Beneath The Darkness Between The Stars

[Veloras Itana 0]

Beneath The Darkness

Between The Stars

Pt. IX

 

Itana once again found herself alone at four in the morning staring at the screen of the small terminal in her quarters. In the weeks since she'd begun this reconstruction project Doctor T'Pren had suggested, sleep came at shorter and shorter intervals. Itana began recording the memories of her imprisonment aboard the Antioch in exactly the way the doctor had suggested but, the effect of her writing was beginning to take its toll. More often than not she would find herself sitting at her desk, late at night, reading and rereading what she had written, as unable to continue as she was to put it away for a later time.

 

The drive to complete the project seemed to over ride the need for such things as food and sleep. All that occupied her off duty mind was getting it done. Being finished with it and, maybe finally being able to move on. On nights like tonight it didn't seem to be helping at all. Only making things worse. She would wake in the morning looking haggard and unrested, her violet eyes normally vibrant and alive now growing dull and unfocused. Dark circles had begun to form three weeks earlier and the cosmetic work it took to conceal them grew more and more time consuming. Still, she kept at it. Now that she had started to relive the nightmare there seemed to be no choice but to see it through to its completion and deal with the consequences when it was done. Her work hadn't begun to suffer yet, or at least she hoped not. And, fearing recognition of her growing distress, she retreated to the safety and solitude of her quarters as soon as her shift was done. She spent no time out among the crew when work didn't require it.

 

Studying the introduction she'd already written to the climax of the tale, she paused, took a deep breath and tried to make herself continue.

 

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Apologies are in order for all that introspective whining I did in my last passage. After all, this story is being presented as a work of fiction and, in fiction there is no guilt, there is no fear, there is no sorrow. As the great poet once said, "The play's the thing." Detachment in the story telling process is as important as the content itself so, I will try to keep my regretful musings on the subject at hand to a minimum from this point on. That being said, on we go.

 

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"Come on now. Come back to us." Jai pressed the hypo-spray to my neck, brushing the hair from my face with his other hand. I could hear his voice but only barely. It seemed to me to be coming from somewhere far away and echoed as if coming from beyond a pool of water.

 

I felt my eyes open but, still seemed to be dreaming as I struggled to make them focus. Gripped by the knowledge that I was back aboard the Antioch and not safely tucked away in a hospital on Earth I began to scream in denial of my surroundings. Jai put his hands against my shoulder, forcing me back into the mattress of the small cot in the sleeping quarters. I was too weak and breathless to fight against him for too long and quickly succumbed to the exhaustion I felt in every muscle and joint in my body. Gradually, as I became fully awake, I stopped struggling completely and fell back into the corner of the bunk, curled in a tight ball, facing the wall.

 

"I wasn't here." I cried languidly. "I was safe. I was safe." I repeated the phrase several more times until the image I had seen in the hospital room returned to me. That last horrifying sight of the heart in the jar and the realization that it was mine and it was still beating. Confusion overwhelmed the panic as I tried desperately to make sense of what had actually happened to me. I fell silent, staring at the wall trying not to notice the sickly sweet smell of decay that seemed to permeate the room. I distinctly remember not wanting to roll over and face Jai. In some way believing that maybe if I didn't look it wouldn't become real. It would remain as I had believed it to be in that "hospital" room a bad dream in a series of bad dreams best left forgotten.

 

"Itana look at me." Jai said in a soft compassionate tone. As compelled as I was to look I felt my muscles seize and my body scornfully lock in place. I closed my eyes, trying to escape back into sleep but to no avail as Jai's voice continued breaching the gap between my hallucinations and reality. "Listen love, as much as I might like to coddle you through this, there isn't time. We need you back on your feet. I don't know where you've been for the past six days but, you're back now and, as near as I can tell with the equipment I have, aside a mild infection in your lungs and around the walls of your heart, you are ok."

 

"My heart?" I stammered feeling the skin in my palms split as I dug my fingernails into them.

 

A warm trickle of blood found its way to the mattress beside my face and I looked at it apathetically, not really registering what it was. My hands moved to my chest. I pulled at my shirt, feeling for the holes left by the tubing or the incision scarring over where my heart had been removed. Confusion and panic began to well in my stomach again as I found nothing but the new smears of blood created by the cuts my nails had made in my palms.

 

"My heart." I muttered again and slowly rolled over to face Jai. His eyes were kind and caring but there was an urgency to his _expression that helped bring me the rest of the way around. "What's happened?"

 

"I could ask you the same thing." He feigned a smile and took my hand to examine the cuts. "Three hours ago we lost atmospheric control. The engine room has no gravity and the environmental controls keep fluctuating. We can't seem to lock down a cause. That's the only reason I agreed to wake you up."

 

"G'Khol's the engineer. What does he say?" I tried to sit up but failed as the pressure in my lungs set off a furious coughing fit.

 

Jai looked away, closing his eyes. He drew a long slow breath and turned back to look at me, mustering all the resolve in his voice that he could. "G'Khol is dead. Three of the passengers are also dead. Two of them are still missing, they disappeared from the main cabin shortly after you did from the cockpit. Those that are left are hysterical and irrational most of the time." He chuckled scornfully. And, I'm running very low on sedatives."

 

"Oh." I replied blandly, certain now that this was just another hallucination. G'Khol wasn't dead. He couldn't be I had just seen him not... My mind wandered off as I felt my eyes roll back in my head. The next thing I remember was Jai slapping my cheek lightly, trying to bring me back around.

 

"Come on Tana, we need your help. You're the closest thing we have to an engineer now and Commander Yung wants you on your feet." Jai patted my cheek again a bit more forcefully.

 

As I slowly came back to reality, I caught his hand in mine and looked up at him belligerently. "Commander Yung can kiss my ass." I shot back at him venomously. "I'm not moving from this spot until someone tells me what the hell is happening to us!"

 

I started to cry, trembling badly which only aggravated the heaviness in my chest making the coughs deeper and more laborious. I could feel every cell in my body shake fiercely as reality finally came crashing down on top of me. I was back on the Antioch. This wasn't a bad dream. The hospital had been. Or at least I thought so. I could no longer be sure what was real. All I did know was that I was terrified and, if Jai wasn't a figure of my imagination that now, better than a third of the people who had started this voyage with me were dead.

 

"I wish I had an answer for you Tana. I really do. But, we are as lost and as frightened as you are. All we can do now is pull together and try to stay alive until we either figure what's causing this or somehow manage an escape. And, to do that, we need you. Can you help us please? Without your help we may all suffocate within the next four hours. I don't know if you're alert enough to notice yet but, the air in here is getting a bit ripe. We have no means of refrigerating or preserving the bodies of the dead and if something isn't done soon, the bacteria will get us if suffocation doesn't. Please, try to focus."

 

I remained silent for quite some time, staring up at him as if I hadn't understood. I did understand though, all too well. In this confined a space, with no ventilation and no air reclamation those bodies would start rapid decomposition very quickly. After what seemed like an eternity, I nodded and forced myself to sit up. Breathing was still unbelievably hard but, seemed to ease up some as I started moving around. I asked for and received another shot of stimulant and before long I was on my feet. Not long after that I wished I wasn't when I stepped into the aft section of the ship and saw the condition of the bodies and, what had been done to the atmospheric processors.

 

Had I been a bit more coherent at the time it may have dawned on me that the damage to the atmospheric controls was very convenient. It coincided with my return to the Antioch, the death of G'Khol, our only certified engineer, and something far more interesting. Something I had completely forgotten. The mechanical failures I witnessed while being held in the "hospital room." Looking back now I don't know how I missed it but I did and, instead of working on the obvious conclusions that could be drawn by all those coincidences I did exactly what our captors had intended. I tried to fix the atmospheric controls.

 

....To Be Continued