Herown era.

  This was his home now, this time and this place.

  His little room was in what was left of the ship’s former holodeck, still mostly intact. He liked it for its size and hidden ventilation ducts, but mostly for the fact that its entrance had been so fused with wreckage and the ground that it couldn’t now be navigated by any but the smallest of the big insectoids.

  He needed that privacy in order to give his stealth apparatus a rest or to repair it if need be. And he needed it to remind himself that he was not, in fact, an Oracle or a seer, but a man, the student of his Prophets, servant of these Children of the wrathful god Erykon.

  After some months, when the first of his acts as their shepherd began to bear fruit, he woke up in a cold sweat with images of unfulfilled paradoxes in his mind.

  Through Tik’ik, whom he had taken to calling Yujae, the word in her language that meant “vessel,” he had brokered the first merger of two formerly rival clans into what he hoped would one day become the Guardian caste. She called him Spirit Guide and never wavered in her devotion to him and his requests.

  He could never truly remove the Orishan adherence to hierarchy, certainly not with the limited time available to him, but he could shape it. He could bend it into a configuration that didn’t lead to constant bloodshed and useless destruction.

  He had sent Tik’ik back to them to celebrate and to iron out some of the finer details-how many female fighters to breed with how many Weaver males, how many larvae the new superclan could support and remain healthy. How much territory they could use before infringing on their nearest neighbor. What to do when they inevitably did.

  She had been happy to go, though still clearly puzzled at his ultimate goals. He hadn’t cured her of prostrating herself before him yet either, but he would eventually. He had been happy to see the back of her if only for a few days so that he could relax and update his star charts and logs.

  Then the thought crept in. Just after his evening supper of what the locals called heart beetles, just before he actually dropped off to sleep, he thought-

  If, as he had tried to do, Modan had been sent back to the proper era with the necessary tools and information to prevent Titan’s coming here, shouldn’t the wreckage have vanished? In fact, he himself should not be here, as he would never have had a reason to enter the shuttle.

  He’d never enjoyed paradoxes, and this one was no exception. The only way he could resolve it was to assume she had failed and that everything would play out as it had before, despite his effort to save his friends.

  The thought depressed him deeply, and for a time, when Tik’ik came to call, he couldn’t be bothered to see her except to send her away again. What good was his plan, his sacrifice, if his friends could not be saved?

  He took to wandering through the wreckage in the early mornings, the time when the Orishans were mostly sluggish or asleep, identifying bits of the wreckage and remembering moments or people that were somehow linked with them in his mind.

  There was the broken and scorched galley table where he and his friends had debated ethics and science and everything that lay between.

  There was the charred remains of a computer console from one of the research labs in which he’d spent so many happy hours.

  There was a section of the wall of the bridge that had contained the turbolift, still nearly pristine somehow though mostly buried in the dirt. He could see the edge of the dedication plaque.

  Suddenly he had to have it. He needed something from his time that wasn’t tarnished or burnt or somehow cannibalized to serve his mission.

  Unmindful of the potential danger, he began to claw at the earth around the plaque. The soil of Orisha was more coarse than on other worlds, less apt to come apart with only the use of fingers, and this was no exception.

  It quickly became clear that if he wanted that plaque, he was going to have to get a tool and dig it out.

  His hidden room and the tool kit were on the far side of the crash site, nearly a kilometer away. If he went back now he couldn’t return until the following morning for fear that some passing scout would hear or smell him and come to investigate.

  He’d had a close call already when he’d set up his lavatory and bathing facility in the remains of one of the large cargo drums. He had spent two hours pressed into the interior of the small bubble at the top of the drum while the intruder wandered around the crash site attempting to isolate the new and unusual scent. He did not want a repeat performance.

  He cast around for something with an edge that was sharp enough for digging and yet would not be so jagged that he would slice up his hands using it.

  He settled on a nearby bit of plasteel that had once been part of a chair or perhaps a section of cable tubing. He looked it over quickly to ensure it wouldn’t splinter and then, literally, dug in.

  When he finally pulled it free, he was amazed at what he found inscribed on the plaque. A broad smile spread across his face as he reread it for the fourth time, and presently he began to laugh.

  The Prophets had a wonderful sense of humor: it was robust and subtle and full of lessons. Later, when he thought about the other meaning of the words on the plaque and the deaths of the hundreds who had sailed under its banner, he wept as well.

  He hung it the next evening, just beside the innermost entrance to his little garret where he would see it every day, coming or going.

  He needed to see it, he realized. It gave him strength somehow, even though the authorship of the inscription was unknown to him.

  The words were simple and powerful and they gave him hope.

U.S.S. CHARON

LUNA CLASS

STARFLEET REGISTRY NCC-80111

UTOPIA PLANITIA FLEET YARDS, MARS

LAUNCHED STARDATE 56980.2

UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS

  And then, below the names of the beings behind the creation of the ship, the ship’s motto:

ONLY SEEK, AND YOU SHALL FIND.

  He would never know for sure how Modan’s journey had ended. He would never have proof that she had returned, safe and sound, and used what he’d given her to help save Titan. He would never have that confirmation, nor any knowledge whatsoever of the events transpiring in what was now, for him, the distant future.

  Maybe Modan would not succeed. He chose to believe she would. Maybe Titanhad not survived this ordeal as it had its many others. He chose to think it had. Maybe Orisha would finally be consumed by the forces unleashed by the thing they thought was god. He chose to believe they wouldn’t.

  He chose these things because they were the only choice. The Prophets had guided him this far, and they would guide her and them too, whether or not any of them believed it.

  He had no tangible evidence of this, no empirical finding to hold up in front of a peer review, but he didn’t need it.

  He had faith.

THE VOYAGES OF THE

STARSHIP TITAN

WILL CONTINUE IN

STAR TREK: DESTINY

COMING IN OCTOBER 2008

About the Author

  Geoffrey Thorne is the prize-winning author of the short story “The Soft Room” in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds VIand the equally prize-winning “Concurrence” from Strange New Worlds 8. His other Star Trektales, “Chiaroscuro” and “Or the Tiger,” appeared in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine-Prophecy and Changeand Star Trek: Voyager-Distant Shores, respectively.

  He has contributed installments of Reality Cops: The Adventures of Vale and Mist, a web serial from Phobos Entertainment, as well as being the creator and executive producer of the critically acclaimed original web series The Dark(thedarklines.blogspot.com), and he’s a contributor too.