Andromeda Rises Ch. 3
Andromeda Rising III
The dreams started to surface sporadically at first. The first week they were hardly noticeable. The second, Lizzy just thought them nothing more than vivid nightmares. But as the evening of the fourteenth day came along, Lizzy went to bed with a nervous sensation in the pit of her stomach. She'd been researching so much lately, and her mind just wanted to gobble up more and more every passing day. Even as she lay down, she was reviewing the grammar structure of N'had'ka. It was the sixth language she would learn those two weeks, and by far the hardest. Many of the others were simple variants of the English she knew adapted for the particular needs of different half-breeds with their modified pallets and concepts. N'had'ka was the rogue's language, spoken beyond the territories of the allied planets. It was dark, guttural, and damn near impossible to pronounce for an Eternal human like her. It was originally created by the avian cultures in protest to the many English-based languages. It forewent any grammatical structure or common human sound, going completely off the basis of what the creators' avian instincts and sounds told them to do. The reptilian breeds of the galaxy quickly caught on to the language as well, making slight modifications, and it grew to be the most common language of the territories scattered throughout the no-man's land that lay between the Persephone and the allied planets.
Even now, Lizzy realized, they could be streaking through any number of these nefarious little hideaways she had been studying, which is why Matthew was so insistent on her getting the language correct, she supposed. He spoke it, but clumsily. She was already far beyond his capacity.
"I just haven't been practicing enough," Matthew said passively when she pressed him on the matter.
"I've been studying it for three days, Matthew. There's no way I should know the language so intimately already."
Lizzy thought of the face Matthew had. It was full of worry-and knowledge. He recognized what was happening with her, but would not tell. Already she knew this was how it was in that before-time too. All the other Eternals were enhanced, yes. But none of them quite so enhanced as her. And Matthew wanted it to be like they were then: not knowing what could be wrong-or so terribly right-with her.
"You know what's happening to me," she said flatly. Matthew shot a quick glance at Y'thrix. The three of them were in the navigation room, and Matthew had been showing Lizzy how to operate the system. She had become bored of it within ten minutes, having stepped far beyond what lessons Matthew and Y'thrix were giving her in her recognition of the patterns.
"I don't know what you are talking about," Matthew sighed as the humble-looking rodent stepped out of the room. Lizzy watched him go. Y'thrix looked to lean and angular to be entirely rodent, she realized, which was why he had that narrow tongue and the strange-looking rat tail. Overall he could easily be mistaken for a mouse like Tak, but when looking closely...
Lizzy shook her head, realizing she was doing it again. She was using what little she knew about the extremely quiet little rodent and was pulling a Sherlock Holmes, figuring out so much about him off of so little. "I wasn't asking you, Matthew," she said angrily, coming back to the conversation. But Matthew was now more distracted by the look she had given the navigator.
"You were on a course of thought there," he said in regards to Y'thrix. "Don't stop."
Lizzy frowned. She wanted to continue this conversation, but somehow felt that this might have something to do with it. She brought up an image of the mouse in her head again. The long but too-wide snout, the feline-like eyes with the odd-looking pupils, the mouse ears that came to a bit of a point, and then there was that tail. She blinked, and already she knew what it was. The eyes weren't a cat's eyes, they were reptilian. "He's got reptile blood."
"And?"
"And what?"
"What reptile?"
Lizzy looked angrily at Matthew. "How the hell am I supposed to know-a crocodile!"
Matthew gave the slightest little smirk. "Listen, Lizzy. I don't want to give you this runaround, but believe me when you have to go darkly into this realm of self-understanding. Teresa will help glean some insights for you, but this is entirely your own journey."
"But why do I have to do it this way?"
"You'll know that, just as you know so many things you already shouldn't. Like how to access this entire navigation array... or perhaps how to hack into the files that go beyond December 26th of 2196."
With that, Matthew departed. Lizzy looked on, bewildered. She didn't know-and then she did. Or, at least, she thought she did. There was a pattern, vague but understandable.
That night, as Lizzy lay in her small cot, she turned to see the files that were still on display on her monitor. She'd been looking through them for a little while now, but she was forcing herself to get some rest. The password had been "bloody finger," only a slight variation on the pattern she had seen earlier that day.
Even as she stared at the screen, Lizzy thought she could never sleep with so much rattling around in her head. She was wrong, though. Only moments later, she was sound asleep.
The dreams came in rapid succession, in massive droves, and varied widely. In one moment, she was standing atop the Empire State Building, overlooking a city that was now a giant slate of green jungle and screaming wildlife. Even the surface she stood on was like soil, with vines all around. The next moment, she was terrified, in agony, tied to a wall and being viciously beaten. They wanted to know something... something only she could know... if only she could... And then she was laying in bed beside Matthew. No, not beside. They had separate beds, but she was slipping out of hers, stepping over to his... Then it was the faces of so many half-breeds. Then it was launching up, up, up into space for her first time ever. It was an odd planet with a purple-tinged atmosphere; it was making love to Matthew, it was a firefight in a ship's corridor. Then, out of nowhere, everything went black.
Lizzy was just there, in the emptiness of her mind. There was nothing to see or hear. But then she started to feel something; something terrible. Lizzy knew what it was. She'd faced it twice before in her dreams. But it wasn't any easier. She could sense it closer, and closer, and closer still. The darkness of it filled her, making her want to scream in fear and agony and hatred all at once. She was nothing but a child now, curled up on the floor, uncovered and unclothed. The face that suddenly filled her perception was horrible. It was hardly able to be called a face. It had no mouth, no nose. There were only eyes. Dark. Hollow. Eyes. The face was like slime, but like granite. There was little form to it, and yet a form she couldn't quite perceive. Then it was the face of her captors that were beating her, then it was Julian, that asshole that tried to rape her in college, and then it was her father, standing over her naked form as the child she suddenly felt she was...
Lizzy sat up suddenly in her cot and screamed. She could hear through the thin interior walls that others had been woken up, and were on their way towards her. Looking down, she realized she was absolutely soaking in sweat. Her thin mattress was wet from corner to corner, her wooly blanket felt heavy and unyielding from wetness. Her hair clung to her neck, dripping down her back.
The first to the door was Matthew. When he opened the hatch, Lizzy could see Byrinah standing behind him. Automatically, Matthew's knowledge was there on his face. Lizzy knew this had happened before by that expression. Still, she suddenly felt the intense urge to run to him, to have him wrap her in her arms, to whisper the way he always did in her ear. And then, Lizzy realized, she cared about Matthew a little too much for comfort. He was that source of knowledge, she tried to tell herself, that pillar she could hold to for support, that was all. Her intense emotions were a result of her wanting so badly to have someone to just be there for her. And somewhere in the back of her head, Lizzy didn't believe that was the case.
But instead of having Matthew come to her aid, he stood aside for Byirnah. She stepped through the doorway that seemed too small for her girth. The door was closed behind them.
Right away, Byirnah seemed to relax, and pulled out the wall-mounted chair that was on the wall opposite the cot. "Come here, Elizabeth," she said in a gentle, motherly tone. Lizzy could do nothing else but obey in reply to such a tone. She tried to find her feet, and realized she couldn't even stand. Byirnah put an arm under her and helped her up. "Come on, darling. It's alright."
Lizzy was guided to her chair and set down by Byirnah. "What's going on with me?"
"I'm not the one who would know, dear," Byirnah said, idly changing out the sheets of the bed. She felt at the mattress with one of those big furry hands of hers. She picked up the mattress and went to the door, handing it off to someone Lizzy could not see now that she was on the other side of the room. She assumed, however, it was Matthew.
"I'm sorry," she said in a whimpering kind of tone to Byirnah.
"Oh dear, don't be silly," she said in a tut-tutting kind of manner. "We've got plenty more where that came from. Now, strip for me."
"What?" Lizzy asked, a little shocked, staring up into the big but now seemingly kind face of Byirnah.
"Your clothes. They need to be changed unless you want to start growing something on yourself."
Lizzy stood, feeling rather awkward as she lost her shirt and pajama bottoms in front of Byirnah. She had an arm over her chest, and still hadn't taken off her underwear.
"You needn't be so modest around me, girly," she said. "I've been an acting den mother for the better part of two decades before I got recruited for this. Nothing I'm not used to seeing."
"Den mother?" Lizzy asked, sliding out of her panties and having a towel thrown around her. Pulling it close to her, she sat on the frame of her cot that was now bare of anything.
"It's something of importance amongst my people. Typically its reserved for females like me..." she said, a sad little smile on her face.
"What do you mean?" Lizzy asked.
"I'm infertile," Byirnah said flatly. "The others females put so much importance on raising their cubs, but there is also great importance on building up our society that they must work alongside the men sometimes. I take the job of assisting them in raising their cubs."
"How does a den mother become a ship's mechanic?"
"I've always had a knack for it," Byrnah sighed as she hefted herself over to Lizzy's closet, finding something new for her to wear. "At the den where I watched all the cubs, I was always the one to fix anything that broke."
"Somehow, a ship's reactor seems a little more advanced than den equipment," Lizzy commented, drawing the blankets closer.
"Well it helps to take a few lessons here and there," Byirnah assented. "I hopped on board this mission to gain favor in the eyes of the Council."
"Why would that be important?"
Byirnah raised her eyebrows and turned to Lizzy. "Here I thought you had been studying history, dear."
Lizzy thought about it, realizing she had, in fact, been reviewing the power structure and who it was that controlled the thousands of mining operations throughout the galaxy. From where the raw materials flowed, there lay the source of power. Distribution of resources by the Council could often be arbitrary. "Right, sorry. I wasn't really thinking too much."
"It's alright. From the way you were screaming, I probably would be pretty shaken up, too." The big brown bear sat down beside Lizzy on the cot, making it creak loudly. She had a pile of new clothes in her lap that she allowed to rest there while a big, brown furry arm slid around Lizzy and hugged her tight. Lizzy didn't protest. Instead, she lay her head against Byirnah's arm and cried.
"I'm scared," Lizzy whispered, wiping her face.
"So'm I, dear. So'm I."
"What's the news?" Matthew said, striding onto the bridge. He'd delivered the new mattress to Lizzy's room. Byirnah was the one who answered and accepted. He wasn't going to question her infinite motherhood wisdom. There was a reason he selected her for the job, just like how he selected a female bear for every mechanic job he'd had in the history of his searching for Lizzy.
Tak rotated in the chair, his prodigious belly once again making a sighing whisper sound against the edge of the control panel as he did so. "Not good," he said. His face was dark. His gray fur was looking matted, and the black cropping of hair was falling flat to Tak's forehead. The trash bin beside the workstation was overflowing with the detritus of a feverish food consumption. "Two more planets, cap."
"Shit," Matthew replied, sitting at the navigation station to review the information. Lyra was the one that stood out the most for him. Third planet to be colonized, it was located in the constellation that had once been known by the same name. The other was a neutral planet simply listed as TY-884 on the borders of the allied territories.
"Do we know anyone from either planet?"
"No, thankfully. Lyra was like Earth. Complete dead loss except for the Eternals that made it through. The other is generally pretty quiet. Minimal trading, they mostly kept to themselves if I remember correctly. Real separatist types."
"Are we going to tell the others?"
"In the morning, we will. Let them get back to bed."
"Alright, I'll see you in the a.m. cap."
"Yeah, when you wake up," Matthew said. "Go to bed. You've been working for what, sixteen hours?"
"Yeah, but somebody's gotta keep an eye on things up here."
"I'll be here. Go sleep."
"Sometimes, cap, you're not as creepy as you look," Tak said, standing up. His chair rose a few inches, and the cushions reset themselves grudgingly, as if they expected to not feel the reprieve from Tak's weight for long. The flabby, jiggling pile of rodent he was squeezed past the rear hatch and down the corridor to his own quarters.
Sitting in the captain's chair, Matthew reviewed their trajectory, took note of any odd readings or variations, and then sat back to enjoy the multicolored display of tachyons ahead of him. After a few minutes, Byirnah came onto the bridge, standing beside Matthew. "She's asleep again. But she wants to talk to you."
"She's moving much faster than I expected."
"Which is why she needs you. Being den mother for her is only going to go so far."
"Has she regained any memories?"
"I think so, but I'm not really sure. The things of which she spoke seem like they could have come from her super-perceptive nature. She's putting the pieces together very fast now. It's not long before she'll be the precog she was."
"That's what I was afraid of," Matthew whispered.
"How long was it the last time-before this started to happen, I mean."
"Centuries."
Byirnah sighed, feeling for the poor girl. She reached out, placing a heavy and yet infinitely gentle hand on Matthew's shoulder. "I wish there was something I could do for you, cap. The whole galaxy'll be after her once it starts."
"Thank you, Byirnah," he said, holding onto her furred hand and gripping it tight. Had either of the two rodents aboard seen this, they wouldn't have believed it. Byirnah with a heart? Impossible. "Go get some rest, Byirnah. We're in for a hell of a time."
"Alright, cap. Goodnight," she whispered affectionately before marching off. She always did like Matthew better than the other cold and holier-than-thou Eternals she had met in their time. It almost seemed to her that, while the others thought they were these great creations, Matthew always saw himself as cursed, envying those of the mortal coil.
Just as Byirnah left, a red light started flashing on the control panel in front of Matthew. He sighed, stood, and locked all the latches before coming back to the panel. He pulled up a screen and hit a button. Teresa's face met his gaze.
"Good evening, Teresa," Matthew said, leaning back into his chair and keeping a calm composure.
"You mean morning. It's oh-four-hundred standard."
"Whatever you want to call it. Some are just returning from the bars at this very moment."
"Indeed." Teresa's voice was more formal, more clipped than usual.
"I'm guessing you have company with you?"
"I'm on the bridge of the Triton, yes."
Matthew smirked. He loved poking at the more formal Teresa. She only acted like this when there were eyes on her. Otherwise, he was sure she would not be sitting so upright, and the collar of her navy blue officer's uniform would be unbuttoned.
"How can I help you, captain?"
"We're a few thousand light years beyond Turanis at this time, Matthew. We decided to change plans. We will rendezvous at the following coordinates."
At that moment, another screen came on, displaying a nebula just under a week out from where the Persephone was located.
"Pretty ballsy, you know, meeting up there."
"We're aware of the risks. That's why we're meeting in the nebula."
"And what of the Shol'krik?"
"Nothing they have could be a match against the Triton. Even en masse, we would annihilate them."
"Tough talk from a tough lady."
Teresa fought the urge to smirk at this. "How is our subject doing?"
"I don't know what subject you're talking about. Perhaps if you're a little less cryptic, I would understand."
"Lizzy," Teresa snapped. "How is she?"
"Ahead of the curve."
"How far?"
"Let's just say it's a good thing you cut our rendezvous down to a week. I doubt it'll be that long, even."
"Stall her."
"Yeah, because I know how this whole thing works. You're the scientist, remember?"
"Isolate her from all information."
"A little harsh, don't you think?"
"She's dangerous, Matthew."
"So are you. See you in a week."
With that, Matthew cut the transmission, and returned his gaze to the tachyon field ahead of the ship. Things were moving too fast, he thought to himself. Over a millennium trying to find Elizabeth, and now every hour was becoming more critical.