Chapter 53 – Survivor's Guilt
The river basin…
All at once my body tensed up; my eyes thrust open, and I drew a deep breath of hot air. I faintly whispered "Eywa…" my voice fell silent as fatigue rushed over my entire body and mind. My eyes closed and my breath became shallow again.
I lay there, barely conscious, and thought it was strange how quiet the forest had become; perhaps I was simply deaf from the overpressure of the blast wave. Obviously, I was still alive and wet. I slowly forced my eyes to open again. I was nauseated at the taste of dirt and blood mixed together in my mouth. I managed to spit most of it out but I could still taste the blood. I took another deep breath and coughed a couple of times as my airways cleared. There was an odd odor in the air an odor I knew. Then I recognized it; the smell of burnt flesh and plants. An odor of death and destruction was in the air.
My eyes finally opened enough for me to make out the forest trees in front of me. I realized half my body was still in the water. We must have crashed and landed in the river, but I don't remember any of it, or how I got to the riverbank. I just know I'm here with the taste of fresh blood in my mouth, bloodied noise, and the sting of many shallow cuts. As the water of the river buffeted my body, I reached down under me and pulled my blade from its sheath. I plunged it into the sandy bank with my right hand and clawed with my left to pull the rest of my body out of the water and up on the bank. It was painful. I wasn't sure if I'd broken anything, but I knew I was bruised pretty badly. My mind swirled, my vision was fuzzy and I couldn't focus. I knew only one thing for certain. We hadn't stopped the bombs.
Every part of my body screamed with aches and pain. That was actually a good sign. It meant I could at least feel my extremities. My mind grew weaker, no matter how hard I tried to focus my vision or thoughts on the needs of the moment. I pulled the blade out of the sand and laid it down in front of me. I figured I'd need it sooner or later. Strangely enough, the forest seemed different. It felt lifeless and deserted. The bioluminescence of the forest appeared dimmer than usual but then again it might just be my bloody imagination.
I just laid there on the banks of the river while I tried to stay conscious. I attempted to pull my head off the ground once, but couldn't. Finally, I noticed the silhouette of a man just a short distance away in the edge of the trees. It was Pierre. He hung upside down, his body mangled and lifeless. I thought, poor guy. He didn't deserve to go out like that, none of them did. Why did Novikov do it? This wasn't supposed to happen. I grunted, "None of this was supposed to happen."
Tears rolled down my cheeks mingled in blood as I faintly muttered, "Dammit. Why am I still alive? Why didn't they come like they promised? Please Eywa just let me die. I should be dead not Pierre, not Gates…" my voice quivered as it failed again.
I managed to turn my head to the right to look down the bank in the other direction. My tears turned to crying and I hissed in agony. I beheld my Ikran, Blood Stripe. His tattered body lay motionless, mangled in tree vines and sprawled out on an outcropping of rocks, one of his wings dangling in the river waters. No one had to tell me, I could feel it in my heart. My lifelong friend was gone.
The tears flowed uncontrollably now. I tried again to lift my head, but the pain and exhaustion overwhelmed me. I allowed my body to relax; I stopped fighting the onset of oblivion. I let my consciousness slip away. My vision blurred, my senses went numb, my mind fell silent, and then a veil of darkness embraced me.
A few moments later…
A small, yet stealthy, comms satellite sat high in orbit above Pandora. It had been placed there when Colonel Quaritch's U.N. forces arrived. While the science station's remaining satellites fell from the skies, this single satellite quietly took up position in orbit. It had successfully gone unnoticed until now.
Even in orbit around Pandora space was huge, which made it easy to hide in plain view. That was true until you're told to scream, "I'm over here" at the top of your proverbial lungs. That was exactly what the satellite had been instructed to do, transmit a distress signal in the clear as many times as possible. The message was an auto distress signal created by Fort Cha'con's superluminal comms system and was being relayed into interstellar space by the satellite.
In the distance, a missile homed in on the signal from the satellite, zigzagging as it approached. Finally, the missile slammed into the small comms satellite like a rock into a windowpane. There was a small almost unnoticeable explosion at impact as the satellite's onboard fuel supply ignited. The signal ceased as the remaining debris fell toward Pandora.
Onboard the Black Jack…
Conrad turned around to face Captain Dias and reported, " Captain, our satellite killer hit its target dead on. The hostile satellite has ceased transmission and what's left of it will burn up in reentry over the next few hours."
Ute asked, "Any idea how many times the distress signal cycled? Did it have enough power to go interstellar?"
Conrad thought for a second and replied, "My best guess would be two or three times, since it was a short message. Whether or not it had the power to send a message home? I don't know. The design looked military and definitely more advanced than anything the science station people were using during their time."
Ute looked at Charlie and asked, "What do you think?"
Charlie thought for a moment and replied, "It doesn't matter. With the departure of the New Hope, we can manufacture a new story or just say it was a malfunction caused by an accident at the UN base. Perhaps they blew themselves up trying to repair the fusion reactor down there."
Ute laughed, "You think they'll believe that?"
Charlie said, "Sure, why not? Stranger things have happened in space and having 4.3 light years between the real story and any prospective reporter means we control the headline."
Ute grinned with pleasure in her expression, "I think it's time we celebrated our success over some dinner."
Charlie showed his agreement with a rather conservative nod.
Several hours later at the river basin…
Dreams and nightmares dominated my thoughts as my soul floated back and forth between a conscious and subconscious state of mind. I dreamt of past nights when Niysia and I lay nestled in each other's arms, ques intertwined with one another. Our hearts and minds joined in the intimate caresses of Eywa's physical and spiritual world.
All those nights that I lay there with her in our hammock and stared into the sky expecting them to come one day, but they didn't. Was the promise broken, or was it never real to begin with? My mind turned to dark places, as it filled with doubt and frustration. So many of my friends are dead, and for what? A promise a friend made, for a cause I cared nothing for, but came anyway to give my life. It was the least I could do for my mother. Now it's a place I can't imagine living without. Pandora, he said, was worth more than any treasure mankind had ever discovered. He convinced me it was worth fighting for, even if it cost me my life. So many have done just that-died for it, but not me.
I took an oath to never surrender Pandora, yet I'm the one who most deserves to be dead. I've made to many mistakes, let myself get too bloody close to what I'm here to defend. So much so that I've become part of it. Was it wrong or was it fate? I don't know, but my senses tell me Niysia made the difference. Her faith carried me through; her love still fuels my labor against final capitulation.
Suddenly, I saw her. I was sure it was Niysia, just inside the edge of the forest. She called to me and I saw her standing there on the bank just out of reach. I wanted to reach out to her, but my body refused to move. Instead, my mind filled with chaos. Terrible storms of derogatory memories reminded me of my life's failures, their voices so loud in my ears that her loving words were drowned out. It faded to into a numb drumbeat and then I heard them, viperwolves.
The day had come and gone as the daylight retreated from the sky…
My worst fears became my most gruesome nightmare. The viperwolves surrounded me. They hissed and whined with anticipation, with plans to dine on my still warm corpse. I listened as they frantically pulled at Pierre's body in the tree vines, and then circled Blood Stripe's remains as well. I wanted to scream. I tried to scream for help, but nothing came out. I tried to grip my blade, but my hand wouldn't move. I was so desperate to fight back, to survive, to make things right.
Just as I was sure they were going to strike, I felt a rumble in the ground. A sound I'd heard before, it was the roar of a Thanator. I'd always known fear was the prime ingredient of any nightmare, and this nightmare came with more fear than I'd ever known in any battle. I had changed my mind. I wanted to take it back, and I wanted to see Niysia again, no matter my failures, no matter the odds against me.
I heard a fierce battle, felt the ground shake under me. I heard the last words the young Marine Captain had said to me, "Semper Fi, Chief" but instead they came from the hissing roar of the Thanator as it stood right in front of me and pounded its paws on the riverbank. Then as sudden as its arrival, it vanished. The words meant "Always Faithful." Now, I wasn't sure if it was a dream or real, or was it both a dream and nightmare? My minds eye returned to the darkness as my eyes closed once again.
November 8, 2155, Pandora orbit…
The former U.N. supply ship "ISV Endurance," now called "New Hope," broke orbit and turned itself toward a new heading. She was fully loaded with unobtanium from the ore rich Hometree site and the last of the unobtanium stores they'd recovered from the Hell's Gate facility. As the engines glowed a stark red color the ship began to accelerate rapidly into deep space. It was headed home under new management.
