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Wanderlust

Chapter 2: Planetfall

Like all dreams and nightmares, the visions and images are surreal and immaterial. They are not copies of reality, but more caricatures of meaning from reality to the viewer. What are important are not the facts on display, but the impressions that they leave. Ironically, it is these figments and impressions that reveal to us the greater truths.

Procyon could see the tears in her eyes. The doe's features as soft and supple as they had always been, but now they seemed ragged and disheveled. Her black dewy eyes seemed darker than ever; but instead of the wonderful vastness of possibilities they normally contained, they now seemed haunting moistened pools of endless void. The subtle brown fur of her cheeks were flushed and streaked with the rivulets of hours of tears. The graceful poise of her figure the raccoon was accustomed to seeing seemed possessed with an imposed rigidity. Procyon wanted to give her a reassuring hug, a tender kiss, a soothing word; anything that would convey the idea that everything was alright, that everything could be made right. However, the charged Lasitor in her right hand pointed at belayed any and all actions with and immediate sense of fear and confusion.

"I don't understand. Is this what you really want?" He pleaded, trying to find some sense of reason in all of the chaos.

Colors swirled around in the surreal background. The inky blackness that was her backdrop suddenly surrendered. Cool and soft colors seem to bleed from around her, reds, blues, even yellows. They spilled from her outline in a conflicted mess. They seem to match a confusion of emotion that showed in her face and lips. Her lips quivered, he focused past the maelstrom of color to make out what she was trying to say.

"No..." was the statement, struggling past her lips like a convict from a prison fence. She lifted her head, her eyes and face heavy. Softness started to tug at and assert itself over her features. The colors around her started to find pattern. Reds and greens stopped clashing and lightened to softer blues and yellows. Procyon could see and hear the doe's panicked stance start to dissipate.

He took the pause to wipe the sweat and tears from his own eyes, and then decided to hazard a question that threatened the sudden stillness.

"Then why are you doing this?" He implored her. He was confused and scared. But his desire not to lose her and help his lover through this forced caution aside. Through her turmoil, he had to comfort her. He needed her in his life. He wanted her in his life. This was worth the risk and he could somehow perceive in the tumultuous hues a pattern that felt right.

She griped the Lasitor tighter, but unsteadily; As if part of her body was trying to drop the weapon and the other was trying to fire it. Her hands were shaking but still seemed deft at handling the popular self-defense weapon. All it really contained was laser, powerful and compact, and a large capacitor capable of powering it, once. Ironically, as useful as it was for providing personal safety, it also is commonly used in assaults and robberies simply because of the size and firepower. Procyon was one of several friends who suggested that learning to use one would make her more secure on many levels. Confront her own traumas with the Lasitor by becoming proficient with the device that had stripped her of control and dignity so many years earlier. It allowed her to take the first steps to get her life back. Never did Procyon believe he would be facing one from her.

Hues swirled around her. The doe glowed softly against and inky blackness of a surreal void around the both of them. Violent reds and gnawing greens seemed to clash with dislving blues and softer yellows. The aura flared at sharp angle.

"I have to...there is no other way...." She said in a quivering, almost inaudible voice. Procyon could hardly believe the words but to his nervous comfort, she seemed equally unconvinced at the words escaping her lips. She paused and looked deeply into both of his imploring, compassionate and wonderful light blue eyes.

Her muzzle and headed fell forward, crying. The sharp angles of green and red shattered, rays and waves of blue and yellow seem to pore from every poor. He wanted to reach out to assure her, but caution got the better of him. He instead decide to use this as a starting point to build from. "There is always a way. You can choose what is right for you."

There was pause in her crying, his eyes tried to perceive a pattern in the shift colors. Procyon to continue the charge and provoke the biggest question

"You want us both right?"

Her light seemed to fade. His sharp blue eyes glistened with love and hope and he watched her. He knew, deep down, she wanted him, wanted her too. Procyon support her desire to have both, to make it all work, but the situation had seemed to drawn to a stalemate over the last year. The crying subsided from the frightened doe. Procyon ears twitched at the unbearable silence

She looked up; her eyes conveyed the battle of blunt, turbulent emotions. Procyon felt he was looking at a panicked caged beast, equally capable of biting or licking the hand trying to free it from a trap. Her conflicted emotions fought, she sobbed, her lips tried to say several things at once. Finally, she breathed in deeply and said in a moment of clarity "Yes, I want you both," she inhaled deeply, as if more confident in her answer "I love you both."

The colors cooled and slowed, seeming to wash over here like and the waves on a beach. Procyons eyes followed the Lasitor, which seemed now drooped almost towards the floor. "Then that is all you need, I love you too and we can work together. We can show her you allowed and able to have it all!" Procyon said with an almost triumphant sigh like quality. He felt mild relief as he felt nerve racking tension subside; there was closure, there was resolution. Then saw the doe's fear in her face.

The light and color completely faded from the doe, and dead, empty space seemed to fill his field of vision. The doe looked up again, tears streaming in her eyes, a wave of incredulousness crossing her face and she raised the Lasitor, "I'm sorry, but sometimes love just isn't enough."

Procyon never saw a flash, instead, all he felt was an intense pain in his left eye. A blinding pain shot strait through him as a sharp ringing in his left ear added to the overload of stimuli. His nostrils filled with the ripe acrid stench of burnt flesh and fur. In all the pain, he could still feel the immense pressure and undulations in his skull as the fluid in his eyes boiled. The pain and ringing swallowed his senses as every fiber of his being was consumed by that blinding instance. Yet in all that trauma, somehow his crippled senses transcending the need to black out, and ingrained the shattering scene burned into his mind: A crying doe he loved so dearly, the turmoil of mixed of emotions, the blinding pain and sound as a laser pierced through his head, his final primal scream.

AAAHHRRGGGG!

Procyon clutched his eye and ear in panic, he felt the cold smooth lifeless surface the poly-ceramic plating. He was blind, his hearing rang emptily, panic swept over him.. "I can't see, their gone, my God, my eye, my e...." A flood of static entered his mind. Finally, the senses from the devices came online as they finished their booting sequence out of sleep mode. He caught his breath as he refocused on his surroundings, trying to calm down from the nightmare, his heart still racing as if coming out of a fleeing run.

He lay in a pool of cold sweat in the bunk of the crew quarters of the Intrepid. He could see the glow of the main console through the two doorways that separated the bunks from main cargo hold and cockpit. His ears focused on the steady hum of the ship. He needed to focus, relax, he was in the here and now. He used the ships gentle hum as a mantra to help him relax, clear the images from his head. He was here, he was safe, and he was on his way to have some fun. The past could and would be forgotten, but more importantly he could proceed on with his life. He reclined back into his bunk, eyes focusing on the rivets on the ceiling. "Oliver has always said that life will continue only if I allow it." Procyon swung his feet around out of the bed and placed them into some slippers he kept by bedside. "Sad thing is he has never really giving me a good clue about how to do that. Hopefully the Deki sys..." Suddenly, a faint alert pierced the ambient noise.

It was the signal from flight computer that they were passing from hyperspace to real space. Procyon continued to focus on the sound of the engines. He actually delighted in the subtle ballet of sounds that his ears could pick up. The subtle hums of the hyperspace field generator were replaced with the higher whine of main deflectors, used to keep debris from damaging the ship. The primary reaction engines came online and warmed up, the navigation computer chirped away as it calculated the orientation realignment required for the burn time to come down from 0.8c to something that could reenter Po-Ying's traffic patterns. Finally he could hear faint bursts of sound as the maneuvering thrusters started to rotate the ship for reverse burn. "I think I remember the computer plotting a course close enough to Po-Yang that I can get a good look with the ship's sensors. Maybe I'll map out where to take some hikes later this week." The raccoon picked up his robe and started to tie it around his waist. Interrupting this was a sharp sound that Procyon did not expect.

It was a sharp rap that reverberated through the hull like someone had hit it with a hammer. Interrupted in tying his robe, Procyon stooped for a moment tried to focus on the noise to see if it would happen again. Then an alarm klaxon came from the console. "Ah crap, this can't be good" he verbally sighed as he bolted to the cockpit.

The raccoon scurried to the main flight controls, deftly removing his eyepiece as he crossed the cargo area and through the hatch of the cockpit. Even before he attached the computer's main I/O cable to his left socket the screens were already flashing: "Collision Alert".

"Oh, crap, not good at all!" he exclaimed.

Ship must have hit a piece of debris too small for the sensors to see or too dense and massive for the deflectors to divert. With an audible click the I/O cable attached and Procyon's vision was superimposed with a virtual set of data, screens and readouts. The flashing red on numerous system reports told him what he need to know, and what he really didn't want to hear.

"Main starboard engine: Malfunction; Failure; Danger" were the labels, slowly spreading across the various diagnostic reports. There, in the middle of them all like a big signal flare was the one the raccoon really dreaded to see: "Fire".

"Dammit!" he cursed to himself as he hit the main fuel cutoff, hopefully that would staunch the bleeding. "A chunk must have nicked the engine while it was in burn" He knew that any crack in a reaction chamber during burn would allow superheated plasma to leak into nearby components and the rest would be history. More data poured in through the I/O cable. Procyon sifted the readouts desperately as he tried to access the situation. "Ok, 1 engine still works, 0.6c, flight is erratic but still manageable. Ok, not going to be pretty but I should be able slow down and limp this crate in to Po-Ying" he tried to reassure himself. The raccoon looked at telemetry and went through the possibilities.

The ships course was now going to slingshot closer to Po-Yang than initially planed. This was useful because it meant the ship's gravity polarizer, effectively an antigravity device, could be used to aid the remaining engine and slow the ship down and then push away from the planet towards Po-Ying. He quickly set the computer to the task of crunching the math necessary to perform such a maneuver. Readouts from damage control continued to monitor the fire in the starboard engine. He glanced at the ship's speed, "down to 0.2c, this should be..."

Another klaxon blared as the damage control system went read across the board. "Fire: Fuel System".

"FUCK!"

Procyon exclaimed as he reflexively activated emergency jettison procedures. In moments, a loud thump was heard throughout the ship as it jettisoned the main propellant tank. The distress beacon of the crippled ship automatically activated. Although the Intrepid still had the main power reactor, most systems, gravity polarizer and the maneuvering thrusters; Loss of the main engines made flying craft almost impossible. Sadly it meant landing even less so. He ran some more calculations through the computer. Could he use the gravity polarizer alone to slow the craft down sufficiently? Maybe he could slow the craft just enough to make orbit instead of sling shot around Po-Yang. That might work. Wait for the emergency beacon to get picked up and hope that a rescue ship would arrive soon. The computer returned some numbers that showed several possible trajectories and a stable orbit was possible around Po-Yang. "Ok, stay calm, this should work." The raccoon was starting to relax. He had been in some tough spots when learning to fly back home. He kept his old helmet as a remembrance of those days and true "by the seat of your pants" flying. This was bad, but not undoable. Suddenly, a bright flare outside the ship now guaranteed panic.

Although some distance from the jettisoned fuel container, the explosion of its contents created visible light. Moments later a mild shockwave hit the ship. Then another loud clang of metal on metal, this time it sounded much closer than the one he heard earlier. Procyon swiveled his chair to look out into the cargo hold to see a small indent on the ceiling. He could also see a small cloud form around the indent. His left ear picked up the high whistling sound of gas escaping through a small hole. Before he had a chance to react the door between the cockpit and the cargo hold automatically closed and sealed. "Great, a hull breach" he said in a tone of disbelief. Damage control astutely alerted "Hull breach detected".

"No, really?" he said in a sarcastic tone, already assuming that this was now going to possibly be the second worst day in his life, if not his last.

Procyon swiveled his chair back into flight position and took a brief moment to collect his thoughts. After centering himself, he ran a quick diagnostics to figure out what he had still working and to see if he had any ability to influence his near future. Maneuvering thrusters were still good, he could point the ship wherever he liked for quite some time. In fact, auto corrections had already stabilized the ship, so he knew that part was still working. Gravity polarizer still worked, it was still slowing the craft and speed was now well under 0.1c. Although not great, the Intrepid could still push away from planets to a limited degree. His nose picked up a faint acrid scent in the air. He checked life support. The cockpit was sealed, no fires detected, heating was good, but oxygen was red. A quick system check confirmed the cockpit was cut off. "why me?" he exacerbated.

Procyon made a quick calculated guess, "maybe 6-10 hours or air tops in cockpit, few more with the emergency bottle." he tried to think of all the implications. even if the Beacon was picked up a rescue ship in that time was simply out of the question. His head laid low in his paws as he came to a grim conclusion "Looks like trying to achieve orbit is out"

The Raccoon slumped heavily into his chair. He was running out of possibilities. He tapped irritably at the consol trying to find an outcome other than the obvious. His spacesuit was in the airlock on other side of cargo hold. The cargo hold was now fully depressurized. Forcing the cockpit door open was death, no two ways about it. He tapped at the computer, plotting flight paths. The computer calculated if the combination of shields and polarizer could slow the ship for "dead stick" re-entry. The numbers came back with the same deadly prediction: Burned up in reentry.

Procyon fidgeted with his eyepiece and disconnected from the computer. The world appeared a lot less cluttered and red without all of the superimposed overlays. His good eye's vision wandered over the cockpit, looking at all the scuffs and dents with an old clarity and fond memories. "The end of the line, I guess." He sighed with a calm acceptance. His eye wandered over his first helmet he kept in the cockpit as a memento.

He currently kept it as both as keepsake and backup in case of emergency. A fact he was all too aware of now that his flight suit was on the other side of certain death. Although it had the integral oxygen bottle, it was made for high altitude flying, not vacuum. Its head shape and muzzle mask always fit so well. It was like a second skin for those early years. He did all of his most audacious piloting with this helmet. He remembered when he pushed his first sky hopper way outside operational limits and hit the ionosphere. Froze up the systems, never lost cabin pressure but everything was offline and needed that oxygen tank to breath while he wrestled the craft back under control.

His head shot up and peered at the looming planet ahead with a flash of inspiration. He instinctively grabbed the helmet and scrambled to reattach the I/O cable to his eye. He ignored the flashing red icons and went back to is calculations. He purposely moved the flight path to avoid landing but just hit the upper atmosphere. If he just skipped the craft, the shields would hold and he could still bleed off speed. Could he do this without shield failure and still slow the craft that it could renter within the limits of his oxygen. The computer went through simulations. Procyon took this time to look at all the dents and graffiti on the old helmet. He found the spot where he wrote with a marker pointing to the dent "skyhopper 35". He laughed while looking elsewhere on the helmet. He found an unmarred area and promised "if we make it through this, this little escapade will get marked as well."

The computer chimed and the readouts produced a "most probable flight path of success". Procyon purposely ignored what the computer gave as odds of success as he put his helmet on. Amazing after all these years it still fit so well, as if it was waiting and welcoming an old friend. Procyon reached up and knocked the hard surface twice for luck and focused on the task on hand "OK! Let's do this"

Instantly and series of overlays washed over his vision. He made some quick readjustments to the readouts so only the most important information was near the center of his vision. Flight corridor, shield strength, polarizer output, external temperature, velocity and flight angle. The raccoon's deft fingers raced over the flight controls against the specter of time to finish all final adjustments. All the while he had to spare some attention to monitor the polarizer to make sure it was exerting just enough force to slow craft but not so much as to cause the craft to completely skip the upper atmosphere so necessary to slow the craft into a decaying orbit. With a keystroke of finality like a pianist finishing a song he looked up at the chronometer to check his time. It was T minus 2 minutes to outer ionosphere. The raccoon grinned as he wished had grabbed his flask of single malt still he stored in his bunk closet. With a final cracking of his paws and a tightening of his robe, he readied for the impossible.

At first it was barely noticeable. A marginal reading of resistance on the shields as the Intrepid drew nearer to the looming planet. Procyon continued to monitor the flight path to make sure he was maintaining the right corridor. Not to steep as to burn up and not to shallow as to skip to high in the atmosphere to slow down enough to cause a decaying orbit. Gently pulsing power to the gravity polarizer, he made sure the craft maintained the correct altitude. Readings from the shield grew quickly. The feint orange red glow from friction with the upper atmosphere could now clearly be seen as a hemisphere around the forward part of the ship. The colors seemed somehow familiar. He gazed as if to search his memory but klaxons alerted him to more pressing needs.

It was all like a precarious dance on a tightrope walk. Procyon's hands deftly moved across the control panel to more power from shields, polarizer, and even the heat sinks to make sure the craft maintained course. However, like a juggler with too many balls aloft things started to degenerate. Overly worried about the ever increasing readings of temperature on the hull, Procyon pushed the polarizer too much and a warning flashed in his virtual display in his left eye that the ship was exiting the flight corridor. He quickly let up on the polarizer only to be met with now a second warning in red that hull temperature was reaching critical. The raccoon tried to boost power to the shields only to hear the strain of the cooling system desperately trying to bleed heat from both the shields and now stressed reactor. Procyon felt his possibilities waning, and was struggling not to panic. The ship jostled violently as the shields encountered more turbulence. This caused Procyon muzzle to impact painfully with the main console.

As he lifted his head heavily, his vision out of his one remaining eye could clearly see the deep and turbulent reds of color flaring past the ship. Beyond that, and inky void that seemed all too ready to devour him. Despair wash over him. Images , pains and ghost of so many years joined him in the cockpit. His ear and eye hurt, even though diagnostics would confirm normal physical operations. Hopelessness and despair cloaked him, yet seem somehow now felt familiar and reassuring, as if guiding him to some final destination. On one level, he just wanted to sob and allow the world and fire to consume him. Deep in his mind, a mad spark arose. His response was simply to laugh.

"It's all like Poe isn't it?" He flippantly stated, allowing all three readings to encroach into the red. "May it be the pit or the pendulum, I'm dead either way." He briefly swept his brow, realizing there was still a cold sweat on it left over from the startled dream that had started this failure of a day. He took a brief moment to stare at the moisture on his paw. "Guess you got you wish after all. Survived the Lasitor, survived the surgery, survived the last 3 years of emptiness, only to end up here." He refocused on his virtual displays. He tried vainly to rebalance the Intrepid and its struggling systems. He activated the emergency fire suppression system hoping it would cool some of the ships over heating systems. The usual caution of its toxicity now lost in the fact that most of the ship was depressurized. It seemed to have little effect. Procyon simply shrugged with a grim acceptance of the situation. His mind returned to morose musings.

"Why did I hang on so long? Said it myself that Oliver, as wonderful as he is, does not have what I need. She took it away. Whatever it was, it died that day. The surgery healed my body and replaced my eye and ear but that was not the real damage, was it? Ever since then I've just kept the specters at bay. I kept from killing myself during that time, as much as the thoughts invaded my head." Procyon scanned the virtual readouts; all of them were still in the red. As if taunting him while they ignored his best efforts to keep the ship intact. Finality was a concept the raccoon was beginning to embrace.

"Is it still worth putting up so much effort just to keep me alive now? I'm not even sure what I'm looking for. Maybe this accident is a sign. It would solve so many things. There'd be enough money from the insurance to keep Oliver settled modestly for life. All the ends would wrap up, all the pain would go away, and I would finally stop struggling pretending to be happy, pretending to be better. The universe would get its way and everyone would be all the happier for it. Happier without..."

A beeping broke Procyon from his trance. The temperature reading had finally started to drop to nominal levels. Reflexively he let up on the polarizer, unclear if his motive was chasing an emotional acceptance or because of a well founded scientific fact. The ship's lack of upward thrust allowed it to drag through the atmosphere a little more. He could see the ship trajectory started to approach green but within a minute or so, stopped. It was obvious that the Intrepid had finished the skip out of the atmosphere, but much higher a trajectory than originally intended. The raccoon quickly set the computer to task of predicting new path's re-entry point. The result was an answer that left Procyon staring at frustrating possibilities: 7 hours, 3 minutes.

He looked at the oxygen bottle that was connected to the mask of his helmet. He knew it held 6 hours, give or take. The air in the cabin had already become stale and heavy from his labors maintaining the craft through the atmospheric skip. The raccoon chuckled again, staring almost incredulously out the front window of the ship. "Always so close, and always so far from what I need. It's always up to me to figure out the difference."

Procyon looked around the cabin some more, as if looking for a response back, But nothing in response but the ambient noise of a now crippled ship. He glanced around the small cockpit some more to find an unseen answer. He felt moisture trace down his muzzle. He wiped it away thinking it was more sweat but the red tinge suggested otherwise.

He felt around his muzzle and, finally as the adrenaline was wearing off, realized the impact with the console had giving him a small cut. Instinctually he reached underneath the console for the small med kit. He opened a shuffled through the contents for a small bandage. He had raided this kit before so it was out of pain relievers sadly, and the few remaining self adhesive bandages seemed scattered under the cold packs and gauze. Finally finding one Procyon continued to muse over his current precarious position as he placed it on the underside of his muzzle. He found himself staring into the med kit.

In a flash of inspiration he grabbed the cold packs and sorted through the pills until he found what he wanted. With possible salvation in hand, he went back to the console. He set up a series of routines and alarms to activate at specific times. With a tap of the return key Procyon settled back in his flight chair. "All I need is an hour extra," he said as he downed pill. He then turned the nozzle on the oxygen bottle, but only barely. It was so slight that only with the aid of his left ear could he pick up a sound of airflow. He placed it loosely over his muzzle and mashed the cold packs to activate them. He placed them over his neck and on the open fur of his chest.

"Okay, with this and the sleeping pill, this should slow my body's metabolism. Allow this oxygen to stretch out far enough. If it doesn't work then..." His mind drifted to his earlier rant, the dream earlier in the day, the recurring specters who seemed to be hiding now in the corner of the cockpit. He sighed deeply as fatigue aided by pharmaceuticals washed over his body. He felt a deep sadness wash over him as well. The last couple of hours made him relive events he'd thought he'd gotten over. He stared out the front window of the ship, consciously slipping away from his as his vision got absorbed into the endless emptiness of space. He could feel that emptiness on a deep primal level now. His thoughts suddenly rummaged onto the concepts of a book he had read so many years ago. His thoughts struggled to keep above the darkness. "I think I know what Frankle means by the existential vacuum..." He tried to finish the thought, but the darkness robbed him of any conclusions.

There, Procyon slept in a crippled ship, in a decaying orbit. Alone with his thoughts; trapped in a life which seemed caught between possibility, guarantee, hope, pain, and finality.