a trifle sheepishly. "But these are illogical people we're talking about. Commander Ivanova had no use for me at all, and Dr. Bashir... " She shrugged. "It seemed like a good idea at the time." Spaldek nodded slowly. "Are you gaining field experience in your area of expertise?" he asked. "Oh, yes!" Ezri assured him. "Working with these kids - well, it's not exactly like counseling the crew of a starship, but I'm learning a lot. They're a very diverse bunch, learning to live and work together in an unusual common setting... seems like there's always something that needs to be smoothed over. Not that they behave badly, or anything like that!" she hastened to add. She knew that at this point she was just rambling, a trait she was reasonably sure Spaldek found to be her least endearing, but she wasn't sure how to stop herself. The answer provided itself when her desk phone uttered the tone that meant she was getting a call from an on-campus personal comm unit - in this case, a commbadge worn by a member of the campus police. "Odo to Tigan," came the constable's voice. "Go ahead, Odo," Ezri said, glad of the interruption. "Could you come down to the Infirmary, please?" Odo inquired politely. "Young Mr. Dukat is asking for you." "Dukat?" Ezri blinked. "What's he doing in the Infirmary?" "It appears," Odo replied dryly, "that he's been in a fight. I'm still trying to get the details sorted out; I may have more to tell you when you arrive. Odo out." Ezri arrived at the Infirmary three minutes later, with Spaldek following unobtrusively. She found Dukat laid out in one of the emergency wing's biobeds, looking bruised and uncomfortable. Odo was standing off to one side, conferring with a white-coated medtech. A young woman Ezri didn't recognize was sitting in a chair next to Dukat's biobed. She looked to be young - probably a first-year student - and she was Bajoran, with short blonde hair swept straight back. Her uniform was a bit disarranged, as if she'd been in a fight herself, though she seemed to be uninjured. Dukat brightened at the sight of her. "Hello, Counselor," he said. "Pardon me if I don't get up. Once I recover, it seems I need to work on my multiple-opponent drills... " "What happened?" Ezri asked. "He was jumped, of course," the Bajoran girl said grumpily. "Not by students," Odo cut in. "The ones we've been able to pry IDs out of so far are from Port Jeradar. Fortunately, Miss Nita here was able to drive them off before they did more than superficial damage to young Dukat." Nita cracked a sardonic little grin. "Right place, right time," she said. "Right armament, too," Odo observed. "If you'd had a blade, I'd have to run you in, since you're not a Duelist. As it is, you'll have to leave." "All right," she said, standing. "But I'll be back tomorrow." "Do whatever you like," Odo replied with his long-suffering tone. "-After- I've completed my investigation." "Hey, wait," Dukat said as Nita turned toward the door. "Hm?" "I have two questions," he said. "Yeah?" "First - why did you help me?" "You said it yourself," she replied, shrugging. "You're not an enemy to my people." "Most of you don't exactly consider me a friend, either," Dukat said wryly. "Well, maybe we'll have to work on that," Nita replied with a grin. "Second question?" "What's your given name?" Her grin widened slightly. "Daran," she said. "See you around, S.G. Dukat." He watched her go, looking as impressed as his injured face would let him, then shook his head and turned to Ezri. "Thanks for coming," he said. "I have a favor to ask of you." "Name it," Ezri said. Dukat glanced warily at Spaldek. "I gather some confidence is about to be offered," the Vulcan said, his tone utterly dry. "You may rest assured of my discretion. I am an absolutely disinterested party in this matter, except where evaluation of Ensign Tigan's performance is concerned." Dukat considered that, then turned back to Ezri and looked slightly pained - more so than was normal at the moment. "Well... you see, my father will probably be here shortly, and... I was wondering if you might... smooth things over with him." Ezri blinked. (For all that he professed disinterest, Spaldek was unable to keep one of his own eyebrows from arching as well.) "... Your -father-?" Ezri finally managed to say. "He's not -dead-?" Dukat shook his head. "No, no - not yet, anyway. This little incident is sure to get his blood pressure up, though, and... well, he may need a bit of... handling." Odo folded his arms. "I'll 'handle' him," he said darkly. "That's what I'm afraid of," Dukat said. "Just talk to him, would you, please?" he asked Ezri. "Let him know that I'm going to be all right, and that Odo doesn't think the ones who attacked me were students. He's probably going to want to pull me out of school, and I'm afraid I can't permit that right now." The calm authority with which he said the last part brought a little smile to Ezri's face - his blithe self-assurance was one of Dukat's most endearing features, and one of his most infuriating, often at the same time. Of all her charges, she found Dukat was the one with which she'd achieved the quickest rapport. The young Cardassian had a natural charm, the kind of charisma that had made his infamous father such a powerful and persuasive leader. He himself would have made an excellent counselor, and it wasn't long before she was telling him -her- problems. [ "... and that's when I recognized that my primary motivation in joining Starfleet was to escape from my tyrannical, domineering mother." "Well, I think we've made excellent progress today, Miss Tigan. It's time for me to get to class. Same time next week?" "Wha - ? Did you? Was I? How do you DO that?" "It's a natural gift." ] Now she smiled and agreed to his request. "I'll see what I can do," she said. "You rest, OK?" Dukat nodded, settling back on the biobed. "I intend to do very little else," he said. "Oh, one other thing, Counselor... " "Mm?" "Don't be taken aback by my father's appearance. He won't look quite the way you recall him from the holos... " No, indeed, he did not. The man who the campus police directed to Ezri's Castle office didn't look much like the infamous Gul Skrain Dukat, the last military governor of Cardassian-occupied Bajor. In fact, he didn't look Cardassian at all, but Bajoran, and he wore the uniform of a captain in the Bajoran Militia. Still, as she took a closer look at him, she could see the resemblance. His skin might be pink instead of grey, his hair brown instead of jet black, and the myriad of details that set the Cardassians apart from more fully humanoid species missing, but the general lines of his face were reminiscent of that famous hawk-nosed visage, and the eyes... the eyes were the same, black but bright with intelligence. This was the face of a clever man, and a dangerous one... "My son tells me you're going to convince me to leave him here," Dukat - or, as his ID made known his name, Anjohl Tennan - said. Folding his arms, he added huffily, "I sincerely doubt that, but I might as well give you the chance." Acutely conscious of Commander Spaldek's presence in the back of the room - though Anjohl didn't seem to care that he was there - Ezri folded her hands on top of her desk and said in her mildest voice, "Please sit down, Captain Anjohl." Anjohl sat, but kept scowling. "My purpose isn't to convince you to leave S.G. in school," she said. "I'm not the Dean of Students. I'm a counselor. My job is to help the students who live in this building to the best of my ability. S.G. asked me to see you and assure you that he's going to be all right." "I could get that from the medical staff. Or Odo," Anjohl said. Then, with a thin-lipped smile, he added, "I know my son. He didn't ask you to do any such thing. He asked you to -handle- me." Ezri returned the smile, though hers was a little warmer. "Maybe," she allowed. "But it amounts to the same thing. The people who attacked him weren't students here." "But they were Bajoran." "Legally, so is your son. So, apparently, are -you-," Ezri pointed out. "I won't pretend to understand the circumstances, but there it is. You should also know that the person who jumped into the melee to -protect- him, at considerable risk to herself, is -also- Bajoran, and she -is- a student here." "How reassuring," said Anjohl dryly. "Look, Captain," said Ezri, spreading her hands. "You have me at a disadvantage. You'd already made up your mind when you came here, and S.G. has -also- made up his mind. The two of you are on a collision course, and from what little I know of you, I'll bet you're just as pigheaded as he is. Now, if you want to turn this into some kind of contest, then that's your prerogative, but I have to tell you, if you do, you've got quite a fight on your hands." Anjohl stared at her, his jaw clamped, for several seconds; then he leaned back in his chair and laughed. "If nothing else," he said when he was finished, "the boy knows how to pick a persuasive advocate. You win, Counselor Tigan. He can stay here if he likes." He got to his feet and extended a hand. "Well played." Ezri got up and shook it with an impish grin. "Thank you, Captain. And before you ask," she added, showing him a palm, "anything S.G. might have told me about his father falls strictly under the counselor's privilege." Anjohl smiled again, nodded in acknowledgement, and left the office. Ezri watched him go, shut the door behind him, then went to her desk and slumped into her chair with a sigh of relief. "You could have been more diplomatic," Spaldek observed, making her nearly jump out of her skin - she had completely forgotten he was there. "I could have," she agreed once she got her heart rate down and turned her chair to face him, "but it wouldn't have gotten the job done. Dukat is a very direct young man, and he responds best to plain talk. It was my assessment that his father shared those traits." "You had no file data on Captain Anjohl," Spaldek pointed out. "Your assessment was little more than a guess." Ezri smiled and gave a little shrug, conceding the point. "Sometimes a hunch is all you have to go on with an unfamiliar patient," she said. "Emergencies happen. There isn't always time for research." Spaldek nodded gravely. "Just so," he said. Then, rising, he straightened his trouser seams fastidiously and said, "Very well, Ensign. Your assignment here is most unorthdox, and I would have thanked Dr. Bashir to log the precise details at the time, but I see no reason why you should not remain. My report to the Review Board will so state." Ezri blinked as she got to her feet. "The -Review Board-?" "Admiral Carcatera was slightly distressed to learn that you were not aboard Babylon 6," Spaldek said. "He feared you might have gone AWOL from your duty station. Dr. Bashir's notes on your assignment were... somewhat less than enlightening. However, all is now well." Raising a hand in the Vulcan salute, he added, "Live long and prosper, Ensign. I will see you back at the Academy for the miderm examinations next month." Still somewhat shocked that Spaldek's visit had been the prelude to possible disciplinary action, Ezri took a moment to catch up before raising her own hand, making her best try at the salute, and replying, "Uh... peace and long life, Commander." Spaldek left her office, closing the door behind her, and she slumped into her chair again with another sigh of relief. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2409 GREEN SECTOR, BABYLON 6 Zargh Thalekh adjusted the baldric of his uniform and turned to survey his quarters one last time. For the first time in several years, the uniform he wore was not the ornate ceremonial armor of a diplomat, but the battle-scarred, practical garb of a warrior. He had served since the Babylon station's opening as its ambassador from the Klingon Empire, and though the position was not entirely to his liking, he had fulfilled his duties with honor... but no more. With the Klingon Defense Forces cut in half and the Homeworld seized by the treachery of the foul usurper Klayvor vestai-Klavaar, the -true- government of the Empire, in exile on Klinzhai Prime, needed all the able-bodied soldiers it could get. A man like Zargh, a genuine war hero with more honors to his name than many active line officers, was much more valuable to the Empire now as a soldier. Zargh Thalekh was going back to war. The door to his quarters chimed. "Come in," Zargh called, expecting to see his adjutant - but instead, he found himself facing B'Elanna O'Brien. "What do you want?" he asked - not belligerently, just by way of greeting. He was mildly surprised when she replied in Klingonese, Zargh frowned. she replied. Her dusky face darkened as she went on, Zargh said. B'Elanna said with a cold little smile. Zargh wondered. she said without hesitation, surprising him again with her forthrightness. She shook her head. Zargh gazed at her for a few moments, his eyes thoughtful. Then he shook his head and said, B'Elanna said. Zargh bared his teeth in an expression half grin and half snarl. he said. B'Elanna's hand went to her belt and returned with a spade-pointed dagger - the ubiquitous Klingon daqtagh. she said. Zargh weighed this for a moment, then drew his own dagger and thumbed open its side blades. B'Elanna advanced into the room; the door hissed shut behind her. For a few long seconds, she and Zargh - a man more than a foot taller and probably twice as massive - regarded at each other past the points of their leveled blades. Then Zargh grinned, relaxed, and put his blade away. he observed. B'Elanna sheathed her daqtagh. she said. Zargh's grin quirked a little. he said. B'Elanna smiled darkly. she said, and Zargh laughed. he said. B'Elanna replied, saluted with forearm across chest, and then left the room. Boba Fett was leaning against the corridor bulkhead one door down when she emerged. "Well?" he asked. "I'm in," she said. "Tomorrow at 3. He's thinking of making me a battle engineer on one of his birds of prey." "Well, I can't say I like it," Fett said, falling into step beside her as she made for the turbolift, "but I understand why you're doing it." They had a farewell party at the Castle for B'Elanna that night. Her adoptive father, Babylon 6 chief engineer Miles O'Brien, stopped by and gave her a full set of Klingon starship engineer's tools, much to her surprise - where he'd gotten them, he wouldn't say. Fett contributed a disruptor pistol from his extensive collection of captured weapons. The others offered their best wishes and the devout hope that she wouldn't be killed. They all knew it was going to be a bloody conflict - but they also knew that she was a veteran of several Valiant campaigns and a survivor by nature. The next day she reported for duty, and within a week, along with the rest of Zargh's fleet, she was gone, vanished into the stars, destination deeply classified. For the rest of the fall term, life in the Castle had an odd sort of arrhythmia to it, as if part of the machine that defined the house's daily cycles were missing. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2409 SENDAI, ISHIYAMA Kaitlyn Hutchins sat on a sofa in the study of Sakura Shinguuji's house outside Sendai - one of the only rooms in the building furnished in a Western style - jotting in a music notebook when an auburn-haired woman in a purple gown swept into the room. "Be rejoiced, loyal followers!" she announced haughtily, her hands making a dramatic flourish. "For now - only two and a half hours late thanks to the train service on the Ono-Sendai Line - your idol, Sumire Kanzaki, has arrived!" Kaitlyn raised the index finger of her right hand in greeting, her left not slackening its pace across the page. Curled up at her feet, her pet tiger Sergei raised his head, blinked once at Sumire, then put his head back down with a muted "grmph." No one else was present. "... Hmph," Sumire said. "No one appreciates a good entrance any more... " Kate finished the phrase she'd been trying to get down, then looked up and smiled. "Sorry, Sumire, did you say something? You're late, by the way." Sumire laughed, then crossed the room and dropped a bundle of envelopes in the younger woman's lap. "Kaitlyn, darling, I bring you your mail all the way from Ohji and this is the thanks I get? Really, now." She seated herself in a chair opposite, crossed her legs elegantly at the knees, and gave Kate a dark-eyed smile. "The one on top is from the NAU Conservatory." Kate blinked, put her notebook and pen down beside her, and picked up the mail. Indeed, the top enveloped did bear the crest and return address of the Conservatory of Music at New Avalon University. "Oh, hello, Sumire," said Miki Kaoru from the doorway. "I thought I heard you arrive. Trains running late?" "Snow on the line south of town," Sumire replied, then mock-huffed, "Honestly, I don't see how Sakura can stand to live in such savage isolation." "It must be the fresh air," Miki opined, moving Kate's notebook so he could sit down beside her. "What have we here?" While he was trading repartee with Sumire, Kate had opened the envelope and was now reading the letter inside it. As she did, her face took on a look of mild astonishment; then she handed it to Miki. "'Dear Miss Hutchins,'" he read aloud. "'On behalf of the Trustees of the Conservatory and the New Avalon University Board of Regents, I am pleased to offer you... '" He turned to Kate, eyes wide. "Wow." Sumire gave him a narrow-eyed look. "I hope you don't always leave off just before the good part like that," she said. Kaitlyn snorted, then said, "They want me to take over their student orchestra." "That's not all they want," Miki said. "They've offered her a teaching fellowship." Sumire looked impressed. "For credit?" she asked. Kaitlyn nodded. "It leads into a graduate fellowship in the fall, or so they say." She glanced at the letter again, then turned a little smile to Sumire and added, "It seems they've been impressed by my film-score work this fall." "How about that, Kaitlyn - your very own bidding war," Sumire said with a smug grin. "I told you working for me would open doors." "I already told Hotohori I'd be going -there- next month, though," Kate said. "I'll have to turn this one down, I guess. Maybe they'll hold the graduate part until I finish my BA on Tomodachi... " "Oh, nonsense," Sumire said, making a dismissive gesture. "You said yourself the other girl, what's her name - McClellan? - can handle Hotohori's orchestra. You'll be doing her a favor." Kate looked thoughtful. "Mm... true," she said. "Heather's good. She did nice things with the orchestra at DSM after I graduated, and she doesn't need to spend another semester in my shadow." She sighed. "And it'd be nice to go home to New Avalon. I haven't really lived there since I was 12. But... " She turned and looked at Miki. "What about you and Juri?" This, thought Kaitlyn wryly, -this- is why most humans don't have more than one life partner. Our little ape brains can't keep up with the -logistics- of it all. But Miki just kissed her and smiled. "Well, it hardly matters to -me-," he said, causing her to blink in momentary consternation until he went on, "since I'm one mostly-complete project report away from being finished with NIT forever and amen, hallelujah." Kate, who had rather lost track of most of her friends' academic standings during her stay on Ishiyama, gave him an amazed stare. "You're FINISHED?" "I -am- a supergenius," Miki said dryly, making both women snort. "Anyway, I've got grad schools offering me everything from a SoroSuub XP38 to a free neurojack rig to sign up. You'd think I was a basketball player or something. I might as well take NAIS up on their offer, even if I can't recall offhand which one it is." He frowned for a second, then brightened and said, "Oh, right - the condo. Well, that'll come in handy. "As for Juri," he went on, "you mean she hasn't told you about the mischief she's been up to while you've been away?" Kate shook her head blankly, causing Sumire to let out a musical laugh. "Oh, you're going to like it," she said. "Not only is it beautiful, elegant, and devious, it involves New Avalon." Kate grinned. "Oh, this I have to hear." "So... " she said half an hour later, lounging in the Shinguuji family's monstrous oak hot tub. "Mm?" Juri replied, coming out of a languid half-drowse. "When were you planning to tell me about your big adventure?" Kate asked with a mischievous lack of rancor. Juri opened one eye. "What?" "Miki and Sumire said you've been Up To Something this fall. Sumire said I'd like it." "Oh." Juri chuckled. "It would have come up eventually. To be honest, I thought you'd find it a bit boring." "I'll be the judge of that," Kate said mock-sternly. "All right, well... " Juri paused, considering where to start, then said, "Mary Broadbank and I took over Aztechnology in October." Kate blinked. "How'd you manage -that-?" "Well, Mary had a substantial piece of the common stock, left to her by her grandmother," Juri said, "and her grandfather gave her another. As for the rest of the majority... I already had that." "You did? Since when?" Juri's smile got slyer. "Do you remember when MegaZone and I first met?" Kate considered that, then gave her a shocked look. "I thought that was ScudCo stock." "So did Zoner," Juri said, "and some of the portfolio he transferred was, but not all. The rest was a mixture of several different securities... including about 30 percent of Aztechnology. Combined with Mary's holdings, that gave us just shy of three-quarters." She laughed darkly. "You should have seen the look on her father's face when he said he knew for a -fact- that even with her grandfather's share, she only had 45 percent, and I said that was certainly true, -but-." Kaitlyn laughed. "I can picture it. He must have been -purple-. Either that or chalk-white." "He went through both by the time we were finished with him." Juri slid around the bench built into the circular tub and cozied up to Kate, then went on, "I only wish Liza could have been there to see it." "Speaking of which, I suppose you don't need the ten percent she gave -me- now," Kate said. "Actually, that will be helpful," Juri said, leaning closer. "You see," she went on, her green eyes half-hooding, "that was only phase one. We're in the middle of phase two now." "And what," Kate wondered, her voice dropping as Juri came nearer, "is phase two?" She felt Juri's soft chuckle against her lips, and her eyes slid shut as the redhead murmured, "We're selling the company to GENOM... " Utena Tenjou had her hand on the knob to the tub room door, a towel slung over her shoulder, when she heard a mighty splash from within, followed by Kaitlyn's voice almost squeaking, "You're WHAT?" Her only response was a throaty, unmistakable laugh and another splash. ... OK, so much for -that- idea, Utena thought wryly as she turned and headed back down the hall. TUESDAY, JANUARY 5, 2410 NEKOMIKOKA, TOMODACHI The house at the end of Wildwood Road had an odd air about it, one Anne Cross couldn't quite pin down. Unlike the house's other occupants, she hadn't been to college, so she had no way of knowing that it felt much like a dorm on moving-out day at the year's end. Kaitlyn's move to New Avalon was an accepted necessity, and the opportunity it embodied was something none of her friends grudged her, but all the same, it was a rather sad thing to see her leave - and a little strange for her housemates, since the house she was moving out of technically belonged to her, not them. Moving day itself thus had something of the air of a party, and something of the air of a parting, as Kate's friends came together to help her gather up her things. She wasn't taking everything with her that day - not nearly everything, in fact. She and Anne, her apprentice in the family kenjutsu style, would be setting up house in a brownstone a friend of Kate's father's had found for them in the borough of Claremont, but until they'd had a few days to look around the neighborhood and get used to the setting, she didn't want to commit to moving a lot of heavy things. Anne was of mixed mind about the transition herself. She'd only lived on Tomodachi for a few months, and early on, circumstances had conspired to make her a virtual prisoner at 1140 Wilwood - but it had been the first stable home she'd had in years, and she'd come to love it. So she enjoyed the festive air of the moving party, but in the afternoon she found herself wanting to step back and be with herself, to try and get some perspective on the change. She slipped away to the dojo behind the house and worked out, practicing basic maneuvers and solo kata, doing her best to clear her mind. She was ambivalent about moving to New Avalon. Though it was a beautiful city, it was still a city, and one much bigger than Nekomikoka to boot. Moreover, Claremont was downtown, not out at the edge of the city. How would she react to living among skyscrapers and concrete again after experiencing the nature preserve that was the back yard here? Well, you'll just have to make the best of it, she told herself as she finished her exercises and put away the bokuto she'd used. She got out the broom and started sweeping up. It took her a moment to realize that she was being watched. When she did, she turned to see the tall, lean form of Kaitlyn's senior student, Kyouichi Saionji, leaning against one of the support columns, a small smile on his face. He was dressed for traveling, with a long coat and sturdy boots, and he carried his lightsaber on his belt and a small pack on his back. "Hello, Juni-chan," he said. "Sempai," she said, startled. "Why are you dressed for a trip?" In reply, Saionji passed Anne a narrow, flat box with a catch on the lid. "Juniper," he said seriously, "I have to go away for a little while. I need you to keep this for me. Don't open it, just keep it safe until I come back to claim it from you." "Um... sure," Anne answered. "What's in it?" "Nothing bad," he said, "but something I need someone -else- to keep safe for a little while." Anne put the box in the pocket of her jacket, feeling honored that he'd picked her and not Utena or Kaitlyn. "I'll keep it safe for you, sempai," she promised. "You keep -yourself- safe, OK? I want you to be there for my journeyrank test." Saionji smiled the small, pleased smile that he saved mostly for her when she'd done a good job at something. "I'll do my best, Juni-chan," he promised. Then he turned and left the dojo. By the time she thought to run to the door and call after him, asking where he was going, he was nowhere in sight. "Hm," she said, then took the box out of her pocket and regarded it again. I wonder what's in there, she wondered, then tried to put it out of her mind before curiosity ate her alive. She put the box away again and turned back to sweeping the dojo. She had nearly finished when a voice called from the doorway, "Anne? Oh, there you are." Juniper turned to see Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan, coppery-skinned and silver-haired, standing in the doorway, her golden eyes glinting in the low light. Night fell early in January at this latitude, and twilight was gathering fast in the dojo, since Anne hadn't turned on any of the lights. "Oh, hi, Azalynn," she said. "Yeah, I'm just... giving the dojo one last sweeping up." "You're missing the fun," Azalynn chided her playfully. "Kate and Utena are just about to get to the -really embarrassing- stories." Anne chuckled, then sobered and said, "I guess I'm not really in a fun mood." Azalynn waited for her to put the broom away and come out onto the steps, then sat down beside her and said, "What's bothering you? That you and Kate are moving far away? Bah," she said, making a dismissive gesture. "You know Kate's our leader, whether she tries to be or not. You watch, we'll all be in New Avalon within a year. The only real reason we're on Tomodachi in the first place is because she decided to go to NIT after high school." Juni eyed the Dantrovian, trying unsuccessfully to figure out whether she was joking. Azalynn gazed back, then giggled and put an arm around her to give her a shake. "You think it's a joke, and maybe it is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it comes true anyway," she said. "Juri's going to be moving within the next couple of weeks, and Miki too. Utena wants to finish her degree with Professor Schepartz, but once that's done - well, you know Kate's Dad wants to give her a job at the IPO. As for the rest of us... well, Moose hasn't said anything, but I know he's already looked into transfer options, and so has Dorothy." "And you?" Anne wondered with a smile. "I go wherever the wind blows," Azalynn said cheerily. "Now c'mon. Cheer up and let's go join the fun. Unless you'd rather we went and, uh, consulted the spirits as to the auguries for your move," she added with a golden-eyed twinkle. Anne snorted. "You're incorrigible," she said, getting to her feet. "Let's go see if Devlin's eaten all the hummus yet." MONDAY, JANUARY 11, 2410 NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI Anne was a little preoccupied as she walked toward her first day of school in three years - partly because it -was- her first day of school in three years, and partly because it was the first time she'd ever gone to a school that wasn't part of the same colossal building as her own living space. In point of fact, her living space wasn't -in- a colossal building, which was enough of a change from her old situation on Orron IV that her concerns about moving to New Avalon as a city never came to pass. She felt welcome and safe in the quirky streets of Claremont; even safer, perhaps, than she'd felt on Tomodachi. There, it had taken a very bold or foolish Psi Corps enforcement team to attempt her arrest. Here, in the very lap of the International Police, such an attempt would require boldness to a degree almost suicidal. For that matter, she was a different girl than the one they'd almost bagged in that mall in Nekomikoka. If she were jumped here and now, she might hope to give a reasonable accounting of herself, and help wouldn't be far away. Truth to tell, though, she wasn't even really thinking about the possibility of ambush. What preoccupied her had little to do with her own situation. Kyouichi Saionji was missing. Anne had assumed, when he'd appeared in the dojo and handed over the mysterious package (which she still hadn't opened), that he'd already discussed his planned trip, whatever it was, with the others. Surely he'd have run it by Kaitlyn, who was, after all, his sensei. -Certainly- he'd have mentioned something about it to his girlfriend, Wakaba Shinohara. But no. He hadn't mentioned a word of any travels to anyone. He'd just packed up some things, dropped off his mystery package, and vanished. Kaitlyn was concerned, but not overly so - she knew he was competent and expected he'd be able to handle whatever he ran into, and journeymen of the Asagiri Katsujinkenryuu did have a certain tradition of, well, -journeying-, though she was mildly peeved that he hadn't even bothered to tell her he was going. She was more annoyed on behalf of Wakaba, who was somewhere just to the left of furious. As for Juniper, she was worried, and wondered if she was doing the right thing not telling all the details of his visit to the dojo. He hadn't specifically -asked- her not to tell anyone that he'd given her the package, but she figured if he'd wanted it generally advertised, he wouldn't have been so discreet about it in the first place, so she kept quiet. She was still mulling this over as she stepped into the main entryway of Harkness Street High School, having completely failed to take in the building's brooding facade. Like so many new students before her, she followed the pointing sign to the office and shortly found herself before Principal Wesley Dodds. Anne was immediately struck by the principal's presence - not that he was forceful or commanding, in any conventional sense, but... there was something about him that hinted at unseen forces and unknown places, and being the sort of person who was attuned to that kind of thing, she noticed. What was more, she could see he knew that she'd noticed, and it seemed to amuse him. He gave her the briefing, which included such eyebrow-raising highlights as the run-down of which students had sorcerous ability and/or superpowers, which teachers ditto, and a warning not to indulge in too much psychic activity near the southeasternmost dormer on the third level, so as not to unduly distress the building's mostly quiescent haunting. Armed with that knowledge - and no longer wondering why no one in the office seemed to be taking any notice of the wooden sword she was carrying - she reported to her first classroom, which was about half-full when she arrived. It was a pretty ordinary-looking group, Anne decided, looking over the room as she stood by the door and considered where to sit. More non-humans than she was used to - they were practically unknown on Orron IV - but she was long past any lingering trouble her upbringing might have given her with that. They were all about her age, all neatly dressed (no uniforms here, though), they all looked reasonably bright... One of them, a tallish, athletic girl with long blonde hair, turned and saw her standing there. She immediately broke into a welcoming smile. "Hi," she said, standing. "New student?" "Uh, yeah," Anne replied. "Anne Cross." She offered a hand. The blonde girl gave it a firm shake. "Courtney Whitmore. Welcome to Harkness Street High. C'mon, I'll introduce you. We've got a couple minutes before Mr. Hall shows up." With a confidential grin, she added, "He thinks he's the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian prince, which is cool? Except it means he has kind of a vague idea of time in spans of less than a few hundred years." MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 2410 Two young women stood at the apex of the colossal crimson and gold step pyramid that was the New Avalon headquarters of the Aztechnology Corporation, leaning against the safety rail at the edge of the airship pad and watching the city's aerial traffic. They said nothing, merely watched, as though waiting for something. A few moments later that something arrived, in the form of a long, sleek, black air limousine that detached from the traffic pattern around the ziggurat and slid smoothly to a halt near the building's roof entrance. The two women turned and went to stand near the limo as a man in red armor got out of the driver's seat, went to the back of the car, opened the passenger seat, and stood stiffly at attention. Dr. Lawrence R. Mann, Master of GENOM Corporation, emerged from the car, straightened his thousand-credit grey sharkskin Armani, and walked to the two women, his bodyguard/driver falling into step behind him. Mann tried to keep his bearing as formal and corporate as possible, but a grin kept stealing onto his face, and soon the shorter of the women who awaited him was matching it. "Miss Broadbank," he said, nodding to her. "Miss Arisugawa," he added, acknowledging her companion. "It's official - my board just signed off on the last of the merger documentation. Aztechnology is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of GENOM Corporation." He held out a hand first to Mary, then to Juri. "Welcome to the family." Then, gesturing to the limo, he said, "Buy you lunch?" "Is this business or pleasure?" Mary asked with a smile as they walked toward the vehicle. Mann laughed. "For me, both. You two will have to make up your own minds. Still, there will be work involved. I need to bring you, Miss Broadbank, up to speed on what will be expected of you as a managing partner, and as for you, Miss Arisugawa, I have a proposition you might find interesting." "Oh?" Juri said, raising an eyebrow. "Indeed," he said as he bowed them into the limo ahead of him. "I have another division that could use a fresh approach to management, and I think you'd be perfect... " THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2410 NAR SHADDAA (THE SMUGGLERS' MOON) NAL HUTTA SYSTEM, OUTER RIM TERRITORIES Like a great many of the businesses on Nar Shaddaa, the Tix-Volik Aerotaxi Company was a bent operation. It wasn't outright criminal - at least, not by the notoriously lax legal standards of the Smugglers' Moon - but it didn't operate in a way that would pass muster in many other places. For one thing, its equipment was very poorly maintained, something that should have been of some concern in an environment where a lift-system failure meant a two-mile plunge into the anonymous oblivion of the Vertical City's lowermost levels. For another, the drivers were slaves. The Outer Rim slave trade was a thing not often discussed in polite circles. Even in the Territories, sentient ownership of other organic sentients was of very dubious legality; it was banned outright on most of the more settled and established worlds, and largely considered a creature of the wilder centuries and more remote sectors. There were educated, important people in the Territories who would vociferously and quite sincerely insist that slavery was something you found in the -truly- lawless regions, like the Coreward Frontier, not on the Rim. But it did exist, in places like Nar Shaddaa, and Tatooine, and Pleiku IV, and even - in vestigial form - in the Vastru system, where fixed-term indenture was still a common legal framework for the employment of farm laborers. Wherever the Hutts went, and their slime trails criscrossed the Outer Rim Territories as in few other places, the slave trade went with them. For the most part, it was confined to Hutt society itself. Most common people - even most lower-echelon gangsters - didn't have slaves, they had droids (the distinction being arguable in some places, but not on the Rim, for the most part). Real live slaves were a prestige item, conspicuously flaunted even as their true status was being coyly hidden from the public. The customers who rode in Tix-Volik taxis generally didn't -know- their drivers were the owned property of the company's proprietor, a greasy human named (imaginatively) Kiv Tolix. Their ID placards, prominently displayed in the passenger areas of the aerocabs as required by law, listed them as freemen - but on Nar Shaddaa, unknown to most visitors, "freeman" was a legal term meaning "slave". Such was the perversity of the Hutt legal mind, though Hutt lawyers routinely insisted it was a translation problem - a limitation of the barbaric pidgin that was the Standard language, and nothing to do with the glorious and honorable legal traditions of the Hutts. For that matter, most Tix-Volik customers had no idea that Kiv Tolix -himself- was a slave, and only owned his company on paper. He, and it, really belonged to a Hutt named Vorgo, who was part of the vast and vicious Syndicate, a criminal organization that needed no other name. Vorgo's business associates included a laundry list of slug-like crime lords spanning the known galaxy, from Begraag, the master of the betting pits of Solaris VII, to the vile Jabba, lord of Tatooine. It was even whispered that he had ties to the most vicious and loathsome Hutt of them all, the ineffable and elusive Braxa, whose stubby hands held the strings to more murders, bombings, kidnappings, brainwashings, and "spaceliner accidents" than any other single criminal's. Not many of Tolix's own -drivers- knew that he was just another slave, and it was not a fact whose dissemination he encouraged. He had, in fact, arranged for several unfortunate maintenance-related accidents to befall drivers who learned the truth and were either foolish enough to try for some leverage out of it or simply failed to keep him from finding out. There was one who knew and had so far lived - a young human of singular intensity, possessed of fantastic piloting skills, preternatural senses, and a deeply buried but incompletely hidden core of pure, sun-hot rage. Tolix let him live for three reasons: 1) The young man was arguably more valuable to Vorgo, who occasionally took him off the taxi-driver job to use him as an assassin, than Tolix himself; 2) He had so far exercised great discretion, seeking to gain no advantage from the knowledge other than the satisfaction of knowing that Tolix was aware he knew; and 3) Tolix went in constant, mortal fear of him, to the point where he was half-convinced that if he killed the boy, he would simply rise up from the dead and wreak a hideous revenge. The young driver knew that last fact, too, and it gave him even more private satisfaction than knowing that Tolix was a fellow slave. Not least because he -was- planning to kill Tolix, and soon. He'd had about enough of life as an unpaid cabdriver and part-time killer (also unpaid). It was time to move on. On his way out, he'd have to take out Tolix anyway, so he figured he might as well enjoy it. It'd be a novelty to have to eliminate someone who had done him an actual wrong or two, as opposed to complete strangers whose crimes he neither knew nor really cared about. Except when he was working on one of his "special jobs", he wasn't allowed to have weapons, and all equipment he was issued for a job was scrupulously recovered after each mission, so he'd spent months carefully designing, pilfering the parts for, and quietly building the weapon for his escape. It wasn't much to look at, but it would work, he was confident of that. He was very good with his hands, even if one of them was a crude bionic prosthesis. Always had been. Technical work came to him as easily as flying... ... as easily as killing. He parked his cab at the far end of the garage, as usual. He maintained it himself, with meticulous care - another reason why Tolix would have found it hard to employ his usual method for rubbing out troublesome drivers. His ride was the only one in the company that would have passed a legitimate airspeeder safety inspection, if such things existed on Nar Shaddaa. He parked it out there so that anyone else would have to walk an inconveniently long way to mess with it, and so he could be the first one out at the start of the shift. He walked toward the office in the back with his usual long-legged stride, a slightly gangly youth with a visible measure of physical confidence. He had long, curly brown hair and rugged features touched with a hint of delicacy; the other drivers called him "Prettyboy", but never to his face. Apart from his shabby clothes, the only thing that marred his appearance was the stark, unpolished mechanicality of his right hand, a metallic manipulator that wouldn't have looked out of place on a labor droid. It may have -been- on a labor droid once. He'd deliberately dawdled on the aerial streets of the Vertical City for as long as he dared before returning to base, knowing that Tolix would dismiss the other drivers and then hang around to bitch at him for joyriding. As it happened, there was precious little joy in the ride this particular time, but that was as immaterial as Tolix's head was about to become. The garage was deserted, just as he'd hoped, but as he approached the office, he felt a -wrongness-, subtle and hard to define, scratching at the edges of his consciousness. He shrugged it off - of course the situation felt hinky, he was about to murder his boss, after all - and walked on, opened the door, and stepped through into the office. "Yes, Tolix, I know," he announced loudly. "I've been out burning ions on your decicredit again, and - " He stopped because Tolix wasn't listening. In fact, for a moment, Tolix didn't appear to be in the room, until the driver noticed his boots jutting out from behind the dispatch console. Only then did he sense the presence of another in the room - He whirled, raising his mechanical hand, and as he splayed the fingers, a round port built into the palm of the hand glowed yellow- white with a keening whine. "Don't move!" he barked to the man standing behind the door. "This is a concussion blaster, it'll paint you all over that wall." The man chuckled, his voice low and calm. "I don't doubt it," he said. "Relax. I don't mean you any harm." He nodded toward what remained of Tolix. "I wouldn't necessarily have harmed him, either, if he hadn't pulled a blaster on me - though that's not certain. He was just unpleasant enough that I might have felt compelled to teach him a lesson." "Why are you here?" the young cabdriver demanded, his dark blue eyes glittering with intensity. "I came to talk to you," the intruder replied. "You -are- Anakin Skywalker, aren't you?" Anakin blinked. "How did you know - " "You cut a distinctive figure," the other man said dryly. "Who sent you? Tell me!" "In good time," the intruder replied. "For now, we should get out of here. I suspect that Mr. Tolix, whether he knew it not, was equipped with a deadman alarm." The younger man considered that for a half-second, eyes narrowing and flicking toward Tolix's remains. "If I'd wanted your head, I could have taken it when you barged past me just now," the man in the shadows pointed out. Anakin thought that over too, his mind racing, his instincts tugging at him in a way he had learned, over the years, to trust. They were telling him two things: that this man was not his enemy, and that he was right about the alarm. "OK," he said. "Let's go." They ran to the end of the garage and piled into Anakin's cab, which fired up instantly at his command. As he hit the repulsors and levered the vehicle out of its parking slip, the office door banged open and a squad of armored paramilitary troopers burst through, weapons at the ready. "Looks like you were right about that alarm," Anakin noted. He jammed the throttles open; the speeder-cab shot out of the garage like a missile from a launch tube, ejected into the evening scrum of Nar Shaddaa's upper-level traffic. Signal horns blared and drivers shook fists as he powered into the traffic pattern without regard for any niceties of aerial conduct. "You have a destination in mind?" Anakin asked his passenger sardonically as he gunned the cab down a main thoroughfare, then banked hard to port and shot down a narrower side passage. The other man, who was dressed in a dark cloak that hid his other garments and most of his face, replied, "My ship is docked at Tower 647 Southeast, Level 244." "Sixty-credit run," Anakin remarked with a wry grin, zooming down another side passage. "Maybe not," his passenger noted as a pair of black speeders popped out of alleys ahead. /* John Williams "The Battle of Endor, Part III" _Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi_ */ The souped-up yellow cab burned past them before they could get into anything like a block position, but their intent was confirmed a moment later as they formed up for pursuit. A moment later, scarlet blaster bolts were whining past the cab. "And me without my portable deflector rig," Anakin complained. "I'll handle them. You just drive," his passenger said. Then, standing, he threw off his cloak to reveal himself clad in dark robes and high boots. He hurdled the seat, and as he went over, Anakin heard a sound he hadn't heard in years - the snapping hiss of a lightsaber igniting. It sent a chill up his spine and raised goosebumps on his bare arms as he wrangled the speeder down two elevation levels and around a three-dimensional rotary. For a second, just a second, he was twelve again and the galaxy was at his feet. Then he was a seventeen-year-old runaway slave once more, and the stranger in the back seat, lightsaber or no, was still a stranger. He gritted his teeth and increased power still further, robbing it from the repulsors to feed to the thrusters - at this speed, most of his lift was ballistic anyway. Any other Tix-Volik speeder would have exploded by now, but Anakin's responded smoothly, the snarl of its primary thrusters deepening as the vehicle surged forward. Behind him, he could hear the unforgettable sound of a lightsaber deflecting cannon fire, and then, far off behind, a muffled WHOOMP that had to be one of their pursuers going up in smoke. Seeing that, the pilot of the other speeder wised up and stopped firing. Instead, he poured on the speed as well, hoping to crowd his adversary into making a mistake. Gods knew there were plenty enough to be made up here, what with the heavy evening traffic, the randomness of -other- drivers, and the various fixed hazards presented by the city. Anakin Skywalker was not a pilot who made mistakes. He knew every cubic foot of the airspace above this part of the Vertical City; it was his beat, his turf, his -home-. He knew every corner, elevation barrier, traffic hotspot, walkway, holobillboard, and docking spire for miles around, all in a constantly updated, perfectly researched 3-D holomap he kept in his head. He was, if he did say so himself, the greatest pilot - speeder or otherwise - in the galaxy, and there was no way he was going to be herded into a power coupling by some two-bit spud in a black XP39. His maybe-Jedi passenger, who was back in the front seat now, offered no editorial comments as Anakin took what would have seemed to anyone else like absurd chances, darting between heavy cargo haulers, yoyoing up and down through a pack of cruising luxobarges, splitting the difference of a pair of walkways connecting two towers. The last maneuver was the capper; the XP39 was a little bit taller than Anakin's skycab, and the top walkway skinned the top of the cabin clean off it. If the driver avoided decapitation, he didn't manage to keep control of his vehicle, which plowed messily into the side of the left-hand tower a half-second later. The taxi's meter had started automatically when the vehicle left the garage with a passenger aboard. As Anakin pulled to a graceful halt alongside the battered Leopard-CV dropship parked on Level 244 of Tower 647 Southeast, the meter's glowing red display indicated precisely 60 credits. Both men disembarked. Anakin walked around the nose of the cab and said wryly, "I guess I can waive the fare this time." Then, his face going hard, he raised his right hand, leveled its built-in concussion blaster at his passenger, and said, "Now, I seem to recall you owing me an answer." The man in the dark Jedi robes smiled slightly. He was a thin-faced, coldly handsome man with short-cropped, almost military- style green hair - a Zardon, maybe? He met Anakin's accusing gaze calmly, but there was a piercing intensity in his violet eyes that matched Anakin's own. "I have a proposition for you," he said. "Oh yeah? What might that be?" "You think I'm a Jedi," the man replied. "Well, I'm not. I represent a much more specialized, much more... -elite- organization. An organization in which there might be a place for someone with your potential." Anakin blinked. "Who the hell are you? How do you know anything about my 'potential'?" "My name is Saionji," the man replied. "I know your potential because I can -feel- it just looking at you, but beyond that, I've done my homework. I know quite a bit about you. I know, for example, that you were once the property of a Hutt-aligned junk dealer on Tatooine; that you escaped at the age of nine in the care of a Jedi Master named Aarok Sifu-Dyas, and that you were Sifu-Dyas's padawan for three years, before his untimely death here on Nar Shaddaa... at which point the Hutt Syndicate recaptured you and put you to work as Vorgo's errand boy." When Anakin had nothing to say to that capsule summary of his life, Saionji narrowed his eyes and went on, "I know that the Force is strong with you - but your master never really understood you, and his death left you without purpose. I can give you that purpose." Anakin looked skeptical. He didn't lower his weapon, but he did say after a few seconds, "I'm listening." "Anakin... would you like to learn how to harness the beast that lives inside you?" The young man looked startled. "Master... Master Sifu-Dyas said - " "I'm sure he was a very wise man, but he was wrong about this," Saionji replied with glacial certainty. "You can't kill the dragon in your heart, Ani. If you do, your heart dies with it. Men like us can only fight to make them work for us... or let them consume us." He held out a hand. "Come with me and I can teach you how to fight that battle. It's one I've fought all my life." Anakin stared at him for a few seconds, his instincts grappling with his fear of the unknown. Then he powered down his weapon and took the outstretched hand. "What do I need to do?" he asked. "For now, very little," Saionji said. "There will be work, and a lot of it, but right now, all you need to do is say a few words and accept a token of your new allegiance." He outlined what was required. Anakin looked on the verge of balking; aspects of the simple ritual clashed with his considerable innate pride in much the same way that being a slave did. But something in Saionji's eyes, something in his voice, gave the young man the first spark of anything like hope he'd felt since Sifu-Dyas had died, and in the end, he wasn't going to let even his pride stand in the way of seizing that hope. So he knelt, bowed his head, and said, "Master Saionji... I pledge myself to your teachings. As your novice student, I am yours to command." Saionji smiled. "Excellent," he said, and he seemed to mean it. "Rise." Anakin stood up and regarded his new master curiously. "It seems you have no choice but to revolutionize the world," Saionji said. "Your place has been prepared." He reached into an inner pocket of his dark tunic, withdrew a small item, and handed it to his disciple. "Put it on," he said, and Anakin obeyed, slipping the signet ring onto the third finger of his left hand. It was made of a metal he'd never seen before, lustrous and opalescently black, and its face was a blood-red gem cut in the stylized semblance of a flower. "Welcome to the revolution, Anakin Skywalker," said Saionji. "Welcome to the Order of the Black Rose." /* Many Small Functions "Betrayal" */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presented UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT - Symphony of the Sword No. 5 - Prelude in A Minor The Cast (in order of appearance) Susan Ivanova Ezri Tigan "Bruce" Corwin Odo Arthur Haineley Tom Palmer B'Elanna O'Brien Lindsey Willows Boba Fett Spaldek S.G. Dukat, Esq. The Port Jeradar Surly Players Nita Daran Anjohl Tennan Zargh Thalekh Kaitlyn Hutchins Sumire Kanzaki Sergei Miki Kaoru Juri Arisugawa Utena Tenjou Anne Cross Kyouichi Saionji Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan Wesley Dodds Courtney Whitmore Lawrence R. Mann, Ph.D. Mary Broadbank and introducing Anakin Skywalker Written by Benjamin D. Hutchins Plotting assistance Anne Cross Janice Barlow and The Usual Suspects With grateful acknowledgements to the original creators The Symphony will return E P U (colour) 2005