i won't be able to write for a few weeks so savor this chapter!!! lol. i hope you enjoy it!!! if you read this, PLEASE r&r!!! reader input is appreciated!
****************
"We should just kill them," one protested.
"No," a wise Elder said telepathically to the first. "They don't deserve to die."
"But they killed U'dam!"
"Yes, but who attacked who first?"
There was a silence.
"Just as I thought," the Elder shook her head. "You can't just kill a creature."
"But they're foreign!"
"As we must seem to them."
The young Kolg thought for a moment. There was no swaying the Elders. "But-" he attempted, but stopped short. It was pointless. "I don't see why they have to live. We're all going to die soon anyway," he said mentally to himself.
"You must know that I can hear all of your innermost thoughts, Velar," the Elder pointed out to the back of the young one's head. Since their race communicated telepathically, any whispers, or even thoughts, could be heard on the open telepathy waves--- to a trained ear.
"Oh, of course! After all, you're such a good listener," he snapped, turning back to face the Elder.
"Do not anger those wiser than yourself."
"You know that it doesn't matter if we keep those 'things' alive! We're ALL going to die! Every single organism on this dead heap of rock is going to die!"
"It's our time. You know that. We must accept our fate."
"And what if some of us don't want to go just yet! What do you say to that?" Then Velar's telepathic words dropped to a mere whisper. "You keep us on this planet against our will, and you murder us. You murder us all," he said venomously and stormed out of the cave room, leaving the Elder in silence.
**************
Harper stood in his old house back on Earth, next to a young child: himself. The Dragans were banging viciously on the door. Harper's father braced himself in front of Harper's mother, between her and the front door.
"Go. Take the little ones," he whispered.
"No..." his mother weeped.
"You must." The two embraced.
Now, the young Harper left the current one's side, coming into the scene. His mother took him and his little cluster of siblings into the back yard. "Hide here. Keep quiet. They'll be gone soon. If you hear gunshots, run." The young Harper curled up behind a small pile of junk with his brothers, sisters, and cousins. The current Harper stepped in front of his passing mother.
"Ma-" he started, but she walked straight through him. He followed her back inside. "No!" he cried out as he turned and saw that his father was opening the front door. The menacing Dragans poured in, instantly shooting the man. "No!" Harper yelled again as one Dragan advanced on the quivering young woman, while the others began to ransack the house. She held herself tall and braced herself to the spot, clenching her teeth and balling her delicate hands into fists. Harper could picture himself and all of his brothers and sisters just outside of the house; a frightened little huddled mass. "Take me!" he screamed, jumping in between the Dragan and his mother. "Dammit! Take me!"
The Dragan leaned right through him and hissed to the mother, "There are others."
The woman shook her head. "No," she said determinedly. The Dragan shoved his gun into her side. She gasped and let out a shaky yelp, but stood her ground.
"Where are they?" the Dragan asked, sensing her fear and acting on it.
"There are no others," she repeated. The Dragan stepped completely through Harper, who jumped back to watch, despite his inner protest. The Dragon was centimeters away from the young woman's face, its gun barred into her ribs, angled upward towards her heart.
"Tell me where they are and you will be spared," it hissed.
She leaned forward, jutting out her jaw, until her nose was almost touching the alien's. "You'll never find them," she whispered with such venom, it made the current Harper shudder. In the next instant, his mother screamed out, stiffened, and fell, blue eyes wide open. She was dead.
Everything swirled together and suddenly Harper was standing before a great heap of rubble and dead bodies. His mother, father, and cousin who had recently died- Brendan-, were among the ones fully surfaced on the top of the pile. Harper was fighting back tears. Just then, his mother spoke. It was barely audible. Harper leaned forward. Then he heard it:
"It's all your fault," she coughed hoarsely.
"No," he gulped. His father joined in.
"It's all your fault," the two said in unison. It grew louder. "It's all your fault." His cousin joined in. "It's all your fault!" they chanted. Dead brothers spoke now. "It's all your fault!" Dead sisters: "It's ALL YOUR FAULT! IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!!!!"
"It's all my fault," Harper wailed to himself as he sank to his knees. "It's all my fault..." The screaming of his dead family members grew so loud, he had to cover his ears.
Then, above the chanting, Brendan called out, "Don't deny it, Seamus! You did this to us! You did this to us all! You should have stayed! But you left us, Seamus! Traitor!" He joined in the chanting once again.
"It's all my fault! It's all my fault. It's all my..."
*************
"Trance!" Harper screamed, flinging himself up the instant he was awake. His voice echoed all around the thick blanket of darkness. The sound of his plea surrounded him. Trance? Why had he called out her name?
"Mr. Harper?" Dylan's voice said cautiously from a ways off in the abyss of black. "Harper, is that you?"
Harper lay back down, panting, heart racing. Were his eyes open or closed? It was so dark, he couldn't tell.
"Aye aye, Captain," he managed to squeak out.
**************
Tyr folded his arms tightly across his chest. The silence was deafening. The darkness was blinding. He could see the colorful patterns that appeared inside his eyelids when his eyes were closed, but now they were open and the patterns remained. He didn't like the darkness. Not one bit. He couldn't tell if anyone was even a mile nearby. Was he afraid? No... that couldn't be.
"Tyr? Are you there?" came a small voice not far off.
"Beka?" Tyr said louder than he had anticipated.
"Yeah, it's me. Where are we? It's so dark..."
"Are you all right?" Tyr asked, disregarding the last comment. He started to move forward on his knees in the dark. When Beka didn't answer, he asked, "Beka? Beka are you all right?" Urgency grew in his tone.
"It's so cold..."
"Beka!" Tyr had found her. He reached out and pulled on her arm, sliding her across the rocky cave floor towards him. She was shivering like crazy. Almost afraid to, Tyr put a hesitant arm around Beka. "Beka... you're not well."
He could hear her laugh, a short rough cough-like sound. "You always seem to state the obvious, don't you?" There was something not right in the way she spoke. Tyr's brow furrowed, but he could not quite place it.
Suddenly, Beka began to thrash at the thin air in front of her. "GET AWAY FROM ME!" she screamed. The sound seemed to echo out into the distance for a very long time. She struggled in Tyr's arms.
"Beka! Beka, snap out of it! There's nothing there, Beka!"
"No! Leave me alone!" Beka started to wheeze. The air was so thin. Her movements slowed, then eventually stopped. Suddenly, she couldn't breathe at all. She gripped Tyr's arm tightly.
"Ow!" Tyr said irritably, but stopped. He couldn't see her face, but he knew the Beka was very frightened. "It's ok, Beka... There's nothing there. It's just me... Breathe, Beka." He felt her muscles tense up. She had completely stopped breathing all together. "Beka!" he said in alarm. He held her face roughly, though he couldn't see it. After several painfully slow seconds, Beka gasped loudly, as if she had been held under water for a long time and was just now surfacing. "Beka..." he was going to ask what had happened, but his guess was as good as hers. And it might scare her more if he made it sound like he had no idea what was happening to her, though it was the plain and simple truth. Instead, he finished his sentence by saying, "... It's going to be ok..." She shook uncontrollably and Tyr pulled her close. He was freezing too.
**************
"Rommie?" Trance asked with meek panic into the abyss of black. She wasn't fond of the dark... but this was a different kind of dark. There was absolutely no light at all. The darkness was so thick, it was suffocating.
There was a mechanical sound as Rommie turned her head in the direction of Trance's voice. "I'm here. Are you all right?"
Trance nodded her head slightly. "Mm hm. How about you?"
"Oh, you know... A few slight malfunctions. That's all. You've been asleep for a long time..."
"How long exactly?"
"I don't know. Maybe a few hours or so? It felt like longer, but that's probably just the dark contributing--"
"I feel sick," Trance suddenly cut in. She grabbed her stomach. She threw up and dragged herself away from the puddle. She groaned. "Oh, I really do feel sick."
"Trance, stay where you are. I'm going to try and find you. You sound close. I know you don't feel like it, but can you keep talking so that I can locate you?" Rommie took the pause and then sudden babbling as a "yes".
There was a dragging sound and after a while, Trance felt a hand grip her wrist. She let out a small yelp, but then relaxed. "Can I stop talking now?"
Rommie smiled, sitting down next to Trance. "Yes, thank you. Hey- I didn't realize that you were by a wall!" She tapped the ragged stone wall behind her. "Well, that's a good sign I suppose." She felt the air move slightly as Trance nodded meekly. Rommie patted her shoulder. "Just go back to sleep. You'll feel better once you're more rested."
Trance didn't need any further persuading. Her eyelids closed heavily, and she was out like a light.
*************
When Trance awoke, it was to something quite strange. It wasn't a noise though. The cave was dead silent. It was something else. Almost like a presence. But it was far away. "Rommie?"
"You're awake! How are you feeling?"
"Better. Just a little drowsy... " She shook her head. She was getting off topic. "Rommie, do you... do you feel anything?" She paused. When Rommie didn't respond, she tried to elaborate. "I mean, like there's someone else here?"
"There's someone else here?!?!" Rommie interrupted abruptly.
"No! No, no... It feels far away... I mean... I don't really understand it... I just feel something. Someone." She hid her face in her hands. She was scared.
*************
Trance knew that Rommie was worried about her; she hadn't said a word to the android all day, or at least, what she thought was a full day. But she had other problems.
She pressed down on the back of her head, pushing her forehead into the top of her knees. She felt nauseous, and she shivered all over. Her chocolate brown leather combat clothes obviously did not retain heat.
But even more frightening were the voices in her head. Earlier, when a silence had fallen after she'd told Rommie about the presence that she felt, Trance had tried to figure out what it was. She'd put all of her concentration into that feeling. After some time, she had started to hear things. Actually, not so much hear. It was as if full statements and ideas were being put into her head, like right after you hear someone say something to you and your brain has to take a moment to register it. It was that feeling of registering the information, but without anyone saying the words at all. At first, it had only been one voice, and then two, then three, then dozens upon dozens. The more she heard, the harder it was to UN-concentrate. Now that she had touched upon some invisible mental wave link, she was unable to pull herself out of it. There were so many things being said, and much of it startled her. Discussions of how to get rid of the "creatures", who she could only assume were the Andromeda crew. Arguments about whether or not Trance and her crew mates could save them, but from what? None of the voices seemed to be saying what it was. It was like some horrible event that all of them knew was coming, but no one dared to speak what it was. One voice had said something that had hit Trance like the delicate touch of an icy hand that made her back jerk into a short yet violent shudder. The voice had said, "You keep us on this planet against our will, and you murder us. You murder us all." It had been filled with such hatred, and for a brief second, Trance had felt a strong current of that emotion, as if it were her own.
Her head ached tremendously. All she wanted was for the hateful words to stop channeling through her mind. She dug her fingernails into her scalp; anything to stop the pain. "Stop," she said to the voices on the wave link. "Please, stop." But it wouldn't. She couldn't hear anything except the words in her head. "Stop it!" she thought more forcefully. The words grew louder, so many at once that they all jumbled together like standing at the entrance of a huge echoing hall full of chattering people. She couldn't single out individual thoughts anymore. "Stop!" she yelled at them mentally. Still they grew louder. She felt blood rushing to her head. It pounded, throbbed. The pain was unbearable. She was on the verge of passing out when she screamed aloud, "STOP IT!"
Suddenly, everything was silent. Dark. The shock of the silence was paralyzing. Trance could hear her scream echoing into the distant expanse of black. Rommie put a hand on her shoulder. Trance was too exhausted to care, to respond, to cry. The voices had sucked all the energy out of her, what little she had had left. Who had she heard? The aliens? Her thoughts drifted off, following after the faint echo of her voice, and she fell asleep once more.
****************
"We should just kill them," one protested.
"No," a wise Elder said telepathically to the first. "They don't deserve to die."
"But they killed U'dam!"
"Yes, but who attacked who first?"
There was a silence.
"Just as I thought," the Elder shook her head. "You can't just kill a creature."
"But they're foreign!"
"As we must seem to them."
The young Kolg thought for a moment. There was no swaying the Elders. "But-" he attempted, but stopped short. It was pointless. "I don't see why they have to live. We're all going to die soon anyway," he said mentally to himself.
"You must know that I can hear all of your innermost thoughts, Velar," the Elder pointed out to the back of the young one's head. Since their race communicated telepathically, any whispers, or even thoughts, could be heard on the open telepathy waves--- to a trained ear.
"Oh, of course! After all, you're such a good listener," he snapped, turning back to face the Elder.
"Do not anger those wiser than yourself."
"You know that it doesn't matter if we keep those 'things' alive! We're ALL going to die! Every single organism on this dead heap of rock is going to die!"
"It's our time. You know that. We must accept our fate."
"And what if some of us don't want to go just yet! What do you say to that?" Then Velar's telepathic words dropped to a mere whisper. "You keep us on this planet against our will, and you murder us. You murder us all," he said venomously and stormed out of the cave room, leaving the Elder in silence.
**************
Harper stood in his old house back on Earth, next to a young child: himself. The Dragans were banging viciously on the door. Harper's father braced himself in front of Harper's mother, between her and the front door.
"Go. Take the little ones," he whispered.
"No..." his mother weeped.
"You must." The two embraced.
Now, the young Harper left the current one's side, coming into the scene. His mother took him and his little cluster of siblings into the back yard. "Hide here. Keep quiet. They'll be gone soon. If you hear gunshots, run." The young Harper curled up behind a small pile of junk with his brothers, sisters, and cousins. The current Harper stepped in front of his passing mother.
"Ma-" he started, but she walked straight through him. He followed her back inside. "No!" he cried out as he turned and saw that his father was opening the front door. The menacing Dragans poured in, instantly shooting the man. "No!" Harper yelled again as one Dragan advanced on the quivering young woman, while the others began to ransack the house. She held herself tall and braced herself to the spot, clenching her teeth and balling her delicate hands into fists. Harper could picture himself and all of his brothers and sisters just outside of the house; a frightened little huddled mass. "Take me!" he screamed, jumping in between the Dragan and his mother. "Dammit! Take me!"
The Dragan leaned right through him and hissed to the mother, "There are others."
The woman shook her head. "No," she said determinedly. The Dragan shoved his gun into her side. She gasped and let out a shaky yelp, but stood her ground.
"Where are they?" the Dragan asked, sensing her fear and acting on it.
"There are no others," she repeated. The Dragan stepped completely through Harper, who jumped back to watch, despite his inner protest. The Dragon was centimeters away from the young woman's face, its gun barred into her ribs, angled upward towards her heart.
"Tell me where they are and you will be spared," it hissed.
She leaned forward, jutting out her jaw, until her nose was almost touching the alien's. "You'll never find them," she whispered with such venom, it made the current Harper shudder. In the next instant, his mother screamed out, stiffened, and fell, blue eyes wide open. She was dead.
Everything swirled together and suddenly Harper was standing before a great heap of rubble and dead bodies. His mother, father, and cousin who had recently died- Brendan-, were among the ones fully surfaced on the top of the pile. Harper was fighting back tears. Just then, his mother spoke. It was barely audible. Harper leaned forward. Then he heard it:
"It's all your fault," she coughed hoarsely.
"No," he gulped. His father joined in.
"It's all your fault," the two said in unison. It grew louder. "It's all your fault." His cousin joined in. "It's all your fault!" they chanted. Dead brothers spoke now. "It's all your fault!" Dead sisters: "It's ALL YOUR FAULT! IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!!!!"
"It's all my fault," Harper wailed to himself as he sank to his knees. "It's all my fault..." The screaming of his dead family members grew so loud, he had to cover his ears.
Then, above the chanting, Brendan called out, "Don't deny it, Seamus! You did this to us! You did this to us all! You should have stayed! But you left us, Seamus! Traitor!" He joined in the chanting once again.
"It's all my fault! It's all my fault. It's all my..."
*************
"Trance!" Harper screamed, flinging himself up the instant he was awake. His voice echoed all around the thick blanket of darkness. The sound of his plea surrounded him. Trance? Why had he called out her name?
"Mr. Harper?" Dylan's voice said cautiously from a ways off in the abyss of black. "Harper, is that you?"
Harper lay back down, panting, heart racing. Were his eyes open or closed? It was so dark, he couldn't tell.
"Aye aye, Captain," he managed to squeak out.
**************
Tyr folded his arms tightly across his chest. The silence was deafening. The darkness was blinding. He could see the colorful patterns that appeared inside his eyelids when his eyes were closed, but now they were open and the patterns remained. He didn't like the darkness. Not one bit. He couldn't tell if anyone was even a mile nearby. Was he afraid? No... that couldn't be.
"Tyr? Are you there?" came a small voice not far off.
"Beka?" Tyr said louder than he had anticipated.
"Yeah, it's me. Where are we? It's so dark..."
"Are you all right?" Tyr asked, disregarding the last comment. He started to move forward on his knees in the dark. When Beka didn't answer, he asked, "Beka? Beka are you all right?" Urgency grew in his tone.
"It's so cold..."
"Beka!" Tyr had found her. He reached out and pulled on her arm, sliding her across the rocky cave floor towards him. She was shivering like crazy. Almost afraid to, Tyr put a hesitant arm around Beka. "Beka... you're not well."
He could hear her laugh, a short rough cough-like sound. "You always seem to state the obvious, don't you?" There was something not right in the way she spoke. Tyr's brow furrowed, but he could not quite place it.
Suddenly, Beka began to thrash at the thin air in front of her. "GET AWAY FROM ME!" she screamed. The sound seemed to echo out into the distance for a very long time. She struggled in Tyr's arms.
"Beka! Beka, snap out of it! There's nothing there, Beka!"
"No! Leave me alone!" Beka started to wheeze. The air was so thin. Her movements slowed, then eventually stopped. Suddenly, she couldn't breathe at all. She gripped Tyr's arm tightly.
"Ow!" Tyr said irritably, but stopped. He couldn't see her face, but he knew the Beka was very frightened. "It's ok, Beka... There's nothing there. It's just me... Breathe, Beka." He felt her muscles tense up. She had completely stopped breathing all together. "Beka!" he said in alarm. He held her face roughly, though he couldn't see it. After several painfully slow seconds, Beka gasped loudly, as if she had been held under water for a long time and was just now surfacing. "Beka..." he was going to ask what had happened, but his guess was as good as hers. And it might scare her more if he made it sound like he had no idea what was happening to her, though it was the plain and simple truth. Instead, he finished his sentence by saying, "... It's going to be ok..." She shook uncontrollably and Tyr pulled her close. He was freezing too.
**************
"Rommie?" Trance asked with meek panic into the abyss of black. She wasn't fond of the dark... but this was a different kind of dark. There was absolutely no light at all. The darkness was so thick, it was suffocating.
There was a mechanical sound as Rommie turned her head in the direction of Trance's voice. "I'm here. Are you all right?"
Trance nodded her head slightly. "Mm hm. How about you?"
"Oh, you know... A few slight malfunctions. That's all. You've been asleep for a long time..."
"How long exactly?"
"I don't know. Maybe a few hours or so? It felt like longer, but that's probably just the dark contributing--"
"I feel sick," Trance suddenly cut in. She grabbed her stomach. She threw up and dragged herself away from the puddle. She groaned. "Oh, I really do feel sick."
"Trance, stay where you are. I'm going to try and find you. You sound close. I know you don't feel like it, but can you keep talking so that I can locate you?" Rommie took the pause and then sudden babbling as a "yes".
There was a dragging sound and after a while, Trance felt a hand grip her wrist. She let out a small yelp, but then relaxed. "Can I stop talking now?"
Rommie smiled, sitting down next to Trance. "Yes, thank you. Hey- I didn't realize that you were by a wall!" She tapped the ragged stone wall behind her. "Well, that's a good sign I suppose." She felt the air move slightly as Trance nodded meekly. Rommie patted her shoulder. "Just go back to sleep. You'll feel better once you're more rested."
Trance didn't need any further persuading. Her eyelids closed heavily, and she was out like a light.
*************
When Trance awoke, it was to something quite strange. It wasn't a noise though. The cave was dead silent. It was something else. Almost like a presence. But it was far away. "Rommie?"
"You're awake! How are you feeling?"
"Better. Just a little drowsy... " She shook her head. She was getting off topic. "Rommie, do you... do you feel anything?" She paused. When Rommie didn't respond, she tried to elaborate. "I mean, like there's someone else here?"
"There's someone else here?!?!" Rommie interrupted abruptly.
"No! No, no... It feels far away... I mean... I don't really understand it... I just feel something. Someone." She hid her face in her hands. She was scared.
*************
Trance knew that Rommie was worried about her; she hadn't said a word to the android all day, or at least, what she thought was a full day. But she had other problems.
She pressed down on the back of her head, pushing her forehead into the top of her knees. She felt nauseous, and she shivered all over. Her chocolate brown leather combat clothes obviously did not retain heat.
But even more frightening were the voices in her head. Earlier, when a silence had fallen after she'd told Rommie about the presence that she felt, Trance had tried to figure out what it was. She'd put all of her concentration into that feeling. After some time, she had started to hear things. Actually, not so much hear. It was as if full statements and ideas were being put into her head, like right after you hear someone say something to you and your brain has to take a moment to register it. It was that feeling of registering the information, but without anyone saying the words at all. At first, it had only been one voice, and then two, then three, then dozens upon dozens. The more she heard, the harder it was to UN-concentrate. Now that she had touched upon some invisible mental wave link, she was unable to pull herself out of it. There were so many things being said, and much of it startled her. Discussions of how to get rid of the "creatures", who she could only assume were the Andromeda crew. Arguments about whether or not Trance and her crew mates could save them, but from what? None of the voices seemed to be saying what it was. It was like some horrible event that all of them knew was coming, but no one dared to speak what it was. One voice had said something that had hit Trance like the delicate touch of an icy hand that made her back jerk into a short yet violent shudder. The voice had said, "You keep us on this planet against our will, and you murder us. You murder us all." It had been filled with such hatred, and for a brief second, Trance had felt a strong current of that emotion, as if it were her own.
Her head ached tremendously. All she wanted was for the hateful words to stop channeling through her mind. She dug her fingernails into her scalp; anything to stop the pain. "Stop," she said to the voices on the wave link. "Please, stop." But it wouldn't. She couldn't hear anything except the words in her head. "Stop it!" she thought more forcefully. The words grew louder, so many at once that they all jumbled together like standing at the entrance of a huge echoing hall full of chattering people. She couldn't single out individual thoughts anymore. "Stop!" she yelled at them mentally. Still they grew louder. She felt blood rushing to her head. It pounded, throbbed. The pain was unbearable. She was on the verge of passing out when she screamed aloud, "STOP IT!"
Suddenly, everything was silent. Dark. The shock of the silence was paralyzing. Trance could hear her scream echoing into the distant expanse of black. Rommie put a hand on her shoulder. Trance was too exhausted to care, to respond, to cry. The voices had sucked all the energy out of her, what little she had had left. Who had she heard? The aliens? Her thoughts drifted off, following after the faint echo of her voice, and she fell asleep once more.