Ambiguity
13 Jul 2019Prochaska
It seemed the curse of her life had been to experience everything twice - two miserably lengthy flights with passengers to Hutton Orbital, because after the first flight the name of the station had not been burned into her memory for all eternity; two stays in Colonia before finding the message from Commander Hyford; and finally Janos, who had pushed himself back into her life. The ambivalence in the relationship with Janos was exhausting. She was glad when he was not around, but her crippled self-esteem benefited from his stubborn admiration. It was an inadequate sealant for the disintegrating sense of her own deficiencies that plagued her in loneliness. When he was near her there was the need to keep him at a distance. Light years away she missed him, sometimes she was even afraid to lose him completely. The knowledge that the ideal solution was independence from their own self-doubt did not make the pressure bearable. Just as she had a huge hate against those responsible for the disappearance of her parents. The hatred instigated her, but the responsibility she gave these people for her own shortcomings gave a group of unknown people of the distant past far too much power over her reality in the present. On the other hand, the knowledge of these coherencies did not dissolve her perceived inadequacies. She thought of the feeling of vulnerability, and a pain shot through her chest that caused her to wince, at the spot where the projectile of Julie's doppelganger had hit her body. The wound had healed, but the memory still caused intense dizziness. Images of the red bubbles dancing in the weightlessness before her eyes forced themselves back into her consciousness. The panic that had arisen in her was then suffocated by the sedatives and painkillers automatically injected by the emergency system of the flight suit, leaving only helplessness, damned to watch the slowly progressing end of her own life. When she lost consciousness, she suddenly saw herself from outside her own body, all tribulation was overcome, and she was free to float away. The greater the distance from her body became, the more pleasant and at ease she felt, until suddenly there was a thought: if you go further, you will never be able to return; Zoe will stay behind in the cockpit and die. She turned around, back to the reality of her heavily injured body, and when she awoke, she saw Ms. Reedings bent over her, and in the background Commander Roger Montgomery. She was given medical treatment, but she kept asking herself the question: could they have saved me with all the medical equipment if I had not decided to return? Or was her floating out-of-body state ultimately just a meaningless dream image? Whenever she thought about it, she felt esoteric.Ms. Reedings was her superior, the head of UC's office on Bluford. When contact with Zoe was suddenly lost, Reedings had immediately suspended all ongoing operations and sent all elements to the sector where the Copernicus had reported its last Position. And now she had been beside Zoe and treated her wounds. Everything about her, the way she talked to subordinates, her movements, had clearly betrayed her past service in the Federal Military for Zoe. Zoe had always distrusted Reedings since she was hired. Too many secrets, that was what had triggered her distrust. She had told Roger her suspicions and he had answered her that Reedings had been his superior during his time of active service, and she would never have left one of the subordinates of her unit behind - no matter in which situation. Well, he had been right after all, she thought. Her thoughts were interrupted by the familiar voice of Montgomery: „The attacker stood in the door way over there. As soon as the shot was fired, the ship's computer activated the lockdown and sealed all the compartments, thus locking "Miss Price" off from the bridge. When our team entered the ship, we had to disable the lockdown, and our culprit was free to move again. We found one escape pod to be missing. There was an Imperial Courier hidden nearby in silent running which picked up the pod and jumped away. Dragon One One chased the ship, but lost its track after some jumps. We found the debris of the destroyed escape pod there, though, and as there also was organic material among the debris, we have to assume that whoever is responsible for this mess does not like to leave potential witnesses alive." Reedings looked up. "Did you find anything on board of the Copernicus?" "The memory store has been accessed; we will need some time to figure out which data she was after. But we found parts of an analysis tool that is used by the ISS...". His voice grew more and more distant and as the applied sedatives kicked in.
This incident had happened around PRAEA EUQ OG-O B6-3, and had been the final stage of the Distant Worlds 2 for Zoe. When thinking of it later, she was astonished how much her own perception had deceived her judgment of Reedings. Even after being rescued, there was always some discomfort left, one last doubt. But that Montgomery and Reedings knew each other from serving together made perfect sense for her. And concerning Janos, he proved to be useful later when saving Julie Price.