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| - Kalid monitored his ship's artificial intelligence and thought about the strange man who he now pursued. Kalid tried to keep from falling into a mindless rage as he thought about the fact that Set had murdered nearly the entire population of Flammis. Only Kalid, who happened to be off planet during the attack, and a few others, had survived. Kalid was having trouble thinking clearly. He could not control or repress his complex mix of feelings. He felt both depressed and angry at the same time. These dark moods seemed to be something that no spiritual technique could heal. Set's attack on Flammis had revived haunting memories of the last moments spent with his wife and he could not dismiss the pain that came from the fact that now he would never again see either her or his son again. He knew what he had to do; submit Set to the justice system, but he doubted that he could do that. Now it was personal. Kalid reflected on his long life of careful training in the control of his own mind, but now he was lost. This was a danger his Master had warned about: Kalid had allowed himself too much love of his relatives and the existence of such an external force with so much control over him was dangerous for a man like Kalid. Kalid had hoped that by coming to this star system he might be able to accomplish some damage control. The Grand Master of the Haldus Order Temple on Azur had reported to Kalid on the way Ketar's defense fleet had attacked Leone's spaceship. Because of the way Leone had used the Invocator to escape from Ketar's forces, it was clear that Ketar now understood that it was possible to cloak a spaceship. Kalid thought: Katar had prepared a lavish welcome for me on Azur, so it seems likely that Ketar had hoped that Leone would bring me to Azur. Almost certainly Ketar now associated cloaking with the Haldus Order. If so, then this was the worst breech of Haldus Order security ever. Kalid now had to act to repair the leak...it was unacceptable that anyone outside the order know that such technology existed. Kalid knew that the Spaceship Guild kept constant watch on the Haldus Temple of Esclagon. Kalid's hope had been that by going to Esclagon he might draw Ketar out of the Akara system and into the open, but then, somehow, Set had appeared! Kalid wondered if Set had been keeping a special watch on Sybil, but if so, how could anyone have followed them through hyperspace? If Set could use his telepathic powers to follow people through hyperspace then why had Set's spaceship come here, to Mars, rather than to Esclagon? Did The Futurist Party have spies in this star system? There were just too many unanswered questions. Now as he drew near to Set, Kalid needed to think everything thorough in a logical way; he could not afford to follow his desire for revenge, he needed to calm down. It had been easy for Kalid to track Set's approach to Mars, but now Set's relatively weak telepathic output was lost in the haze of telepathic output that surrounded Mars. Kalid suspected that Set had gone down to the surface of Mars, but he had no confidence that he could find Set down there. There were quite a few telepaths on Mars and all those other minds confounded Kalid's ability to lock onto Set's mind pattern. To do so would take Kalid's full powers of concentration, but the sadness that plagued his own mind was something he could not avoid. Kalid felt that he would eventually get past his great loss by using his advanced energy handling and relaxation techniques, but he did not want to use those methods at this time. He still needed to feel his losses, at least for a while, as any human would. It was something he had learned while being under training at the Order: he should not use his skills to overwrite his true feelings. If he did that then he would stop being a man...he would become some kind of robot. Master Kalid felt desperate, something he had not experienced since he was young. Kalid knew he had grown soft and he had come to rely on the comfortable fact that everything on his home world had been carefully controlled and peaceful. He had to change his patterns of thought and face the reality that now chaos was reigning. Set was completely out of his mind and nobody knew to what extent Set would let his madness continue to spread violence and death around the galaxy. Kalid took a deep breath and made a special kata in order to take some fresh energy and lead it to his mind. Kalid's mind was in a borderline state and he needed that energy to avoid falling apart emotionally. In addition to his desire to capture Set and maybe, indulge the illicit desire to take revenge on him, there was also the feeling of guilt for not having been able to protect Flammis. Some minutes before Set's attack on Flammis, Kalid had felt something. He knew that feeling very well, it was his sense of danger. He had a brief vision and could see his family in peril. At that moment, he understood that it was a vision from the future; they would be attacked. Kalid did not know when the attack would come and so he wanted to go back home as soon as possible, but he had hesitated for a few seconds. He recalled the vision and tried to judge if it might be a false vision, maybe a stray thought that was just triggered by stress. But no, he was sure: his mind never gave him false images of the world. He had really seen the future. With no further delay he had commanded his ship's AI to change course and go back to Flammis. He had departed from Flammis less than a day before, so it would not take long to return, but it was too late. Before he knew that, Kalid had tried to see more details of the impending attack. Kalid retired to his cabin and closed it hermetically. No sound and no light could enter the room so there was just the sound of his breathing. He had to quickly enter into a conscious REM state, he had no time for anything more. He put his mind in a blank state and performed all the energy forms in the correct order: those katas, taken from ancient martial arts, could put his mind in a special state of relaxation and trance. After that, he went to his bed and relaxed his muscles. He felt a strange sensation, the spaceship was entering hyperspace, maybe...it did not matter...all distractions must be dismissed from his thoughts. He then visualized the planet Flammis. After a moment, he could see Flammis directly with the eye of his mind. His mind penetrated the surface of the planet, found the under ground city and he could sense horror...the people of Flammis were being attacked by a spaceship. His vision blurred and he could only hear screams of terror and sense much pain. At that moment he recognized the death cries of some of his friends and relatives and that made him lose his concentration...he woke up. Kalid knew he was not really guilty for having failed to protect Flammis. He could not have gotten back to the planet in time to help, but he also knew he had left the planet for strange and unusual reasons. He would probably never know if he really needed to leave home just at that time, but he had sensed that Sybil was in danger and so going to Sakkara had become a special mission he felt he had to accomplish... or at least try to accomplish. Kalid knew that there is a reason why it is so hard to predict the future with any certainty: the future was constantly in the process of being created. Kalid's rational mind knew he could not have avoided his true fate, but his emotions told him otherwise. It was an unfamiliar dichotomy of mind for Kalid. He now knew his weak points, his emotions that he could not control, and he also knew that Set could exploited them. Set had crushed Kalid's mind discipline completely by slaughtering the population of Flammis. Now Kalid was rushing to confront Set on Mars... rushing blindly into a confrontation with Set which Kalid had been cautiously avoiding for months. Kalid tried to calm his mind. He was losing his self-control. Hate was something for weak minds, he knew that. But at that moment, his mind was cracked. He only wanted revenge... or justice, at the bare minimum. Kalid had underestimated Set and now he was dealing with the consequences for his failure. Now, almost a week had passed since the attack on Flammis and his anger was almost completely transformed from an initial raw reaction to a new stable mind set. What remained for Kalid's rational mind was the thought: Set was mentally disturbed and had been driven to homicidal rage by his own personal loss. However, while the red fire of anger had mostly faded from Kalid, his depression had grown stronger. On a rational level, he knew his life's mission and the Order were more important than his family or himself, but by losing his family he had lost all hope, everything he ever personally cared for on the emotional side of his mind. The centuries-old purpose of the Order was too abstract to truly motivate a man. Only one thing was moving Kalid's mind: the need to bring Set to justice. The Order was now of second importance. Kalid knew it was temporary, but who could say when he would recover his faith in the Order... the Order that could not save Flammis, in spite of all its power? Kalid tried to think rationally about the matter and wondered if he would have enough time to plan his "justice" or would he be forced to act instinctively...which would be dangerous now with his emotions still so raw. Really, the Order did not matter anymore. And not only the Order... after the death of his relatives, his life would have no purpose. Long ago, in the years after Flammis had been attacked the first time, the Order had believed that it could safely return and hide under the veil of the green clouds. With time, it had come to seem like a great joke, hiding an important base for the Order right under the nose of those who had previously attacked Flammis and turned it into a Green planet. He had lived to protect Flammis, but he had failed, completely. Now what good would he do in the world? Was it even possible for a man like Kalid to use revenge as a reason to keep on living? Truly, he was sickened by his own desire for revenge. He searched his soul and found no other reason... or maybe there was one: to protect all remaining members of the Haldus Order from extinction. It seemed that Set's attacks were premeditated and becoming increasingly daring. Maybe Set now wanted to destroy the whole Order and not only those with telepathic powers. In that case, there was a reason for him to live... he decided that he would not feel guilty for Set's murders again, ever. For a moment, Kalid entertained another idea: self-sacrifice. Maybe it could be arranged that Set would only try to kill him. Maybe Kalid could make a deal and let Set kill him, but, no, Set would not do that. There was nothing special about Kalid, Set would happily destroy Kalid first then move on to exterminate the entire Order....even complete innocents like Sybil. And anyhow, it was a promise. He had promised Jeremy he would always protect Sybil. Kalid vowed that he would not fail Jeremy as he failed his family. For a few minutes Kalid watched the surface of Mars and he marveled at the progress being made in terraforming this world. It was an inspiring sight. He could remember how Mars had looked so lifeless when he first saw it, but now its surface was sprinkled with small lakes and wide regions of green growing plants. Well, mostly it was still cold-resistant algae in lichens, but it was a start. Then his thoughts relentlessly returned to his troubles and he again felt repentance for not having been able to prevent the deaths of his family members. He felt as if he was sinking in his own mind and that his life was not worth living....but then, slowly, his thinking shifted out of this rut and somehow he knew these feelings were not new. He told himself: yes, I just keep thinking obsessively about the same things. And it did not matter either. His life had no purpose... He fatalistically thought: maybe my only remaining purpose is to be a martyr for the Order. If he could have only saved his f... but what was he remembering now? How could have he forgotten about that? Yes...he had already felt these things before...years before. Kalid felt a powerful sense of something unusual like déjà vu. Finally he recognized the source. It had been at his first meeting with Sybil... when he tried to enter her nervous system. At that time he had not been able to understand what had happened. At that session with Sybil he had been deeply shocked by his failed attempt to explore Sybil's mind and by the way she had escaped his created dream, but now he finally realized that at that time, so many years ago, a message had been sent ahead to the future...to now. At that time he had sensed the future and he had wanted to sink in his sadness, oblivious to life and the world. There had been no way, back then, for Kalid to know that he had glimpsed the future...this very moment. No, this was no typical deja vu experience, it was a telepathic loop in time that amplified the feelings and the emotions arising from the fact that his son and thousands of others had been slaughtered. Now that he understood the source of the force that was driving him to despair he could shift his focus and see that the important question was: why? Why had this loop been created? How could Sybil trigger such an amplification of thoughts and how could she have pushed his mind to the future? Kalid now realized that whenever he was near her he always felt a familiar sensation. It was a kind of background noise, and he had always previously let it simmer in his subconscious. And it was familiar indeed... It was the same feeling as when he had been near Jeremy, her father. Maybe she had the same gifts as Jeremy but in a hidden form. Kalid had often tried to engage in a telepathic conversation with Jeremy, but he always ended up tired, depressed and the conversation never took place. It was as if Jeremy was instinctively shielded against a mind intrusion. Maybe his daughter had developed the same skill. Kalid thought of Jeremy as a powerful emitter of telepathic particles, one of the most powerful Kalid had ever known. Maybe Sybil had grown up constantly exposed to that invasive flux of particles and so her mind had found ways to get rid of them, not allowing them to enter her own mind. And maybe that was why Kalid had been kicked out of her mind. But that was not all. Somehow the force of Sybil's mind had allowed Kalid's mind to see the future then. If that was an innate (although hidden) power of hers, then Sybil could be a key person inside the Order. Kalid had left her at Esclangon...but was she safe from Set's wrath? Reacting to this new realization about Sybil's abilities, Kalid made one last effort to understand Set. Kalid did not really want his last deed to be destroying Set or even bringing him to justice. After all, Set had suffered a great loss and probably had felt exactly these same feelings, that everything in his life was now devoid of meaning. And Kalid feared that Set's command of telepathy was mightier than his own. At least Set seemed smarter or trickier. Was Set attacking Kalid specifically? There was no real basis for enmity between them. Had Set decided to destroy the entire Order? Kalid and the Order were so off balance that they had started down the path of working with their traditional enemy, the Antiquist Party. How had it come to this, how were things going so wrong? Kalid could not understand what the key was to Set's behavior. There was no reason at all for the slaughter at Flammis. Kalid knew Set very well and knew that Set was not a murderer, at least not a blind one. There must be some conspiracy somewhere, Kalid sensed it.
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