Halcyon's Wake: Faith
Chapter 12

Luna & Beyond

Mouse was pissed. Really pissed. And no amount of his significant genius could quell his frustrations. He’d been doggedly working for three days with little to no sleep, trying to find a way to get past the dampening field that obscured his view of the station and his friend’s demise. One minute he’d been chatting away merrily with Zack and Beth, the next all hell broke loose. Christina had replayed for him over and over what their sensors showed of the space station’s destruction before the blackout, and it didn’t bode well. He had messages on a thousand different frequencies trying to ping Zack or Beth’s I-Pad’s - but all he got in return was a chilled, hollow static. He had no way of knowing if they’d made it to the escape pod or if their frozen, bloated remains were now littering the surface of the sky-skin.

A woman with fiery, red curls bouncing entered his quarters silently, watching him feverishly pound away at his keyboard while scanning six different monitors. The equations blazing across the screen didn’t seem to baffle her, but she was once again reminded of Mouse’s genius. She quietly approached and with a whispered ‘hello’ began kneading his all-too-taut shoulders.

He reflexively flinched, and just as quickly calmed when he heard her gentle, Aussie tongue close to his ear. To say they’d hit it off in the last few weeks was the friggin’ understatement of all time; though not without some peculiar twists. At times Christina seemed to be all over Mouse, other times she was simply friendly. He couldn’t figure it out.

He closed his eyes and leaned back, momentarily letting the equations and his frustrations melt away beneath her agile fingers. Now was one of those good moments. She leaned in close, ringlets of her fiery, red hair and sweet breath tickling his cheeks and putting his mind in a far more gentler place — but only for a moment — his friend’s were counting on him, and he only had a week left on Luna Base before they would take two of the Dwarves back to earth.

He was growing to trust the brilliant and beautiful Australian communications specialist; but he had yet to divulge what Zack and Beth had told him moments before the meteor’s tore the hell out of the space station.

His years in government service and as a prodigious freak of intellect had made him cautious and leery, and the revelations of the past month made him even more so - but he wanted to tell her all of it so badly that it ached. His limited exposure to intimacy with others in the past made him all the more leery; somehow doubting Christina’s motives as some kind of succubus- hell-bent on subverting him and his friends, and he seriously doubted his own, fleeting judgement. And Zack said to watch out for Balthus. Supposedly a reptilian. They were real, after all.

Deep inside he knew Christina wouldn’t mislead him- somehow- but these new emotions were all too unfamiliar, and he couldn’t put credence into some theory he had yet to prove or disprove. And he couldn’t risk Beth, Zack and what potentially remained of humanity’s hope upon his fledgling grasp of separating love from lust. No matter what level of genius he aspired to.

He melted at her touch, momentarily closing his eyes and reveling in her scent and the comfort of her presence; a fleeting balm which stood only to further fuel his frustration, doubt and angst.

She sensed his turmoil, leaning in close and wrapping her arms completely around him, her ample breasts across his back eliciting a decidedly more relaxed, albeit electric response that brought a small grin of satisfaction to her face. He couldn’t see the odd reflection of her distinctly non-human eyes in the monitor, nor could he tell that the tongue gingerly licking his ears was pronouncedly forked - but in a quick flash of clarity the obvious finally descended upon him in a cold, sobering wave.

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“Eamyuot onakeep Malathus, Donasha. Aehad Dharkimon…”

“Zack… wake up… Zack, you’re jabbering… up and at ’em, jarhead.”

Beth was gently rocking my shoulder and I began to blink the sleepiness from my eyes. My vision was cloudy - and of a distinctly purple hue. I kept trying to focus on Beth, and it took several moments for my vision to adjust. She eyed me quizzically, a touch of concern in her eyes - and she was still in varying shades of violet, like I was wearing a literal pair of rose-colored glasses; I actually reached up to check and see if I was.

Hiro was standing at the foot of my pallet just beyond Beth, also looking a wee bit concerned.

“What was I jabbering?” I asked, rubbing my eyes to try and restore a more normal vision.

“Some foreign tongue - sounded similar to Arabic to me,” Beth said.

“Close, Beth. Been awhile since I was in seminary,” Hiro added, “But if my ears are still working it sounded like Aramaic. I’ll have to roll it around the old brain-pan to try and remember all the words, but I did recognize two of them - actually three, to be precise.”

Beth and I both looked to the old Asian, who in spite of my rubbing and blinking looked like a diminutive, purple samurai.

“I believe eamyuout is death, Dharkimon is love, - and Malathus was a name Lothar mentioned last night… the others will come to me - eventually.” Hiro wandered off, mumbling the phrase to himself and scratching his chin.

“Your eyes, Zack - take a look,” Beth said, concern in her voice, and handed me a signal mirror from her pocket.

I hadn’t looked at my face since we were on the station. A good week’s worth of beard filled out my chin, with just a little more gray than I cared to see, but the whole reflection was cast in a purple pallor. The gash across my neck from the meteor shower was almost completely healed, although the wound had been more than just a little superficial. Weird.

My eyes, normally a rather vivid blue did seem to give off a faint luminescence. “Some kind of reaction to the Liland would be my guess,” Beth said, “But why you and none of the rest of us? Any discomfort or nausea from the accelerated healing? Are you having any trouble seeing?” I flinched back as she shone a pen-light in my eye, pain searing through my head and I let loose an involuntary yelp.

“...highly sensitive to light…” Beth said, her scientific mind seeming to not care that she just crammed a light saber through my skull.

“I was seeing just fine until you blinded me, chick!” I spat out. “Everybody kind of looks like Barney the dinosaur, but other than that…”

“...Was it Lothar speaking through you just now?” she asked.

“No” I replied instantly, but somewhat rather uncertain as to how I arrived at that conclusion. My expression must have broadcast my confusion, Beth’s quizzical expression telling me to elaborate.

“I’m not sure why I know it wasn’t Lothar - I just do.”

The answer seemed to slightly appease her and she began to roll up her bedroll.

“Let’s get moving, violet-eyes - I figure we’ve got at least three month’s of hard travel ahead of us, if not more. No sense wasting time here.”

I dressed and began rolling up my own bedroll, thoughts of death, love and whatever or whoever the hell Malathus was dancing through my purple-hued, mind’s eye.

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