Chapter Five
Lathartha stepped up to the railing of the overlook into the gallery below. The people gathered looked anxious, but at Lathartha’s broad smile their anxiety seemed to go down a notch.
“My people today is the day that everything changes. Soon no more will we have to live in disguise amongst the ruins of our world. We have all heard of the surviving Melungeon fleet that has wondered the Far Quarter for almost as long as we have been held up within these asteroids we now call home. I would like to introduce Captain Siringo to you.”
Surprisingly there was applause as Lathartha stepped to the side in order to make room for me. The place grew silent then until the sound of breathing was all there was to be heard. This cloaked home of these people was far quieter in operation than my old home, where the clanging and banging of overworked systems never ceased to let off its grinding squeal of arthritic complaint.
Looking at them I saw differences to my own people only in terms of the superficial. These people were survivors just like us and just like us they were desperate for hope of any kind. In a way it was easy to adopt them as if they were my own.
I spoke out, “I’ve lived all my life within the confines of a space vessel much like this one. At the age of 17 I found myself looking down upon a sea of faces just as I see now. I salute you for your tenacity to survive as you have in the face of overwhelming opposition, but I applaud you because greater than that is that you have yet remained compassionately human. Many who have been cast adrift in these barren corridors of the galaxy did not fight to hold onto their sanity the way that you have and the way that my people have. Together we are one in our desire to survive and yet remain in control of what makes us uniquely human. I do not stand here as a man boasting of any special ability to have survived to this point, rather I am a man tested to the extreme in my faith in the great Creator, who made all we see and touch. In a matter of a few spoken words the universe as it once was in perfection was spoken into existence. Through means not of our own choosing we were cast out from the first world of our creation in order to do the bidding of monsters in direct opposition to the ways of our Creator. Again we as two peoples are unified in this. In times past we both, through the grace of God, managed to attain freedom for ourselves even as the salvation story the Creator inscribed across all our separate skies in illustration of a Savior, His Son, though separated by distance from us no less died for each and every one of us. You and I are crafted in the image of the Almighty and for this we are hated by all the fallen relics of antiquities past, who are long due for the judgment they so richly deserve. They destroyed your world and they made mine a place more akin to hell than the paradise it once was. They’ve hunted us both unmercifully because we defied them in our desire to remain free! To worship the Master that they can never be redeemed to and yet holds the reins of their fragile existence within the palm of His hand! To live the lives and experience the freedoms of choice that each man, woman, and child of us is born inherently to make as gifted to us by our God. You are not alone in your struggle to remain free. My people are with you and indeed there are likely more than we know of our kind hidden elsewhere waiting, as we, for something to change. Something has changed. The bondage of survival my people have been shackled under is over! My world as you know was once a beacon for freedom for all the masses of humanity transported against their will from beyond the shores of Earth. It was fallen, but now it is reborn once more. My world has been reborn and just as it is resurgent in the freedoms of those who have turned it from disaster so is the hatred of all of our ancient enemies of old. They cannot allow us to come together yet again. It was only by chance they succeeded the first time and they dare not risk the rise of a people rich with the taste of freedom once again, because even as we have known tyranny there is not one of us here that will rest until it is abolished! I put before you the cause that we all face and I say to you as fellow humans in the fight to live and experience the joy of our God-given rights that my world, which I have never seen, is no less not only my world, but your world also! We share a common story and now I tell you plainly that we share a common war for survival. For almost two centuries, perhaps longer for you, we’ve been relegated to running and hiding from those who hunt us. That time is over! Now is the time that we take back the freedom that was once our forefathers before us! Now’s the time we not only celebrate our humanity and tenacity to survive, but also the reclaiming of our honor in a supernatural war against the forces of darkness that have forever opposed us! It’s time to forsake survival and fight for the hope of the end of war and the ushering in of the second great awakening of this galaxy! No more should we run and hide from those who are less in spirit than us without any hope of eternal life. No more should our children live in the fear of the proximity sonar alarms going off. No more should we live in the armpit of our broken down dwellings tested by time and lack of supplies and parts. No more should we trod on hoping for something to change, because I tell you it has changed! The time is now and if we do not capitalize on it then we may well lose the ability to affect change for yet another generation. Another generation that could see us all destroyed. But a few days ago I received one of those who returned to my homeworld and who has been helping to restore it to the paradise it once was. He has told me of many things and while you can well imagine the fight that will be against us I believe with all my heart that our Creator has not brought us so far only two fail us now, in our gravest hour of need. No, today and each day from now is when we put on the courage of our forefathers who, centuries before our time, threw off the shackles of tyranny in order to claim freedom. We fight for what is ours by right and to that end I have committed everything. The mothership I have called home all my life is even now being fashioned into a matter jump gate, by which we have the means to transport our entire fleet the length of the galaxy. What my smaller fleet can do against an armada which will likely number several hundred to every one ship of ours I cannot tell you. All I can tell you is that I have faith that we will win and not only win, but usher in a new era, an era of peace kept in security by our ceaseless faith in the God of our creation and the willing tenacity of our remembered slavery to purge every last trace of the enemy from the realms of our habitation. I urge you to join us because this simply isn’t our fight alone, but it’s yours too! My world is your world. The children I hope to have need a place to live and experience the joys of warmth and the comforts of life that have been so long denied to all of us. Are your children any different than those I hope to have for myself in what they need and deserve? Your children, my children, there is no difference even as my people’s fight is also your fight. Now my final question to you is will you join this war and fight alongside of us for freedom for all of us?”
I really didn’t need to ask that, but as humans everyone deserves the right to choose their own path and these people were making their choice loud and clear. Screams and roars of unification with the common causes we shared echoed loudly within the confined air of the magnetically stuck together asteroid.
I wiped a hand across my brow to get rid of the sweat running into my eyes. I felt utterly spent of emotion and yet I had never been so elated.
I glanced to Lathartha only to see the respect that every man craves from the woman he’s committed everything to. I’d waited a long time to see such a look of shared consciousness and I thanked God on the spot for the birth of something beautiful and new within the very confines of a time of rapid change bordering on chaos.
Lathartha sealed the deal then before the ground swelling emotions of her people by stepping close and kissing me with a passion that left none of those watching the spectacle in doubt as to how truly in-depth two peoples had just become of one mind and one flesh within a matter of hours.
Laughter broke out almost as loud as the cries of jubilance before. When Lathartha finally let go of my face she did so without any sign of embarrassment.
Turning from me to grip the railing before her gathered people, who had quieted down only somewhat less in volume than before, she said looking down at them, “Let there be no doubt in any of you that I support this man in any and all endeavors for which he undertakes for the combined good of both of our peoples.” She glanced back at me with an intense look before then turning forward again to proclaim, “We are one! We will fight and if God deems it so we will win! To that end my last orders are these. Combine the rocks of our outer lying colonies into the prearranged Alpha squadron alignment. Set a course for the Melungeon fleet, which you will find on our return ships navigation. We will join their fleet even as we are now one people in cause and in hope. Together we will go through the gate that they are constructing and we will wreck a terrible vengeance for the destruction we have all suffered at the hands of monsters for even now I’ve been told that that the ability to harness the free energy of space that we have failed so many times to replicate in our own experiments has been achieved by the Melungeon’s. They are engineering their jump gate to be powered with the outlying free energy held in the vacuum of space all around us! With this step forward we will energize our rocky homes into the enemy’s nightmare from hell! Go now and each of you prepare for what is to come.”
In exuberance the ranks of her people filed from the gallery with more hope and vigor than was ever experienced in any of the preceding generations to grace the corridors of these forlorn rocky outposts of space. In every way it seemed I had met my perfect match in life.
Seemingly forgotten now by the people below I stepped up behind Lathartha. She turned to me with a ready smile and surprisingly tears.
“Thank you for this! How I’ve longed to see them like this. Whether we live or die this moment of freedom can never be taken from us!”
“I know of what you speak of only too well.” I said in complete acknowledgment of what she was experiencing now as a leader.
A grinding groan of noise the likes of which was rather alarming took place then and with the noise came quite a bit of turbulent shaking. Stepping to the side I gripped a hold of the railing and with alarm asked, “Are we under attack?”
Laughing she said, “No! What you hear is the resistance of our inner nucleus as it remains stationary in gravity as the outer shell of rock around us spins around driven on by the proper sequencing of power given off by the magnetic ejections of electrical inverters located around the whole of the inner nucleus that we live in. In effect we are rolling through space right now.”
I shook my head still feeling very much in awe of what these people had managed to accomplish. In sudden curiosity I asked, “What you spoke of at the last about the plans of reaping revenge with these asteroid coverings of yours, can you explain that?”
She nodded, “What you feel in part is what they will experience if we were to crash into their ships. As it is now however we are vulnerable to being blown apart or dismantled even as our world once was, but if we can channel the fusion power of unlimited energy the way you say your man has found a way of doing even so then we can literally supercharge the magnetic quality of the rocks around us into a virtual shield of unimaginable strength. We will smash through their fleet at will as if they were but pins to our higher mass of a ball twirling under gravitational power.”
I shook my head in complete awe. I had no words to say.
I had a world to return to. A way to get there and now a seemingly invincible means by which to destroy our enemies congregating against us in great number.
Finally I managed to breathe out, “God is good.”
Smiling she stepped forward to give me a quick kiss before saying, “Yes He is! Thank you yet again for showing me that. I had all but forgotten what it is like to have faith, but you have brought it back to life with the strength of conviction you have in your own. Thank you.”
We stared into each other’s faces until finally I couldn’t help but ask, “Do you have somewhere we could go where we could be mostly alone?”
Cocking her head to the side curiously she said, “Yes, but why?”
I shrugged, “I’d just like to take a walk with you if I may. Get to know you so to speak.”
Her eyes glanced past me to the door of her room. Her face was a mixture of puzzlement and amusement as her gaze came back to me as she asked, “Why?”
Then before I could speak she added, “I know you want me and I want you so why don’t you just take me into my room and we could be one even as you’ve made our two peoples one today with just the words you spoke.” She finished up saying, as she nervously tucked a few strands of her long blonde hair behind her one ear.
“Because I want more than that. To put it in a crude way as if to likening you to that of a fast space cruiser, I don’t want the sum total of my experiences with you to be simply the act of flying you as fast as you can go. While I do want that I also want to know why it is that you can go so fast, why your unique among all the others in the fleet, what your capabilities are and what hidden potentials may lie yet hidden beneath the surface of your circuitry. In short I want to know you so well and be so fluent in your system telemetry that I could take apart your engine and reassemble it flawlessly and perhaps even improve on the efficiency of who you already impressively are.”
“You want to take my engine apart?” She asked looking at me in an odd way.
Feeling embarrassed I waved my hand, “Okay, bad analogy. I……”
“No no! I like it. I’ve just never heard anybody talk like this, especially not to me. Come, the gravitational engine compartments are this way.”
Her hand slipped into mine and tugging I was compelled forward to follow her. There was something softer about her all of a sudden.
Glancing at me in an almost bashful way she asked, “So what as my mechanic would you do different in my construction?”
“Well you see I’m not sure yet. I need to do some analysis on that, but right now I’d have to say absolutely nothing. You’re the best put together cruiser I’ve ever laid eyes on.” I said lightheartedly enjoying the verbal game we were playing. In some ways it felt like being a teenager all over again.
However my mood fell when I saw the light heartedness suddenly gone from her. I stopped walking and asked, “What’s wrong?”
Looking to me she gestured jerkily to where a twin matching blue sapphire to the one she yet possessed should have been in her face, “you’re telling me you don’t mind this?”
I shook my head and said, “Ask any of my people and they will tell you that when presented with a flight deck full of cruisers to pick from that I never go for the ones with the flawless paint jobs. To me such ships are untested and not to be overly relied upon. What I look for is the one which shows some dents and in general proof of existence through some harsh realities. It’s not what’s on the surface that counts, but rather what’s under the hood. It also helps to have some miles under the belt so to speak, because then you know what the craft is capable of, but the biggest test of circumstance being that it’s still ready on the flight deck prepared to take more damage if need be. Ships like that I feel the most confident in. The scars and haywire system glitches are in a way charming, because they speak to the character of that craft and what its managed to survive through. In such a craft I’m not simply flying it, but rather I’m flying with it into battle. Does any of what I’m saying make sense? I wish for your sake that you did still have two eyes, but once again in our little analogy here you’d be the ship I’d pick out of the lineup every time. The one I’d trust my life to and the one that I’d always respect and admire the most.”
She shook her head before saying under her breath only barely loud enough for me to hear, “You make me want to laugh and cry all in the same moment. I know you’re telling the truth, but… but…… we’ve only just met today!”
I smiled warmly, “And yet I feel like I’ve known you all my life. Shall we?” I asked in gesture to what could only be the engine compartment ahead of us judging from the loud noise and drifting aroma of grease and overheated coolant.
She reclaimed my hand with a teary smile and perhaps she squeezed it a little harder than before. We reached what was indeed a room full of machinery which though familiar in purpose was nevertheless unique in its design from anything I had ever seen before.
“So tell me how your experiences relate to this area. Something tells me that you’ve spent a lot of time here.”
Nodding she said, “I have. Not meaning to be rude or anything, but unlike you I wasn’t born into the role of leadership. This is where I got my start and from here my successes spread out until it seemed everyone was asking me what to do with issues far more ranging than what lies within the functionality of machinery in this room. I hope I just didn’t offend you about saying, ‘being born into the role of leader’. You are without a doubt a great leader if there ever was one. For myself, as a leader, I’m more of a fill in the gap person. I’m actually really glad that you’re in charge now and that I don’t have to be mentally and physically on point all the time.”
Ruefully I said, “Please don’t retire on me now. I would be the first to say that I need help.”
Smiling she showed off all her teeth as she responded with, “I haven’t gone anywhere. Remember I’m your ever waiting cruiser waiting for my rider.”
I looked at her as desire for her punched me in the stomach hard.
Her smile deepened as did her voice as she said, “Tell me do you perform maintenance on your own craft personally or do you have someone else do it?”
“I always do it. How else would I know what I’m working with?”
“Very true. I’ve found it much the same here in this engine room. Now I could explain how all the equipment in this room works, but really once you get past the surface appearance it all works the same. Want to see under the hood?”
Pure excitement danced lively in her eye and looking around briefly my gaze came back to her and quite honestly I stated, “Do you know how close you are to getting more grease in your hair?”
Laughing softly she whispered, “I know a back way out of here.”
“Then what are you waiting for!” I breathed out with the tension this woman had put me under by turning my own game back on me.
Arching that expressive eyebrow of hers again she coyly asked, “Don’t you perform a preflight check before taking your cruiser for a ride?”
“Honey I’m going to run every diagnostic variable on you that is known to man before I take you into the air!”
Smiling she backed down a side corridor that I hadn’t seen before and just before she disappeared into a cloud of steam she said with a crook of her beckoning finger, “This way to the flight deck Captain Siringo.”
She disappeared and trustingly I followed her into the steam. Had this woman really taken an intended shot at me, but a few short hours ago?
I found myself doubly grateful for my defective old relic of a weapon right now.