Her name was Heather Pt.11 (FINALE)
28 Jan 2018Gmanharmon
Part 10 & 10.5I’m flying.
My eyes flutter, but only one opens. It’s blurry. There’s a Federal Gunship and Python flying around what used to be my Diamondback Explorer.
Movement above me. The Anaconda started to glide forward, the muted rumble of its thrusters carrying through my Remlok helmet. A cargo canister flies past me. All three ships are circling the wreckage, with running lights activated. They’re looking for something.
Or someone.
I pass out.
Am I alive or dead?
Are there thoughts within my head?
Tumbling. Something touched me.
I open my eye. There’s blood in my helmet.
The sky is green.
I see the Anaconda and the Python nearby, in front of the black hole. They’ve been blown apart, and set on fire. There’s a green gas over both ships. The Gunship floats nearby, also surrounded in green. It bounces against half of an Imperial Eagle. They’re all dead.
I’m not alone.
Something flies in front of the black hole, and turns towards me. It’s not a ship. It’s not anything.
What is it?
I’m surrounded by green light. There’s a noise. A call. A cry. The most inhuman thing I’ve ever heard, clear as a bell. I was being scanned. When I rolled to my right, I saw it. A fleshy flower.
It was green, and it was alive. I started getting pulled towards the flower.
It wants me.
An explosion comes from the back of the flower, fire and smoke splashing over its petals. It cries and flashes red. It flips one-hundred eighty degrees and takes off, leaving a shimmering trail of space in its wake.
The missile’s blast wave blows me in the opposite direction, sending me tumbling away from the flower and whatever attacked it. In the short glimpses I caught of the scene behind me, the flower had released a cloud of little limpets, flying all around, then shot forwards at a different ship. A Federal Corvette.
The Los Angeles. She was swarmed by the cloud of limpets, and hit by bolts of yellow lightning from the flower. The Corvette exploded and flew apart.
“Holliday!” I called out. My voice left me. Holliday! I screamed wordlessly into my helmet. I tumbled through space and time. My nose started to bleed.
My vision grew blurry, and I passed out again.
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13 January 3303
Baker’s Prospect, Low Quarter, Asellus 2
Asellus Primus System
22:38
Sam and Arvin Cowell stumbled out of the greasy spoon into the alleyway, soon followed by their dates. The bacchanalia within Hogan’s Diner could be heard for blocks, while the four inebriated souls marched in lockstep away and began caterwauling the last several bars of the current song playing within. Nothing in the universe could ruin their jovial moment.
Sam and Arvin were both freshly minted Midshipmen in the Federal Navy, and Arvin’s recent exploits in the Perendi civil war earned him enough credits in combat bonds to purchase a Core Dynamics Dropship. Together, they planned to outfit their Dropship to the nines and hunt pirates in extraction sites all over the galaxy. Tonight was their celebratory dinner with the comrades in their squadron, and they lasted nearly six hours. Their flight leader had put in a good word in for them with two strapping young lasses from the neighborhood, Bronwyn and Amie, who now hung on to their arms and strutted down the alley along with them, matching cadence with their clunky mag-boots. Arvin suddenly stopped the group just before they exited the alley, turning to face them. To their left, a figure wrapped in a threadbare brown blanket sat on the ground unconscious, propped up against the rubbish receptacle, skin puffy and pallid, mouth agape.
“I’m gonna fly my Dropship all the way to Colonia, I tell you,” Arvin slurred, clutching his bottle of beer like a microphone, “and make those pioneers remember who Zachary Hudson is!”
Sam fractured in delight, clutching his stomach. “With a seven light-year jump range, eh? You’ll have better luck going to Morgor with your Hudson talk! Probably spend the same amount of time trying to just get there!” Bronwyn laughed alongside her date, snorting occasionally. Amie couldn’t help herself and guffawed as well.
“Shut up, Sam! You’re just mad you’re a few creds short. I bet Winters could give you a loan!”
“Like hell! Weren’t you telling me the other day how much you’d like to give that liberal bag o’ bones a full taste of your eminent domain?” Bronwyn collapsed to the floor with laughter, spilling her drink.
“You son of a bitch!” Arvin tackled his brother, sending both men barreling against the trash receptacle with a loud bang. The noise reverberated throughout the high street beyond, and startled the unconscious man awake. His eyes flew open and he screamed, causing the foursome to scream in return. Arvin and Sam scrambled away, and they watched as the frightened man stared at them, eyes darting between all four faces, before calming down a bit.
“Calm down,” Arvin said, removing his hand from the butt of his blaster pistol, having gripped it out of reflex. “Calm down, man! We didn’t mean it!”
“Who are you?” the figure asked, his voice gravelly and quavering. His eyes were bloodshot, and he had a scar across his face. “Where… where am I?”
“This is Asellus Primus,” Sam replied. “Not the best place for a reefer addict, either.”
“Reefer?” the man muttered to himself. “No, no, that’s wrong...”
He stood up shakily, letting the blanket fall from his shoulders; he was dressed in tattered and loose-fitting clothing over a Remlok suit missing its gloves and mag-boots. The synth-canvas uniform jacket he wore bore a Federation logo patch above the left deltoid, along with FNS Los Angeles sewn underneath. Stitched above the left breast pocket was a symbol of indeterminate origin, which was also silk-screened on the blanket he was wearing.
“Oh, you’re a pilot!” Sam became more amicable and stepped forward, regarding the symbol on the blanket. “The Crimson Lance? Weren’t they that one fleet that went rogue a while back?”
“Something like that,” Arvin replied. “Onionhead Wars or some such. Are you a veteran, sir?”
“Veteran? I don’t… I don’t remember.” He shook his head. “How did I get here?” A glance at his hands, callused and swollen from recent spaceflight; on his left ring finger was a pipe-cut palladium wedding band. He touched the ring and slowly turned it on his finger, lost in thought, mouth moving wordlessly.
“He’s fried,” Arvin exclaimed. “Let’s take him somewhere so he can sober up.”
“There’s a church just down the street,” Sam replied, pointing to a pre-fab structure sporting an illuminated crucifix above a set of double doors. Arvin picked up the blanket and placed it on the man’s shoulders, and the four of them walked him over to the church steps before letting him on the topmost step.
“I...” he kept mumbling. “I… I remember… my wife...” He looked up, but the foursome was nowhere to be found. “Her name...” He glanced up and down the empty high street. Nothing stirred.
“What was her name?”
The vicar found the man asleep on the church steps early the next morning, waking him up and allowing him to come in for a hot meal and a shower. He tried talking to the wayward soul, but couldn’t figure out who he was or where he was from. A cursory inspection of the wedding band revealed an inscription along the inside:
G+H ~ The World Is Yours
with no other discernible markings or names. The vicar asked about the inscription, but he simply shook his head.
“Last thing Ah remember, padre,” he started, in a peculiar drawl, “Ah was floatin’ out in space, wrecked ships all over. Musta been a big battle or somethin’.”
“Do you remember where this was?”
“Ah wanna say… out near the Pleiades? By a black hole or some such...”
“Oh my. The Pleiades is no place for any man right now. Do you remember anything else, my son? Anything at all? Any other ships?”
“Ah think I was in a Diamondback Explorer…? There was an Anaconda, an’ somethin’ else...” A sip of tea as he began to recollect. “Somethin’ big, somethin’ green...”
“Green?”
Suddenly, the haggard man’s eyes opened wide as dinner plates, mouth open and trembling. His hands gripped the chair arms as his vision was assaulted with snapshots of times past.
A boy and his father, shooting a rifle. A smiling face, skin of porcelain. Dead Imperial Inquisitors. A Senator and his blue-haired toy. A stainless steel revolver in an oiled leather gun belt. Gyrating hips and heaving breasts. A shock of pink hair.
“My son?” the vicar called out. He put his hand on my shoulder, watching helplessly as I was being wracked with shell-shock. Rigor had gripped me, whole body taut, with a string of spittle from the edge of my lip. “Son, snap out of it!”
“Her...” I spoke, in stabbing breaths. “My wife…! Her name…!” Tears rolled down my cheeks and clung to my beard. I remembered.
“What is her name?”
I love you, Grayson.
I drew in a sharp breath, stood completely upright, clenched my fists, and in a booming voice that rattled the rafters of the church, I proclaimed:
“Her name… was Heather! ”
I sank to the floor and wept. My wife is dead. My home is gone. I have nothing to call my own anymore. From this moment forward, Grayson Harmann will cease to exist.
"Have you recovered, my son?" the vicar asked me. I blinked the tears out of my eyes and looked up.
"Ah don't think I'll ever recover. Leastways, not the old me." He looked at me strangely.
"What do you mean?"
I stood up from the floor and wiped my face. "Mah name is Grayson Harmann, padre, an' it's been mah name since I been born. Grayson had a beautiful wife, a whole clan a' folks willin' to die for him, an' a dream to shoot for. An' all a' that got took from me. Grayson ain't got nothin' left ta live for, but somebody else might could."
"Grayson," the vicar replied, "we may change our names, but our past makes us who we are. Can you truly say you're ready to cast aside Grayson's life for a completely new one?" I took a moment to reply, vividly remembering the expression of pain on Heather's face as she red-shifted out of existence. I stuck my hand in the uniform jacket, removed it, and saw my wedding band, the double eagle coin, and a lock of Heather's hair, pink and auburn, sitting in my palm. I closed my fist around the articles.
"Reckon I can."
Tomorrow, I will go to the Pilots' Federation, assume a new name, and apply to be a Commander.