Two Entities of Great Energy (For the Birds)
If one was a traveler through space, coming upon this corner of the universe at this time by happenstance, such a traveler would spy a fantastic sight: two entities of great beauty and great energy facing off, one against the other—the great galaxyship, the Eridanus, and the swirling barrier of brilliant beings, some of their number continually breaking free, blazing out like solar flares, then returning to slide back in to make the circle whole. The galaxyship once again made a forward push against the barrier and once again was forced to thrust sternward when the pressure inside the ship became debilitating. Some outside force was not allowing the ship to fly over or under the barrier, or to maneuver starboard or port. Communications were jammed. The officers and diplomats aboard the Eridanus quickly assembled in the executive briefing room to discuss the stalemate. A decision needed to be made as to how, and even whether, the mission could continue. Ambassador Gillis and First Deputy Lee urged finding a way to push ahead, stressing the critical future benefits to ISEA. Second Deputy Palladin argued strenuously for scrubbing the mission and turning back. The captain’s chief concern was the safety of his crew and ship. He listened, but said little; in the end, Gillis possessed the authority to override any plan of action, but Chipman was the one who understood the capability of his vessel. They needed to listen to him.
Almost imperceptibly, but nonetheless in a steady and measurable manner, the pressure inside the ship began to mount again, but this time not in reaction to any forward move. Back up on the bridge, Chipman was informed by his helmsman that the helm could no longer command the ship. The Eridanus was frozen in place, caught in a web of undulating beauty and brilliance. Retreat was no longer an option; they would have to destroy the barrier or be destroyed. The outcome would depend upon their collective competence and courage.
Joanni had her own private communication channel with the Oreanian Council, via a low level individual called Ganhokeet, with whom she would check in when a message was sent to her. She had tried radio signaling the Council once or twice on her own initiative, just to chat one could say, and to practice her language skills, but the Oreanians made it clear they were disinclined to participate in unsolicited social interaction. Now she would be glad to work through any awkwardness in order to ask them what was going on on the edge of their galaxy, but the feathered, churning creatures were causing interference between the Eridanus and the solar systems in that galaxy, and she could not reach them. She had often felt like a fairy with the Oreanians, a fairy entering an unexplored cave with her very own luminescence of fairyness lighting up all before her so she could see what lay ahead, but this barrier ring had shut down such power, and she was left in the dark. As she was sitting in this troubling dimness in her quarters, the red alert sounded, then the call to action stations, and she understood what was about to happen.
The doors of the lift to the bridge opened and Joanni stepped out and went straight to Chipman in the captain’s chair. The two spoke in short, clipped whispers. There wasn’t much time; the ship was losing power.
“What are you going to do?” she demanded. It was not due to her former romantic status with the captain that she was not immediately thrown off the bridge, but rather to the understanding by all present of her status as their world’s representative to that other world, the world of the future and of the unknown, the Oreanian world. She had unassailable standing.
“I will not compromise the safety of this ship.” He looked straight at her. “No . . .”
“The Oreanians . . .”
“It’s immaterial to me what the Oreanians would do.”
“Oreana would NOT destroy something of this magnitude. They would . . .”
“I don’t have the luxury of self-destruction.” He turned his face away from her to study the front screen. “Get off the bridge; go to your quarters. That’s an order.” She stared hard at him, then turned on her heel and left. Chipman kept his eyes on the screen in front of him; he had no time for her appeals and did not want to see the hatred in her eyes. ‘When do you stop thinking you’re young, moving forward,’ he thought to himself. ‘It just stops and then you’re . . . very tired.’
“Leave me alone to mourn. Let me mourn,” Joanni muttered over and over as she stormed back to her quarters, along the now empty corridors, raging at her helplessness. Why the hell did she allow herself to get into such a situation. She entered her quarters and flounced down on the couch, unconsciously in the former “non-captain seating area” (no duties here, no responsibilities, no stress.), put her feet up on the coffee table and crossed her arms across her chest. ‘I wish I was one of those creatures out there, flying off into the vastness, free, returning home, not stuck in this ship, this tin can,’ she thought. ‘Breaking from the circle, returning to it.’ Oreana would not destroy these birds. The circle was a real breathing thing to her, almost a holy thing.
She lowered her arms, releasing her grip on herself, then raised them to massage her forehead. She was light-headed from her stomping about, and the ship’s internal cabin pressure was becoming unbearable again. Then a blast from deep underneath her sent her flying to the floor; there was an awful pause, then a lengthy volley. The resulting kickback and reverberation sent her rolling to the other side of the room, slamming her back into the leg of her desk, then sucked her back again in the opposite direction, as if the tide was pulling her to her drowning. The Eridanus had focused its ion laser weapons at a single point in the barrier, and with each minute draining power from it engineers, fired several rounds, causing an explosion within the barrier that slowly traveled around the ring like dominoes collapsing, causing it to implode with a devastating shrieking sound, then explode into a blinding, blanketing light. Debris slammed into the ship and sent it listing hard to port from the impact. The lights flickered and went out with a buzzing sound; there was an awful silence, then the thrum of the auxiliary engines sounded throughout the ship. Emergency lighting came on, enveloping everyday surroundings in an eerie murkiness. Eventually, the intercom cracked. It was a medical assistant checking for casualties and damage. Joanni struggled to pull herself up to the microphone and mumbled, “I’m fine, just bruised.”
But she wasn’t really fine. The understanding that, rather than being a different world, this was the same world and thus no escape from reality, was forced upon her. The captain’s voice floated over shipwide communications, “Secure from general quarters.” He had survived. Her quarters seemed empty now, not safe, without him. She felt very alone. What was it about that man? How much of her initial desire for him was just loneliness, sexual attraction, and ambition? How much of it was love?
She stumbled toward and fell back onto the couch, her mind conducting a jumbled rumination on her worthiness, the cost of risk-taking, the gift of appreciation. ‘Here, finally so close, was that great love, the man I always wanted,’ she thought, ‘but unobtainable, unreachable as the undulating birds, the shimmering stars outside my spaceship window. So much closer, but even further out of reach. When do you stop thinking you’re young and realize you hit your high water mark,’ she continued to herself. ‘It was only downhill from here.’
The ship gave another shudder, and with a start, Joanni remembered her clesig. She hurried to check if it was all right. One of the bridges had been knocked loose, but it was otherwise undamaged. The Oreanian’s favorite alien clutched her clesig close to her as she would hold tight to her own child. But she couldn’t rest; she left her quarters and paced up and down the hallways, a throwback to the earlier claustrophobic days immediately after coming on board, the continued lurching and jerking of the ship causing her to stumble from one wall to the other, to once actually fall down. Joanni ended up at her private office and went over to stand by her window. She stood silently there for a long time, rubbing her bruises, bearing witness to the destruction that had just occurred. There was a long deep scratch on the outside surface of the window running down the entire length of the right side, plus other smaller scars, claw marks, and dents. Debris from battle, the result of the struggle between duty and paradise.
The Eridanus had sustained major damage, but was slowly righting herself by the low light of auxiliary generators: the engines slowly coming up to full power, the fuel generating pods intact and secured. She had lost sixteen men. She glided through space, darkly at first as her warp engines stabilized. Full power was eventually restored, and she continued on her mission to Oreana, once again lighting up the skies.
Image: Beauty as its own light. Source: Detail from “Group of Egrets” by Ohara Koson, Tokyo, 1925-1936. Rijksmuseum. Public domain.