Hair of the Wolf: Open for Business

1st Lieutenant Joined: Mar 17, 2007 Posts: 32

When Wolf left the bar saying he was going to bed I somehow felt relieved. Wolf had become a close and trusted friend and to have him looking at me that way was more than a little unnerving. It was downright troubling. The kind of troubling you feel when your brother squeals to your parents that the mess you both had gotten yourselves into was your fault. No matter whether it was true or not, you just don’t do that. And your friend just doesn’t doubt you like that. Unless he’s really not your friend.

Or unless… he has a real reason to doubt you.

That I had no recollection of the recording was bad enough. I could explain away that gap in my memory with the knocking around I took in the battle, the oxygen starvation, the panic of dying a slow painful death. If that was the sum of it all, I’d say ok, blow it off, and get on with the fight. But there was more, and the more was what bothered me the most.

I never lose sleep over dreams. So to speak. What I mean is, I never take them very seriously. But these dreams were more than your average garden variety dreams. There was something more about them, enough to make me not want to sleep. Enough to make me drink myself to sleep every night since I returned on Larissa. It was like I was living a separate life when I was sleeping. It was creepy.

So when I’d decided I was drunk enough I made my way up to Wolf’s room. I was worried about him and I still had the door cipher from the night before, so I thought I’d drop in on him before going across the hall to my own room. If he was asleep I wouldn’t have to wake him.

He was asleep, but I could tell right off it wasn’t as easy sleep. He tossed and mumbled, cried out once within the first minute after I slipped in. I dimly saw a chair in the corner. I made my way to it and sank into its body-conforming comfort. I’d intended to keep an eye on my friend but the drink was too much. I fell asleep. OK, I passed out.

The dark stone was cold against my back. No wonder. I was completely naked. I sat up, tried to get my bearings. The roughly circular room was strangely lit in shadows of green and violet. Instruments lined the walls most of the way around, strange alien markings on the panels and screens.

Several monitors opened views of other similar rooms, but these were more barren. This must be a control room, I guessed. I slipped off the platform, feeling surprisingly light. Closer to one of the screens I could easily make out a figure on another stone slab. Several others stood around him. He was human, the others were obviously not. They were arranging devices on his body. When one moved aside I was briefly offered a better view. I was appalled at what I saw.

The remains of the man wore the remains of a flight suit. An Order flight suit. There were wires connected to numerous nodes protruding from his body. A wire mesh cloth was draped over his head but with the light shining directly on it I could see the figure of his face beneath. Dead eyes stared at some point in space and the mouth was opened as if in the midst of an anguished cry. How he had died I could not say but it must have been agonizing. There were deep gashes and burns over most of what I could see of his body but nothing I would call life-threatening. I wondered how he’d died.

My mind flashed back to my last battle, my battered ship adrift through the green clouds in Omicron Theta… the oxygen meter pegged at zero, the red light flashing its warning, stammering through the last of my message, fighting for breath…

When I looked back at the man on the table I knew. He’d died the same way, in the lonely cold of a darkened ship.

One of the creatures turned away from the table and reached for a control panel adjacent to it. Long fingers curled in impossible angles to push several buttons and adjust a meter at the same time. Then it turned into the light for a brief moment.

It was long enough. I recognized it at once. From the primers in school as a child to the briefings in basic training, this image was engraved on my mind.

This was a Nomad.

The lights dimmed for a few seconds. When they returned to normal the cloth was removed from the man’s face. His eyes opened and he looked wildly about the room. Then he seemed to relax. His eyes shifted to another Nomad who was leaning toward him.

The pilot sat up, all the while looking at the Nomad. Then he nodded and said, “I understand.” He rose and moved out of view. The Nomad he’d spokne to turned. This one wore a sash across his body. On it in bright blue shone a crescent and some markings within the arms of the arc. He looked at the others and they moved quickly out of the room.

The Nomad stood alone for a moment as its face, for lack of a better word, twisted into a grotesque form. Then it, too, move out of view.

I woke with a start as I heard a knock at the door. There was a blanket over me I know I hadn’t put there myself.

Wolf sat up in the bed and looked at me groggily, then at the persistently knocking door.

“You gonna get that or what…?” He asked with a lopsided grin.

Posted: September 8, 2007, 8:11 am

Vengeance got up unsteadily and moved to the door. When it opened the silhouette of a big man blocked the light from the hall outside. Vengeance stepped aside and Carnival entered.

He seemed surprised to see V with me. Looking back and forth between us with a raised eyebrow he asked, “Am I interrupting anything?”

“No, no, we were just getting up…” I said

“Uh, no, just a bad dream,” Vengeance said, at the same time.

C looked at the bed, then back and forth between us again, a strange look on his face. “Just when you think you know someone…” he mumbled.

“What?” “What?” we said in unison.

Carnival burst out laughing.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, very funny. Don’t quit yer day job, pal.” I groaned as I crawled out of bed. “What time is it anyway?”

“Oh-five-hundred. One hour to briefing. Thought you two ladies might want to freshen up.”

“I’m so hungry I could eat a Belian Beetle,” Vengeance complained as he made his way to the lavatory in the back of the room.

“What’s this about a bad dream?” I called to him over the sound of his water falling.

“The usual.”

“Well ok, what’s the usual?”

“Listen, I’d really rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind”

“Well, ok,” I replied as he emerged. “It’s just that I had a pretty screwed up dream myself. Or at least I think it was a dream…”

“What’s this?” Carnival joined the conversation.

“Well it was so damm real it’d be easy to say it wasn’t a dream...” I elaborated.

“Now that’s interesting,” Vengeance interrupted. “I could say the same thing.”

”Wait your turn,” Carnival quipped. “The doctor has plenty of time for both of you.”

“It’s just that I could have sworn I was awake,” I explained. “There was someone in the room but when I turned on the lights there was no one here but Vengeance, and he was cutting logs in the chair there.”

“Yeah?” Carnival turned to Vengeance. “And you were asleep too? The whole time? “

“Well yeah. I mean, I was dreaming so I musta been asleep, right?”

We both looked at Vengeance. It hadn’t occurred to me til he’d said that. C and I looked at each other and back at V again.

“Wait a minute. Here we go again…” Vengeance held his hands up, shaking his head.

“Look, it’s not that we don’t trust ya, mate. But it’s just you’re not yourself lately.”

“Oh come off it, guys. No one thought anything of the sort until that guy came in here with that recording last night. So I freaked out. I don’t care how many time I kick over and wake up, it’s never any fun. The pain in my head, the screaming, it’s always the same. No one likes it, no one talks about it, but come on! Tell me it’s fun for you!?” His voiced had raised defiantly. “Tell me you look forward to it! You ever die slowly? Flash bang gone is one thing, but you ever have time to think about it? Tell me that doesn’t scare the crap outta you!”

“OK, I get it,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “Yeah, it’s never a party. I’m sorry, OK?”

“Yeah, forget it.”

We all stood looking at each other, trying to ignore Vengeance’s discomfort and the whole topic of conversation. Then I remembered.

“Well anyway, what’d you come here for at 5 in the morning, C? You didn’t come here just to give me a wake-up call.”

Before he could answer, a gibbon stepped into the doorway.

“Mr Carnival?”

“Yeah?”

“Sir, you have an important Message. It’s been waiting for you at least a day now. I think you should have a look at it..”

“Yeah? So how come no one’s said anything before this?”

“Well we’ve been waiting for you to come pick it up, sir, but the boss said if you didn’t get it by today someone should bring it to your attention.”

Wolf looked at Carnival . "Sounds important. We'll catch up with you and you can fill us in over breakfast."