Twilight

Shar’s eyes were open and looking at her. He resembled a corpse, with empty eyes staring without seeing from a face that had lost any trace of vibrancy, his blue skin ashen. Pry

Pry

Shar squeezed her hand, and she set the tricorder aside. He tried to speak with her, but his mouth made only small, smacking sounds. Pry

“Your eye,” Shar said, and she remembered the injury to her sclera.

“I’m fine,” she said. “It looks worse than it is.”

“What happened to you?” Shar wanted to know. “And to me?” Pry

“He’s fine,” she said flatly, anger welling within her. The emotion surprised her—not her negative feeling for Vaughn, but the sudde

Because he doesn’t deserve anybody’s concern,she concluded. Except that even she hoped for his continued well-being right now, since he was attempting to save four billion people. And even though she despised him, she did not wish him dead.

To Shar, Pry

“Will he have time?” Shar wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” Pry

“If Commander Vaughn can’t stop the pulse,” Shar said behind her, “then we’re going to die.” His voice, it seemed to Pry

“Shar,” she said, turning back to face him, “I’m working on repairing the shuttle’s transporter. Some of the primary circuits were destroyed in the crash, but both backups are relatively intact.” She explained Vaughn’s orders, that she should first try to fulfill the mission of stopping the pulse, and then one way or the other get Shar and herself as far away from the pulse as possible. “In a few days, Saganwill be repaired and Lieutenant Dax will send it down to rescue us.”

“If we live through the pulse,” Shar said.

“We’ll make it,” Pry

Shar rolled his upper body onto his left elbow, and looked over at her in a way that stopped her in mid-sentence. Color rushed into his face, patches of deep blue blooming on his cheeks and forehead, a dramatic contrast to the stark whiteness of his hair. Pry

“What?” She did not understand.

“My mother,” he said, and she realized that he had interpreted the word for her. Pry

“Your mother?” Pry

“Some part of her…” he said, and trailed off. “She made this worse.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Pry

“Just before we left Deep Space 9,” he said, “she brought my bondmates to the station.”

“Oh,” Pry

“She was trying to manipulate me into returning to Andor.” His right hand balled into a fist. “And she succeeded. I agreed to visit my bondmates on Andor when we get back from the Gamma Quadrant.” Shar lifted his fist a few centimeters and then brought the meaty part of it down onto the ground.

“Shar, you don’t have to think about that now,” she told him. “Listen, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Your mother—”

“I promisedto go back,” he said, yelling the word. “And when I don’t…” He looked away from her, his gaze drifting toward the ground in front of him, but the vacant look in his eyes told Pry

“Shar,” Pry

Shar punched once more, then stopped, his arm pausing as he raised it. Pry

“So this is what they mean by ‘Andorian fury,’” she said, glad that the soporific she had given Shar would keep him asleep for at least several hours. She stood up and went once more to the medkit, to retrieve what she would need to treat Shar’s new injury. It seemed almost impossible to credit the transformation she had just witnessed. Shar, normally quiet and reserved even in social situations, had changed in an instant into somebody she barely recognized. She had not felt threatened herself in any way, but the incident had still affected her.

This is Vaughn’s fault,she thought. He had left them here. Had left herhere. Again.

Again?she asked herself. Now I don’t even know what I’m thinking.She attempted to clear her thoughts as she returned to Shar’s side.