The Starlight Crystal by Christopher Pike

Author:Christopher Pike [Pike, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Epilogue

THE LONG TWILIGHT

I was twenty-five years old when we encountered

the Shamere warship off Delta-Pau, a blue-red

binary star system in the Hercules cluster. I was the

same age my mother had been when she left earth

in the Pandora. Of course, I remember that day,

and what followed: how it felt to die in a cold

hibernaculum. I even recalled her final musings

because she was right—she was not yet free. I was

not Alpha, but Paige. The same soul burned in me,

the same fire. The war was not over yet.

I left earth with my brother, Tem, fifteen years

after the departure of the Pandora, as an eighteenyear-

old, the same age my mother had been when

she left earth in the Traveler. We were minor

officers aboard a starship called the Virgo. Our

destination was the star system Ortega-6, in the

Felix Nebula. With time dilation, it took us two

159

years to arrive at our goal. But back on earth over

three hundred years had elapsed, and therefore the

earth was over a century dead. It was the first thing

I was told upon waking in my hibernaculum, but

naturally I knew of the disaster.

My memory was clear. I knew precisely where

the Shamere home planet was to be found. What

was left of humanity was grouping together to fight

off the Shamere. But it appeared, when I awoke at

Ortega-6, that we didn't stand much chance against

the enemy.

Throughout my adolescence, on earth, I had

kept my remarkable knowledge of science a secret.

I reasoned that we had only two weapons

against the Shamere: my knowledge of their technology

and their ignorance of the fact. I only

wanted to reveal what I could when I was in a

position to strike a devastating blow. As a result,

during my stay at Ortega-6—from the ages

of eighteen till twenty-one—I watched many

human ships being blown up for want of energy

beams and shields I could have built for them.

It was a hard test of my discrimination. I had

to keep focused on the bigger picture, as my mother

had.

But I must stop calling her that.

I am Paige, only Paige tells this story.

At the age of twenty-one I finally did reveal a few

secrets I had learned from my long-ago mind link

with the Shamere clone. But I didn't tell my

160

superiors everything, only enough to bribe my

way—four years later—into the captain's chair of

a small cruise ship called the Jubilee. People, male

or female, young or old, were promoted quickly in

those times if they were competent, and I was much

more than that. I made my brother, Tern, my

Number One, and the first thing we did was fly

straight into the arms of the enemy. My superiors

didn't want to give me the command for fear of this

exact thing. They had wanted to keep their budding

physicist superstar out of harm's way. But I had

been persistent.

The Jubilee was hardly armed for war. It

had flimsy shields and only one disrupter cannon.

In fact, when we encountered the Shamere warship,

we didn't have a single anti-matter torpedo

aboard. From the outside we appeared to be helpless,

which is the way I wanted to appear. I was

not unduly worried that we would be blown out

of the sky. As our war

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