Giving You the Full Moon

Norm wasn't too bad really. He was cute in that geeky, egghead kind of way, but the proverbial egg had a brain behind it, one that was grey rather than yellow. Also, for someone who'd spent five years at Harvard without ever getting laid, he'd apparently arrived on the moon with the intention of making up for lost time.

Cute, Trudy though, especially when she'd basically had to explain that RnR was a metaphor, and not the kind of metaphor that DnD was. Rather, it was the kind of metaphor that involved CPR, only the breathing would be two ways, and there wouldn't so much be compressions on the chest, but rather one chest against another, and both chests going up and down.

Even then, he hadn't got the memo, and she'd nearly given up then and there before cutting to the chase and giving him the full moon. Long distance assignment in the Hallelujah Mountains, most of their days cooped up together in a link shack, after all was sorted and done, they could go their own ways back in Hell's Gate and move on.

Of course, Trudy reflected, as she cleaned her pistol in that same link shack, things weren't simple now. Things hadn't been simple for the past two days, and all things considered, not simple for the three months before that. Things were so not-simple that tomorrow, she'd be flying into battle with a na'vi army, a battle that they'd almost certainly lose, and a battle where, if she somehow survived it, she'd have no recourse. Sooner or later she'd run out of air, or food, and she could either be consumed by Pandora's animal life, or throw herself at Quaritch's mercy.

Grunting as she slid the safety back, she decided that any of the alternatives was better than kissing that cunt's boots.

So really, as she'd told Norm, as this was likely their last night on this moon, that might call for a bit of RnR, but no – big boy Normie wanted an early sleep. Come tomorrow, he'd go into the link-pod, take control of his avatar, and go charging into battle like King Bloody Arthur (or so he'd said). She'd pointed out that the better metaphor was Spotted Elk, but then they'd started shouting, and now, she was sitting in the link shack, listen to Norm snore.

Loudly.

Very, very loudly.

So loudly that, as she held the pistol in front of her, she toyed with using it to silence the noise. Put a bullet through his head, put a bullet through her head, or just shoot it loud enough to deafen her. After all, in less than 24 hours, chances were she'd never be hearing anything again. Or seeing, or feeling, or tasting anything but her own blood before that too was removed from her.

She winced as Norm's snores continued to tear through the recycled air like a chainsaw through wood. With a grunt, she got to her feet, holstered the pistol, found the fridge to be lacking in anything but jello ("fucking barbarians," she murmured, before taking it anyway), and stood beside the two link pods.

Norm's was empty. Jake's wasn't. Indeed, he spent so much time in the pod, she was sometimes left to ask who was controlling whom. Because while Norm had changed over the last three months, Jake was…well, it seemed like every time he exited the pod, he'd lost something of himself. Or perhaps gained something. His hair a little longer, his face a little paler, his muscles a little weaker (even his already shrivelled legs appeared to have shrunk). Norm had changed, but she'd seen him in his avatar form, and there was practically no distinction between the two of them. Jake, however…

Maybe it was because his avatar had originally been meant for his brother. Or it was something else. Something that she could only hope to understand. Like Tantalus able to feel water, yet never taste it.

"What do you think?" she asked, loud enough for Norm to (theoretically at least) hear her. "Think I get it?"

Norm snored.

"Hmm, that's a good point. But if you could further-"

Norm snored, as if gasping for breath.

"…further elaborate," said Trudy, through gritted teeth, "then I might be able to-"

Norm snored even louder than her abuela. So loud that it felt like the whole link unit was shaking.

"Point taken, egghead."

She got to her feet, and without really thinking, put on an exopack and exited the unit. Norm was asleep, Jake might as well have been, and she needed some air. The fact that she couldn't breathe Pandora's atmosphere was really just a minor inconvenience for someone who would stop breathing soon regardless.

What the hell am I doing?

She ignored the voice in her head and started to talk through the jungle. Not really with any destination in mind, let alone purpose.

No, seriously, what am I doing?

Biting her teeth, she walked all the faster, though given how large everything was, even the ferns towering above her, it made little difference. Pandora was 30% smaller than Earth, but here, on the ground, she felt like a child. Out of size, out of place. Like a toddler who'd stumbled into a garden, unable to comprehend the world around them.

Not that Trudy had grown up with a garden. No-one she knew did. She'd been born in a room not unlike the link unit, grown up in an apartment scarce larger than it, along with her madre and abuela. Crammed together in one of the countless megablocks of Greater Los Angeles. High enough that to open the window was to invite the smog in, but also high enough that when the city's seawall was breached (as it so often was), they could watch the waters surge through the city below them.

She tried, and failed, not to think about home. Her madre and abuela had made it across the border – everyone was fleeing Earth's equatorial regions back then, heading for cooler climes wherever they could find them, and over the course of her first sixteen years, things had only gotten worse. She'd watched her abuela waste away, and listened to her madre yell at her after she left to join the military. Practically the only path out of destitution one had in a world where unending brushfire wars raged across the globe, matched only by the wildfires in turn.

Was this a war, Trudy wondered? Had the shots at Hometree been heard around the world? Far as she could tell, the answer to the latter was no – Jake had brought numerous tribes into the fold, but from what she could tell, all of them were blissfully unaware of the RDA's actions. Many of them had only heard tales of the "sky people," and had no real understanding of how deadly the alien invaders were.

Perhaps it would have been better for them not to try at all, since it was inevitable that countless na'vi would die tomorrow, and highly likely it would all be in vain. She…

…fingered her pistol. Looked around through the gloom. The forest was coming to life, blue-white lights shining in the dark, brighter even than the stars above, or even the other moons of Polyphemus. Bioluminescence that one could even see from orbit, or even a few nights ago as she'd flown Jake, Norm, and Grace through the night, and spared a peek at the forest below.

Here, now, her tiny body bathed in the lights of plants she couldn't even name…it was like nothing she'd seen before.

(Granted, she'd never been in a rainforest before, or really any piece of greenery on Earth, period).

Perhaps that was why she didn't hear the footsteps and cracking of twigs.

Perhaps that was why, as she reached to some of the leaves, she did not hear the whispers in the dark.

Perhaps, perhaps not, but she let out a yell as an arrow suddenly impacted the ground before her, and hunters emerged from the gloom.

Oh shit.

They looked ready to kill her. Three metre tall aliens, painted and ready for war. Perhaps they were Omatikaya, fresh from the destruction of their home. Perhaps they were another tribe, but fully briefed on the aliens invading their moon. Either way, Trudy had no delusions that the arrow loosed at her had missed intentionally, and that the second most certainly wouldn't.

"Friendly!" she exclaimed, raising her hands as the hunters surrounded her. "I'm friendly!"

They didn't talk at her, rather looked at her with a mixture of disdain and disbelief. Disdain for reasons that were obvious, disbelief for reasons less so. Maybe they were wondering how such a tiny creature could pose a threat to them.

"I'm with Jake," she continued. "Taruk…Toruk…tamuk…look, the big Pteranodon guy, and…" She trailed off. "You don't understand me, do you?"

They clearly didn't. They weren't even listening to her, but rather in conversation among themselves. Speaking in low voices, their language flowing through the air like water across stone. She'd spent time in the camp earlier, helped show the na'vi had to aim for a gunship's cockpit and rotor blades, but she hadn't talked to every na'vi about that, and had instead relied on word to be passed around. Jake had advised her that wandering around the war camp would be dangerous, and now, as she saw a hunter's grip tighten on their bow, he appeared to be right.

One of the hunters squatted down to her and said something that she didn't understand. What she did understand though, was the rope that was in his hands. Designed for wrists far bigger than hers, but then, this was a learning experience for all of them.

Trudy sighed and put her hands forward. "Take me to your leader."

Trudy had trained for scenarios like this. She'd joined the Marines as soon as she could – despite Los Angeles's pollution and her madre's cooking rotting her brain, she understood that two plus two made four, that men weren't meant to fly but had managed it anyway, and understood the aerodynamics of everything from helicopters to second generation space fighters. The United States Space Force, as it turned out, wasn't in need of yet another pilot when Solar Unity Law prohibited war in space (on paper at least), but Uncle Sam was quite happy to have another nugget join its ranks within the surly bonds of gravity.

Name, rank, serial number, resistance against torture techniques, survival training, she'd gone through it all while simultaneously training as a pilot. Her first deployment had been in central Africa, over what had once been the Democratic Republic of the Congo, before it and much of Africa had collapsed into warring fiefdoms. She'd begun her work in search-and-rescue, then as close-air support for troops on the ground, then as a fighter escort for bombers. Deciding that dropping ordnance on starving people wasn't the best life decision, she'd refused a second tour of duty and enlisted in SecOps, confident in the knowledge that as bad as things were on Earth, serving in Alpha Centauri would be much more peaceful, and much more lucrative. Heck, her madre might even start accepting the remittances she was sending.

But none of that had prepared her for this. Hostage training had been based on the assumption of being captured by fellow humans. People for whom the rules of engagement fluctuated as readily as everyone else, but humans all the same. Led into the war camp however…

There were fires everywhere. Warriors were celebrating. Speaking, shouting, letting out war cries as they danced around the fires. At the very least, there was no shortage of morale.

That in of itself terrified her. She'd done her best to explain how Scorpions and Samsons worked. That as tiny as sky people weapons (heck, sky people themselves) appeared, they were lethal. That whatever battles they might have fought over their history, they'd never faced an enemy like this, and they had to understand this, or everything (yes, everything) might be lost. And while some, Omatikaya as far as she could tell, had nodded and taken her words to heart, fully aware of what "peace through superior firepower" meant, many more hadn't. They had listened, but she doubted that they'd learnt. The na'vi weren't stupid, but to so many, things like Scorpions and Dragons were little more than big flying birds, or whatever the Pandoran equivalent was.

But maybe their scepticism was understandable. The jungle had made her feel like a child, the war camp reminded her of some kind of carnival. Buildings that were much too big. Weapons that she couldn't even hold. She wasn't exactly lacking for height, even if so many others her age grew up stunted in LA, but she barely came up to her captors' waistlines. If anything, she felt less like a prisoner, and more like a pet. It was hard to feel threatened by something that was half your size.

Many of the na'vi spared a glance, but little more. But many others didn't, and again, she had a sense that they were Omatikaya. She saw mothers glance at her, then look away, as if terrified. She saw fathers clench their bows. Clench their fists, as if barely able to contain themselves. She saw children, who just looked at her. Not in hate, not in fear, just nothing. Blank stares, as if still unable to understand what was going on. What had happened.

Children who were about as tall as she was, she noted. But children all the same. She'd seen that look on children before. Had come to Pandora partly in the hope of never seeing such looks again.

Ain't life a bitch? she wondered, as her captors tossed her into what could be called a war tent, though its walls were weaved out of a material she couldn't identify, and its interior was bereft of any kind of maps, armour, or whatnot. Sitting down, she waited for the inevitable – either a knife would be used to cut her ropes, or used to slit her throat.

She didn't know the odds. And weighed down by the world, she found herself unable to care either. Perhaps Jake would find her, perhaps not, either way, she'd die tonight, die tomorrow, or-

Oh.

Her watch said 00:06. Tomorrow had already come.

"Fuck," she whispered.

She sat and waited. And waited. And still waited. The only real passage of time was her watch's green glowing numbers. Out beyond the tent, things became quieter, and fewer fires cast their shadows on its exterior, but it seemed that the na'vi weren't about to go quietly into the night, for all the good it would do them.

Maybe Norm would find her. Maybe Jake. Maybe she'd remained bound here until her exopack gave out. Maybe this was Hell, and her soul had taken the colonel's suggestion of getting some RnR there. Because while she wasn't religious unlike her madre or abuela, having spent more than one Sunday getting high, she knew that if there was a Heaven, she wasn't about to go there.

Granted, as the tent was open and a cluster of warriors walked in, she might be going somewhere soon.

"Hey fellas," she said, holding up her hands. "Help a girl out?"

They were babbling away, but one of them, the only female in the group, yelled something which shut them up. She gave Trudy a look, disdain in one eye, recognition in the other, before she talked to the hunters some more. Trudy couldn't understand a word of it, but so far, the odds of not dying right now were looking up.

Of course, the odds of her dying today were still as high as ever, but hey, baby steps.

"Thanks for that," she said to the warrior-woman. "Us girls need to stay together and-"

The na'vi drew out a knife.

"Um, yeah, staying together and shit!"

The knife came down. Trudy closed her eyes and waited for the blade to cut her throat. She knew the na'vi coated their arrows in a deadly neurotoxin, and that if the arrow itself didn't kill you (considering their size, that wasn't too common an occurrence), the poison usually would unless you had sufficient field treatment, or time to get to a medic. Whether that extended to their blades was something she didn't know, but her only hope was that death would be quick, and relatively painless.

She hoped.

She waited.

She didn't feel the knife anywhere against her skin, but did feel ropes being loosened. Cut off by the blade in question. Opening her eyes, she looked up at the na'vi woman, who sheathed the blade and looked down at her with the same recognition and disdain.

Have I seen you before? Trudy wondered. She was about to ask when the na'vi began speaking.

"You are very foolish, TrudyChacón."

"Um, yeah, lots of people say that." She blinked. "Sorry, do I know you?"

"Ny name is Neytiri."

"Neytiri? Neytiri…" Her eyes widened. "Oh fuck, that Neytiri?"

"I know of no other member of the People with that name."

"Right…"

Neytiri. Fucking hell, this was the broad that Jake had boned, or something – she really wasn't sure, Grace hadn't been able to say much since their flight from Hell's Gate, Jake had barely spent a moment outside his avatar, and Norm, well, he'd mentioned something about "alien booty," but events had moved so quickly she'd been able to keep up. But looking at the alien's face now…she looked familiar, Trudy reckoned. A display on one of the terminals in their hab unit. One that, now she thought about it, she'd caught Jake staring at in his human form on more than one occasion.

No accounting for taste I guess. She looked the na'vi up and down – mainly up, because she barely reached Neytiri's waistline. In contrast, Neytiri looked down at her, in every sense of the word. Like a mother looking down at a child they'd been forced to take in, and couldn't wait to pawn off to the foster system.

"You should return to your abode," the alien said. "Battle will soon begin."

"Yeah, sure, sure." Trudy had no illusions that Neytiri wanted her gone, but since she was as good as dead, why not push things? "Do you know where Jake is?"

"He is with Eywa."

"With Eywa? Does that mean he's…" A horrible thought ran through Trudy's head. "Wait, do you mean that he's-"

"He is communing with Eywa as we speak."

"Oh, right. Sure. Communing. I get it."

"Do you?" Neytiri asked.

Trudy fell silent. When her abuela had fallen sick, her madre had tried communing with God, for all the good it had done her. When she'd sailed across the airless void from Earth to Alpha Centauri, she'd discovered her mother had died in the interim. With humanity having conquered Heaven, it appeared that "God" wasn't home, and as such, she had little reason to believe that "God" or "Eywa" could be found on this moon.

Or maybe the na'vi had the right of it. Maybe Jake was communing with a deity. Maybe that was why the na'vi had their shit together until humanity turned up, whereas humanity had been forced to conjure deities in some attempt at guidance, for all the good it had done them.

Strange as it was, she actually wanted to tell Neytiri about it. Confess to her, or whatever the na'vi equivalent was. But she could tell that Neytiri wanted to be rid of her, and deep in the heart of the war camp, she knew it was foolish to object.

"Well, it's been great," Trudy said. "I'll be off."

Neytiri sniffed.

"Can I have my gun back?"

It took a good five minutes for Neytiri to actually find it. Five minutes for Trudy to get her bearings and settle on a direction that she hoped would lead her back to the hab unit. That, or she could stay here, catch a dose in her Samson. It wouldn't be easy sleeping with a mask over her face, but she wouldn't be the first to have managed it. Heck, she could even work some more on the paint job – yeah, it was more function rather than form that her baby was painted in blue stripes in order to avoid being shot down, but she couldn't deny it, it looked, to put it as an art critic might say, "fucking cool."

"This is your k'un."

Neytiri tossed the weapon's parts to Trudy – the stock, the barrel, and the magazine.

"Nice," she said. "I didn't think you knew how these things work."

"I have long known how these weapons work." A shadow passed over Neytiri's face. "Even before they took my sister."

"Um…"

"Guns killed her. Tawtute pulled the triggers. It is no different from a bow in that sense, though the Laws of Eywa prevent us from using such weapons."

"Right," Trudy murmured as she put the parts back together. "And has anyone ever broken those laws?"

"Na'vi do not break the Mother's laws. We are not lawbreakers. The law is the world, unbreakable."

Trudy winced. She couldn't fault Neytiri's anguish – she'd felt plenty of it on her own at Hometree. She might not have pulled the trigger, but she'd been there, and had done nothing to stop it. But as awful as that moment was for her, it had to be much, much worse for the na'vi standing before her.

Yet she didn't yell at her. She just gave statements. Short, direct statements, each of which twisted like a knife in her gut. Part of her wanted to fall down on her knees – to apologize for all of humanity, to beg for forgiveness, to provide some assurance that the na'vi could win the looming battle. But she couldn't. In part because it would be pointless, in part because she knew it would serve her more than the na'vi before Neytiri.

Confession, after all, was more to help the sinner.

"Well," Trudy said as she holstered the pistol, "see ya."

"See-ah."

"No, it's see ya, as in, I'll see you later. Like, not see into you, but…okay, I'll leave now."

In silence, the pilot headed off into the gloom. Stumbling through the undergrowth, confident that she would eventually arrive at the-

"Other way," Neytiri murmured.

Trudy could tell that Neytiri wanted nothing more than to be done with this. To escort the "sky person" back to her unit, so that she might return to her camp, and make preparations in whatever way might befit her.

Not that she'd said as such, but the signs were there – the hisses, the scowls, the way she strode through the rainforest at such a pace that Trudy had to do something between jogging and walking to keep up. Like a toddler moving after her mother, who'd yet learnt how to walk properly.

"Foolish to walk through here," Neytiri hissed. "Blind."

Trudy had to assume the words were meant for her – Neytiri had been muttering to herself on and off throughout the evening, but this was the first time she'd used English.

"Children, even. No. Even children see better."

"Yeah, well, not all of us have eyes like yours."

"Two eyes, perfectly capable. Yet you do not see. Either you are blind, or you are mad."

"Look, I get it – you don't like me, and frankly, you have every right to. But the sooner we get to the link unit, the sooner you'll be rid of me."

Neytiri remained silent.

"Or," Trudy added, "you could just get rid of me now. Save yourself a walk."

Neytiri froze. Froze quite quickly in fact, like a cat that had suddenly seen a laser pointer. For a second, Trudy was afraid that the alien was going to take her up on her offer. Subconsciously, she reached for her pistol, despite knowing that at such close range, it would avail her nothing.

But she didn't withdraw it, as the moment after her hands reached the stock, she realized that Neytiri wasn't looking at her. Rather, she was looking at everything else. Every tree, every leaf, even the grass, which she crouched down to touch.

"Um, something I should know?" Trudy asked.

Neytiri paid her no heed. She was clearly listening to something, but what, Trudy had no idea. She watched the na'vi's ears twitch, like a rabbit or cat, before finally, Neytiri spoke.

"The world is silent."

"What?"

"Do you not hear it?"

"Um…"

"Silence," Neytiri said, her eyes meeting Trudy's, for once, bereft of contempt. "The world is quiet. Beasts, gone from the forest. The forest shines, but its song is unsung."

Right, so I'm hearing silence. Great. "Maybe the animals got the heads up?" Trudy asked. "I mean, in a few hours time, a whole fleet of sky people gunships are gonna head this way. Let me tell you, you don't want to be here."

"Excuse me?" Neytiri rose to her feet. "Are you saying I am best be elsewhere?"

"No, I mean you, as in, the royal you, not the you-you, as-"

"Talk and talk," Neytiri spat. "Years of talk, and what of it?" She began striding through the forest. "Come. I tire of mothering you."

"My mother's dead, actually."

Trudy walked, then jogged to keep up, struggling with every breath. Not because of lack of fitness, but of shear weariness. Her watch said it was 1:04, and in less than five hours, Quaritch and his goons would be on their way to the Well of Souls, and less than an hour after that, the battle that would decide the fate of Pandora would begin.

So it was with some relief that they finally came in sight of the hab unit. Relief for both of them, though as someone who'd made no secret of her contempt for her charge, Neytiri didn't look as relieved as Trudy had expected. Instead, she looked apprehensive. The bio-luminescent marks on her cheeks were a little dimmer, she clutched her bow a little harder. Why, however, she had no idea.

"Well, here we are," Trudy said. "Home sweet home."

Neytiri sniffed. "This is your home?"

"Well, sort of. My old home wasn't much bigger than this, but…" She smirked. "Hey, wanna come inside? I hear you can breathe our atmo for quite awhile before it gets to you."

"Come…in?"

"Yeah. You can see Norm's geekier half. Heck, you could even see Jake if he's jacked out and-"

"No," said Neytiri stiffly.

"You sure? Might be your only chance. I mean, I get you've been running around with Jake's better half for the past three months but-"

"No," Neytiri repeated, her voice cracked. Her eyes wide. Her knuckles a slightly lighter shade of blue as she clutched the bow. "No. I have seen him."

"But you haven't seen the real…" Trudy trailed off, as she finally understood.

She actually toyed with waking Norm up. If nothing else, he'd geek out to see a na'vi this close, without his avatar. Heck, he could even speak the language properly. She turned to look at the link unit door, murmured, "maybe I can get you some jello," before turning around and saw that Neytiri had already disappeared into the forest.

"Night," she murmured, as Neytiri's footsteps grew ever softer. "It wasn't too bad, actually…"

Who was she even kidding? She slumped down on the steps of the link unit, too exhausted to even summon the energy to go inside. She looked up at the stars beyond count, and other moons whose names escaped her. Pandora was one of fourteen moons that orbited Polyphemus, and there was always at least one of them in the same sky. It was as if the planet was giving Pandora's inhabitants the full moon…as she had with Norm on more than one occasion. Binary moons before Norm had engaged in atmospheric insertion. Heat had filled her through the process of moving through her atmosphere, but a successful landing in the ocean was made, and both of them had ended up very wet.

Smirking, she went back inside. Made her way through the airlock, stored her exopack, and took a gulp of sweet, recycled air. The type of air she'd breathed for over eighteen years, yet was much cleaner than anything she'd had on Earth.

Without thinking, she moved to Norm. Took off her pants and dog tags before finally getting into the bed with him.

"Here's to us, lover," she whispered, as she felt his breathing against hers. As she closed her eyes and waited for the dawn.

Only dimly aware that Jake's link unit was still in operation.