Disclaimer
: Tribune. Not me. Tribune. ::sticks out tongue::Notes
: Here's ya are. Sorry this one is a little late, I spent most of my free time today working on my résumé (what, you thought my saying I need a new job was a joke?).Again, I know that is story is a little…jumpy, but I'm literally making this up as I go. It will be heavily edited when (if) it gets finished. – How many more sub-plots can I get going!?! Lol.
Thanks to Antares, Spooky-girl, Brat64, Parisindy :) and X. It's nice too see you guys are still out there.
(X-the flashback was planed, but the blanket thing is all your fault. lol)
Again, any feed back is more than welcome. Please let me know if this chapter makes sense…if you can get what the guys are doing? Thanks.
So, I'm shutting-up now….
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~~*~~
Bang, bang, bang - THUMP.
Bang, bang, bang- THUMP.
Bang, bang, bang- THUMP.
The young boy stopped dead, surprised by the noise. He stood on a muddy hillside, under the mid-evening stars, and listened, poised like a rabbit. A breeze warm with a hint of spring ruffled his hair. Winter was over. He had survived it, though many he knew hadn't…
Bang, bang, bang- THUMP.
Bang, bang, bang- THUMP.
Bang, bang, bang- THUMP.
Movement in the huts and crowed dorms behind him. A few people came out, stood near him, also listening.
Bang, bang, bang- THUMP.
Bang, bang, bang- THUMP.
Bang, bang, bang- THUMP.
He knew what it was. Had heard it before. But his brain wouldn't accept the information. Refused to deal. Input denied.
Behind him a few began scrambling away. Boys in ragged clothes. Mothers herding half starved kids. A pair of young lovers, grungy and hollow eyed. Panic kindled slowly in people who could barely feel anymore.
Bang, bang, bang- THUMP.
Bang, bang, bang- THUMP.
Bang, bang, bang- THUMP.
The rhythm of a five chambered heart. They used the sound to link to each other—to merge—to synch their heartbeats, abandoning individuality for the power of a pack mind during a big hunt. The fucking Neitzschean's must've had sold them out.
Bang, bang, bang- THUMP.
Bang, bang, bang- THUMP.
Bang, bang, bang- THUMP.
"Purge." The word slipped from numb lips. "They're purging the camp."
Someone behind him screamed. Panic finally ignited like a wildfire, leaping from one person to the next, one dwelling to the next. Down the hill and away as the rhythm stopped. He turned. Ran. Ran faster. Somewhere behind him he could hear the snarling of the beasts. He Ran.
Refused to hear the screams. The grunts. The hiss of burning flesh. Refused to see the gore and the pain. Refused to smell it. Refused to feel it as he stepped in it. ~' S'all right, I've got shoes. Good thing I was Dana's size when he died…'~ He just ran.
He was one of the lucky ones. There was nobody in camp for him to be worried about. Everyone he had cared about was already gone. It left him free to keep moving, ignoring the others who darted into houses and dorms to grab friends and relatives. He didn't slow. Except once, to grab a kid, who had fallen in the street, and haul her to her feet and push her, muttering the only word he understood at the moment. "Run."
And because of that brief pause they were so close he could hear their claws snick on the pavement behind him. Hear the chuffing, howling sound of their enjoyment. He turned a corner, darting into the dark, separating himself from the herd, hoping that they would go after the mass first, that he could gain just that much more time.
In the ally there were a few kids. One, who looked to be about eleven and was probably in her teens, had her had clamped firmly over the mouth of a terrified baby, whose squeals could still be heard, despite the fact that it had gone dusky with lack of air.
He moved on.
On… but not out. There was no way out. The Magog would simply push them against the fence at the edge of camp, where the Ubers would laugh enjoying the show.
He turned a corner—
--and was in the lab again. Strapped to the chair. He shook as he watched them come forward, a jack in one hand. His mouth was filled with something thick and pliable, so he wouldn't bite through his tongue when the seizures hit. He couldn't breathe. Frantic thoughts, ' No. Please, no… I don't want that thing in my head!'
They moved in, hands grabbing at him, the jack drove in--
--Harper jerked awake. Shuddering, gasping, he fought the scream lodged in his throat.
Fuck. That was an oldie but a goody. Wiping a hand over his face, he sat up. The Maru was dark, still. Okay, so he had managed not to scream out loud. "Yay for me," he muttered quietly.
He sat for a minute, getting control of his breathing, his surroundings. Then considered going back to sleep. "Why dwell in hell?" he asked himself, standing, reluctantly abandoning the warm blankets. He briefly considered working on his new jammer—it was the perfect time, no one shouting for him, no one to walk in a catch him—but his hands were to shaky. All he need now was to accidentally pull the wrong wire and fry the whole thing before he'd even finished it. It's not like he had enough time to start over. Sighing he left his berth to wander into the hall. He padded toward the galley, still in his old sweats and sleeveless tee, thinking that he would drop another generic line to the Fungus and grab a Sparkly. He wondered how many of those Beka had left.
By the time he reached the galley, the Sparkly had taken precedence. He moved straight for the 'fridge. Opened it and pulled the cold can free of the light, shutting the door and just starting to turn toward the panel when she spoke.
"What the hell are you doing up?"
Maybe it was the dream; memories that were floating just beneath the surface, like restless storm clouds. Maybe it was the dark; unfamiliar shapes making odd, dangerous shapes in the shadows. Maybe it was her voice; cold and flat and accusatory. Maybe it was all of it. But suddenly he was in a different place, a bad place and—
--and he couldn't move and they were so much bigger then him, so much stronger, and they hadn't let him sleep and it had been *days* and they just kept hammering at him, *Where is it, little kludge? Where are they? Who else was there? What is it for? How did you do it? How did you make it? Where did you find it?* And every time he couldn't (wouldn't) answer, they got meaner, and he hurt, and he began to hope that they'd fuck up and go too far and just kill him, but they were professionals, and he knew he didn't have a hope in hell—
~~*~~
"Shit!" Beka hissed.
The boy had turned at her voice, jumped really—and she had meant to startle him, to shake him up a bit so she could maybe get a straight answer from him. But instead of the guilty grin she had expected, he dropped the can of cola he was holding, and lurched backward, slamming his head *hard* into the 'fridge. When he could go no further back, he had slid down, huddled on the floor, shaking like an unsecured hatch during liftoff. His gaze had gone distant, vague. He started to make a low noise; wordless desperation and pain.
Beka moved. She carefully went over to Harper, and crouched near him, but not too close, not invading his space, which she had figured out early on was a bit wider than normal. She held out her hands, showing that they were empty, but made no attempt to touch him. Instead see fought to catch his eyes.
"It's okay, Harper. You're all right. It's all over." She kept her voice steady, calm, and awareness finally began to seep into those lost eyes.
"Beka?" His voice was rough and he was still shaking.
"Yeah. You okay?"
"Yeah. I'm good. I'm good." He looked around the room, and brought a hand up to the back of his head. "Ow."
Beka smiled slightly. "Delayed reaction. You hit your head on the 'fridge."
"Oh." He still hadn't looked at her. And, she couldn't be sure in the dark, but she though he was blushing. She had never seen him blush before.
"So…" desperately she cast about for a way to smooth this over, without doing his pride any more damage. "So…."
He smiled sadly. "I think you were asking me a question."
She grinned ruefully. She sat down on the floor across from him and, leaning over, grabbed the can of Sparkly. "So what was that all about?" She tossed him the can and he caught it deftly.
He shrugged, studying the can with more attention than it deserved. "Nothing. Bad dreams. You spooked me. What are you doing up?"
"Too frazzled to sleep. Too shaky after that many slips. I needed to calm down before I could lay down. What kinda bad dreams?"
"How many kinds are there?" He smirked, but she could see the shakiness behind the gesture.
"A plethora. A rainbow of shades, from kinda weird all the way to heart-stopping."
"Then one of those. Yeah, it was one of those."
"While you were awake?"
He looked at her for a moment, then dropped his head, shrugging. He was still shivering slightly. No wonder, the floor was like ice.
She turned and popped open the cabinet behind her. Pulled out one of the emergency blankets. Handed it to him.
He simply held it for a moment, as if he wasn't quite sure what to do with it.
She rolled her eyes. "Well, use it. It's cold in here tonight, and you're not wearing as much as you usually do."
"You keep a blanket in the kitchen?" His voice echoed disbelief.
She smiled. "Standard emergency equipment. There's one in every room on board, along with a med. kit. One of the few regs I agree with."
"Oh." He seemed dazed, running his hands over the rough fabric, calluses catching on the nap. "I've never been in a place with a blanket in the kitchen." He sounded bemused, distant. Then he shook himself, "The temp regulator is probably on the fritz again. I'll get to work on it in the morning."
"That's cool. So long as we don't freeze, whenever you get to it is fine."
They sat there on the floor, in the dark, and just enjoyed not being alone for awhile. When Harper finally spoke, his voice was dead.
"Sorry," he muttered, still not using the blanket, "about all this. Freaking out like this." He looked up at her, something that wasn't *quite* fear in his eyes. "It won't happen again."
"Don't make promises you can't keep." It sounded harsher than she intended, "Sorry, one of my pet peeves."
"S'all right. It's true." He popped open the can. "I sometimes think only a lack of imagination keeps me from immobilizing myself with imaginary fears."
She snorted. "It should go for me as much as you. The promises thing, I mean. Not the fears." She ignored his muttered 'yeah, yeah rub it in.' "I said I could get us to the station. Now… I've gotten us so close, but I'm not sure we can *get* any further in." She watched as he lifted the can, taking a deep drink. "I'm beginning to think we should just give it up and turn around while we still have enough fuel to get us back to—"
"What?" he asked, confused by her sudden stop.
"Your arm."
"Yeah, so?" He wasn't wearing sleeves, and she could see his brand. The stylized 's', the slashes that cut through it. He reached up as if to cover the mark.
"Wait!" She crawled over, Harper looking more and more freaked.
"Uh, Boss…? Beka..? What're you—"
She took his arm in her hands, lightly tracing the 's' with one finger. He twitched. "What does this remind you of?"
He blinked at her nervously. "A lot of bad shit I'd rather forget?"
"No. Well, maybe you, but to me it looks like a map."
"A map." Disbelief.
"Oh yeah." She had no way of knowing how bright her eyes had gotten. She scrambled up, leaving Harper sitting stunned on the floor. She hit the com link. "Tev! Tev, get your furry hide outa bed and on deck! We're going in!"
~~*~~
"Mister Harper, what do you know about stellar nurseries?"
The bridge was bright, lights on full. Tev stood leaning lazily against her station, yawning, and showing a few too many teeth for Harper's liking. Beka was pacing, bouncing, around the bridge, eyeing the main screen like it was honey-hive and she was a bear.
Harper sighed, wishing Beka had at least given him time to put his socks on. His feet were cold. "What we have here is a big 'ol dust ball, just hanging out in space. This particular one is roughly 5 parsecs across, or say, roughly 12 light years.
"Made up of a cloud of ionized, heated hydrogen, with cooler areas of interstellar molecular clouds swirling around, it has inside, oh, lets see, O and B stars, T Tauri stars, glowing hot dust and gasses, and Protostars, putting out enough infrared to fry most sensors. Not to mention the reflection nebulae and the unbound systems.
"All of this create an unnavigable region, where the flux of gravity and heat and radiation can simply crush a ship—if you're not unlucky enough to just smack into a star hidden in the dust. Which is why there are no slipstream routes anywhere near a stellar nursery, let alone, leading right up to one."
Instead of bringing her down, the description seemed to rev Beka up to new levels. "And where are we compared to our target?"
Harper sighed again, pulling the proper display up on the computer. A huge, beautiful cloud filled most of the screen. Colors danced deep within it. It glowed like the eyes of a god.
"We are here." Harper marked a section of empty space just below the nebula with a small dot, then an arrow, then wrote the words 'You are Here' next to it.
"The station is here." He marked an X just above a small dark tendril that had whipped out from the main cloud. "On the other side of the nebula. The station drifted into this arm roughly fifteen years ago. It's come out, but just barely. To get to it, we have to come, way, way too close to that arm. And, even though that little wisp looks about this big," he measured out a space between his thumb and forefinger, "It's actually about a light year across, and has enough force in it to crush us like the insects we are. Just so you know."
"Right," Beka smirked. "The whole place is a mess, slipstream speaking. Not a single route in." She smiled though, and something in that smile made Harper cringe.
"If that's true, then why are you so happy?" Tev half growled from her station. "Are you telling me I gave up a paying job to come here and *not* reach our pay off?"
"Oh no. you didn't listen, Tev…. Just 'cos there's not a single route in, not a *single* way… doesn't mean there might not be a couple of ways."
"What?" Tev suddenly came fully awake behind her.
Beka looked thoughtful, one hand moving like a whirlpool. "The slipstreams start to… swirl up close to the nursery. They get clogged, like water trying to go down a plugged drain, right? So every time we get close to the station, we either get kicked from the stream, or tossed sideways."
"It's the gravitation." Harper said, curious where Beka was taking this. "That many stars, in that kinda flux…the streams gets twisted into a knot. We can't ride it in, and flying straight would take almost four years…"
"We can't ride *one* in. What if we could take one from our side in, until it hits the knot, then hop to another, leading out?"
"Excuse me, Boss, but I think I speak for everyone when I say…huh?"
"Look at this," Beka traced the wisp of the nebula they had to cross. It flared away from its parent like a stylized 's'. "If we ride a stream in, then jump while in transit, we can slash our way through the arm and end up right at the stations door."
"You wanta jump streams while in transit?" Harper threw his arms up. "Sure, why not. And then we'll just rebuild the commonwealth, and make you the Empress of Tarn Vedra while we're at it." He stomped over and sat down on the railing above the pilots chair. Bare feet on a cold rail didn't help his temper.
"No, really," Beka grinned. "Listen. The streams here are unstable. They bulge. If we wait for just the right moment, and we trigger the slipstream drive while in transit—"
"And blow half of the engine room to little, tinny, itty, bitty pieces--"
"Ah, c'mon, there's a good chance it won't blow. Besides, trying to open a new stream inside the old should tear a hole in the stream, allowing us to jump to the next available. In effect we solve Giddon's knot by cutting it apart."
"And just where did you get this marvelous idea?" Tev sighed.
Beka grinned and held up Harper's arm, showing her the brand. "Stylized 's' cut apart by three streams." Tev stared at it, then met his eyes sadly.
Harper jerked his arm away, glaring. "It might work," he said, "but I'll have to rig some kind of wall, or barrier to keep the *possible* blast as contained as possible. Keep it from taking down anything but the slipstream drive."
Tev shook her head, "And what about the slipstream drive? If it does blow, just how do we get home?"
"Tev, we'll be at the docks of a fully stocked space station! We could build a whole new one, let alone make minor repairs to the old one." Beka's excitement was contagious. "This is it Tev. The big payoff! Just have a little faith…"
Harper leaned over to Tev. "Are all Valentines insane, or did we luck out?"
Tev sniffled, her version of a chuckle. "I've worked with 'em for years now, and never met a sane one yet."
"So is that a yes?" Baka grinned.
~~*~~
