Draigkhiun: The Foretelling

Tcharnghir

(Foretelling)

“No!”

I came awake sputtering and struggling to inhale. I didn’t know if I had screamed or if the word was on my lips only in the dream. I didn’t hear any telltale movement within the house so I had to have only dreamed screaming out. The prayer of the young Marine from my dream echoed through my sleep-addled thoughts.

“Deliver me unto the hands of God, so that I may be shepherded across the swift waters. I accept this embrace into my Creator’s flock and I shall reside within the fields of Heaven. There, will I find refuge from the grips of evil.

“I have lived my life upon the good and moral path. I have resisted the temptations of the Lords of Darkness. I have fought their grip upon our souls.

“Lord, I come to you in the execution of my duty to you. I beseech thee: deliver me not into the darkness of Hell.”

The last time I had heard the Lord’s Prayer for the Dying uttered was from my mother at Luke Elise’s memorial service.

My sheets were soaked and clammy. They were twisted about my body and my heart was beating too fast as I tried to breathe deeply to calm down. My room was oddly surreal in the waning darkness, its interior visible only as silhouettes created by the dawn light coming through the window.

I wasn’t sure if it was one of those dreams that came when change was imminent in my life. More than likely it was a pure and simple nightmare brought on by too many long hours at work, with too much coffee, and not enough food or decent sleep.

I untangled myself from my sheets and went over to my room’s single window. I opened it to let the early autumn air in. It gave me gooseflesh but helped to calm me. I breathed it in deeply, feeling my heart slow a little more with each breath. My body still buzzed with adrenaline and my hands shook as I leaned on them against the sill.

The images slowly faded from my fatigued mind like the diminishing echo of some sudden, discordant noise. They were not as strong but still hung in my thoughts and reverberated. I still felt a little of the noise as a buzz in my bones, chilling me as certain as the air coming through my bedroom window.

She had had no recollection of the crash after her landing craft had been shot down. She tried to move and pain interlaced every inch of her body. Her armor injected more drugs and she was swept with a mild euphoria that dulled the pain in her consciousness. She struggled to move again. The armor’s Kinetic Enhancement should have been able to propel her even if her body couldn’t. She could barely crawl. Her link with the armor confirmed that the KEMAS was damaged. Through her interlinking the acknowledgement came as another disparate sort of pain that would not dull against the onslaught of drugs. If she had not had that superhuman link with her armor, the shock of her injuries would have killed her outright. She felt out the energy levels in her armor’s power packs. She would have plenty, though it would draw a lot of power to force the nearly seized KEMAS into motion. She had no choice. Directing more energy into the damaged lines, she began to slowly crawl in the direction the GPS had told her lay help. She hoped her armor held enough drugs to keep her capable of moving along with the suit.

The enhanced audio sensors of her armor warned her of the approaching soldiers. She heard the faint crunching of boot on rock as though right on top of her. Painfully, she looked over her shoulder. Her stomach was hollow and her heart beat faster as she recognized the bulky armor of her enemy.

She tried to free her EMPAW from its harness but realized that the weapon was smashed and useless. The clip of small missiles normally locked around the weapon’s fore grip had also detached. She started to breathe hard. She focused upon the status of the Anti-Personnel Laser on her left gauntlet: it was okay.

She tried to power down and adjust the chromatoskin of her armor to match the bare, gray ground around her. It was non-responsive. She brought her power back up when the first soldier found her. She sensed eyes on her back as he brought his weapon to bear. She knew she was as good as dead. Reiterating the long-forgotten Lord’s Prayer of her childhood, she readied herself, pushing her fear as far away as possible, to roll and fire.

The soldier paused, so she tried to gather a little more strength. More steps approached and she knew the platoon’s officer was on the scene. Linked as they were, she could incapacitate all of them if she killed him.

Kicking as best she could at the bare ground, she acted as though she were scurrying away in desperation. She rolled and fired the APL, aiming for the joint of his gorget and helmet. Her targeting was off and the blast grazed the mirror plating on his helmet. The attempt to roll brought excruciating pain that made her consciousness waiver and her armor became a heavy shell around her body, barely moving with her efforts.

Shaking my head to disperse the feelings and images, I looked out over the checkerboard landscape of Duiledaire’s backyards. The sun was just barely coming up, giving a long twilight to the land. It was comforting but I still couldn’t shake the feeling of hopelessness that remained with me from the dream.

Tears flooded her cheeks and pooled in her helmet. Her breath was short and hard. She tried to breathe slow and deep but could only gasp. There was a feeling of a presence within her. It was not the Creator. She had been abandoned as surely as she had formerly abandoned her faith. She struggled to maintain her focus. Her mind wanted to wander. She was so sore; so sleepy.

One thought raced through her addled mind. She thought of her brother on Wassenglia. He was the only person she had grown up with and truly still called family. He would soon be graduating from the Academy. He would soon be here facing them.

She screamed within her helmet. “No!”

My whole body shuddered. Was it purely from that dream; of experiencing the life of someone resigned to die?  Or was it me?  I thought about the possibilities as I sat by the open window.

There certainly was a sense of hopelessness to me. I had completed weeks of grueling, mindless work renovating the antiquated modules at the recycling plant. It was definitely not a job where I felt ambitious goals for promotion. It merely paid my student loans and gave me drinking money. And I couldn’t stand it any more. I couldn’t stand the listless existence of getting up every morning and just being. I was standing still in my life.

I looked out at the rising sun. It formed a beautiful, translucently violet horizon where the curve of Andowhan ended and space began. I wondered if there might be something better beyond that horizon. There must be some real meaning, out there, but I felt isolated and constrained from it.

Leaving the window open, I crawled back into bed and stared up at the ceiling of the room I used to share with Zeke. I liked the coolness of autumn. There was always an anxious expectation in the air as the equinox approached. Most people within my culture looked to the winter solstice as an annual turning point within their lives; that chance to start anew. For me, it was always the autumnal equinox as the world readied to sleep and rejuvenate itself.

The last memories of the nightmare—the tromly, in the household tongue of my people—faded. My breathing slowed and grew deep, rocking me as a boat in waves. Each dip into the trough of my exhale brought me a little closer to sleep as I thought not of the dream, but the horizon where my planet ended and space began.

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