Chapter 4
Reflection
Both Darian and Katherine shared an uneasy silence for a long time after Elena’s last communication, neither one knew what to say or even what to do with the new information. In the end someone had to speak, as both people were going to get nothing done, and go nowhere otherwise.
Darian looked Katherine directly in the eyes and said “So, care to explain all that? Plan on building a second starship and not telling anyone?”He thought he knew where everything was and how everything happened in the last 6 months but, lo and behold, this planet still had secrets to give up.
He put the bottle to his lips and sucked back more of the robot degreaser someone tried to pass off as alcohol when they packaged it. Darian may never have been privy to all information going in and out of the colony, and he used to be fairly certain of the whereabouts of all bases and equipment, but every once and awhile something would happen to make him question his judgment. Of course now wasn’t about questioning his character, it was more about ascertaining who he could trust at all. Darian was getting ready to throw almost anyone out into the thin atmosphere of the planet for answers when the woman across from him started to talk again. He was almost sure he could trust Katherine, he had been wrong before.
“I don’t have an answer for any of that, why would you think I should?” She reached out to him, fearing she was going to throttle him with a sucker punch he braced against the cot he was sitting in; instead she grabbed the bottle from his left hand, spun and sat down on the bed next to him. Katherine turned the bottle up and almost drank half of the contents before speaking again. This time she wasn’t talking at him defensively, her words had a sudden weight to them, the somber tone in her voice that Darian knew very well, and then he remembered why she sounded the way she did.
She looked at him and said “I would give anything to be up there with him, but I would never take from others to do it, you know that” Katherine set the bottle down beside her and became quiet. As each moment passed the strong willed woman sitting next to him, the one that never grew complacent with this world or of the idea to surrender to fate, became more tired and less worried about keeping up appearances, so much so even that she slowly closed her eyes, lowered her head, and began to cry.
Darian almost forgot about Ethan.
Ethan was her sixteen year old son, now on the Conestoga II and barreling out into space. The kid was a blond haired dreamer, not a lot unlike his mother, only he was less restrained by the gravity of influence cast down on by peers, and of life on the planet itself. Darian knew Ethan well, the kid was around his daughter whenever possible in these last six months. Ethan got an automatic ride on the ship with his mother having to be left behind, something that surely weighed heavily on Katherine, and may have even taken something from her altogether when he left.
Elena had been following in her father’s footsteps from a young age and after her mother passed away she had become even more of a shadow to him. Ethan had never lived through that sort of emotional trauma and didn’t feel the need to be at his mother’s side as much as Elena was to Darian. Ethan was always off on his own finding a place for himself in the colony, Katherine was dealing with people and problems and with the violent outbreak of activities leading up to launch day the two spent even less time together.
Just as Darian was remembering that Katherine was more alone on this world than ever before, Katherine was just beginning to realize that she was living it, and not enjoying one bit of it at all. She was however, enjoying the bottle in her hand so much so that Darian reached over to take it before it was all gone.
“There’s some kind of point to all of this right?” Katherine looked over at Darian. Taking a swig and then turning to her “To live on, to control ones destiny I would surmise, which is a bit farcical to think as I have been feeling an overwhelming lack of control as of late, probably has something to do with Elena being on that damn skydock. If I you were to ask me I would say she may have found the worst place to be, which is shocking coming from somebody having survived some forty years on this bloody rock. She’s not on that ship heading towards what should be a better life, and she’s not down here staring at the end, she’s right in the middle, waiting for nothing to happen… would drive me nuts man.”
Darian turned his head to look out the plate window of the tight room, staring off into the distant sunset. It must have been forever since the last time he sat still looking at nothing, and even now at the end of the day when things should be slowing down there was a still flurry of activity on this desolate rock whipping around in space, at times when Darian was sure little was happening, as if all motion stood still, something was always going on.
“There’s never a pause is there, things never stop, it still marches on”
“What marches on?” Katherine looked at him quizzically, or as best she could through tear soaked eyes.
“Life man…life” The orange and red glow of the star receding back from the horizon was calming for Darian, New Terra wasn’t always terrible, and every once and awhile it still had its moments. He sat there in silence now for an even longer time watching the slowly vanishing light just south of the mountain range about a kilometer to the north of the colony, and moments later the sun was gone. It was after the light gave up its battle to the darkness that Darian realized just how long they had been sitting there.
“Alright, now what?” He looked back at Katherine. She must have sorted herself out while Darian was staring off into the void because when he looked at her again she was back to normal.
Her face was still visibly flushed but she wasn’t crying anymore, and the emotions weren’t gone, they were just held back for another day. “You gonna be alright?” he asked her.
“I’ll be fine. I don’t usually breakdown like that.”
“That wasn’t a breakdown, I’ve witnessed those before, we’re all just human remember, you finally took a break from being a robot to become normal again.” Darian joked lightly and it was enough to provoke Katherine into punching him in the arm.
“Well I’m hungry now, better go replenish my robotic energy stores like the machine I am.” She gathered herself together and stood up from the cot and walked over to the door.
Katherine turned to look back at Darian “I’m going to call some people and have every one meet in the Observatory; there are a lot of unanswered things going on around here that I want to get straightened out, and we also need to figure out how to get off this damn planet.”
“Why there?” Darian looked puzzled.
“It should be empty right now, there is nobody around looking at anything and we don’t look to be going anywhere quickly, most of the colony is in Res or at the Rec Center, we should be able to go over things quietly.”
“Oh right, like how a damned R.L.V. came back to the planet? Or why there is an extra drive module in orbit?”
“And the impending storm and Plymouth Colony and so many others” Katherine opened the door and stepped into the hallway “and thank you for being here for me” she took another step forward, the door closed and she was gone.
Again Darian found himself alone with his thoughts. He had known Katherine all of his life but never remembered her falling apart like that, and definitely never believed that she would do it in front of him.
“Jade, how long till the storm hits us?”
“Conservative models place the storm 18 hours out right now. It’s fairly large, maybe a category 4 with electrical discharges spaced 5 mins apart at the moment, there is enough disturbance in the atmosphere to interfere with long range sensors right now.”
Something else to look forward to Darian thought, as he was trying to make sense of things his mind turned back to Katherine. He was reluctant to admit that it felt good to have someone around that he could rely on that wasn’t his daughter, and somebody that needed him just as much. As it happened to be a subject of debate in his mind, it wasn’t abundantly clear which one needed the other more, or if at all, and Darian hadn’t decided if he was ready to think like that again.
“Jade call Elena”
“Setting up communication link” there was a pause while Jade was routing comm. channels “communication link established”
“Elena you there?”
“Yup, just finishing off my meal. You were gone long” Elena replied cheerfully back down to him, Darian felt just as good about hearing his daughters voice as she was of his.
“Lost track of time sitting here watching the sunset with Katherine” and Darian immediately regretted having said that, he closed his eyes and put a hand up to his temple knowing his daughter was going to make more of what he said than what he thought he did.
“Were you holding hands? Did you just finish a meal together? Tell me everything” if Darian could see his daughter he would bet she was grinning from ear to ear and wearing a smug grin on her face. Elena had been pestering him for years to get more acquainted with Katherine but he used the ‘colony is too busy, needs me there’ line as a sort of defense for a long time now, and largely because of his wife passing on.
“No we weren’t holding hands, we were sitting on my bed with a bottle of…” which at that point Elena abruptly cut him off.
“Sitting in your room on your bed? What has been going on since I left? Oh I’m so proud of you”
“It wasn’t like that, good grief” Darian got up and walked towards the lavatory to splash some water in his face and get ready for the walk over to the observatory. “We weren’t talking about much really, she was remembering her son and started to get a little emotional…”
“Emotional? What did you say” Elena sternly asking him, as if he had just done something terribly wrong.
“I didn’t say anything inappropriate, she was just upset about Ethan leaving that she started crying.”
“She started crying?” Elena paused for a second “that’s big you know”
“What’s big? So she cried, that’s not a big deal, were friends, friends confide in one another, there’s no shame in that, so she vented a little. Big deal.”
“It’s a huge deal, I’ve never seen that from her, she’s comfortable with you and you need to be there for her. She needs you, and you need her.”
“Oh bother” Darian wiped the excess water off his face, grabbed his voucher card so he could grab some luxury food at the Rec Center on his way over to the Observatory “don’t be starting with that nonsense again. I’m fine, she’s fine, everything’s fine.”
Darian picked up his jacket by the door, checked the pockets to make sure his Ident Card was in it and turned back to face the middle of the room.
“I’m going to this meeting with Katherine and some others to figure out what the last of us down here are going to do next. Get some sleep. When you wake up try to figure out what got you high level clearance to open up that munitions case, find out all you can about the R.L.V that came back down to the planet and why the one up there has an extra damned drive module in its cargo hold.”
“Okay I will, if you promise to watch out for Katherine”
“Fine fine, I was going to regardless. And see if you can’t get a message down to the Plymouth Colony, there is a large storm on the way and it may have already over taken their little outpost.” Darian looked around the room and wondered if he needed anything else before taking off, and then he remembered the little black case.
He walked back over to his large grey steel cabinet that held all of his clothes and equipment and opened the doors. Inside it you could find all manner of items and junk, extra belts and boots, a few tools, shirts and pants, jackets and boxes. One of the boxes on the top shelf that Darian had to move other things out of the way to reach, buried way in the back was a little black dust covered box that he hadn’t thought about in years.
Darian sighed heavily and then opened it. In the little box was a crudely crafted silver ring on a necklace, and it had been a very long time since he last looked at it. Living on this planet didn’t afford much for big sentimental gestures and events that you would see in the old history logs of earth, especially when it came to things like weddings and marriages, but one tradition that carried over was the wedding band. Life on New Terra was always hanging in the balance, even precariously at times, and so terribly apparent at first that some of the colonists chose to mimic the idea by hanging a wedding band around your neck instead of wearing it on your finger. It was a reminder that even though life could be hanging by a thread at times, you could always look down and see that at the end of that rope somebody else was right there with you. That somebody else was a hand crafted ring from the person who wanted to be there with you.
Darian always felt it was a silly ritual that got started, but he never once mocked the people or the feelings behind it. He reached into his shirt and pulled out the gold ring and necklace he had worn for years around his neck, the one Jordan, his now long gone but never forgotten wife gave him. She was buried at the first colony site after the accident and was buried with the ring and necklace he made her.
The silver band and chain he held in his other hand was from Katherine. A much different girl than the one she had become, but more like the one that had just cried on his bed and walked out of his room. That was a long time ago Darian he thought to himself that was a whole lifetime ago now. He was having a hard time now remembering why the falling out between the two of them occurred, and he was only sort of certain that it wasn’t entirely either one’s fault, just that it happened and they both moved on. He pocketed the silver ring, put the box away in the cabinet and closed the doors.
“Elena?” he asked over the comm.
“Yes?” she replied back almost immediately.
“Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone. I’ll check in with you once I’m back” Darian shut off the light to his cabin and opened the door. “I love you, be good.”
“Love you too, and be careful”
“No promises.” And just like that the comm. went dead.
Darian walked out the door and made his way in the direction of the Observatory, and onto what could very well be some of the biggest decisions he was ever going to have to make. The encroaching storm which was most certainly spurred on by the blight was also making its way in this direction and was going to be forcing another colony move inside the next eighteen hours. Darian wasn’t sure if he was going to be the one to make that decision or if it would be Katherine, but he was positive there was nobody else left in charge to shoulder that responsibility, and that it was going to take everyone to do it.
The first decision was figuring out where to run, and they were running out of usable planet to run to, and fast.
