Star Light, Star Bright

"A man wakes up on the moon, without a spacesuit staring at a dead whale. - Zeronet"

. . .Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. . .

Waking feels like drowning, clawing towards the dappled light, filtering down through the choking depths of dreams.

It’s always like this, a calm conditioned part of me tells the terrified animal rest of me. You are coming out of Combat Sleep. You are remembering experiences that your brain no longer has the ability to properly process. Inevitably the mind fails, and the previous experience evaporates away, leaving only an ungraspable nightmare fog.

This, that relentlessly rational part of my mind tells me, is a good thing. It keeps me sane, keeps me alive. But most importantly, keeps me me.

“We don’t know what they are, or where they came from oiginally, but now we've woken them from their slumber we do know what they want.” Says the Captain of the Shieldship Morpheus. We stand before a glowing map of human space, incoming vectors spelling our doom, spewing from the Wakened World, converging on Sol. I already know all this – it’s the reason I’m here. She was at Site Zero. "They want our souls. To perceive them outside a DreamShell or out of Sleep means madness and death - only unconsciousness offers any defence. People, we went to the stars and found Gods. Now we need to kill them.”

There was something I really needed to remember though. I remember that at least. But not what. I thrash to the surface of consciousness, bloody light breaks all around me, and I awake to choking. Clotting amnion gel clogs my mouth and nose, no longer feeding me saturated hyper reactants, also muffling the rattling buzzer that warns me something has gone – remains in the process of going - horribly wrong.

. . .I wish I may, I wish I might. . .

We sit together in the park, looking up at the sky. We can see only the brightest stars against the light of the great city, most of them man-made, but she points to the one she’ll be going to, her excitement at the wonders they are excavating there infectious. I wish her luck, tell her I’ll miss her - secretly save the little felt case in my pocket for her return in a few months. . .

A dark shadow falls over me, vast and terrifying, defined by the shimmering beams it blocks, blotting out myself and the human race. I close on panic.

Steady. Calm conditioned me says, remembering the procedures. Your suit has failed, you need to trigger the eject sequence. Yes, shed this killing, murderous weight, be free and then the Morpheus will save me.

I do so, jacks and wires explosively separating from their housings in my flesh, a split-second before the suit cracks like an egg, and spews me and a spray of hardening amnion globules out into the sky. I crash down several meters from the shattered combat suit, past the jumbled furrow it created with its energetic impact with the lunar surface.

Adjust for vacuum! I lie still as my body does as I tell it, sealing orifices, configuring for survival in an environment where life means death. I have maybe five minutes if I remain active, considerably longer if I hibernate. The work of the flight surgeons to make me suitable for piloting a constellation combat suit also gives me some protection here - but only against the mundane hazards of space.

“It broke off from the main swarm at Tau Ceti, slipped past the beacons below the Solar ecliptic and made a pass over South America. DreamShell on the outer platform cracked, so the crew were. . . rendered ineffective. Someone must have remained sane enough for long enough to unlock the automatics, so the grid lit it up, and it didn’t get lower than a thousand kay before its gravitic distortion field started failing.” There is grim silence in the air as we few remaining crew of the Morpheus listen to the Captain’s words. We all know what they mean. ”Discharge storms are still disrupting coms with Earth, so casualty figures are still fuzzy. But we know it’s heading for the Moon now. May sling and escape, or come back for a second pass. We’re in a position to intercept either way, but-” She looks at me, “We were here for refit and repair, you’re the only Sleeper we have ready. I’m sorry.” I am not. They will pay, at every opportunity I can make them, whatever it costs me will never be more than what I have already lost.

But I haven’t lost now. I’m not a gibbering soulless madman, I’m still me. I can just lie down now and sleep for a while. Real sleep now.

No, there is something I need to remember. I push away the suggestion and slowly rise to my knees, scraping black plastic nuSkin over dusty grey powder. More dust is falling like snow around me. From what? My suit lies there like a fallen Buddha statue the size of a house, its armoured bulk portly and toppled, its thrust legs twisted into a mockery of a lotus from the impact. Dust has already settled around it. It must have taken me some time to wake. The nearby crash of one of the drones from my constellation perhaps? No, they were all destroyed. I remember that, vaguely. Destroyed? By what?

My eyesight is still blurred as protective membranes thicken before thinning and adjusting, but I squint and raise my hands against the harsh light to scan the distant ridges. Only minutes ago, through the virtual array of my suit and its constellation of battle satellites I possessed the senses to resolve the face of a woman at a hundred miles. Now even my hands before my face are fuzzy at the edges, and the ridges tens of kilometres away remain a blurred outline. You lose so much coming out of Combat Sleep - out of the dream of the suit. But what was I dreaming with?

Then I see it. A dark shadow, falling across the mountains, perfect arcs of dust still rising as the vast titan impacts in apparent slow motion. The head has already struck, with shockwaves rippling down to the massive fan of its gossamer tail as it settles with silent violence. The focus is jerky, unclear, and the form distorted by the shocks of battle and impact. Outside of the Sleep maybe that saves me for a time. Perhaps it is what the giant whales of old might have looked like, had they dreamed of great and terrible gods to carry their dying curse against the humans who hunted them to extinction. Perhaps, if they were the size of a city. If that were New York it were crashing on, the city would be crushed entire, with room to spare. If there were still a New York.

Great streamers black liquid hate stream down after the settling star god, venting from the rents in its shimmering emerald hide. Rents I caused. The last of my satellites slash in, detonating one after another in suicidal bursts of gamma rays as they fire their last beams. The god –presses– against my mind as I dance my suit past the ruins of shredded fins that blot out the stars, through the maelstrom of my dying constellation, angling for an eye like a burning ocean, lances of fusion fire burning and twisting between us through the gravitic shimmer of a twisting sky. I am fighting a god. Against the urge to scream and claw my own eyes in terror I feel a flash of pride. You CAN die.

And now so can I.

. . .Have the wish I wish tonight. . .

I feel it –press–, much weaker now, but with a final vindictiveness. I feel its hate and its contempt, merciless to the end. I avert my gaze, although it’s already too late. I’m too close, naked, with too little protection, even from a dying god.

Then I see the star, burning high over head. It is Morpheus, for an instant blazing brighter than the sun. I smile.

“We can’t recover you if you don’t break off!” The captain is saying. Her voice distorted as it comes into the Combat Sleep, my mind makes it hers. I’m not even sure the Captain is a she at all. “That close the DreamShell won’t hold! You have to pull back!” I can see the bleeding star god across from me as my suit darts and weaves from slashing flails of twisted gravity. We are both wounded, punch drunk fighters now, our ring the growing disk of the moon, as our fight tumbles lower and lower. For all that this terrible space whale dwarfs me by orders of magnitude, it knows I can kill it now. It will flee if I let it with its cargo of stolen souls. Maybe one of them is hers. Or I can close and finish everything. I tell her what to do, spin the Suit, arm my last fusion lance, and dive in closer one last time.

I open my eyes and face the great whale, now completely collapsed across the lunar ridge in a messy smear. I face the –press– in one last, fatal act of defiance. I will have it know my revenge. Know what I wish for now that these gods have stolen my dreams.

A bolt of light connects high Morpheus with the fallen whale, burning clean and straight now the god’s gravitic distortion is gone, annihilating the corpse in an instant so that it will never wake again.

I have an instant before the light reaches me as a final mercy. I cannot speak, but if I could I would be shouting her name.