CHAPTER ONE
The Terrarch slowly walked up the drive, the large rocks, tinted ever so slightly blue, crunched loudly beneath her feet. The house was on the smaller size, barely large enough for the small family that was starting within it. Most of the size of the dwelling was instead dedicated to the expansive yard. The Terrarch knew that everything that she could see, the rolling hills, the small barn from which the occasional cow could be heard, even the old rusted tractor that was surrounded by tall grasses at the end of the long drive, belonged to this small house. It had been in the family for generations, though over the past sixty or so odd years, it had stood empty. She could see the spattering of old and new against it, spots where the residents had set to repair the damage that time had wrought on the simple structure.
She walked up on the porch, her footsteps echoing as she walked across the wooden planks. The door creaked mightily as she opened it, groaning at the intrusion of this stranger on these private grounds. She heard a call from the back of the house.
“Please tell me you didn’t forget the formula,” it said, feminine and forceful. The Terrarch just stood there. The door had opened directly into the living room of the house. A small fireplace, currently unused, sat center in the room. All along the walls were various photos and pictures, remembrances of a past spent together. The Terrarch took in the small couches that circled the room. Most of them were threadbare, long since etched by the passage of lives. She picked one out, and walked over to it and took a seat.
“Mamour?” came the voice again. The Terrarch heard a wet sounding noise, a slight spattering of something onto the floor. “Oh dammit.” A second later, the sound of water echoed through the house. It was so terribly quiet otherwise. In a way, the Terrarch welcomed the silence, the calm of it. She heard the woman walking around. “Don’t worry, ma chérie, we’ll get you all cleaned up.” The water turned back on.
A drawer opened, then closed. The Terrarch could hear footsteps again, this time approaching the doorway that led deeper into the house. When the door opened, the Terrarch could finally see the woman of the house. She wore her hair back in a tight bun, a remnant of a time past that had engrained a lasting habit on her. Time had taken the once silky hair and turned it into a crown of gray. Despite all of the advances in medicine, humanity still hadn’t figured that quirk out, and the woman wasn’t vain enough to dye it. She wore a simple light blue blouse, a dark wet stain that still had one or two small flecks in it spread over her left breast. She carried a tension in her shoulders, one arm hidden behind her. The arm that she held before her shined metallic. The Terrarch knew that from the shoulder down, it had been replaced with a cybernetic prosthetic. She had turned sideways before she stepped through the door, her training radiating from her. The Terrarch simply took in the surprised expression that passed over her face.
“Anticipating something?” The Terrarch said wryly, her eyes sweeping over the arm that was hidden behind her back. The woman blushed, and the Terrarch heard a loud clunk as she set her pistol down.
“Well, you could have announced yourself.” A babbling came from behind her. “One moment.” She walked back into the room. When she emerged, she was toweling off her chest, a delectable ball of pudge and giggles on her side. She sat down across from The Terrarch, giving her a good view of the joy on her hip. The little girl was dressed in a small onesie, soft and pink. Around her wrist, she had a small bracelet, a tiny ring of feathers coming off of it. Several of them were tattered and bent, signs that it was well attended to by the baby. The Terrarch noticed that the tensions hadn’t left the woman’s shoulders.
“You can relax, Coeur, I’m not here on business,” the Terrarch said warmly.
“Oh please, we’re past all that. Besides, it's Fletcher now,” she said, a joy causing the edges of her eyes to shine. The Terrarch noticed that it only touched the edges. The small child continued to bounce on her hip. She had taken to blowing out of her mouth again and again, exploring the bubbles and strange sensations that it made.
“Okay, Manon.” Boer looked at her expectantly, one eyebrow raised. “So?” she said, suggestively.
Manon looked at her for a moment, not understanding her intentions. Boer just wiggled her eyebrows at her again. She chuckled and sighed, and handed over the bounty.
When Fletcher finally arrived home, he was greeted with the sight of the two strongest women he knew standing over his daughter, a predatory glint in their eyes.
----------------------------------------
Halfway through the modest dinner that they had set out, Boer couldn’t take it anymore. The tension had been so thick that she had wondered if the air would separate into chunks if she ran her knife through it instead of her steak. Fletcher must have been similarly strained by it. When he got over the pleasantries of his arrival, a stiffness had settled into his body, an expectation for the night. He hadn’t brought it up but while they were all enjoying their steaks, he finally spoke.
“How bad is it?” he said, looming over his plate, ready for action. Beside him, his wife sighed. When she looked up, her eyes were just as focused as her husband’s. Boer glanced at her again. No, sharper, more violent. Boer let out a chuckle.
“It’s not. Not in the least.” Immediately, Fletcher relaxed, but she could see that Manon kept a little edge of it, though she did return to her meal. “This past year has actually been very quiet.”
“The Scretta?” Manon asked, turning her hawk-like gaze to the side to envelope Boer. The Terrarch caught that gaze and drowned it in compassion.
“As I said, quiet. Since they scuttled the remains of their fleet, they haven’t left any of their territories.” Manon went back to her meal. Boer turned to Fletcher and was about to speak, when a sharp sound cracked through the dining room. They turned to where Manon was now hanging her head, eyes shadowed overtop a plate that had been split cleanly in two down the middle. Without a word, she lifted the knife that had cloven the plate, a bit of wood coming off of the table with it, and set it to the side, her hand clinking with the sound of metal striking wood. She stayed like that for a moment. Fletcher’s hand twitched, like he would reach out, but he paused, fingers flexing. This apparently wasn’t something new to him.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“I’ll clean this up,” Manon said, her voice thick and dark. No one said another word as she unceremoniously picked up the shattered plate with her food and dumped it all into the trash.
----------------------------------------
After dinner, Fletcher and Boer had found themselves on the porch, watching as the sun set behind the hills. Manon had gone upstairs to put the baby down. Dinner had put a damper on the night, and they had spent the rest of the meal in silence.
“She’s not getting better,” Fletcher said softly, his voice hushed so it wouldn’t carry. Boer’s eyes became unfocused as she listened to him. “I had hoped after Sara arrived, it would help, but its not enough for her here.” Boer looked over to him, and took in the pain on his form.
“She wouldn’t be the woman you love if it was,” she observed. Fletcher let out a breath and nodded his agreement. As they rocked back and forth in the dimming light, the porch protested their movements.
“You know, she was always the better of us. I never could catch her on anything back in the academy.” Fletcher’s eyes gained that same distant look that Boer’s had. Boer just flicked her hand softly towards him, signaling a question to him that he understood. “She was deemed too aggressive, unfit for command.”
“How’d she end up as your second?”
Fletcher took a moment to find his words. “I disagreed.”
Boer felt the turmoil in him, the anguish that his mind was consumed by.
“Give her time, Fletcher.”
He shook his head.
“I don’t think time is the answer here. It’s this,” he said, motioning out to the horizon. “She wasn’t made for this. As much as I would like our story to just end with, ‘... and they lived happily ever after,’ she needs more. As much as it hurts, she needs more.”
“Fletcher…”
“She still wears her tags, Boer. She hasn’t taken them off since Destiny. She hasn’t even washed the blood off them. Four years.” That caused Boer to fall silent. They remained that way for a while.
Up in the baby’s room above the porch, Manon had been listening. He always forgot just how thin the walls were on this old house. As they had talked, Manon had found herself leaning against the wall. Her eyes were distant, seeing a very different scene than the cheery pink room which she was in.
----------------------------------------
She had woken first. Her arm was on fire, like she had thrust it into molten metal. When she looked across her body, she saw that her arm was twisted around. It looked like it had been through some kind of horrible industrial accident. She tried to move her fingers, but they wouldn’t respond. Her elbow also wouldn’t move. She rolled over, her broken arm flopping heavily on the deck, sending an even sharper pain through her body. She hissed out her pain. When she stopped, she noticed that the hiss didn’t. Finally, she looked around.
Command was twisted, the deck going from flat to almost vertical by the end. Several panels had come loose. Components were hanging from the ceiling. Only one conclusion, we were venting. She needed to get to the masks. She remembered Fletcher and looked for him. He was lying motionless. She could see a bit of blood on his forehead. His arm was also bent and broken, but it looked like a clean break. It didn’t matter at the moment, she needed to get to the masks.
She began crawling, a trail of blood sweeping the desk from her passage. She pressed on. It hurt so much, but Fletcher needed her. She crawled past Chubb's body. His neck looked much like her arm. Nothing to be done there. Keep going. She needed to keep going. Have to get the masks. Need the masks. She crawled over Tellson’s body. She didn’t have time to think about it.
Finally, she was at the masks. The compartment wouldn’t open. The door was twisted and jammed. She started hitting on it. Again and again. She cut her hand on the edge of it, but she continued on. Finally, it popped open. Shards of glass fell out. She almost wept. She fell unconscious.
When she came to again, she felt her lungs being forcibly inflated. A moment later, the mechanics of the mask switched, sucking all of that air back out. Again, it cycled, causing her breast to rise. She opened her eyes. The scene was much the same. The only change was that Fletcher was beside her. His eyes were open, bloodshot from the vacuum. She could tell he couldn’t see her. He had put the mask on her. He didn’t have one for himself. The idiot! She crawled over to him, then forced herself to her knees over his twitching body. She straddled him, ripping the mask off her face and pressing it so it could seal to his. The moment she did, she felt the breath ripped from her. She staggered from the violence of it, but saw Fletcher’s lungs inflate. She spasmed for a moment, before ripping it back off and pressing it to hers. On the next cycle, she began chest compressions with her good arm. She could feel his ribs crack beneath the pressure, but she had to keep going. Had to keep going. Had to keep going. She took another breath. Her eyes were burning, the moisture of them boiling off in the vacuum. Had to keep going.
She felt a hand on her shoulder. She lashed out at it in her single mindedness. She connected with something hard. She didn’t recognize the forms. They were strange and alien. She tried to resist them. Out of habit, she used her left arm, twisted and broken as it was. When it collided with the creature before it, she saw it come apart, her hand dropping to the deck. She collapsed.
They gathered her up and forced her into some type of bag. She was suffocating. She was dying. Please let it be worth it. Please, at least let Fletcher make it. With a loud bang, her ears popped. She was able to take a full breath. She fell unconscious again.
----------------------------------------
When her eyes refocused, she was back in her daughter’s room. She was surrounded by the soft pinks and the stuffed animals. Her back was slick with sweat. Some of was on her brow and it ran down into her eyes. She walked over to her daughter’s crib and reached into it with her arm. Not the replacement. She didn’t trust it after dinner. She reached in, grabbing one of her delicate toes in her fingers. One by one, she softly grabbed each of the toes, chanting in her mind, One piggy, two piggy, three piggy, four. She repeated it again and again. Each cycle, the trembling of her body lessened.
Eventually, when her body was calm, she realized she had been holding her dog tags with her other arm. When she released them, she sagged against the crib. She looked at the fragility of her daughter, and ran her remaining hand through the edge of her hair and watched her frown in her sleep.
From down below, she heard the Terrarch’s voice again.
“I might have something for her … relax, I’m not going to ask her to rejoin the fleet … No, no combat…Its a consulting position … We’re putting together a mission … We need to know what they are doing.”