Andromeda Rising Ch. 6
Andromeda Rising VI
-Credit for the song sung in this chapter goes to Vienna Teng, "Lullaby for a Stormy Night."
Matthew leaned back in his chair, bringing his fingers to pinch at the bridge of his nose, right between his eyes. His head was pounding. He was starving already. It had only been two days, but they had been a long two days. He was pounding through line after line of ancient Aramaic, trying to get himself to communicable levels of skill. It was a far faster of a process than it was when he was but a mortal human, but he felt his fluency may be pivotal in this galaxy.
Elizabeth was, as always, already getting a fluency for the language that Matthew and Teresa would never quite be able to match. She was surfing through transmissions being broadcast across Andromeda. While she was listening intently to the different variations and dialects, Matthew couldn't help but notice just how many of them were obviously Eternals. Many of them had alterations done to their hair to hide the brilliant red locks, and several seemed to keep their fangs filed down, but they seemed to keep the red eyes as what could only be described as a mark of distinction. Much of what was being communicated was general nonsense, so far as Matthew could understand--things of no real importance. And the communications went on and on without so much as a sign that anyone was paying any attention to Persephone or her distress calls.
On the bridge, Byirnah, Tak, Y'thrix and Yardley were rotating shifts, watching and listening for any signs of rescue. The propulsion system was fixed but for some key components that had gotten fried in the assault their trans-galaxy trip had committed on them, and Byirnah was not exactly capable of performing miracles. For the time being, they were stuck in their orbit around the twin suns.
Elizabeth stood up, leaning back and stretching until a series of loud pops came from her spine. Matthew took no mind, Teresa seemed to cringe. "I'm getting sleepy," Elizabeth said, yawning wide as if to prove her point. "Can't I go get some rest?"
"Yeah, baby," Matthew said, giving a tired little smile of his own. "Of the three of us, you've got the least to worry about when it comes to lost ground here. Hell, by the end of the week I'm sure you could teach quantum mechanics in Aramaic without a problem."
Elizabeth simply giggled and kissed Matthew's forehead. "Well, I do seem to have a knack for it. It reminds me so much of when we taught ourselves German that first winter after the plague."
"Why would you need that dead language?" Teresa asked. She seemed particularly irritated. Part of it had to do with the fact Lizzy was showing no signs of regaining her abilities, the rest was mostly due to the fact that, when it came to languages, she was on the back end of the curve. She made up for it, though, in her sheer genius in the medical field.
"Es ist eine schöne Sprache," Elizabeth replied.
"What?" Teresa demanded.
"She said it is a beautiful language. Stimmen Sie zu?"
"<She doesn't know the usefulness of having a code language?>" Elizabeth asked Matthew. This time it was in Gaelic, however. She did not want to risk Teresa knowing any of the words she was using while talking about her.
"<I think that she gets frustrated too easily with languages, so she only bothers learning the ones necessary for communicating. You should hear her try to speak any of the tongues of the confederated planets. You would die laughing.>"
"Okay, I get your point about secrecy," Teresa said, interjecting. "You don't have to keep speaking German."
The couple looked at each other with a smirk, realizing that switching to an even more obscure language was completely unnecessary. Matthew didn't bother telling Teresa they had gone to a totally new language. She might get suspicious that way. "Alright, alright. Anyhow, goodnight Liz."
Elizabeth smiled and kissed Matthew briefly. "I'll make sure to check on Tak and see if there's any updates before I hit the sack." And with that, Elizabeth disappeared through the door.
Matthew turned towards Teresa. She had those eyes that he was so familiar with. It was the kind of look she got when she hungered for some sort of new scientific revelation. It was this predatory, hungry thing that spoke of a lust for power rather than knowledge. It was probably the one saving grace that kept Matthew at enough distance to not be too tempted by Teresa's offers.
"She's going to hurt us, you know," Teresa said, turning towards Matthew.
"What do you mean?" he said, now with irritation in his own voice. He turned his gaze down to the several data screens cast across the table top, deciphering the written Aramaic there.
"Once her abilities return. She'll be hunted. We all will."
"I have no intention of anyone else knowing what she's capable of."
"People have a way of finding out. And we're in a whole new ball game in this galaxy."
"I don't have any intention of remaining here for long."
"And what's your plan for travelling over two million light years without anywhere to stop?"
"It's doable."
"You can't run your warp drive full-board for over two and a half years, Matthew. We'd be dead in the water less than a third of the way home."
"We'll see..." Matthew replied, drifting off as he went back to work on his Aramaic. In the back of his head, he was already trying to figure out a plan.
Queen Chloe was idly licking blood from her fingers as she watched the video of the so-called Captain Matthew trying to transmit a distress call in his broken Aramaic. She thought it so wonderfully delicious; letting them wait out in the middle of nowhere, just hovering around those two red giants.
Behind her, hanging by his wrists, was Oriel. Everything from the waist down was gone. Only a few desperately clinging tendrils of his flesh remained hanging from his torso where his hip bones should have started. Blood stained the wall behind him and below. His entrails had been whipped around the room, leaving brownish red streaks everywhere. The remnants of others were also splattered on the walls, making for a horribly gruesome lair for the young-looking queen. The worst part of it, however, was Oriel remained breathing. His eyes were the kind of dead, glazed eyes one would expect of a man who has felt more pain than was imaginable for a person. They were the eyes of one who just could not react to the pain anymore; it was so intense and mind-numbing. Sometimes, being an Eternal meant more pain that it was worth. Oriel knew he should be dead by now, but those damned bionic machines inside of him stemmed the blood flows with expert care, using what resources they could to keep his heart beating and his lungs working. They knew not of his pain, only their own survival. A dead host meant dead nanites.
Then, a voice came to Oriel. You want to die?
Oriel didn't even respond. For him, it was another hallucination. Another voice that wasn't there.
I asked you a question.
Oriel's eyes shifted up at to the left, then to the right. He was trying to see where the voice was coming from.
You cannot see me. Don't waste the energy on trying.
Who are you? Oriel thought, but could not say.
A Watcher.
There is no such thing, Oriel said. It was almost an instinctive reaction. Watchers were myth. They were not the all-powerful, all-knowing evolved creatures everyone believed them to be, permeating all that went on in the universe.
You deny me? I am here, talking to you, in a place no living thing escapes from.
You are a delusion based on my dreams to have this pain end.
If I am a delusion, would you still listen to me if it meant you could do just that?
I'm listening.
While this went on, Chloe simply replayed Matthew's message over and over again. She considered, perhaps, telling him her true identity, and when. Perhaps just as she was about to disembowel him, she could tell him. Or perhaps she would tell him sooner. Let him weigh in on the fact this was what his own granddaughter had become. She tittered with laughter at this idea.
"I don't know how you got this far, grandfather, but you'll pay for treading in my galaxy."
"Your tyranny is at an end, highness."
Chloe whipped around on her spider-like appendages. "What was that, slave?"
"You will burn like all the others. Repent, little Melissa. Purge yourself of your sins."
Chloe charged forward in a blur of metallic legs, and had her hand at Oriel's throat. She didn't even have time to register Oriel was speaking in English, a language she thought dead in her little corner of the universe. "How do you know that name?"
Instead of answering, Oriel began to sing softly.
"Little child, be not afraid.
The rain pounds harsh against the glass
like an unwanted stranger.
There is no danger.
I am here to--"
Oriel's words were stopped suddenly as one of Chloe's spider legs thrust from underneath, ripping apart his entire spinal column and decimating the motor function area of his brain. The damage was too devastating for his nanites to compensate, and so all faded to black for Oriel. The last thing he managed to do was think out to the voice that had helped him. Thank you, Watcher. I can sleep...
You are welcome, Oriel. You were so brave.
Chloe tightened the grip on Oriel's neck, ripping his body away from the wall with such strength that his hands crushed themselves through the metal rings that held them fast. She then threw his corpse clear across the room where it slammed into a pile of several other unfortunate souls. It was then she began screaming in rage.
Matthew burst into the bridge as quickly as he could when the call came. It was four days into their constant distress calls. He'd learned Aramaic fluently enough to feel confident he could communicate with others in the galaxy. Elizabeth had stopped studying only the day before, satisfied with her own capacity.
"About time," Tak said, turning in his chair towards Matthew. "We just got a call from a ship. Looks military to me. They're awaiting your reply."
Matthew gave a slight nod. Even as he stepped forward to stand in front of his own control console, the others came filing in after him. By the time Tak had re-opened the connection, there was a hodgepodge of creatures standing behind Matthew.
The image that came up was odd. Matthew and his entire crew had looks of puzzlement when they beheld the female in front of them. She was stunningly beautiful in a classical kind of way. She had soft cheeks and a curvy body, and thick golden locks spread out around her head. But her eyes were closed, and her body lay limp in what looked like a throne. There were a multitude of connections going in and out of the chair, which was solid white along with the cables that connected it. The female, too, was clad nearly entirely in white but for a red mark that circled her neck at the top hem of her button-down shirt. Even the background of the room in which she sat was almost purely white. The look of it was so sterile and yet so blinding.
Matthew blinked a few times to get his eyes adjusted to the screen, waiting for the female to do or say something.
Just as he opened his mouth to try to say hello, a voice filled the bridge. "State your purpose here." The voice was a mixture of the robotic and the feminine. It was beautiful and yet fell flat on the ears. But, more importantly, the voice was speaking English. Matthew decided he would worry how they knew the language later.
"We're travelers from the Milky Way. We hit an anomaly that launched us across to this galaxy."
"Can you prove this?" The voice was so cold and straightforward, yet Matthew still could not help but detect some sort of human element in it.
"Just look at the debris field trailing us. You'll find the remains of three other ships that got pulled in our wake."
"You are destroyers?"
"No. Like I said, it was an anomaly that tore everything apart behind us," Matthew said, speaking carefully.
"What type of anomaly was this?"
"Honestly, if I could tell you, I would," Matthew sighed. "Look, all we want is to get home safe. Could you lend us a hand here?"
For a long while, there was nothing said. Then all the sensors began going off, indicating a ship beside them. Matthew looked at his readout. The thing was at least twenty times the size of his own ship. It was spherical in shape, with a depression in the front with a strip of windows stretching across the diameter. He figured that was what could be considered the "bow" of the vessel. It was also pure white on the outside. "You will be towed in and transported directly to Azophi. The Queen awaits your arrival. Please remain aboard your ship while in transit."
"Wait," Matthew said, holding up a hand just as the screen faded out, leaving only the image of space ahead of them and the large white ship to one side. Still, the same voice answered.
"What?"
"How long have you been maintaining a course alongside our ship?"
Another pause. "Since one-point-five of your hours after your arrival in Andromeda Galaxy."
Bella was strolling along her stone-cobbled path back home, which was a low wooden structure with a beautiful red door in the front. The wooden panels had no paint of their own, and a thin trail of smoke was drifting into the air above her head. The breeze picked up, and the smell of wet dirt wafted across her nose. Rain was coming. Rain was always on its way when it looked like change was near. She sighed, but there was still a warm smile on her face as she opened the doorway into her home.
Setting down a basket full of vegetables from her garden, Bella wiped her dirty hands on a white apron that hung in front of her blue cotton dress. She turned to Nancy, who had been preparing their lunch for the previous half hour or so, and placed her arms around her, kissing her tenderly. Nancy was tall and looked almost Nordic, if it weren't for the dark black hair and brown eyes. Her features were a little more angular, her build a little larger than most women, but Bella thought her gorgeous. Bella looked as she always has, with her thick golden locks of hair, slightly rounded face, and sapphire blue eyes.
"Hey baby," Nancy said tenderly, moving her lips from Bella's lips to her forehead. "You were out in the garden quite a while."
"I had some thinking to do," Bella said, laying her head on Nancy's chest.
"This matter of Matthew troubling you?"
"Yes... and my mother doesn't seem very happy."
"When is she ever?"
"I hope she doesn't hurt him. He seems to be a good man. Unlike most of those like him."
"You act as if you're not one, yourself."
"What I am has changed so much, I'm not certain of what I am anymore."
"I know you're the love of my life," Nancy said affectionately, smiling and kissing Bella's forehead.
Bella simply lay her head on Nancy's shoulder, nosing into her neck. "Any more word from that Watcher?"
"He hasn't come back yet, no."
"If what he promises is true... would we go?" Bella asked, lifting her head again to gaze into Nancy's eyes. Nancy smiled down at her, caressing her cheek.
"I'll go if you do."
"You know I want to."
For a moment, their reality vanished as the ship finalized the docking with Persephone. A couple thoughts from Bella in tandem with Nancy, and they were underway to Azophi, and back in their little wooden cottage. "We will finally be able to just be together," Bella said, kissing Nancy's cheek.
"And if what the Watcher says is true, this digital fantasy can be a reality."
"Let us pray that is true."