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Star Trek Athena: Stream Of Angels - crobato
:: 06/19/01 ::
Chapter 3
Even in this remote desert planet, among a vast armada of ships their best technology created, the Shakpah would never forget their ancient rituals. It was the Festival of Sulnahi', the festival that honors all great heroes before they die, a festival that showed the Shakpah's reverence for life and heroism. Tomorrow will be a different day, but the night will see a short time of peace and happiness.
If it was called a night. Actually, for the desert planet, it was the day of the dim binary sun. The system has binary suns, but the second one was so far away that it lights the sky much like a moon would do on another world. Around it was a fiery nebula, and both cast a soft orange light across the desert sands and dunes in the barren darkness.
Even where the rows of the great ships lie, the people had setup simple primitive bonfires to gather around and dance. This will be the time where people were set loose, to sing, to drink, to laugh, to cry, even to confess their sins and beg their forgiveness, to make new friends, to mend relationships that were lost, to express their last wishes, or even to cry or curse, to pray or beg at the Most Holy One. Tomorrow, some will live but many will die. Today was the time to do what you wish while your limbs still have life.
Tharuk waited anxiously for his appointment, catching a glimpse of the bonfires, the dunes, the dim star and the nebula as he waited. Then she came, coming out with the dim moonlike sun behind her, as beautiful as the Moon Goddess Neheyah herself, in white flowing robes, a delicately veiled headress, and a dress that bared her shoulders, opened her waist, and with a cut on the long skirt that revealed her long legs in a teasing way.
"How do I look?" Athena said, as she spun around to show him her dress. "I don't know much about your dress customs, but I remembered that there was an ancient culture on Earth that dresses much like you. So I patterned it after that culture. I hope it does not offend you. I hope it matches with the look for your ceremony."
"You...you look wonderful," Tharuk said after an awkward hesitation. "Beyond my expectations. You did well in your pick of dress. If I must say, you look like an angel."
She spun like a top, letting her skirt and robes catch the air like wings. "Thank you. This is the first time someone asked me for a date on a celebration."
"A 'date', what do you mean by 'date'," Tharuk asked.
"Oh never mind. It simply means an appointment among friends," Athena said.
"That is wonderful to know that I am considered a friend even for a day," Tharuk said.
"Oh yes, you are," Athena said, grabbing his arm by the elbow. "You have given me a wonderful day, if you call it that." She noted the unusual day and night cycles of the planet. "You have made my separation from my own kind bearable. You are the first friend I have over your kind, and already you're a special one among all the friends I know."
"Really?" Tharuk asked.
"Oh yes, let's say you're kind of cute when you're innocent but serious," Athena said.
"I'm not sure what you mean," Tharuk asked again. "There is a strange subtlety in your words that I do not fully comprehend."
She put a finger on his lips. "Don't try to," she said. 'It is only to describe what is, not something to break into pieces and analyze. Now show me the celebration."
"Ah yes," Tharuk said. She was a photonic being, and yet he felt the softness and warmth of her skin touching his. Even for a photonic being, she was incredible. The illusion of appearing like any person was so complete. Even the way the moon like light touched her hair and reflected in its highlights, or its soft shadows across her skin, her face and her smile.
"Why are you looking at me?" Athena teasingly asked.
Tharuk blushed. "Forgive me if my actions are rude to your culture. I have not been with a woman for quite some time as I have taken my work and duty so seriously, not even with the women among our units."
"Kind of like my situation back home," Athena said. "In fact I tend to irritate a lot of people."
"It's hard to believe that they don't appreciate you like they should," Tharuk said. "But I feel even in the short time I know you, that you have a free spirit. Maybe that rubs off against the people in authority. You may be a photonic being, but you have more life than many people of flesh I know."
'Should I take that as a complement?" Athena said, as she pulled herself closer to him as they walked.
The bonfires across the runaway rival the stars in their multitude and brilliance. In the background, the drums beat relentlessly, sensually rhythmic, and yet sadly ominous. The flutes sang their notes; the barren night was alive with lyrical energy. There was much eating and dancing, and Athena could sense the same familiarity with the celebrations of old Earth cultures. Regardless of the name, the time, the event or who the celebration was for, it all boiled down to singing, dancing, eating, drinking, and just simply uncontrolled merriment.
Tharuk felt conscious at the many stares falling upon him as he made his entrance with this beautiful stranger from stars unknown. Both shyness and pride filled him, his face warmed.
"I think you're blushing," Athena said. "Now don't tell me that you don't know what that means."
"I think I have the general idea," Tharuk said.
Will he feel shame to bring a complete alien stranger, one who was not even flesh and blood? Or will he feel pride, to bring the most beautiful girl he met into the celebration and be seen with her?
Even in the glow of the fires, they can see him and her, but as the minutes went on, it didn't seem to matter and they faded into the nameless crowds that celebrated in the night.
"This is so beautiful, so incredible. To say the least I have never been on a real planet before," Athena said. "This is like a movie. Look, a real bonfire-just like in the movies, with real burning and heat and smoke and stuff, not an illusion, not a hologram. I can even smell the smoke. Sniff...sniff... Starfleet can be as bland and as boring like a sterile clinic. Most of the time, we live in space stations and starships, where everything is based on artificial luminescence. But here, look at the sky, and the air. Hmmm, the smell of natural air and imperfection, not something filtered. The sight of a real sun against a planet's atmosphere, even though it's dim. I've only seen suns through an atmospheric sky in a hologram but this is real. It looks the same, but being real makes a whole lot of difference."
"You didn't seem to notice that before," Tharuk said.
"I was distracted, lost-and sad. Now my spirit feels free," Athena said, raising her hands in the air. Then she knelt to the ground, grabbed a fistful of sand. "See this. Real sand. Real stuff. This isn't something made in a holodeck. It's real because you know its real."
She turned her attention to the notes that rhythmically float in the air. "You got flutes, real flutes, and what is that I hear?" She cupped her ear. "Real drums...you got it...real drums!"
"I take it you don't have any of these back in your world," Tharuk said.
"Are you kidding? They do, but they forgot this long time ago," Athena said. "A few practice them for they will not be forgotten. But for the most people, they are.
"The music we hear is mostly recorded and played through machines, not real life people with instruments. Hear that music-the notes...fa lo ti do-hear that? Actual air passing through the holes of the flute. And there, hear that? Thum, ti di tum dum... The sound of a real hand or percussion instrument hitting against a stretched supple surface..." She pretended to thump an imaginary drum in the air, dancing a bit with the beat.
Crowds began to gather around the fires, dancing their ritualistic, ceremonial dances. Or were they? They could just be dancing out of the sheer beat of the flutes and the drums. Cinders rose from the flames, and as they floated up the air, they seemed to dance with the rhythm of the music.
She excitedly clapped her hands with the tribal rhythms, again and again, until she can't help swaying her own body to the rhythms.
She grabbed Tharuk's arm. "Please, let's join them and dance."
"How do you know how to dance the way of the Shakpah?" Tharuk asked.
"Oh, it's easy. Looking at it for a few minutes, I guess I can get the picture," she said, tugging his arm more. "What are you waiting for? The world to fall down on you? Come on!"
This was a precious time of celebration, and the music was strong. Already Athena had joined the women dancing around the flame and they didn't mind her who she was or what she was, if they ever knew at all. The only thing mattered was that she celebrated. That's all. She was one of them and she belonged. Oh she belonged as she loosed herself into the music.
Tharuk watched her lithe figure danced near the fire, the flames silhouetting her form among the crowds, her shadow casting upon the sands. Who was this beauteous angel from the stars? Why did she came here? Why does she has this spell over him? What possessed him to befriend this stranger?
Her body rhythms began to enthrall him, and so did the tribal tunes. His body began to sway, began to dance, and soon he found himself in the ring of dancers around the fire, with Athena next to him. She grinned when she saw him finally overcome his shyness and joined her in the dancing. For a moment he held her hand as they danced and the touch excited her. Time passed as they danced, but he could not tell how long or short it was. Time had become irrelevant, and only the moment counted. Time froze in front of the fire, in the midst of the dance.
"Come on, let's go!" She tugged him to a different direction, and when his head turned towards her, she motioned him to the direction of the dunes nearby.
"You want to quit dancing?" he asked.
"We can do it again later, there is something I want to do," she said. "Come on," she tugged his arm.
Tharuk followed her as she ran out in the dunes, her robes and head dress falling to the ground. She ran up a dune, her feet kicking sand as she went, raising small clouds of dust at her toes. She stood on top of the dune, her figure backlit from the pale moonlike light of the weak second sun, with her arms outstretched. Then she spun around like a top, arms like a propeller, trying to engulf all her environment, the dunes, the desert breezes, the notes that still reverberate in the winds; the luminous nebula, and the moonlike sun that cast their weak shine across the wind blown ridges of the sands.
"This is so beautiful," Athena cried out. "I have never been so happy..." She bent backward and let herself fall. Tharuk caught her just in time as she deliberately fell, but for a photonic being, she even simulated weight. Her weight knocked him off balance and they found themselves rolling downwards the dune.
When the rolling stopped, a fine, powder like sand covered her figure and her face. She brushed them aside and then she started both laughing and crying at the same time. "What are you laughing and crying about?" Tharuk asked as he brushed the fine sand off his body.
"This is like a dream, a dream I don't want to wake up from," Athena uttered.
He crawled next to her, and she let him stared at her face closely. "I think you're the dream," he whispered. With some hesitation and shyness, he lowered his lips upon hers. She did not resist or complain or anything, and she let his lips touch hers. The moment stayed frozen as their lips locked, their arms embracing their sandy bodies.
Then he hesitated, then stopped, lifted himself from her. "This isn't right," he said. "You're just a photonic being," he said. "Beautiful as you may be, I don't know if you're real. A program running in the brain of a ship."
"This isn't right. I shouldn't be doing this," he said.
"Why? In our world, men and women have played with holograms of their fantasies before, why not we?" Athena asked.
"That's the problem. I am not really satisfied with just a fantasy. I want someone and something real," Tharuk said.
"Am I not real enough for you?" Athena asked.
"You look real, the way you touch seems real, the way you feel seems real, but are you real?" Tharuk said.
"Are you trying to define whether I am real or not based on what I am made of?" Athena asked.
"Didn't you just judge reality by the basis of what everything around is you made of?" Tharuk said. "The stars, the sand in your feet, the light falling on your face, the sound of the flutes and the drumes, the heat of the fire?"
"But that's different," Athena said. "All these are not made in a holodeck."
"But it's not whether or not it's a holodeck. The point is whether it's an illusion, whether it's a place or a person," Tharuk said.
A silence fallen upon Athena. She could not answer his question. For several minutes she lingered, her face saddened. "I don't think it's what you're made of, it's the things behind it that count," she finally said. "I know I am real because I know my feelings are real."
"And what do you feel now?" Tharuk said.
"I feel happiness, for seeing and knowing all these, and yet sadness that perhaps, you still don't trust me," she said.
"And what do you feel for me?" Tharuk asked.
"I feel...I feel you're special...I never had a friend like you before, even in the short while we met," Athena answered.
"Would you say it's love?" Tharuk asked.
"I never known real love before, except what I see in the videos. Perhaps if it is about feeling special and close with someone, maybe it is love," Athena answered. "Can something like me feel love? Can I? And what do you feel, Tharuk?"
"I am not going to hold back, certainly not during the Ceremony, not in the nightly stare of the goddess Sulnahi'. What I feel? That you're the most beautiful and sweetest thing I've seen in my life, even though you're not Shakpah, even though you're just a photonic being, a projection from the consciousness of a ship," Tharuk said. "When I first saw you, I thought Sulnahi' had sent me an angel."
"Aw shucks," she said. She leaned her head on his shoulder. "You sure know how to flatter a girl."
"Me? I don't know how to talk to a woman," Tharuk said. "I had always dedicated my life to a discipline, to medicine, to science, and now the cause of the preservation of our life and culture. I have never given the time to look for a mate, or even harness the skills to look for one. With the war going, I may never have the chance. I could die tomorrow, or the next day. Everything now is a day to day basis, and all I ever wanted now was myself but for my people."
"You sound like a hero," Athena said, brushing his hair. "But you need to lighten up. Don't get too serious. You're in a celebration, celebrate!" She danced around in a circle twirling her arms.
"That's beautiful," Tharuk said. "Your dancing is beautiful. Is dancing an expression of your cultural as well?"
"Oh yes, cultures actually. Earth has many cultures, let me show you," Athena said. "I got it all in my data banks." She let go his arm, and stood at the top of the dune, her form silhouetted against the spotlight of the dim binary star, the sands her stage, the stars her audience. She started to dance ballet, and then performed every tribal and culture dance from Irish to Thai.
Time froze with every motion of her graceful gestures, alternating between the calmness of a still night, to the fury of a raging storm. He stared spellbound. He showed her a part of his world, and now, she showed him hers. All in the motion of dance.
"Come on, join me," she said. "The next dances are a two some. For some reason they called it ball room dancing but I don't really know how the rooms looked like balls." She pulled him up, then placed his hand around her waist, while they shared the other hand.
"This sounds fun," he said. "Now what?"
"Now follow me step by step, la-la-la-la..." She began to sing the tune for the Blue Danube as she led him around and around step by step in a circle around the dunes, their footprints drawing circles around the sands.
When it was over, she sat next to him on top of the dune, overlooking the fires of joy that burned throughout the night. She laid her head on his shoulder, and he caressed her cheek, pushed her hair aside, then wrapped his arm around her.
* * *
"How did your people ever get to use slipstream?" Athena asked, her head laying on his shoulder.
"Slipstream? For us, we had always called it the 'stream of angels'. The technology has been with our people for generations. It passed from one alien race to another. No one knew who first discovered it," Tharuk said. "Like the sky, the wind and the sun, it had always been there. No one questioned how it came to us, or why. We assumed that the gods first discovered it, and handed down to all the people in the stars as a gift so that one day, they will all be united in friendship and brotherhood. But instead, the stream of angels brought war."
"To fly with the stream of angels is to cast your eyes upon the faces of the gods," Tharuk said. "Maybe it brought pride and hubris. Instead of unity, the races cast dreams of conquest upon one another, the Shakpah included. It was conquer or be conquered. So we conquered and we were successful for generations, for many millennia. System after system. When we first started it was for our self defense, but in the end we became the conquerors."
He continued. "Then across the Galaxy, the Gorkhans came. They were...like us. They conquered the races in their side and their empire became bigger and bigger. It was inevitable. This was something diplomacy could not correct. Like a force of nature, there can only be one. One who will rule the Galaxy. It was conquer or be conquered. "
"We do not hate the Gorkhans for what they are, nor do they hate us," Tharuk said. "This is a strange war. We fight because it is in our nature. It is nature that only one must stand supreme above all others."
"That's quite simplistic, if not fatalistic," Athena said. "Actually it sounds stupid. It is as if there is no choice."
"There are times that I myself question the whole thing," Tharuk said. "But it is not my place to question. I am only a single individual in the hundreds of billions, against the irrevocable fate of two empires in a collision course."
"There are times I feel I cannot change my course too," Athena said. "Maybe because I'm a ship. I have a purpose. I have a duty. I have a responsibility."
"Responsibility... that is the word," Tharuk said. "I have a duty and a responsibility."
* * *
Today was the day of battle. In a universe where she had no place, she had to take a stand, if only to belong and to survive. The Prime Directive no longer existed here; it was particularly meaningless against empires that span two quadrants, with ships that could transverse the galaxy in one Earth season.
She would be alone in this one. Every Shakpah had joined their ships. Everyone had their place, including Tharuk. They cannot spare anyone, not even to join her in the Athena. For Tharuk, he was the chief medical officer of the dreadnaught Sug'Daal. Athena had seen the ship and the design. A huge ship about a kilometer in length, its main hull shaped like an arrowhead like any slipstream ship, with four nacelles, two slung beneath the ship and two from its back.
Almost every ship were spear or arrow head in shape, with complex concave curves and an organic brown color. The nacelles coming out from behind the hulls gave the fleet a collective flying calamari look. Or one should say, like a school of armored sea animals.
"I am amazed that your technicians could work so fast," Athena said in the comlink.
"Yes, Athena," Tharuk affirmed. "They are the best. In wartime, time saved is lives saved."
She ran her scans and diagnostics. They reinforced her frame everywhere, designed not just to improve robustness against slipstream stress, but also against that of weapons fire. They re-tuned her
slipstream engines, which must look awfully primitive to them. How long have they flown in the Streams of Angels? Generations? Millennia? The thought of having so much slipstream experience astounded her. They must have discovered every crook and cranny of this galaxy. With nothing left to discover and expand, they had to turn on against each other in a contest for eventual sole dominance.
The General had given her, her first orders in this universe. She would provide protective escort to the Sug'Daal. It was not a big and daring assignment, rather typical and ordinary, if not conservative. But the enemy would be gunning for the big ships, and they would need protection. The thought of Tharuk in the Sug'Daal gave her a motive and inspiration to fight. She would be helping to protect him.
Tharuk came on the view screen. She raised her thumb for him to see.
"What does that mean in your culture?" He asked.
"It's an expression that everything will be alright," she said.
If she was protecting the Sug'Daal, she had her work cut out for her. With only her main hull armed, she only carried half of her effective firepower. She wished she had her original engineering hull-it had six of her torpedo tubes there and her arrays of four pulse phasers. What she still had was still quite respectable-ten phaser arrays and two torpedo tubes. If she used up her inventory maybe they will learn to build torpedoes for her.
Tharuk replied with a raised thumb. She smiled.
The captain of the Sug'Daal called her through the comlink. It was time.
The vast rows of ships began to rise from the desert surface. Already in the sky among the stars, huge formations of ships have assembled and met those coming from other sectors. She had turned on her log again, so she could verbally record all events. Tharuk had gone off her screen, and all she saw was the bright primary sun shining upon the beige desert, where huge lines of ships await their ascent, while others have started their ascension.
"Preparing for lift off..." She said. She performed a countdown. "Engage," she said to herself. There was only a small problem. She had never really lifted from a planet before. The Prometheus class always had the capability, but she never had the opportunity to use it. She just hoped it was simple enough not to pose any problem.
The portable field generators that held the ship under a supporting field had closed off, leaving her ship loose and free. Her thrusters pushed their fire against the hardened and baked surface. Anti gravity generators broke the bond of gravity. The Athena began to rise, slowly at first, then with increasing speed. So far so good.
She tilted her nose upward, with a fraction of impulse power, her trusters pushed her through the atmosphere. All around her, ships began their ascension, an army of angels rising to the heavens. She broke through the clouds, into the blue sky that became darker with every mile she climbed.
Below her, the Sug'Daal, nearly three times her size, have disengaged her holding fields and have ignited her thrusters. She began her own ascension, a titan rising from the earth to face its fate on the skies above. Around her in three positions, her escort ships joined in her in the climb.
The Athena had reached orbit. The primary sun lit the blue and brown crescent of the world they had left behind, and on her back, the secondary sun cast its weak orange glow on the night side of the planet.
Athena stared at the dark skies. Hundreds of ships formed into massed lines that seemed to stretch from one infinite horizon to another. The captain of the Sug'Daal called her in the comlink to begin a defensive formation around the giant ship. She was a stranger who finally found her place in the strange universe, in a a role in the struggle she would share with her new found friends. Not even in her imaginings of the Federation in its height of power, could she ever have seen or imagined an armada of this size and power, all ships capable of slipstream, all ships ready to enter what they called the 'Stream of Angels'. The discipline they exhibited in their vast formations-no wonder the Shakpah were a galactic superpower.
"Warp, engage!" The order rang through out the armada. Like a wave, each line of ships engaged their engines, advancing forward. Then the line behind them started their advance, then the next line.... The ship in front of her engaged, and it was her turn. She engaged her engines, and the Athena shot forward, and so did the ship right behind her, and behind that as well. The giant Sug'Daal had also engaged her warp engines.
The stars streaked backward against every ship that shot forward. The lines of ships flowed into a river, and then into an unstoppable torrent. This was a sight she would never forget.
"Warp 4...5...6...7...8...9..." She grit her teeth. "9.3...9.4...9.5...9.6...9.7...9.8...9.9..." She kept going faster and faster. She could feel the benefits of the Shakpah modifications. Her body felt much stronger, and she felt much lighter with the increased power. Even at extreme warp speeds, she flew with the smoothness of glass. Her engines purred.
"It is time. Let us all ride into the Stream of Angels," the General ordered. With these words, the first ships formed their slipstream fields around them, then broke the warp barrier as they hurled themselves through the slipstream conduits. One after another, the sharp triangular ships entered the streams, the tunnels of blue and green space.
"Slipstream field generators, on!" She told herself. As the field bubble formed, so did the conduit. The second time around seemed easier. "Slipstream engaged."
The Athena broke through the warp barrier, rushing headlong into the blue and green tunnels of slipstream space.
<< Stream Of Angels: Chapter 2 <<
>> Stream Of Angels: Chapter 4 >>
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