I know that I am only going to a graveyard, but it's a most precious graveyard.
- Fëdor Mikhailovich Dostoevski, The Brothers Karamazov
"What do you mean, 'no such person'?" demanded West.
"Like I said, buddy," said the disinterested clerk behind the service counter at the Lake Town Public Records Office. "There is no such person listed anywhere in the entire Federation database, living or dead. How many more times I gotta tell you? You sure you got the name and ID right?"
"Of course I'm sure," grumbled West impatiently. "You sure you typed it in your computer right?"
The clerk glared at West with undisguised resentment and called "Next!" at the long line behind West.
Knowing a rude dismissal when he was slapped in the face with one, West turned away from the counter with a mumbled "Thanks for nothing, kid," and headed for the door.
Once outside, he leaned against the building in the shade of the awning that stretched across the front. The only sign of activity out in the blistering noonday sun was a lonely dust devil swirling an erratic zigzag down the center of the street. Only the hardiest or most masochistic souls were out and about at this time of day.
West unfolded the scrap of paper he still carried in his shirt pocket. There could be no mistake. The message, while cryptic and mysterious, was properly formatted with the cipher from the old days. It really was from whom it claimed to be. He refolded the paper and stuck it back in his pocket.
He considered the possibility that the official records had been deliberately altered. He knew his own records had been doctored many times over, but they hadn't been completely erased as seemed to be the case here. He was pretty sure strolling into the local Starfleet Intelligence branch office and asking about it wouldn't yield particularly positive results either. He was at a loss as to where to search next. Maybe it was time to call in some old favors.
An old man with gray hair and scraggly beard was standing at the far end of the porch and caught West's eye. He was stooped from a lifetime of hard work, and the shabby clothes on his back suggested he'd seen better times. The eyes, when they swept across West, still held a bright sparkle though, despite whatever hardships they might have seen. When the man noticed West looking in his direction, he turned his eyes away. He changed his mind almost immediately though, and approached West with a shuffling gait. West waited patiently, curious to see what the oldster was going to do.
"I heard you talking to the clerk inside," said the old man without preamble. "I might know a thing or two about the man you're looking for--" he opened his mouth in a sly, gap-toothed grimace, and added, "--for a price..."
West threaded his way through the drought-yellowed, overgrown weeds and scrubby chaparral towards a lone, ancient oak in the near distance. The bare limbs reached into the darkening sky, starkly silhouetted against the setting orange sun behind them. The air was chilly, forcing an involuntary shiver from West, but he had left his leather jacket behind in Lake Town with the old man, along with a few slips of latinum.
If the old man was telling the truth, he would find his missing friend here in the Cairn Hills, though West was at a loss to explain what his friend would be doing in the open wilderness. It had taken him and the Rocinanté almost half an hour to reach this remote location by air.
As West proceeded, the falling night grudgingly relinquished a few more details. He could see stone slabs, crosses, Bajoran orbs, and other mystical symbols from across the galaxy sticking out of the earth at irregular intervals. The oak tree was the center point of an old cemetery. Most of the grave markers were skewed one way or the other, and most were weathered with age and neglect.
West stopped just inside the broken gate that hung from the mostly-disintegrated fence that used to guard this forsaken place. He was perplexed now more than ever. Starting with the nearest grave, he began scanning the names on the headstones, looking for one particular name.
As he rounded the thick trunk of the old oak, he suddenly realized there was someone else standing in this lonely field -- a woman, by the curvaceous shape of the silhouette. She was facing the other direction, staring down at a particular grave marker, and either hadn't heard him approach or was choosing to ignore him. He stopped behind the woman, loath to disturb her, but she spared him the necessity when she finally turned her head to acknowledge his presence.
Both West's and the woman's eyes widened in surprise, instant recognition flashing between them like a 1.21 gigawatt jolt.
Before he could even formulate a greeting, a clenched fist came flying out of nowhere and connected with devastating effect on West's jaw. He staggered back, his vision exploding into a thousand shards of light, and tripped over an exposed root. He landed on his butt in a little cloud of dust. The woman loomed over him threateningly with both hands on her hips, and glowered down at him.
"That's for almost getting us killed the last time we met, West!" she spat.
West rubbed his aching chin and looked up into the woman's murderous glare. A few pieces of the puzzle suddenly clicked into place. The woman's last name was Vasser -- the same last name as his missing friend, the one he'd come all the way out here to find. With sudden understanding, West turned his eyes toward the gravestone, which was now at eye level with him, but he already knew what name he'd find etched there. 'Claude Vasser'. His friend. He turned back to the woman.
"Hello, Max. Funny... As I recall, the last time we met I saved your butts from a world of trouble," he said as genially as he could manage.
"Sure, after you got us into it!" retorted Max. "What the hell are you doing here, anyway?"
"I've come looking for your father. I didn't expect to find you here extending the fist of welcome." That last was said with a very carefully measured dose of sarcasm. He didn't want to do anything to antagonize the woman. He stood up and fastidiously patted the dust from his pants.
West had first run into Max Vasser and her wing commander, Lee Carter, months ago. The two women, members of Starfleet's Banshee starfighter squadron, had been on a mission to thwart the evil criminal Vincent Kelly and his Jelly Brain masters, and West had helped out a little. He'd gotten along great with the Banshees, especially Lee Carter, but for some reason Max had taken an instant dislike to West, though he couldn't imagine why. Women always found him irresistible.
"If you're here to see my father, you're a little late, West," said Max testily. "My father's been dead for twenty years."
"I got a subspace message from him yesterday."
"That's impossible!" spat Max.
West reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew the scrap of paper that held Claude Vasser's enigmatic message and waved it in front of Max.
She snatched it from his hand and read the brief contents out loud: "'Press your luck with the angels. C.V.'" She thrust it back at him and said, "What kind of idiotic nonsense is this? This can't possibly be from my father."
West shrugged. "I have no idea what it means, but I do know it's from your father. What I don't understand is how someone whom you say has been dead for twenty years can send me a subspace email."
Max shook her head. Her eyes caught the last dying rays of the setting sun and flashed like two miniature supernovae. "I have no idea what you're talking about, West. This is obviously another one of your crazy schemes just like the last time we met. That time you almost got Commander Carter killed with your idiotic plans, but I'm not falling for it, whatever you're up to! And just how the hell do you know my father anyway?" she demanded.
"We were partners," replied West. "We worked for Starfleet Intelligence. We were good friends, but we had a... falling out, I guess you could say. That was twenty years ago. We lost touch and I never knew what became of Claude," he said looking at the gravestone.
"What are you talking about?" retorted Max, her voice thick with ridicule. "My father worked three-hundred-sixty days out of the year on a tramp freighter hauling quadrotriticale. I hardly ever saw him -- just a lousy recorded message on my birthdays -- and then he was killed by Son'a renegades when I was nineteen years old. I never got to know him, and now he's gone, so don't give me any talk about Starfleet Intel and secret missions!"
"No, I suppose you wouldn't know the truth," mused West. "But either someone sent me this message to lure me here, or else your father is really still alive and is asking for help."
"Well in that case, I'm coming along, if only to prove you wrong. And when I do wind up proving you wrong, I'm gonna pound your head in for slandering my father, so don't even think about trying to stop me!"
West broke into a lopsided smirk. "I wouldn't dream of it, sweetheart!"
"And don't try any funny stuff, either," warned Max. West affected a wounded look. "This is strictly a business relationship."
"You got it, babe," said West, rapscallion smirk still firmly in place.
"And the next time you call me 'babe' or 'sweetheart', you're losing some teeth."
West wasn't listening anymore. Claude Vasser's grave marker had reclaimed his attention. He bent down for a closer inspection. Above the etched name was a pair of winged angels. They were carrying a stone tablet between them, and on the stone tablet was carved a single symbol -- the Greek letter omega.
West's breathing quickened. Could Claude have found it after all, after they'd parted ways? Had he taken it to the grave with him? Or was this all an elaborate ruse?
"What are you looking at?" demanded Max.
"What does this symbol mean to you?" asked West pointing to the Greek letter.
"Omega," replied Max. "It was the name of the freighter he worked on, the Omega Orionis."
"Omega Orionis," repeated West thoughtfully. There was no such freighter, of course, since Claude never actually worked on a freighter -- that was just the cover story perpetrated by Claude for his young daughter's sake. So was the name another clue? West had his suspicions. He had a sudden thought. Press your luck with the angels. He applied his thumb to the little carven tablet between the angels and shoved, and to his mild surprise the stone gave way! He was instantly rewarded with the sound of stone grating on stone from around the backside of the headstone. Both he and Max looked, and saw that a rectangular section had pushed out about an inch above the surface in which it was embedded. Max wrapped her fingers around the protrusion and yanked.
She held the rectangular stone in her hands, astonishment plain in her eyes -- astonishment that something in which West was involved was actually more than just a figment of his demented imagination.
"May I?" asked West, holding out his hand.
Max handed him the stone and looked on with growing curiosity (despite herself) as he turned it over and around inspecting the different sides, but her confidence quickly faded when he held it up to his ear and shook it like a kid trying to figure out what was inside his birthday present.
"What the hell are you doing?" she said in disgust.
"It's hollow. There's something inside," replied West. He bent down and placed the stone on the ground. A quick scrounge yielded a fist-sized rock, which he picked up. Then, before Max could protest, he brought the rock down on the stone rectangle with shattering force. The brick cracked, and a jet-black something peeked through the wreckage from the hollow inside.
Both Max and West reached for the little rubble pile. West's hand came away with another small slip of paper only because Max had snagged the black object first. The thing was colored a black so inky black that it seemed to actually suck in all the light from the air around it. It didn't seem to be so much a solid rectangular box as much as a box-shaped absence. But as Max and West looked on, they could begin to see shapes forming inside the black void that was the box's surface. They swam around just on the edges of perception so that they couldn't really be sure they actually saw them, but then a few solidified.
Max gasped. "I recognize those symbols!" she exclaimed breathlessly. I saw them on the planet on the other side of the Black Gate. It's the writing of the Ancients!"
West's eyes widened in amazement. Claude did it! He actually found it! he marveled silently. He opened his mouth to speak, but froze when he saw Max suddenly go stiff, like a she-wolf sensing predators nearby.
In a lightening-quick burst of motion, Max grabbed West by the lapels, and, ignoring his surprised cry of outrage, heaved him bodily over the top of Claude Vasser's grave marker and slammed him into the ground before diving on top of him herself. West felt a violent whump in the pit of his gut as an explosive shockwave slammed into him. A thunderous boom pounded his ears and a spray of gravelly shrapnel stung his face. The blast tumbled Max off his back. He scrambled to his feet, forgetting for the moment the indignity of being planted face-first in the dirt by a woman, and peered over the top of Claude's marker. A smoking crater three feet across marked the spot where he had been standing only moments before.
"How did you know?" he demanded of the woman crouching by his side.
Max flashed a quick look around the side of her father's tombstone, trying to spot their attackers. She felt at her waist for her accustomed sidearm but her hand came up empty. "Damn!" she groused. "Didn't think I'd need my phaser here." She spared West a quick moment of her attention. "I'm an esper, remember? Who the hell is shooting at you?"
"Me?!? What makes you think they're shooting at me?" exclaimed West indignantly.
"Because you're you," was Max's snide rejoinder.
West decided not to argue the point, though he strongly suspected the Ancients' black box was the reason for the sudden hostilities, and not his own, unique charms.
A bright lavender energy beam streaked out of the darkness and struck the ground near the first crater, blowing another hole in the landscape and showering West and Max in more dirt.
West had had enough; it was time for a strategic retreat. He searched the ground for another rock and found one. He counted to two, then lobbed it high overhead in the opposite direction from where he had parked the Rocinanté.
The rock landed with a racket of snapping branches in the middle of a thicket of brambles, and a second later the sound of running boots reached his ears. He grabbed Max roughly by the arm, made extra sure she still clutched the black box in her hand, and hauled her ungently to her feet after him. "Come on!" he urged, and ran off through the graveyard towards his ship.
It didn't take their unknown attackers long to discover West's trickery, and before the pair had even gotten to the old graveyard gate the lavender energy beams were blowing more holes in the scenery all around them. The night's darkness was torn apart with staccato flashes of hellish light.
West and Max had just enough light to see the graveyard fence, which they leapt like a pair of Olympic sprinters. Far ahead, the shadowy bulk of the Rocinanté still seemed a lightyear away.
As she ran, Max dodged and weaved through the energy bolts with uncanny precision thanks to her esper ability, and West did his best to follow her lead -- he knew enough not to look a prescient horse in the mouth -- but his foot caught on a tough bramble and he went sprawling flat on his stomach.
"West!" shouted Max. Braving the zipping energy blasts, she dashed back and hauled the wheezing man to his feet. A well-aimed shot streaked out of the shadows behind them and grazed West's left arm. He cried out in agony as the merest touch of the beam fried clothes and flesh alike, fusing them together in a horrifying mess. "West!" cried Max again. "Are you all right?"
"Still alive," West managed to grate out between clenched teeth. He pushed back the red haze of pain and let the woman yank him to his feet by his good arm and forced his feet to follow her. Behind them, he could hear gruff voices calling to each other. The owners of those voices were still hidden in deep shadow amongst the tombstones, but he recognized their accents all too plainly. The knowledge lent impetus to his flight.
West detached himself from Max's grasp and fumbled at his belt for his communicator. His thumb automatically found the emergency switch.
To his relief, he could hear the whirr of servo-motors ahead from where he knew the Rocinanté lay waiting. A few seconds later, a racket like the sound of ten-thousand golf balls hitting a tin roof slammed into his ears and the air was suddenly full of hot lead and glowing tracers from his ship's autocannon turrets. The ground ten yards behind West and Max exploded upward in a solid wall of dirt as it was churned by the torrential anti-personnel fire. Angry cries of outrage erupted as their pursuers were stymied by West's primitive yet effective defenses.
The last few yards to the Rocinanté were the longest of West's life, but with Max's help he staggered up the boarding ramp in his ship's underside. He slapped the 'close' switch on the wall beside the entrance and collapsed on the cargo hold floor.
"Rocinanté! Lift off! Full thrust!" he shouted.
Something somewhere beeped compliance, and the rumble of engines suddenly echoed through the empty hold. West felt the deck lift under him. Beside him, still on her feet, Max grabbed hold of a support beam. She looked at West questioningly. Shouldn't you be at the controls? was the unspoken question written on her face.
West groaned and got up. He waved off Max's help and passed through the sliding hatch out of the cargo hold into the forward part of the ship, carefully favoring his injured arm. At the end of a short, angled corridor, they came to the cockpit. He dropped heavily into the pilot seat and Max took the copilot position to his right. Outside the front windows, the sky was rapidly darkening and the stars becoming sharper as the Rocinanté climbed away from Serenity.
Multicolored patterns of light played across West's face as he studied the sensor readouts, and after a minute he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
"No sign of pursuit -- for now," he breathed.
back to TOC