Raven Tide

“Raven Tide!” I cried into the comm-link.

All that returned was static.

I scratched my fingernails into the moss-covered dirt and winced when the prismatic cloaking bubble surrounding me jiggled and burst into nothing.

Everything was quiet just as he said.

“Raven Tide...” I breathed in denial.

My eyes burned and my vision warbled behind a layer of water.

“No,” I pinched my eyes shut and sucked air down my nose. That won’t change anything.

I scooped up the scattered equipment into the satchel and stood up, hugging the oversized black bag in my arms.

The jungle was silent.

I crept in the direction Raven Tide ran toward. Bootprints were everywhere.

My stomach lurched and I dropped on all fours vomiting.

“Keep it together, Chyani,” I panted and wiped my mouth.

To my horror, blood and viscera littered the forest floor in front of my hands. There was a wet red skull and spinal cord sprawled on the ground to my left.

The way he moved was insane... What kind of masochistic nut job would deliberately face Raven Tide in a one-on-one deathmatch?

Warm blood trickled over my fingers.

“The red bush!” I got up and scoured the area until I finally located the correct skull marker.

His motley bedecked utility belt was laying next to his red-stained gauntlet. I clutched both items and tucked them tight to my chest.

Hot liquid simmered across my eyelids.

“Stop it!” I scrubbed my forearm over my face.

Focus!

I took one last survey of the blood-splattered battleground. There was nothing else here that I needed.

I ran for what felt like forever having no clue what to do if something hungry jumped out and tried to kill me.

This feeling was the source of all my nightmares. The immobilization of unending obligation, the sinking fear, the awareness that I was powerless and things were becoming too real. It’s why running in the mornings was a dreaded chore. I couldn’t stop my thoughts from overflowing.

Don’t stop, get to the ship. Don’t stop, get to the ship.

I repeated the mantra to block out paralysis.

My hands were shivering and my stomach was growling when I arrived back at his ship.

“Wow...” I marveled at the drone’s proficiency. “The hull is shiny.”

The ship’s giant aft door hissed and opened in response to Raven Tide’s buzzing gauntlet. Common sense suggested that this response would be a major flaw in security for a craft this advanced to allow access automatically. He must have unlocked it before ditching the gauntlet.

A drone bumped my boot and I knelt to it, then a few more skittered over as I handed them the missing parts and the fabricator.

“Do your thing little bugs,” I exhaled and waved them off down the hall.

The lights built into the floor of the hallway blinked on as I walked toward the bridge.

“Ok, a good sign. At least one thing is working.”

I entered the bridge and sat down in Raven Tide’s chair. It was a lot harder without him to cushion me.

“Ok,” I stared up at the blank floating screens and tapped my fingers on the armrests. “All I have to do is turn on the highly advanced alien spaceship, activate the cloaking system, and the distress signal...”

I held up Raven Tide’s gauntlet, mindful to point the end with the two giant knives facing away.

“Fuck, I have no idea what I’m doing!”

Why did he have to leave me with such vague instructions?

Those damn tears crept in while my brain replayed those last few fleeting moments he tried to make count before those soldiers overwhelmed him.

“You can do this Chyani!” I took a deep breath. “He said to use the gauntlet, start there. Break down the problem.”

The hunk of armor was smooth and lighter than I anticipated. There was a hinged flap that opened up and within a long black viewscreen. I poked a few buttons at random but nothing responded. Then I tried speaking his name at it, cause why not? If I was going to troubleshoot, I may as well test the basics.

I sat there for upward of twenty minutes fumbling with the clunky thing and still nothing happened.

“Com’on, it’s not like someone’s life is depending on you working!” I shook the gauntlet over my head in frustration and then flopped it in my lap. “This sucks.”

Suddenly, the view screens flipped from cloudy grey to brilliant cyan. “What the-?”

Oh, ok. Apparently, all I needed to do was swipe the gauntlet in the air.

“Ok, step two,” I hunkered into the giant captain’s chair. “Activate the cloak.”

I sifted through the glowing squares for symbols hinting at concealment. The process reminded me of when I first installed this amazing universal drawing application and spent the entire first day arranging the extensive toolbar hud. The menus used only icons and symbols as the program was designed to circumvent any language barrier.

I paused on an outline of the ship and focused on two circles. One solid green and the other hollow gray.

“It couldn’t be that simple?”

I tapped the green circle and a dotted green line traced around the ship’s outline.

“Did I?” I hopped up and ran to the back of the ship to peek out the still-open aft cargo door.

“Ha HAA!”

The exterior metal was translucent and swirly.

“Ok, how to close the door?”

I turned my back to the open door and stretched my hand out against the wall. There wasn’t a switch but the doors reacted the second my hand grazed a smooth panel.

“Yes!” I made a fist and yanked it to my chest.

I returned to the bridge and sat down.

“Step three, distress signal.”

I tabbed through the menus, then paused, “In an emergency, this would be something you’d need to have direct access to and have at the ready.”

I turned my attention to the armrests.

“But not so close that one might hit it by accident...”

I found two matching metal flaps on the front of the armrests, each housing red switches. The markings around the buttons were thick and inlaid into the metal. Something that could be identified by touch alone.

“Here’s hoping these aren’t weapons or the auto-destruct countdown. "Though, as I recall, he controlled the offensive systems with only the virtual buttons.

I clicked the switches simultaneously.

A brand new window opened that eclipsed the others.

The image displayed was a close-up map of Iddril territory. A tiny silhouette of the Venom Heart sat on the smallest planet in the solar system and there was a red pulsating dot on one of the moons.

“Raven Tide!” I hopped from the chair.

Off at the edges, there were four arrows, each with words, probably names, next to them. I tapped the first one and it zipped over to another very distant sector.

Two of the arrows vanished and were replaced by a static black dot on a green planet and a white dot on a nearby blue one. I tapped on the other two arrows and those took the display into yet another sector. Two dots, a big red one and a half-sized gray one sat on the largest planet in the center of the alien system. One of the moons of the pink and gray planet was broken in half.

“Friends of his? Or family?”

I tapped the red pulsing arrow at the edge of the screen and switched back to Raven Tide.

“Alright,” I put my hands together and tapped my lips. “Was that the distress signal or just a locator?”

There was a blurb of text blinking at the bottom. I swished it up to the center. There was a twinkling dashed bar, like a long-range transmission loading icon.

I think the text next to the animation was a line of numbers.

“Is this how long it will take for help to arrive? Or is that the time it’s taking to send the message?”

Either way, the chain of numbers was way too long and the digits were ticking down far too slowly for comfort.

“Do I just wait here?”

My stomach was growling but all I could concentrate on were the little letters blinking red next to Raven Tide’s dot. The order and configuration of the dashed-line alphabet seared permanently into my mind.

“I could try and figure out how to get a message to Hecte.”

I remembered what Raven Tide said about his people’s policy of not revealing themselves and their moral disagreements with humans.

Hecte, being an officer in the Galactic Defense, would alert his commanders. He would probably do that anyway solely on account that I was his baby sister and his only living family member.

“He’d turn Galactic Headquarters upside down trying to get me back.”

A sweet notion but that would entail confiscating Raven Tide’s ship and inspectors asking me a lot of questions. Most likely, they’d blame Raven Tide’s people for what happened on Phirsa 3.

And they certainly wouldn’t bother rescuing him.

Raven Tide undoubtedly wanted to keep me alive. He’d proven that unequivocally from the moment I first met him. It wasn’t where he wanted to take me but I’d be safe with my people on our capital planet.

He’d be happy to know that...

Those stupid tears leaked out again.

I raked my fingers through my hair. “How am I supposed to fix this?”

I did what he asked, I think. His people were clearly the most capable when it came to returning him home and punishing the Iddril.

I’d never forgive myself for leaving Raven Tide to die but there was no other option. His rescue wasn’t the greatest but he didn’t deserve to be hurt, or tortured, or worse.

It didn’t matter, I was stuck here.

All I could do was confirm that the signal made it though. Then afterward, I would attempt to get a message to Hecte and let him know I was alive and safe.

I sat in silence watching the little countdown cycle one digit at a time.

What if that little red dot stops blinking?

All of a sudden, the orange lights surged on and the ship came alive with a monotonous hum. A new window sprang open. It was the system status menu Raven Tide monitored while the moth was attacking the ship.

Everything was lit up solid green and there was a big green circle in the middle begging for me to poke it.

“Fuck it!” I slapped the circle and the entire ship rumbled. Then I pressed and held my finger on the little red dot prompting Venom Heart to lift off and set a course for one more rescue mission.