I, Propitiator: "Chapter 15"

Chapter 15

Love does not hide, but it does wait.

While my body was in that altered state of consciousness we call sleep, the Prime I teleported by my bedside took my hand kissed it and returned to the A.R.S. Zoelight. Captain Lee, Captain Dalton, and the Prime I were taking the A.R.S. Zoelight and the A.R.S. Lightning out to capture a few freighter ships of the regime that were carrying military supplies. Just after he left, my eyes opened, yet what had just happened was completely unknown to me at the time. From there, the two resistance ships flew on an intercept course to secure the military supplies for the resistance.

In the early morning, the whole house arose to welcome our extended family. Daedalus had taken me out for coffee and a walk in the park, so when Auntie Cassandra arrived Oliver greeted them. Her eyes looked so tired Oliver’s first assumption was that she was a zombie. Of course there’s no such thing as a zombie even in outer space, but the thought had crossed his mind. Oliver said hello to everyone on our behalf, but Cheyenne and Brooke ran through house before Oliver had finished speaking. Tamara didn’t seem to be listening, but you couldn’t really tell for sure; after all, she was a teenager and her mind was in all probability on her boyfriend and if not, in some book she was reading. Now don’t get me wrong, my Terran cousins are nice enough, but when they are together it’s like a Terran illness better known as “mob mentality” ails them all. They go from calm, lovable people to insanely loquacious monsters that have lost all sense of peace and quiet. After everyone had gotten into the house, David inquired, “So we were expecting you guys to get here last night, what happened?”

“We hit really bad traffic about half of the way through then I got too tired so we checked in at a motel for the night.” Cassandra answered.

Then as Mom was making breakfast for everyone, Tamara sat down at the dining table to read her book. Seeing that she was sitting there, Cheyenne and Brooke also sat at the table, shouting across it. Then Cheyenne tilted her head as she saw Oliver’s commander certificate. She picked it up, waved it in the air and shouted, “My cousin is a soldier!”

Daedalus took my hand as we walked through the park. The crisp air felt good gently blowing through my hair. He told me how much he loved me and how lucky he was to have me. Yet for some strange reason, it didn’t feel right. In all that, there was something about it that felt almost like betrayal, yet then that same feeling in some weird way made me smile. As if breaking some unknown rule was pleasurable, exciting and exhilarating. His presence was intoxicatingly delightful. His touch felt warm and soothing. His words carried a melodic tone. We felt inseparable, invincible, and indescribably meant for each other. He never wanted that moment to end and the feeling was returned.

Of course Cheyenne couldn’t read the writing since it was in Cymese, but she was intelligent enough to recognize Oliver’s name and the military symbols. With speeds comparable to the fastest Terrans on the planet Oliver ran to her, snatched the paper from her and put it behind his back. Then Aunt Cassandra asked to see it. He shook his head and explained, “It’s personal and it wouldn’t even make sense, just let me put this away.”

Fortunately for all of us, she was quite tired, so she relented to his offer. Mom breathed a sigh of relief as she served breakfast, but the trouble was just beginning. After breakfast, there was a rumble throughout the house. Mom snuck up to her room and checked the surveillance cameras. Next she knew it she was alarmed to see a 15 go from the garage to Kanda’s room. So then she telepathically alerted all the Ies in the house of the new development. Kanda was the closest one to the 15, so she closed her bedroom door and drew her tipir. Though she fired an array of shots at the 15, she was unable to actually hit it as the creature just faded in and out of the wall and our house was built to withstand all energy weapons. Eventually, the 15 came out of the walls and entered the dining room where most of the family was gathered. Now you can imagine the look on their faces when the 15 shot a fireball at Oliver and then headed up toward mom’s room. If you can’t imagine it, think of the most surprised and confused look you’ve ever had or seen in your life and multiply that by about a factor of forty. That’s the relative amount of shock they were in, and we had absolutely no way to deal with it. Now David in his rash mentality, thought that the best way to solve this disaster was to teleport everyone in the safe house to the A.R.S. Victory, why he chose this path escapes the realm of my reasoning. However, there was no stopping him. This was the second time in all of resistance history that a Terran had ever learned of our existence, the first was Daelalus, but he was smart enough to know that since he was the only one who knew Mason was and I, and then in turn the rest of us, he reasoned that it was a ticket to the looney bin if he blabbed on about it to others. So that ordeal was taken care of with some ease.

Basically, last time we had a problem, Oliver and Mason were on the planet and Mason lost his temper and thinking no one was around yelled at Oliver about how much he hated the Terrans and the whole idea of protecting them when they deserved to die did not appeal to him. Daedalus had been just around the corner and heard the whole thing, so he promised to never speak of it. Knowing he was the only one who knew, we kept a close watch on him and then when he became good friends with us, the Avners, the resistance hardly kept any tabs on him. This was also the incident that made it so that Mason no longer worked on Terra Lapsa and was always at the station or on some ship.

Yet this time it was different, we had multiple people to account for and no way to trust them, this was a disaster in every way. So as we all stood there in David’s quarters on the A.R.S. Victory, the 15 was back on the planet tearing up the safe-house. About five minutes into it, Mom managed to get a lock on the 15 and beam it out into space. Where it would drift until the resistance could either shoot it down or teleport it somewhere better. Even still, the fact that four Terrans knew we weren’t normal was a problem growing by the minute.

Zurui was eerily near by as he focused in on what was happening through Kanda’s eyes; he smiled as he saw the disaster the 15 had created by showing himself to the Terrans. The idea of the Ies loosing all they had worked for from just a single 15 showing up at the right place at the right time was too good of a possibility that he knew the resistance would find a way to stop the disaster from taking full form. However, the concept itself was enjoyable. Perhaps Kakios’ next stage in the plan would prove even more entertaining.

Mason answered his phone, “Yes?”

David’s voice sounded frantic, “We have Terrans on the A.R.S. Victory.”

“What?!?”

“Well, um there was a 15 and um… confusion… didn’t know what to do…”

“So you teleported them up here?” Mason inquired.

“Uh… yeah.”

Mason ran his hand through his hair, trying to figure out what they were going to do. Oliver was the senior officer in the area as the admirals had left immediately after the tournament. This left them with virtually no higher officers to consult. The decisions mostly rested on the new commander. Mason sighed and inquired, “Where is Oliver?”

“Um… he’s in the control room… perhaps trying to contact someone? Certainty eludes me.” David answered.

“Ok, well bye.” Mason then hung up the phone, leaving David just a tad less frantic than when he called.

Mason headed off to meet with Oliver and discuss how to deal with the situation. David, on the other hand, still being so frantic, dialed Gabriela’s number. The phone rang… then it rang again… David’s anxiety grew in strength as the phone rang a third time. She answered with a nice, cheery hello that nearly made David jump and hit his head on the ceiling. David then collected himself and said, “There are Terrans on the A.R.S. Victory.”

Gabriela then jumped up and nearly hit her head on the ceiling, “What?!?”

“Um well you see there was a 15 and well um… teleporters are a lovely invention.”

A look of shock crossed Gabriela’s face as she inquired, “So you teleported Terrans onboard?”

“Um… Yes…”

“Well then it seems we better deal with them before they learn the truth about the universe around them. We can’t have the government firing nukes into space…”

“Aw… why not?” David asked without thinking, then corrected, “oh um, right. That would be bad.”

Gabriela sighed, David sure was weird, but so was everyone else. Given the Ies he worked with, David would probably be fine in a few years and be helping the Prime I in some way, but for now she had to put up with this. So she said, “Go talk to your cousins Oliver and Sarah, leave the station work to me.”

“Rawr!”

Gabriela pulled the phone away from her ear, looked at it, confused as ever, then said, “Well if there’s nothing else, good bye.”

David hung up then darted for the control room.

Meanwhile, Aunt Cassandra was in utter shock to find herself in a room with no doors or windows, this was the brig of the A.R.S. Victory, black walls, one floating ball of light and no way in or out except by teleportation. Our cousins were in my room, which had been locked from the outside. Whatever David’s instinctual reasoning was for this did not satisfy my now sour mood. Fortunately, David was smart enough to put up alternating jamming frequencies so that all phone transmissions that weren’t designed by the Ies didn’t get read on the universal phone network that allowed long-distance communication. For your information, the universal phone network doesn’t use normal relays of electricity or even light, but instead it runs on FTL neutrinos that are sent in coded patterns and received by corresponding relay points until they are eventually converted to whatever form is needed for the phone provided. As a result, telepathic thought being an energy source actually causes distortions which can be picked up with special phones designed by the Ies in order to track down each other. This however has one major weakness because certain Terrans that are what Mason would call “awake” can occasionally cause distortions that mimic the same change to the readouts, but the Terran may not actually be an I. For this reason, we don’t rely on this technological advancement too much for now. Anyways, Tamara’s text messages back to Terra Lapsa never got through and we were still stuck with the difficult task of fixing our Terran problem.