Brothers in Exile_Sons of the Starfarers Page 12
“What—what happened?”
The light in the cabin switched on, momentarily blinding him. “Sounds like you were having a nightmare,” said Isaac, his brother.
Aaron groaned and covered his eyes until they adjusted to the light. Slowly, he eased off the bunk and stepped over to the table set into the recess in the opposite wall.
“It was so real this time,” he said as he slipped into his seat. “I saw her, Isaac. She—she died before my eyes.”
“Who?”
“The henna girl.”
Isaac draped a blanket over his shoulders just as he began to shiver. “Here, let me get some healant for your forehead. Looks pretty nasty.”
“What do you think it means?”
“What?”
“The dream,” said Aaron. “It’s got to mean something. A dream can’t be this real and not mean something.”
“It doesn’t mean anything. You’re just delirious right now.”
“No, I’m not!”
“It’s okay, calm down. I didn’t mean anything by it. Now hold still while I apply the cream.”
Isaac knelt down in front of him and rubbed the healant on Aaron’s bruise with his index finger. It stung at first, but cooled down quickly, stopping the pain. Aaron imagined little healing ice crystals running through his skin, freezing him into cryo like the henna girl. He shivered as his sweat turned cold and pulled the blanket a little tighter.
“Are we going to find her, Isaac?”
“We’ll do our best.”
Yes, Aaron thought to himself. I certainly will.
“Where do you think she is right now? Is she alive? What are the Imperials doing to her?”
Isaac sighed. “I don’t know. They seized her as contraband, so they probably haven’t thawed her yet. If they have, then hopefully they’ll treat her well.”
“Fat chance of that, with the war going on.”
“Maybe.”
Aaron frowned. “What do you mean, ‘maybe’? She’s in danger—we’ve got to save her.”
“I know, I know. We’ll get her back. But you’ve got to understand, she doesn’t know anything about us. For all she knows, the Imperials rescued her.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Okay, I won’t. But when they wake her up, she won’t know how she got there. As much as you obsess over her, she doesn’t even know you exist.”
Aaron’s headache returned in spite of the healant. He groaned and rubbed his forehead.
“Even if she doesn’t know about us, we’ve got to help her,” he said. “It’s our fault that the Imperials have her now, our fault that she’s so far from home. Or what’s left of it, anyway. We can’t just let them take her.”
“So you’re finally taking responsibility for something?” Isaac said with a grin. “That’s a change.”
Aaron groaned and rolled his eyes. “Whatever. How long before we arrive?”
His brother checked his wrist console. “Jump drive’s almost charged. We’re about point-six-four light-years out, so another two dayshifts.”
“Is there any way we can speed that up?”
“Not safely. Besides, we’re probably going to do a lot of waiting around anyways. The Pleiadians might be assembling a navy, but that doesn’t mean they’ll set out as soon as we join up.”
“I know,” Aaron sighed, burying his head in his hands. “It’s just—I’ve got this feeling, you know? It’s like a premonition or something. I know that the dream probably won’t come to pass, but it feels like a sign of something, you know?”
His brother reached across the table and laid a hand on his shoulder. “I know the feeling. I’ve had a few dreams like that myself.”
“You have?”
“Yes,” he said, his expression suddenly serious. He looked Aaron in the eye. “You remember when we used those EVA suits to escape the Imperial battleship?”
“Yeah. We barely latched onto the Medea before the nav-computer jumped her out.”
“Remember right before that? How you were drifting away because you didn’t know how to read the suit menus, and I had to come out and grab you?”
“Yeah?”
Isaac withdrew his hand and took a deep breath. “That’s my nightmare. I dream that you’re drifting in front of me, but before I can get to you the Medea jumps out and leaves you there. The next thing I know, I’m alone in deep space, and you’re gone forever.”
Neither of them spoke for a few moments. Aaron shivered, and not from the cold.
“Well, at least it didn’t happen like that.”
“It could have. The dream feels so real while I’m in it, but it’s not a premonition. So just because this nightmare seems real to you, it doesn’t make it a premonition either.”
“Maybe,” Aaron admitted. Inwardly, though, he couldn’t shake the feeling.
Isaac rose to his feet. “Well, I’d better get ready for the next jump. You get some sleep. It’ll help us get there faster.”
“Right.” They’d been alternating shifts, jumping as soon as the drives were fully charged, ever since their escape from Colkhia. It meant that they saw less of each other, but it also meant that they’d arrive at their destination that much sooner.
Isaac ducked through the doorway to the cockpit, and Aaron stood up and rubbed his eyes. His brother was right. Nightmares or not, he needed to sleep. But even though the image had mostly faded from his mind, he could still remember the feeling of powerlessness as the henna girl disintegrated before his eyes.
BUY COMRADES IN HOPE
Created with Writer2ePub
by Luca Calcinai