Table of Contents . . .

Five months after the Steltek encounter...

Space Station Bishop; Corridor 15-A
In orbit over planet Gwynedd
The Gwynedd System, Isaac Quadrant, Enigma Sector
NOV 21 2793/2793.325; 0900 Hours (CST)

“Oh, excuse me, Ser!"

A man stumbled as he bumped into a soiled technician while walking down the well-lit corridor. Shrugging it off, he continued on. Rubbing his eyes as he went, he stumbled about in disorientation.

The man eventually reached a particular bulkhead with a viewport and came to a sobering stop. As if awakening from a deep, fulfilling sleep, something suddenly dawned on him that snapped his mind awake and aware.

He collapsed to his knees, cringing. His hands went to his temples as a mild headache quickly rose to throbbing, incredibly painful migraine levels. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a passing Varni female in a baby blue outfit with a Confederation insignia over her left breast. She saw him bent over in obvious pain and, with a concerned look on her face, approached him.

Unexpectedly, the man grabbed the reptilian woman by the collar and pulled her to him. "Who... am... I?" he asked between gasps.

The woman swallowed, holding her scaled face back as the man’s grip tightened on her collar. Her gaze traveled the man’s gray tunic, settling on a plastic sticker on the left side of his chest. "C.B...." she read, "... C.B.2...."

He tightened his grip even further. "C.B.... 2?"

"It’s on your medical tag!" she protested.

The man released her. He blinked repeatedly, then tore the tag off of his white hospital gown. "C.B...." he muttered. "Chris... Christopher Blair." The unbearable pain he’d been feeling in his temples eased, if only slightly. Faces and events began to play themselves out in his mind, summoning, restoring, and linking together lost memories until it made some semblance of sense. He let go of his temples and rested with his back against the bulkhead. "I-I’m sorry... I didn’t mean to..."

"Where did you come from?" she asked. She was apparently letting the matter of him grabbing her by the collar go.

Blair shook his head, offering no answer. "I don’t know. I... I remember flying a fighter... activating something... heat, so much heat—then darkness. Then... then I was walking down this corridor." He looked up, clearly befuddled. "Where am I?"

"Bishop Station, Ser. Over Gwynedd."

"Bishop..." he winced at the name he spoke. "I heard that somewhere before... Yes, I woke up in a hospital here... I’d been in cryogenic stasis for well over a century..."

The woman’s eyes shot wide as she pointed a finger at his face. "Hey, I know you!" she exclaimed. "You are that Terran on the news! That pilot from the 27th century who fought in the Kilrathi and the Nephilim wars! You came back and stopped the Steltek invasion five months ago!"

"The Steltek, yes," Blair repeated. It seemed to bring more clarity and meaning to it in his mind as he did. "I remember now."

"But... but you died. Just as you said. You were in an Excalibur 3500 fighter, set off your Nuke’em, and were caught in the same blast that destroyed the Steltek mothership. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you!"

Blair ruffled his sweatewn blond hair. "Yeah."

"They also said you went mad a century ago. When you came out of hiding after everyone thought you were dead, you left aboard the Star Runner. Then you disappeared for almost a year, coming back more powerful than ever, immediately declaring war on everyone you encountered. It finally came down to a Confed pilot and a Gemini privateer’s near suicide mission to stop your insane rampage. You were assassinated... it is all over the news now."

"But... that can’t be... I don’t remember it... I retired after the Nephilim..."

Her gaze didn’t let up. "How did you come back?"

His headache returned to full intensity as he tried to remember what she was talking about. He seemed calmer now, more open minded. "Admiral Braddock... on Sol Station... he talked about that, too," he uttered, "But I... I was never... never assassinated. I don’t remember that. Christ, I don’t remember any of it!"

"But the reports... they told everything, Ser. You were killed in 2685. Just about everyone out there would swear with their last breath that you’re a fraud, not the real Blair. Others that are more unsure of the facts want you dead just the same, after what you did in your... psychotic rage."

His calmness crumbled. "Damn it, I told you I don’t know what you’re talking about!" Blair pressed his head against the bulkhead as hard as he could. "Star Runners, pilots, privateers, assassinations... damn it, none of that happened! I had a wife... kids... Tolwyn’s nanobots activated in my bloodstream... I was put into cryogenic stasis in 2691! When they took me out, it was 2793, and the Steltek were invading. The only gap in my memory is the time between the Steltek invasion and just now. I’m not making this up!"

The reptilian woman shook her head. "Well, it is still 2793, and you—whoever you are—stopped the Steltek invasion. But you died! History declared you dead a second time!"

"I don’t know what’s happening to me. Everything... everything is so crazy! I’m supposed to be dead in both my present and now this... this future I’m stuck in."

"I wish I could help you."

"Pamela Darmin, Harold Etchinson, Graham Kimle..." he rattled off the names. "I remember their names, their faces. They... they were the doctors on this station that brought me out of stasis! Can you help me find them?"

The woman regarded Blair with a questioning look. "I’ve been the chief medical officer on the station for fifteen years and I’ve never heard of any of them. Are you sure you woke up on Bishop, not some other station?"

"No, it was this station. Please, find them."

"Well, if it’ll make you feel better I’ll look them up in my index." Doubtfully, she withdrew a PAD from her lab jacket and keyed in a few quick commands. After a few moments of searching, she put it away. "Nope. No listing for any of them. There’s a Pammele Darmin in the Lyra Sector, but that’s about it."

"Damn it." Blair abruptly got to his feet, startling the medical officer as he then stormed down the corridor back the way he came. "Damn it!"

A few seconds after he’d disappeared, a figure emerged from the bend in a doorframe, grabbing the Varni woman around the neck and yanking her backwards before she could utter even a sound. Then, in a coolly measured movement, it drew a comlink from its belt.

KN2A Mk II Danrik 001
The "Tri-System"
The Irrulan System, Amaron Quadrant, Vidur Sector
DEC 05 2793/2793.339; 2232 Hours (CST)

Vell Ricaud II couldn’t remember the Chirichan Clan being so damn tough!

Try as he might, he just couldn’t line the Testmos-class heavy fighter up for a good pounding. It banked left, right, up, and down faster than he could track with his crosshairs.

"I hope you’re not eyeballing me, son," the cyborg pilot remarked over the comm. The guy’s face—human, with mechanical implants and tubes jutting in and out of it—appeared on his upper-left screen.

"Eat shit and die!" was Vell’s response, accompanied by a blast from all four of Vell’s Kraven Mark V lasers that finally managed to strike home. The Testmos fighter’s aft shields fluctuated as the blasts impacted one after the other.

A robotic-like jeer could be heard over the comm. "Oh yes, you will be mine!" He pulled his fighter into a tight 360, attempting to loop around Vell’s Danrik fighter.

Vell was tired of playing games. Punching the ’burners for a quick burst of speed, he rammed the starboard side of the Testmos as it began to maneuver. "Impact," the feminine voice of his on-board computer notified him.

The Chirichan ship veered off, clearly jarred by the impact. Quickly, Vell swiveled the crosshairs of his targeting screen over the stunned ship and its disoriented pilot. He pumped as many laser beams into the craft’s rear as he could until his ship began overheating, then launched the Mark II Brute missile he had on stand-by.

The Testmos ship recovered from the initial attack that had sent it spinning, beginning to turn around to face Vell’s Danrik fighter. The cyborg pilot began to speak, "Say hello to my little frien—"

The missile struck, obliterating whatever the Testmos ship had left of its aft hull and hitting the fuel feeds. Bits and pieces of the Testmos’ hull shot off in every direction.

Vell couldn’t help but smile. "Same to you, asshole."

"That was the last one, Ser Ricaud," came the young voice of a Serra on Vell’s comm from his flagship, the Desiccator. The vessel was only 400 klicks behind him, and was doubtless watching him like a hawk. "Will you be returning now?"

Vell grunted, frowning at his HUD readout. He’d gone to all the trouble of gearing up his brand new Danrik Mark II fighter just to scuffle with three Chirichan fighters? Well, it had felt good to get away from his stressful Kindred business. "Yeah. I’m coming in."

At 230 klicks from Docking Bay 3 the comm cackled back to life, "Ser, we’ve received word from a civilian aboard a stolen Confederation shuttle just entering the Tri-System. He’s asked for clearance to dock at our convenience."

A stolen Confed shuttle? The guy probably had an interesting story to tell, at least. "Who is he?"

"He’s informed us that it would be best if he only disclosed his identity in person, Ser," the Serra explained.

Vell sighed. Nothing too unusual about that—not with the kind of people he was used to dealing with in his line of work. Steadying his flight path, he slowed to an approach vector into the visible Docking Bay 3. "Clear him for boarding, but I want a full security compliment on watch the minute he enters. Got that?"

"Understood, Ser Ricaud. We await your boarding."

Vell spent the rest of his trip into the Desiccator pondering who his unexpected guest might be.

KS Desiccator; Docking Bay 12
2321 Hours (CST)

"Blair?!" Vell gasped.

The man walking down the shuttle’s ramp came into view. He had short dusty blond hair, blue eyes, and a thick, sharply defined goatee around his chin and lips that reminded him of the vids he had seen recently of Blair during the ancient Nephilim War. The somehow-still-living legend wore a dark brown leather jacket over a blue shirt and a pair of loose black trousers.

"Are you Vell Ricaud II—the leader of the Kindred?" the man asked, almost matter-of-factly. "I’ve only talked to you over the vidcomm, so forgive me if I don’t exactly recognize you."

Vell nodded excitedly. "A-are you... are you..."

Blair gave the docking bay an outward glance, then gestured with his head to the corridor at the end of the chamber. "I think we need to talk."

KS Desiccator; Office of Ser Ricaud
2330 Hours (CST)

Vell continued his restless pacing. "Let me get this straight..." he spoke, making hand gestures, "... you didn’t die. You somehow... survived that blast without your STW generator... and have now come out of the shadows five months later?"

Blair rubbed his eyes. The two had spent the last twenty minutes going over this again and again. "I told you, I don’t know what happened. But I had to have died, right? I know my generator was dead, I know they never found any trace of my fighter afterward, and I did black out after I triggered the Nuke’em. Everything seems to indicate that, well, I died."

"Okay... let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you did die. How in the hell are you able to be standing here and talk to me right now?"

He raised his arms up helplessly. "I don’t know!"

Vell grimaced. "Yes, you told me, you woke up on Bishop Station fourteen days ago, your last memory being of triggering that bomb. You know, that tells me pretty much nothing."

"All I know is I’m back. From the dead, from some kind of temporary amnesia I suffered the last seven months—whatever. I just want to get some answers. An explanation for just what the hell has been happening to me. I was hoping you could help me out."

Vell regarded him with a glance. Blair looked like Blair enough, except for the goatee that reminded Vell of the vids he’d seen of the man during the century-old Nephilim War. "Why me?"

"I don’t much in the way of... y’know, friends in this century. You’re about the only one I know that I can even remotely think about trusting."

Vell flushed, but only a little. His childhood hero was coming to him because he trusted him? "What do you want me to do?"

"I’m not sure. I can tell you what I know, what I’ve gathered so far over the last seven days."

"Take it from the top, then."

"Number one, I wake up on Bishop Station."

"You told me."

"Number two, I take a shuttle and leave for Gwynedd, the planet the station was orbiting, for clothes, supplies, and a place to rest."

"You stole a shuttle, you mean. That’s what I heard."

"Number three, I leave Gwynedd and find that Bishop Station isn’t there anymore."

"What do you mean? It was destroyed?"

"No, it just wasn’t there. No debris, no sensor readings, no nothing. I even figured out how to tap into the Confed database network aboard my shuttle and could find no record or mention of the station ever having existed."

"What can I say? It all sounds pretty fucked to me," Vell commented. "So this Bishop Station, this was the place you awakened both seven months ago out of cryogenic stasis, then again fourteen days ago?"

Blair nodded. "But now it’s gone, and no one I’ve talked to has ever heard of it! While I was aboard it just before stealing that shuttle, I’d talked to a woman who said she was the chief medical officer, asking her about the doctors who’d awakened me those seven months ago—she hadn’t heard of any of them and the search she did reported nothing. Now I’m supposed to believe the whole station never existed!"

"Damn, that’s no good."

"God, I feel like I’m losing my mind. Can you help me?"

Vell stretched. If there was anyone out there who understood what Blair was going through right now, it was him. After being stuck in cryogenic freeze for twenty years, he’d had something of an amnesia incident himself. "I hate to suggest it, but it sounds an awful lot like someone’s trying to cover something up. Something big."

"Someone... in Confed?"

"Who else?" Vell gave Blair a knowing look. "Some kinda secret weapons manufacturing station they don’t want the public to be aware of. Once you were away they could have had everyone you talked to aboard drop the act they might have instructed them to put on, then cloaked the entire station." He gave a resounding harrumph. "Christ, don’t ask me, man, I live in the Tri-System where people are normal."

"But what would I have been doing on board a ‘secret weapons manufacturing station’? It doesn’t add up. It doesn’t make sense."

"No, it doesn’t. But we’re going to find out."

"Got any ideas? Leads?"

"Not specifically, but there’s only one way we can go about getting to the bottom of this."

"And that way would be...?"

"Going to the source. The heart of your Terran Confederation."

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