One Life Ends

Posted on 26 Apr 2020 @ 11:32pm by Lieutenant Quinle Rahl

470 words; about a 2 minute read

Mission: Changing Faces
Location: Rahl’s Quarters

Rau sat in her bunk, her sleep attire clinging to her. Cold sweat had broken over her body as she awoke with a pained scream. No lights came on as she requested the computer keep her quarters dark unless she requested light, which she did now in a panicked tone of voice. “Light, light by the galaxies above… light!” The first time she said it, it was a scream, then a trembling plea, the last a breathy whisper.

Leaning forward as a gentle light flooded her quarters, the twist she usually tied it up in as she slept had come loose and the ebon strands fell across her face, waves clinging to her damp skin. Trembling shot through her body and she reached for the bottle that she had almost emptied before she slept, drops hit the table as she barely managed the last pour into the glass there.

Dark amber liquid was raised to her lips and gulped down. “Maybe I should get some of that jet fuel from Romanov.” The heat of the liquid burning her throat and settling in her stomach, the empty pit there rolling with the entry.

*”Our maybe you should stop drinking.”* Her thought was what she would have told a client, but in gentler terms. The face came to her thoughts again looming over her as a plasma dagger was slid between her ribs, pain overruled the fire in her stomach and she ran to the sink to relieve herself of the liquid in her belly.

The vision, it would not stop, not from the time the lights had come back on during the diplomatic meet and greet for the Ambassadors. Recovery in the moment had been swift as she was needed, but since then the images came more and more.

Occasionally she would get a flash from her symbiot of recognition from its past but usually it was nothing but a key of something it wished her to know, or a warmth of a good feeling, or a lesson it wanted her to know. This was different, much different.

During the party she had been studying the faces of those in attendance from both sides of their negotiating parties when one in particular caught her attention. A tall male from the Union delegation, handsome for a human which is why she though pt she would remember him. Dark hair, deep blue eyes, the kind she would have enjoyed losing herself in for a time, but a prickle in her mind had her rejecting the attraction and turning instead to the others.

Now his face haunted her dreams, seeing him slipping that weapon into a body that was not hers, but her symbiot’s prior host. Shavasa Rahl had been murdered and the human that had done so was in the Union now.

 

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