(This story takes place during the events of of "Forever and Always")

There comes a time just once a life

When everything just comes out right

When all the heartache you had seen

Will disappear just like a dream

With you I let my heart run free

And it returned faithfully

And now one life comes from two souls

And now two halves become two wholes

With those words, glittering confetti exploded from cannons and filled the overcast afternoon outside The Manor at Cliffside, an upscale restaurant of Grecian and Roman design on the edge of Grandstorm proper. A three-piece band welcomed the awed gasps with a joyous, energetic melody punctuated by driving rhythms which only one person could create.

Dragon, Wolf and Tiger practically filled the small stage with their presence while a dozen white-robed, barefoot children raced past them, carrying baskets of flower petals and giddily tossing handfuls onto a long white carpet. Voices rose in delight, as Merlin and Samantha Sinclair entered the reception hall, he in a black and white suit and she in a shimmering, billowing satin gown decorated with a misty web of wrought tulle dancing like a gypsy over her cascading hair.

At the head of the reception-line stood a quietly proud Master Tristan, beaming in regal attire, flanked by his wife and a pair of Silloni who served as his personal guards. On the other side, King Aris and Princess Tinara cheered their friends as a pair of Tanager aides tended them. Samantha happily broke from her husband to accept her master's embrace while Merlin was seized in an ecstatic hug by the princess. The pair rejoined one another on the carpet as a shower of confetti washed over them as they progressed. Patch and Pockets looked totally unreal in matching tuxedos instead of their trademark coveralls and Renny and Taro stood as a couple in blue and violet, respectively. Sparky and Roland, Holly Harken, crew, friends and family, and even Arktanis had been able to take time away from his studies to attend. A group of children, all Tanthean house pages, danced and leapt between the cheering adults, their infectious laughter brightening the already-exultant event.

Merlin and Samantha arrived at the small archway wreathed in garlands and bells—symbols of new love on this world—and posed for photographs and praises from the collected attendees.

Samantha Sinclair beamed with joy, grateful and somewhat awed by the attention of so many important people at her wedding. It had been a long time coming and fraught with many setbacks. The years she had spent with Merlin had been full of many adventures and much heartbreak. But this, she knew, was the only way it could possibly have come to fruition.

When all this died down, the new couple stepped down from the archway and proceeded toward the tiered cake, which was now surrounded by the Tanthean pages. The children were looking at the mountainous confection in various stages of have not-eaten-in-a-week, patiently waiting for the first cut.

At this moment, a long, sleek cruiser arrived beside The Manor. Merlin's gaze momentarily fell on it as three—four—five black-suited human heavies in official-looking suits poured out from it and moved toward the rear door. Samantha felt his hand tense for a moment and her smile faltered a bit.

"I have a bad feeling," Merlin whispered to her. "You entertain the guests for a few minutes. I'll take care of this."

Samantha had barely registered what had happened when she saw it.

Victor Faltane had emerged from the cruiser.

The human opened his arms with a bright smile, "Sorry I'm late! Traffic was insane!"

Merlin Sinclair snatched Victor Faltane by the collar, but only for an instant before the heavies broke them apart and seized Merlin by his own collar, drawing the astonished attention of the party guests.

"You!" Merlin snapped. "What are you doing here?!"

Faltane's expression faltered. "Obviously you aren't happy to see me." He gestured toward a small antechamber on the side of the cathedral. "Let's go inside and talk."

The door slammed behind Merlin as he regarded the human with a sneer on his lip, the sounds of revelry outside slowly, tenuously, reviving after the loud confrontation moments before. "You dare come here! After what you've done?!"

Faltane stared back blankly, eyes momentarily glancing toward the shadow of a secret service agent standing outside the shaded window. "What are you talking about?"

Merlin crossed the room, struggling out of his jacket, ready for a fistfight. "I know all about you! And Intergalactic Aid, and the Kastans, and all of it!" he practically sputtered.

"What?" Faltane stood, hands open, facing him openly. "IA was a charitable venture and I tried to negotiate with the Kastans to end the hostilities. What are you talking about?!"

"You hired Sagan to try to destroy us!" Merlin moved only inches from the bantam human, his breath hot on the bare skin of Faltane's face and his blood surging in his veins. The rush of vengeance filled his mind like a tsunami ready to break across a seafront village.

"I," Faltane paced his words, "hired Sagan? What, the pirate?"

"Yes," Merlin growled, his voice low and dangerous now.

"The one you killed—what, two, three years ago?"

The moment hung in the air as Merlin tried to gather his thoughts. For some reason he could not put his finger on, the time lapse meant something. "It's been you all along! The problems we've been facing and fighting, the attack on Fyn, the Siilv war!"

Faltane knitted his brow, "Merlin… what are you talking about?"

"She told us everything!" the wolf seized the human by his collar and slammed his back against the nearest wall, fists pressing into his chest as he saw Faltane's countenance fall.

"It would really help," Faltane ventured, "if I knew who you are talking about and where 'she' got the stories you are apparently so upset about."

Merlin snarled, thrusting his hands slightly forward before releasing the human and storming several feet away to keep himself in check. He knitted his brow and ground his teeth, the insolence—the arrogance!—of Victor Faltane demanding an explanation of his own actions!

"Khepri Mandisa," Merlin began. "Ring any bells?"

"Not a one," was the response as the senator gathered his dignity in straightening out his dinner jacket.

"She was the medic on Sagan's cruiser, the Basilisk."

"I'm still waiting for the part that has anything to do with me," Faltane continued. "You want to get to the point?"

"She told us everything. How you are actually much older than you look, that you kidnapped Sagan as a child, tutored and tortured him, how IA was just a front for your true, criminal activities!"

"Uh-huh. And how did she gather all this knowledge?"

"She was Sagan's lover before we destroyed the bastard! He used her skills and treated her like a whore with his pack of butchers and killers. She told us everything last year on Fyn! You're nothing but a bloody murderer!"

"I see. So the former girlfriend of a man you killed years ago told you, last year, that—what? I'm responsible for all the major troubles that have cropped up for not just you, but the PA in general, in the last half-decade?"

"Yes!" The word was quick to his tongue, but immediately after uttering it, he realized how little sense it actually made.

"Well," he sighed, "how do I respond to that?"

"I," Merlin stopped in his mental tracks. How would a person respond to that?

"Well as far as being older than I look, I'm quite flattered that anyone would think so and I'm sure you would as well, no matter if it came with an accusation of attempted genocide. As for the rest, I'd love to see how you think I fit all of this into a schedule that's already so packed I have to make appointments to see my mother. Hell, I'd love to see her train of thought in coming to those conclusions. Even if it was exciting pillow talk, this is Sagan. He created quite a few stories about himself to amp up his own reputation. Pirates are known to do that to drive fear into the hearts of those they plunder. And so do their subordinates."

"She told us you were Sagan's master and that after his death, you set Var Briggs against us in an effort to locate my brother, Lucas."

"Uh-huh, and Var Briggs would be…?"

"Sagan's second-in-command at the time of his death, and his successor after that. Khepri told us that even after Sagan's death, Briggs wouldn't let her go."

"Does that make any sense to you, Sinclair?"

"What?"

"Imagine her position. You have a woman you've used and abused over the years. Do you trust her with your health, the health of your pack of butchers and killers, or submit to her hands when you are helpless and about to die? A rebellious doctor is in a perfect position to use her skills as a weapon and end her captivity. All she had to do was administer the wrong dosage of a given drug or open instead of close a sucking chest wound. She could taint a supply of vaccine and wipe out everyone who stood in her way. But she didn't, am I right?"

Merlin's face twitched. He had never considered that.

"Thought so," Faltane continued. "Why didn't you kill her like you did the rest of the Basilisk crew?"

"She was protecting the children of the colony…"

"I see.  So you did kill the rest of them." The words fell from his tongue with no effort. "And you call me a murderer."

Merlin opened his mouth to speak, but Faltane continued, "So let me see if I get this straight. A person in a position of authority among your sworn enemies sells you a sob-story about not being a killer even though she's supported a band of killers for years on end, even though she had unlimited chances to escape. Then, in a situation where she knows she might get killed because you just massacred her shipmates, divulges a cockamamie story about wicked men in positions of power and their nebulous motives being the real architects of the destruction she and hers committed. Is that about right?"

Sinclair stood, struck by the simplicity of the explanation.

"Merlin," Faltane began, arching an eyebrow, "are you… an idiot?"

"Huh?" the wolf's lip curled at the ham-handed swipe. "No… we were… under a lot of stress at the time."

"Clearly, and were I in her position, I'd probably have done exactly the same thing. Come on! You're smarter than that! You and I have had our differences over the years, but this!" He stretched out his arms in exasperation, "This is ridiculous!"

Merlin stood in his place, stunned by the words he was hearing.

"I'm up for a position as Representative for Earth in the Alignment Senate! You have no idea what kind of deep-reaching background investigation is involved in that! If I'm going around being 'the maah-shtah!' for some sick band of stellar outlaws, wouldn't it would have been all over INN by now? You've made a spectacle out of your own wedding. You've assaulted me, dragged me in here, made threats and insinuations… if I wanted you dead, there are five guards," he gestured toward silhouettes outside the small room, "and all it would take is one cry."

Merlin's eyes shifted from Faltane to the windows and back, following closely with his claims. It was true—he had probably wrecked his own wedding for the sake of a vendetta that was now unsure.

 "You know," Faltane adopted a wounded expression, "obviously it was a mistake to come here. I overestimated you for so long, and I guess this is exactly what I deserve." He started toward the door, stopping only momentarily to fish a small packet out of a pocket and jam it into Merlin Sinclair's shirt pocket before whipping out into the purple sunset. Merlin saw his shadow immediately circled by bodyguards as he stormed off.

The wolf reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew the package. The ornate blue wrapping practically fell away to reveal a PA Bond certificate for ©10,000, opened two years ago and which would mature in the next two weeks.

Merlin Sinclair walked purposefully out, a wan smile across his face as he shoved the argument to the back of his mind and determined to make the most of the rest of the evening.

"What was that all about?" Tristan asked as the wolf approached him.

"A business disagreement," Merlin mumbled, "not a going issue right now."

"Uh-huh," Tristan replied, sipping from a glass of blue liquid.

"Honestly, I'd rather not talk about it."

"Of course not," Tristan grinned, throwing back his head and laughing heartily as the pair continued toward the wedding guests. "Is that all?!" the unicorn bellowed, slapping Merlin on the back. "You two need to stop making mountains out of molehills and get on with things, truly!"

Merlin managed to stifle his look of incredulity long enough to appreciate what he had just been granted, and took his new wife's hand. A glance from Tristan told her volumes of information and Samantha's face brightened in a practiced manner as the party resumed and the new couple cut into the cake and opened gifts.

"Let 'er go!" Charlie Einmann called, waving a thick hand at the man operating the crane overhead. A long, copper cylinder was released from an industrial transporter and allowed to slide with the weight of gravity down a metal sleeve, spiraling grooves along its surface gracefully spinning it into matching grooves inside the sleeve.

"That did it," Einmann reported into his vocator to the worker above. The foreman wrenched a grimy lever as the transporter moved away, and thick metal plating slid slowly over the cylinder, thick fingers locking it in place with a scrape and hiss of compressing air. Einmann pulled his observation platform back from the deposit site and watched with an eye for safety as the novice above relocated the transportation arm back into place. With a glad thumbs-up, he signaled the rest of the crew that it was time for a trip to the bar for something wet and something half-naked. However, there was one thing left to do before he could join them.

"The last regulator has been installed in the Prime, ma'am," he spoke into another channel on the vocator. "Me 'n the boys are heading to McGinty's."

"Roger that," came an authoritative, female voice. "I'll let the bigwigs know it's ready to roll."

Einmann left the observation platform with a swing and landed heavily on the iron grating of the third level, the next-to-highest in the construction bay nearly half a mile in diameter. Below, the crew was clearing out from around the newly-completed Prime-class starship. It was the latest in ultra-modern design and was already purchased. The copper energy conductors—three in all—would regulate energy flow throughout the ship. It was an amazing bit of engineering, focusing that much raw power through those cylinders, with a spider web of conduits and coils spreading over the inside of the ship. If he had read the specs right, this ship could generate shielding at roughly two hundred percent of the current levels. This Prime, called The Årynubis, was going to revolutionize the way space transport was done.

Abner Corwin sat bolt upright in his seat as he read the text splayed out on the screen before him. "What?!"

Don Alabaster, gulping down a bottle of water beside him and standing in a sweat-drenched one-piece athletic suit, started at the cry. "What is up?"

The bison gestured futilely at the screen before him. "Kurby. They just cancelled on us. Said they want to find other transportation for their contract."

"Aren't they up for renewal?" the cougar asked.

"Yeah, in two weeks. They have the option of letting us go then. Thing is that they don't give an explanation."

"They can get into all kinds of trouble for contractual violations, can't they?"

"Yes, and I told them so. Merlin has instituted a hefty penalty for breach of contract written into the new contracts, but we both know the expense in pursuing litigation would only drain his resources. Any final settlement will dwarf the expense of going after them. They're just cutting us loose here."

"Uhh… yeah. That pretty much leaves us to go on to our next assignment without a shipment."

"We were counting on that extra credit to make Argent's requested upgrades to the engines!"

"Well," Alabaster added, trying to console his boss, "it's not as if we really need the upgrades just yet."

"I know…" the bison brooded. "It's just that we were making book on having that leg up now that things are getting fiercer in the competition."

"Better contact the home office so they can cast around for some more business. Surely there's somebody out there who needs something taken from Ganis to Pomen so we won't travel empty?"

Corwin sat back in his chair, "Yeah, but I'm also going to call up Kurby and see what's going on with them. This can't be right—it's just not good for business. Theirs or ours."

Victor Faltane stepped out of his office and onto the floor where a maze of half-dividers wove a geometric tapestry at waist level across the room. Workers manned phones, computers, and tabulation machines, coordinating responses and dialing homes on their registers and speaking sweetly in a swirling miasma of sugarcoated solicitations. A group of investors stood nearby, watching a display on a vidscreen as he sidled up to one of the clerical workers with an air of aggravation.

"Janna, may I use your phone? Mine's on the phritz and this is important."

The girl agreed with a smile and left as Faltane began punching numbers. Telephones were antiquarian, but incredibly inexpensive to use when one had very simple information to convey.

"Hello," he said aloud in a determined voice, perhaps a little too loud than was appropriate next to the throng of investors. "I need to charter a transport vessel. Yes. No, I don't want to use Blue Horizon. They've become unpredictable and highly unreliable."

A muted sound of interest arose from the investors.

"Yes, get me a transporter I can rely on not to go off on a personal vendetta when it suits their needs or decide to give their cargo to charity."

Significantly more murmurs from the investors.

Faltane began to scribble on a sheet of paper. "Fine, they'll do. Thank you for that." He put the phone down and swirled confidently back into his office, closing the door before dropping the meaningless scribble on the crumpled paper down the waste chute.

With the touch of a few keys, the office windows went black and Faltane brought up the PA Travel and Commerce Agency, which required all professional companies and private businesses to list their projected interstellar plans. This allowed a central agency to de-conflict flights with one another, to track piracy, and maintain security across the expanse of the Alignment.

His finger crossed through his lush beard as Faltane scanned through manifests, examining the Blue Horizon, Mooncrest, and Hidalgo Sun's projected deliveries for the next several weeks, and adding a bookmark to keep them under surveillance in his private files.

The human reached to a holonet projector and inserted a thick, jagged key, turning it in a circle and causing the white holo-frame a dark orange—the sign that it was ready for a secure connection. Faltane entered a 17-digit code and waited for the connection to handshake with the other side, and go full secure.

After a buzz of static, a dark-furred feline face filled the now red holographic square. "Remind me again, why is it that you want to conquer the universe?" she gibed.

"Not the universe, just Argeia. Now that Brandt is undeniably bled dry, they are the only source of unrefined Siilv in the galaxy, and that door was slammed. But I'm prepared to take the next step in energy development as soon as we can get back in their sphere of influence."

"You're still chasing that legend, aren't you, Victor?"

"And once again, it's not a legend," he replied in an icy tone. "The Kastans can't be dealt with, they can't be bought, and I absolutely don't want them to know what they have—"

"According to your investigations, at least," the feline needled.

"According to those, yes. There's no reason to believe that they're untrue, anyhow. Argeia's energy signature is greater than the quanta of Siilv would register, and more chaotic than even an appropriate amount of that precious metal to warrant. No… there's something else there, and it's something we will need if we want to wrest control of the Alignment from Alexandrius. Earth should be the center, the very seat of the galaxy. And I aim to make it that."

"Whatever," she replied, her voice laced with sarcasm.

"Did you get those specs on the new Prime class ships that'll be shipping out soon?"

"Yes, the foreman called in a few hours ago and told me they were finished installing the last regulator. Einmann's a good man and he runs a tight crew, so we shouldn't have anything to worry about."

"Not at all," Faltane replied. "I trust you." He turned the key, signed off the transmission, and then collapsed back into his thick leather chair with a long exhale. His memory drifted back to that night six years ago when his emissary mission to Argeia—the beginnings of diplomatic relations with the Kastans—led him to discover a very peculiar aspect of the planet's superstructure. Either the felinoids were utterly unaware of it or had chosen to ignore it, but his survey team had found readings to indicate that the planet was not mere rock and ice, but had within its bowels an entirely new element as yet unfathomed on the periodic scale. What was more, it was active and shifting within. Seismic and volcanic readings out beyond Kastan cities showed this. The aliens only entered these remaining wild areas once a year for their primitive rituals, always after the rumblings subsided and lay dormant. What's more, the seismic activity seemed to correspond with the lunar phases of Argeia's second, smaller moon.

A knock at Faltane's door was followed by Janna's head appearing as it opened. "Mr. Faltane, the investors are ready for you now."

Faltane smoothed back his mane of light-brown hair, straightened his tie, and strode into the outer office to meet his campaign contributors once more before watching the election results in an hour.

"Cancelled?" Merlin breathed, rubbing his chin as he looked at the vidscreen.

"Cancelled," Sean Jones repeated. "Mussen closed up to us and didn't really explain why. Just said they wanted to pursue other avenues."

"And you spoke directly with Kelly Mussen on this?"

"I talked with the director of operations, the director of logistics, the legal department… they all had the same story. Odd thing is that they all said the same words in the same order every time."

"Talking points?"

"Scripted completely, like watching the Newsnet at election time: They all repeated exactly the same platitudes exactly the same way. This was a coordinated effort."

"We've had a running engagement with them for two years now," Merlin added.

Jonesy shrugged, "I mentioned that but they weren't interested. They said they were going to look for new charters even though our contract isn't yet expired."

"They're breaking a legal contract, though. I'll get our lawyer Jackson Wyatt on it and see what we can do legally."

"I already told them to expect a call from you," Jonesy added. "All three ships need upgrades if we're going to stay competitive with TranStar Shipping. We really don't need this kind of thing right now."

"No, we don't," Merlin finished, tapping a key and closing the communication. He had received a similar message from Corwin earlier, though they were able to secure a second, less lucrative charter for him.

Absently, Merlin Sinclair clicked on Newsnet and the widescreen display showed an attractive man in a suit, four windows, three scrolling tickers and a flashing advertisement for sexual enhancement. The presenter was going on about the highly-anticipated Prime class transport vessels coming out of the Faltane Company, the family enterprise of noted philanthropist Victor Faltane, on Earth.