Chapter One
“I have to go back,” Stephanie declared.
Agreed, said the Morgana’s presence in her head.
“Only you?” the Ebon Knight snarked, “or do you think you might need the others?”
She startled a laugh out of the young woman at the table who was about to sip her coffee. The Witch’s expression lightened but only for a moment.
“What are you trying to say, Ebony? Of course, I’ll wake the others. But…not yet.”
Again, the cold, dark voice agreed. Yes, not until we have a better idea of what we face and what we need.
“I think I’ll need them all, Morgana,” she informed her.
That’s as may be, but we do not need them yet. The Teloran within was adamant.
“Who died and put you in charge?” she demanded.
I know what it’s like to lose your world to time, the ancient witch reminded her.
With a sigh, she had to acknowledge that this much was true. She couldn’t even challenge her about knowing what it was like to lose a friend. The entity she allowed to remain within equaled her on that too.
Exceeds, the Morgana informed her, but that is a count you don’t want to win. At least you still have your body.
Again, it was something she couldn’t argue. When Stephanie had visited Telor with the hope of returning the Morgana to her corporeal form, they’d discovered it had deteriorated too far to be recovered. Merely removing it from the magical stasis the Teloran had put it in had made it crumble to dust.
Rather than see her die completely, she had continued to share her mind with the woman. It wasn’t easy having a millennia-old alien witch inside her head, but it was that or kill the being who’d fought to keep more than one world safe from the power-hungry dictator who had ruled Telor.
They ruled it no more, but the world the Morgana had grown up in was gone…and so were all the people she’d grown up with. Even the long-lived Telorans didn’t live forever.
“I’m sorry.” She drained her cup and crossed to the dispenser for a refill.
There is no need, her mental companion told her. You did what you could and now, we must find another way to free you of me.
“It’s not like that,” Stephanie protested, and when the Teloran chuckled, her dark laughter escaped the girl’s lips.
The ship was not impressed.
“As I am not privy to what is going on your head,” she protested, “would you mind telling me what you saw to make you believe you must return? Last time we spoke, you thought it best for your world if you did not return to fuel its politics.”
“That was a mistake,” she stated.
“How do you know?” Ebony challenged. “You have just woken—and not very well, I might add. You have no data to—”
She turned and leaned on the counter with her coffee in her hand. “Becca is dead.”
A small silence followed as the ship accessed the files.
“Your friend?” she asked.
“My best friend,” Stephanie corrected and took a sip.
“I thought Todd was your best friend.”
“My best girl friend.”
“I do not understand.”
“Becca was the only girl at school who accepted me for who I was—and there are many things you don’t want to talk about with the boys in your life. Besides, I wasn’t in love with Todd, then. He was simply a nice guy I knew.”
The Morgana snorted.
Stephanie rolled her eyes.
“Becca and I shared all kinds of things—our dreams, our hopes for the future—” Her voice caught and her eyes darkened. “I saw her name on a plaque—”
“That does not mean she is dead.”
“The plaque was on a stake and formed a cross standing in a cairn of stone.”
Ah… The Morgana’s voice held a world of understanding.
The Knight was slower to grasp the relevance as she had to reference the significance of cairns and crosses in the few seconds of silence that followed.
“I…see,” she acknowledged when she found it. “Did you see a ceremony?”
“No, only the cross but the voice that called her name—” She stopped and her eyes filled with tears when she recalled the agony in that single cry. “I didn’t know she had a son.”
“A son?” the Knight asked. “How do you know?”
“Well, it was too young to be anything else. It sounded…” She shrugged. “It sounded young, okay?”
She drained the coffee with a grimace and turned to the dispenser for more. “We have to go back.”
“At least it is ‘we’ now,” Ebony acknowledged.
But not without more information, the Morgana repeated and Stephanie sighed.
“Ebony, can you get me someplace where we can find out more?” she asked.
“I can, but I will need my crew.”
The Witch sighed again. “How many of your crew?” she asked. “Because I don’t want to wake all of them. Not until we know more.” She waved a hand at the empty mess around her. “Think about it. Can you imagine what their reaction will be when they find out they’ve been away for more than twenty years? Many of them had families to get back to, remember.”
“That is a matter better left to the captain,” the Ebon Knight told her primly. “But I agree that we should not wake them all at once.” She paused, then asked, “Are you sure you will need to intervene on Earth?”
Her face hardened. “If Becca is dead, I can only assume things have gone horribly wrong at home.” Her voice broke. “She should have been safe.”
“A number of scenarios could have resulted,” the Knight informed her gently. “We intended to monitor it, remember?”
Stephanie sniffed. “I remember.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why were we gone so long, Knight?”
“There appears to have been a malfunction in the drives,” the ship informed her stiffly.
“And?” she pressed.
“A fluctuation in the magical energy as we transitioned, to be precise—a pocket of nMU at the transition point sent us off course in transition space.”
“Meaning?”
“We skipped along the edge of the wrong dimension and ended up somewhere that hadn’t been mapped,” the Knight admitted reluctantly.
“And you couldn’t retrace your steps?”
“Not quickly. It took the engines several skips before I could vent the nMU, so it took me much longer than I wanted to reach anywhere I had a star chart for.”
“And the crew?” she asked.
“They were in their pods as I made the final approach,” the ship replied. “Captain Rawlins trusted me to make the jump on my own.”
The disappointment in the Ebon Knight’s voice was palpable. If she’d been human and not in a battle cruiser’s body, Stephanie might have hugged her.
“It’s not your fault, Ebony.”
“I’m not sure the captain will see it that way.”
She pressed her lips into a firm line. “She’ll have to. You did your best in a difficult situation.”
Morgana, is…can the nMU have been an attack? she asked.