Gravestones of Fire

Klingon Hamlet

She's there when I close my eyes. In the darkness, floating, hair rippling in unseen currents. Her face is pale--as it should be. Her clothes--the last outfit I ever saw her in--are baggy, bright white like the moon, whiter than her skin, shining bright. I wince--I always wince--because then her eyelids flick open, and what I see terrifies me beyond imagining.

I awaken in a pool of my own sweat. Tears cascade down my cheeks, and my chest quakes with a deep and dreadful sadness--so deep, so dreadful, that my body dares not let it free. I sob silently, my open mouth letting out a gasp like the last gasp of a dying man. Eeys wide, adjusting to the darkness, I soak in my surroundings--each and every time I suddenly remember:

Space. Mission. You're the captain. I'm the captain.

Meds lie beneath my mattress. I always take three, to soothe me, lull me into a dreamless sleep. Never do it going to bed at first---I won't see her then, and I want to see her, painful as it is, dead as she is. I want her.

But just this once, leaning forward, ignoring the aches in my joints, I deny myself the meds. I close my eyes, breathe in the recycled air of the cruiser Everlast, and let my heartbeat drown out the sounds of ion engines hurtling me and three guys into the heart of space.

Sleep. Her dead face. I groan and cry, I reach out across the black, touch her, feel her soft smooth features harden and crumble under my fingerstrokes. Like old paint. Fragments of my lover's flesh tumble by, and she smiles, even as her lower jaw tears off.

"Alert! Captain to the bridge!"

I snap awake. I push the memories down to my gut, let them fester. Out of bed, into uniform, and onto bridge, double-time. Jane is there, and she's looking worried.

"Came out of nowhere. Heading straight for us. Vector Alpha-two-nine. Speed, point-three L."

"Jesus." The bridge is cramped. The front port dominates. The rest is consoles and tiny seating for me, Jane, and Tom. I look out the port, see the flicker of blue out in the nothingness. "ID?"

"Unknown."

It's not the black hole. It's an object, a something, in the nothing. Traveling at point three L. A third of lightspeed. Ten times faster than us. I think of sci-fi shows, of spaceships, of dead faces. "Comm HQ: send them a link."

Jane gives me two eyebrows up and a creased brow. "Tried that a minute ago, no luck--"

"Try again." I lean into my seat, drum up a few command sequences. Scanners usually taste an asteroid no problem. Comets come up nice and simple. Old satellites lost in space belch out radio waves. This thing is a ghost.

I think of Morena, and the night she choked to death, her eyes wide, looking right at me. "Anything?" Jane shakes her head, punches in more commands; Jane hates to lose. And she's scared. So am I. Please, she cried. Morena. I mouthed the word. She begged me to save her. I love you, I said. I love you.

"Rut this," I grunt. "Tom deserves his beauty sleep, but I need his brain. De-cryo, fast-pace."

"Could hurt him," Jane tells me, and I nod. "Can't we-"

"Wait?" Shaking my head, I say flatly, "No." Jane is opening her mouth just like Morena. I push the thought away, blink, hope the single tears dries quickly. "That thing is coming for us. I put us on evasive. It matched out trajectory perfectly."

Like a ghost. Chasing us. Jane said, "Sequencing cryo-negative process. Tom'll be with us in five."

Space is silent and dark. The stars do not gleam like those in holos. They are pinpricks in an ocean of death. They are themselves the light of the dead, shining brightly, in remembrance. Gravestones of fire, burning themselves out. So even the fires of the dead die. I look at the shadow I cast upon the deckplates, and wonder, when I die, will my shadow die too? Do shadows stay, while light dies away?

"John." It's Tom. He's groggy, and hugging his ribs.

I give him a grimace. "Sorry. but there's odd sh!t out there, and that's your specialty. You OK?"

"No, but I will be. ID?"

"No clue. It's big though," says Jane, and she flashes him a smile that tells me she has recently, or plans to, bed him. It doesn't make me jealous, especially at a time like this, but I feel a lot more alone, these two lovebrids, while my Morena rots away long lost, and that big boogeyman comes toward us at a speed that makes the hairs on the neck of nature curl.

Tom takes his spot, rubs a sore rib, and peers into the goggles mounted on his board. A beat. A gasp. "It's here."

Jane throws me fearful eyes. I stay calm. No fear in the unknown. It's excitement, I tell myself. "Here? Where?"

Tom points, and I follow his still icy-arm to the port, where a thin haze of rippling light shimmers before the glass, and I think I see a heartbeat.

Here. All round us. We scatter signals, send pulses and beams. All come back contradicting one another, like a bunch of professors in a room crying out for attention. Like a bunch of bugs scrambling over one another to chew at the corpse's meat. All vying for alpha-attention.

The readouts say yay, nay, organism, ship, matter, anti-matter.

"Well one way or another," I say, and I'm shaking, "it's got us. Now what?"

Tom rubs his eyes. He's pale, and not just from the cryo-stasis I lurched him out of. Tom's as sh!t-scared as me and Jane. "You're the captain, Captain."

Jane mumbles, "We're not moving, our air is fine, energy cubes up and running...but I'm picking up weird energy-streams."

"Where?" I bark that. Shouldn't have done that.

"Everywhere," and suddenly Jane is that young student I seduced with stories and drink and bedded two nights before Morena died in front of my very eyes. Did Morena know then? Was that why her eyes said, Why? as she tumbled out of the airlock? I still felt the gentle thud, as air and machinery and Morena were sucked out into space. Still felt the hum of the console, as my finger slipped away from the blinking red button, and I stepped back, watching my wife die. My finger, warm, after touching the big red button.

"Thing's got us encapsulated," I state. Two meds, pop-pop, chew them like gum, hope they don't notice, or if they do, don't care. We're dead meat anyway. "So we bring the fight to them."

"Fight!" Tom rubs his shaved head. "This is a phenomenon. It's an aberration. It's not--"

"A Spectre? A Spectre, Tom? Cos it sure rutting looks like one to me, Tom." I lean in, and yeah, I'm mad. The meds ate up my fear, left a big bag of hate in my chest, and I'm dumping it on baldy's head. "Now go get your gun."

No... She's here, in my head, in my ship. No... she says, and she's in the outfit I last saw her in, the baggy space-suit, and she's tumbling, only this time she's tumbling towards me. Tales of Spectres kept kids awake at night, it's fun, right? Only one's really got us pincered, and now there's Morena, in the room, in her suit, reaching for me. I see her face, the red eyes, and I embrace her. I close my eyes, and when I open them, I can see the Everlast, turning away, heading home. I'm floating. Warm, burning white.

She's all around me, my wife Morena. Her light is enveloping me, protecting me, a womb of light in space, and I am unafraid, I am with her again, she is alive!

You killed me, she says sweetly, as she pushes her visor down, and I see my own reflection, and it is a mask of fear now.

I didn't! I didn't want to!

The black helmet with my face stretched across it nods once. I had the Virus. You did right. You did right... But two days ago, you slept with her. And I knew, and I forgave you, and then you let me die...

The white light is fading around us, and I suddenly I feel very cold. I'm sorry. I should've tried---

I'm sorry too. She fades to nothing, and I wonder, as she hurtled into space with only a minute of O2, could a Spectre have found her, and saved her? Was she real?

I wonder this for a milisecond. This milisecond. This very moment. I am frozen in time. I know now, in the next heartbeat, in the next fraction of infinite time, my body will submit to space. I know, but I do not want to know.

I'm sorry.

nietzy

is this another part of CSI story Klingon?

Klingon Hamlet

nietzy wrote: »

is this another part of CSI story Klingon?

Nope.

nietzy

its massively long, i wont be able to read it without being interrupted.

pickarooney

nietzy wrote: »

its massively long, i wont be able to read it without being interrupted.

You'll have plenty of time in prison.