[LEGACY VERSION] The Enemy of Time (Book 2 - The Kaireyeh Chronicles)

Chapter 36 - Damon

Damon couldn't fully hate someone he loved. The Edora Zivali that Barenin Lyr knew--that Alexi knew--wasn't the same person they had faced on Talina's ship. That Edora wasn't even genetically the same as Admiral Zivali. She was Aezthena, and she hadn't blended with her younger self like he and Barenin had or they would have felt an Aezthena presence here.

Damon wasn't Barenin, but he felt what Barenin felt. And what Barenin felt about his Edora was part of what Alexi/Barenin had been walling off from him, something deeply personal that spanned millennia. Something that was foreign and overwhelming to Damon.

Damon drew his walls so tight his mind went into overload. His senses blanked and everything outside of his own mind dimmed.

Who was he, really?

He wasn't Damon Morgan. His own name didn't fit anymore. Damon Morgan never spoke out of turn, never looked anyone in the eyes. Damon Morgan knew a version of Luc that was a lie.

He wasn't Barenin Lyr, either. He had Barenin's memories, but those were from a future that may or may not ever happen. Alexi's thoughts were accessible to him, they held a similar pattern to his, but they didn't feel the same as his own. Alexi could be so coldly cynical. And Alexi could overwhelm him with his own emotions, like he had done just now. But they weren't Damon's emotions. It wasn't what Damon felt at his core.

He'd claimed the Kynaston name, but he hardly knew who Damon Kynaston was, either. He was sure now it had been Barenin's intrusion on his mind that had forced him to decrypt. And then they'd melded identities and genetics into whatever strange parodies of themselves they had both become. How could Damon understand himself if Barenin had hijacked his life?

Damon felt Barenin prying at the edges of his walls and pulled them even tighter. No. Barenin could not have his thoughts right now, no.

Watch! Barenin shouted, and Damon jarred loose some of his hold. Senses returned, if dully. He was on the bridge, and he was supposed to be watching outside the ship for Aezthena.

Fear drove his thoughts into focus--then he sucked in a breath as he felt a growing pressure of Kaireyeh around him.

He looked to Barenin and his mind flipped fully back to the present as he replaced the mental Aezthena image of Barenin with the very human Alexi.

"It's strong enough that we're picking it up on sensors," Alexi said. Damon, I know I just wrecked havoc on you, I'm sorry, but you need to focus. He pointed to the front screens. "Scan out there."

Damon picked up glancing thoughts from Campa as he hurled his mind outward; that he'd neglected his duty, that this was the one reason he was on the bridge and he'd failed.

Damon felt the build of Kaireyeh lessen the farther out he scanned and he slowed, and then stopped. With his mind expanded, he saw everything immediately around the ship; the Kaireyeh surge was coming from the point of the ship itself.

He probed it cautiously with his thoughts. It didn't feel like a threatening presence. It was the calming, steady rhythm of the bones of the ship.

Then he sensed a surge of Kaireyeh in the space outside the ship, from the direction of Zivali's fleets. He flung himself outward again.

Kaireyeh rippled in pockets around Zivali's fleets, the ripples growing wider until they began to break like waves.

Alexi, he said.

"I see it."

Alexi grabbed his arm, fingers digging in. They knew what this was--the sense an Aezthena ship made before it emerged from the Kaireyeh tides.

"They're here," Damon said. Panic hit him, and unlike human panic, his thoughts gained painful clarity as they sped down lines of logic.

"Where?" Campa asked.

Damon opened his eyes again and looked at the front screens. Red zones bloomed on the charts with Edora's fleets, spreading like blood.

He sensed Aezthena minds and knew that they saw him, too. He didn't draw back; there would be no point. But he readied himself if they'd try to come on his ship again.

Campa hit her comm. "Kalec, this is Campa, we suspect the presense of--"

The front screens went blank.

Damon stared. The whole bridge crew stared.

"It's glitched," Oji said after a moment. "Campa, I'm on it."

But Damon could see the screens refreshing. There were deep, barely visible patches of red where the Eddies began their spill into normal space. The screens were functioning fine.

"Damon?" Campa asked. Her thoughts were screaming a panicked litany, but her voice was mostly calm. Mostly. "What happened?"

Luc, who'd been standing behind Damon and Alexi, stepped forward to grip the back of Oji's chair. "Hell. Was that the Aezthena? Did they just destroy Zivali's fleets?"

"Sir," the comm officer said, "Prince Chevani is asking--"

"No," Alexi said, turning to Luc. "That was a transport mesh. The Aezthena took her fleets with them into Kaireyeh. Into the Eddies."

Another moment of silence.

"Sir, Prince Chevani is--"

Campa thumbed hercomm. Her jaw tightened. "Yes," she said, in answer to Kalec's unheardquestion, "that was them." She glanced at Alexi. "They've taken Zivali into the Eddies." 

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