by John Short
Why am I here? He wondered. The doors opened and Jon walked through only to find a long hallway with paintings along each wall. They showed beautiful landscapes, armored warriors, beautiful females, and the last painting seemed to change before his eyes. He knew each of them because his ancestor had taken them from the cave and brought them to the house. Jon had loaded them onto the shuttle and brought them with him when he left the house on Haven. Finally he came to the painting he had looked at many times. It began as a painting of a tall handsome male dressed in silver and black armor, holding a flaming sword in one hand while his other was wrapped around the beautiful female at his side. Behind them stood a gleaming city of gold. Next the painting showed his ancestor with his mate and the youngling they raised together. The youngling was Jon's great, great grandfather. Finally the painting became him and Satrina with Talga sitting next to them. In one hand Jon held a flaming sword while his other arm was pulling Satrina tightly to his side and she had her hands resting on his chest. She was wearing the Connell House colors and had chosen the most beautiful gown of them all. She looked like the Queen that she was destined to be. The look of absolute love on her face brought tears to his eyes even though he knew he was sleeping in a tube in the Med Lab on Leviathan. It was exactly as it had been the day it changed when he had given Satrina his house colors. Still it had changed again because what had been a blurred area above his mountain home now clearly showed the image of Leviathan surrounded by stars. Jon now wore a black cape, edged in the gold braid of a Master Swordsman, with a hood that covered his face and instead of the look of innocence that he had before, now the image showed his face as a mask of rage and pain. He was the Death to Satrina's life. The darkness to her light. The hate to her love. Jon suddenly realized that the look on Satrina's face was not one of love, it was one of a person pleading for someone to return to the innocence that once was. “I'M NOT THE ONE WHO TURNED AWAY! SHE REJECTED ME!” he screamed out in the dream.
“Take a care Warrior” an angry voice called to him. “The time comes when you must decide to forgive. If you can not, my ship will betray you and you will be he of the painting knowing only darkness and death when love is calling.”
Then the male voice was gone and Jon was left alone looking at the painting that had changed back to the Umin King and his beautiful Queen with their golden city behind them. In the sky high above that part of the image that had always been just a blur slowly became sharper until Jon realized that the painting was of a massive ship far out in space! The ship was the Galaxiey!
Who did the voice belong to and what did he mean HIS SHIP? Was he the Umin King who was the ship's first Commander? Why was he dreaming? His mind was supposed to be a blank while he was in the tube. Someone was calling,
“ADMIRAL! Wake up sir. Admiral Connell, I need you to wake up now.” the Healer was saying as he stood over Jon. “That's it sir. Wake up now. Medic, bring me the nutrient drink. Here sir, try to sit up and drink this.”
Jon was feeling dopey and not at all alert. His mind wanted to go back to sleep. The Healer was forcing a straw into his mouth and telling him to drink. He tried to tell the male that he was not thirsty but his voice was a rattling squeak without words forming through it. He took a sip of whatever the Healer was trying to give him. It was cool and soothing as it went down his throat. It tasted of something nasty that had been found dead along a road side. He started to feel more like himself, so he took another sip of the vile liquid the Healer kept insisting he drink. He was starting to feel more alive and his vision began to clear. Another sip and his taste buds decided that he'd had enough of the foul tasting slop in the glass. He pushed it away and tried to speak again. “What happened? Where am I?” he weakly asked.
“Well Admiral, welcome back. You really need to drink the nutrient. You've been in the tube for two months with only the liquids we could give you intravenously to sustain you. It will be sometime yet before you can eat solid food.”
“You mean I have to drink all of this engine lubricant?” Jon asked.
“I'm sorry for the taste sir.” Healer Hukor told him. “You are the first to use the tubes since the humans used them to get to Haven. We had no way to foresee how you would react. We only knew that you would need the vitamins and minerals in that drink when you woke.”
“The dream said I have to learn to forgive. So I'll forgive you, but only if the next one of these cocktails you give me tastes more like bacon and eggs instead of gear lube!” Jon told the Healer jokingly as he took another sip and his face twisted up into a scowl.
“I can't promise you bacon and eggs, but a nice Delouvian salad maybe.” the healer joked back. “Of course it will be a terrible brown color that looks more like what is left behind after a case of diarrhea.”
“Did it work?” Jon asked. “Can I walk again?”
“Why don't you try for yourself and find out?”
Jon carefully slid off the table placing his bare feet on the deck and feeling the cool metal under them for the first time in nearly a cycle. He took a tentative step and feeling no pain he tried another, then another and another until he was prancing around the Med Lab with a huge smile on his face. “I think it fixed my back!” he finally told the Healer. “I can feel my legs and feet again. I also have no pain in my back at all!”
“Good, very good” the Healer told him. “Still, I want you to take it easy. Your body is still weak from being in the tube for two months and you haven't really used you own legs since the Canari raid over a full cycle ago. You'll need to rebuild your strength. Drink.” Jon took another sip of the nasty liquid the Healer kept insisting he drink. “Admiral, nothing more than walks from the command bridge to med labs or the mess room at first, and always have your wheelchair close. Don't over do it. You'll tire yourself too quickly and probably fall down. You're much too large of a male for most of your crew to be able to pick up.” Looking directly at Jon, the Healer continued, “Whatever you do, do not fall in front of your Chief Flight Engineer. Captain Phillmma has been in here every day since we put you under. That female has a very foul mouth on her when she is unhappy! If you fall and she cannot lift you, I hate to think how she will terrorize the crew because they let you be so foolish. She already has that Libirian warrior they call Jackal wrapped around her fingers! He follows her around like a lost youngling!” Pointing at the drink again the Healer made lifting motions and Jon took another sip. Finally resigned to his fate, he popped the straw lid off the glass and downed the entire thing in a few gulps.
“AAARRRRHHHH!” he roared “I should find the person responsible for that stuff and throw them out of the nearest air lock!”
“Actually I am responsible for that stuff” the Healer proudly told him. “It is high in nutrients and easily digested. Its perfect for people recovering from an extended period of deep sleep.”
“It tastes like yesterday's garbage!” Jon complained.
“I'll work on that some more.” the Healer promised and then handed Jon his clothes. “Get dressed. I don't need my female assistants dreaming about the huge human all day and all night instead of doing their work.” Pointing at Jon's maleness he asked, “How do you ever manage to use all of that?”
“Very carefully at first, then with extreme vigor and lustiness.” Jon smiled as he remembered his time with Satrina. The thought of her for even an instant took the smile away from his face. He was lost without her, and she would never be his again. She was to be the Queen after all and he was just a human Warrior. Not at all a proper mate for the Lexonian Queen. “So, how much younger am I now? Should I wear a youngling's covers?”
“No warrior. You didn't grow any younger in the tube. Maybe a few minutes, but that's all. You weren't in there long enough,” the Healer told him, “but it did fix a small problem in your heart. One of the wounds you received was very close to your heart, too close for your military healers to fix, so they left it to heal on its own. It was one of the reasons why you'd get tired so easily. The tu
be fixed it and now your heart is as healthy as it was before the raid. Then there is this.” the Healer told him as he showed Jon a tablet with a picture of his back. “Not only are the scars mostly gone, but you now carry the image of a fierce dragon. It wasn't there before and no one can explain how you ended up with it. I took these scans just before we woke you up and it was there just as you see it.”
“I never knew anything was wrong with my heart.” Jon said slightly surprised by the news that he'd had anything wrong physically with his heart. “Did someone decide to use me as a place to paint?”
“You probably wouldn't have noticed your heart as long as you didn't stress yourself. With your legs not able to do the work as they normally would, you were only using half your strength and only experiencing half the normal stress.” The Healer paused before saying; “Now that your legs are working again, you'll begin to feel the effort of using them much more than before your spine was nearly severed. At least until you build your strength back. That's when you'll start to notice your heart working harder to keep your blood flowing. You're still not totally recovered; remember what I've told you. Take it slowly at first and build yourself up gradually. You'll be back to your old self in just a few months if you do. If you try to stress yourself too much, you'll end up back in the tube and then drinking more of my miracle nutrient!
Now get dressed and get out of my Med Lab before my female assistants decide to rape you!” the Healer joked. “As far as the dragon image.. Only the makers of this ship know how that happened or why. The same thing happened to your ancestor and many of the other humans of that time.”
“What are you taking about?” Jon asked.
“Before we decided to try this on you, we went over all the old medical logs from the last people to use these tubes.” the healer told him. “It seems that the last ones in them were the humans from Earth in what they called the Sol system. The original Jon Connell went in them as a terribly wounded warrior and came out with his back healed and the same dragon image on his back as you now have. If you're interested, I can show you the records. Your ancestor must have been the strongest warrior to have ever fought in any battle. His battle marks covered his entire back and some even wrapped around to his chest. What we here in medical thought was interesting was his back had the same spinal injury as yours did. Also, instead of his heart being damaged, it was one of his lungs. Of course, he'd had several cycles of recovery behind him and he could walk again whereas you had only just started to walk with the eckto-frames.
Everything I've seen in the records and now on your back just confirms something I suspected from that very first series of tests I ran on your blood. You carry Umin blood in your veins Admiral Connell. You were born with it. I have no doubts about that now.”
If felt good to be able to stand and walk without those hated eckto-frames Jon thought as he pushed the wheelchair in front of him on his way to the mess room. The Healer was right Jon was hungry. There had to be something to satisfy his hunger that didn't taste like what was usually flushed in the relief chambers. He was also getting very tired and every step was getting harder and harder to take. He had made it down one corridor, taken the elevator and now was forcing himself to keep going for the few more steps to reach the mess room doors.
Pushing the doors open with the wheelchair in front of him, Jon barely managed to turn the chair so he could fall into it with a sigh of exhaustion. He felt his heart pounding as if he had just run all morning instead of taking a short walk and an elevator ride. He was just starting to calm his gasps for breath when both Phillie and Jarrieal rushed over to him. “Boss?” Phillie looked worried. “Are you OK?”
“Yeah sis, I'll be fine. I just pushed too far.” Jon reassured her.
“The Healer just commed me to say he'd released you.” Phillie said. “Why didn't you go to your stateroom and relax?”
“Because I'm starving and I was hoping to find something I can eat instead that glop the Healer gave me.” Jon confessed.
“I know just the thing.” Jarrieal told him. “Its called chicken noodle soup. I haven't got any idea what a chicken noodle is, but Jinkly found several packages of the stuff in with the other food stocks in storage and its still good. I've been eating it with every meal. Jinkly always has some on the serving line. Everyone loves the stuff. You go over to the table and I'll get you some.”
“I'll take him,” Phillie announced. “Make sure you bring some of that stuff Jinkly calls bread too.” She instructed Jarrieal. “Jon, how did it work? Are you whole again?” she asked while she pushed Jon in the wheelchair over to a table that already had Phillie and Jarrieal's trays sitting on it.
“Maybe.. The Healer says I need to take things slowly and this little experiment showed me that he is right.” Jon told her. “Phillie, I got up and walked here from Medical. No frames and I pushed this chair the entire way too until I fell into it just now.” Jon beamed. “I guess it did some good because I know I couldn't manage that before.”
Phillie's smile turned into a frown. “Jon Connell. You will do what the Healer tells you to do. I need you, heck we all need you to get strong, but it doesn't have to happen today. DO YOU HEAR ME JON CONNELL!?!?”
“Yes Boss.” Jon smiled at her and she slapped him only to pull her hand away and yelp.
“Damn! I forgot how muscle bound you are. That hurt.”
Jon and Jarrieal both laughed while Jarrieal placed a steaming bowl of the soup in front of Jon before taking a seat next to Phillie. “Want me to make it better?” Jarrieal asked her.
Phillie looked up at Jarrieal with love in her eyes. “Later.” she smiled up at him. Jon noticed the change in both of his friends right away. They had become close. Good for them.
“I hope I didn't interrupted you two.” Jon said
“No.” Jarrieal quickly said, “We're both glad to see you up again.”
“We certainly are. You can be the Boss again starting right now! I know we only told you we would leave you in the tube for one month, but the Healer said two would be better. If you walked all the way from Med to here then he was right, cause at first we thought you'd still need the frames.” Phillie assured Jon.
“Was it that or did you two need time alone with me out of the way?” Jon kidded which earned him another slap on the arm from Phillie.
“It wasn't like that Jon.” Jarrieal told him. “We kind of fell over each other one day.”
“Yeah, he kept calling me a furball, and when I told him to stop it he explained why he did it and I was lost.” Phillie confessed.
“Even then, it took us a while to get past our own hurts to see the other one's needs.” Jarrieal told him. “Now I want to be with her all the time I can.”
“He's a big child Jon.” Phillie went on. “He sees me for exactly what I am and he doesn't care about my past. He just loves me.”
“I'm happy for you both.” Jon said sadly as he finished his soup. “I think I'll go to my stateroom and rest now. I am more tired than I thought I would be. Tell Jinkly that I enjoyed his chicken soup and this stuff he calls bread. Oh and Jarrieal, I don't know what a chicken noodle is either. Maybe we should find out before we allow the crew to eat too much of this stuff.” Jon rolled away from his friends and out of the mess room headed for his stateroom behind the bridge on Leviathan.
“Maybe we should have handled that better Phillie.” Jarrieal said.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I thought you would have already known. I mean we all know how much you two mean to each other. I just assumed that he would have told you.”
“Told me what?” Phillie demanded.
“His mate rejected him and he's made up his mind never to have that happen again. With a male as strong willed as he is, I believe that our friend will live out his life alone.”
“That's impossible! No Lexonian female has ever rejected her mate. They can not do it!” Phillie exclaimed.
“Why not? Females choose new mates all t
he time. I told you about my own wife taking another over me. Heck furball, he messaged her everyday, sometimes several times a day, and she never returned a single one.” Jarrieal insisted.
“You wife wasn't a Lex. Listen and I'll teach you a secret. Pure Lex females mate for life!” Phillie then went into what she knew of Lexonian females and their mating habits before saying, “Something is wrong here. Someone is going to great lengths to keep them apart.”
“Who would do something like that Phillie? Its just one more male and female in love. It happens all the time. Just look at us!”
“Not just another male and another female. Jar, it’s a Human/Umin Dragon Flier and the Crown Princess of Lexon II! She will one day be Queen and he has already claimed the most feared Warcarrier of legend in five galaxies! With this ship he could well be King of the known universe!”
“What's that mean? Him being a human I already know. Are you trying to tell me he's one of the ancients too?” Jar asked. “Besides, I don't believe he would ever go that far as to start taking over the planets. Phillie, before he went into the tubes he asked me if I thought he was doing the right thing by waking this ship up. He wanted to leave it sitting out here and just go away. I told him that we all trusted him to do the right thing with it. I still trust him. Are you sure it was the Princess who claimed and then mated him?”
“So do I Jar, trust him that is. My people were closer to the early legends of the Unims. Jar, our Jon looks exactly like the ancient Umin King, he called to this ship and it welcomed him as if he was coming home. Jar even the dragon ship below answers him like it was tuned to his mind from the day it was first built. He is in for trouble Jar and we must help him. My people's legends speak of the battles the Ancients fought. Every one of those battles were fought to protect entire worlds! I have to figure out who would want to keep him from his mate. Yes, it was the Princess. I met her myself and sensed her essence on him. I call him sweet cheeks because her essence makes him taste sweet to other females who can sense the essence. Her continued absence maybe what is driving him into the darkness?