CANAISIS ∞ Chronicle One: The Last Living Ship ∞ 1: A New Mission

37 ∞ Given Memories

A/N: This chapter recognizes SRCraven, our third unsolicited reader who has already read Chronicle One three times (!) (and who could have been the first, had she voted on her first read-through. Lol).

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Day 00007 Mission Nilex

Ayla floated in the blackness and saw nothing, felt nothing. But she was aware, and, being aware, she heard the voice soothing her.

"Listen to the Breath of Wind... Be still and hear..."

When the Memory came again, Ayla was aware of that too. She felt the coldness begin, but the voice grew louder, and the cold subsided. A new sensation overcame her, and she knew the Memory wasn't going to claim her this time. Instead of it taking her, she felt herself take a Memory given to her. A gift from the soothing voice, she knew, just before the Memory began.

Eyes glued to the shuttle window, he replayed the orders he'd received at the assignment ceremony in his mind. "To serve Mankind, to explore the stars."

His heart jumped as a gray curve slid into view, and he leaned forward.

The ship Canaisis.

He should feel excitement, pride... but he just couldn't find it in himself. Not with his wife's passing. Not with all he knew about Canaisis.

Had he earned the right to be called Captain? Or was it all a horrible mistake?

He was but one of seven Captains assigned to these newly-built starships, intended for speeding up exploration and colonization. Once these ships left moon dust and gravity behind, they'd initiate the final protocol for adapting to space... and then they'd be forever children of the dark.

A quote he'd read a long time ago sprung unbidden to mind: "She is a Child of the Moon... A Sibling of the Stars."

Exhaling, he sank back into his seat, the restraining belt across his chest easing its pressure. He glanced around at the other Captains, but no one paid attention to him—they were all staring out the windows. They too wished to have glimpses of their ships, Canaisis' Sisters.

He'd come a long way to be here, a long, hard journey of hard choices... Pain from recent memories tried to surface, but he stubbornly shoved them back down. They had no place here—he had a Ship to command.

The Memory faded but Ayla knew this was not the end of it—she could tell there was more. The voice continued to whisper to her, comforting her, a calmness in the blackness filling her. She relaxed and let a new Memory come over her...

He was on his usual walk through the hallways of his ship. Not looking for anything, but always on the lookout for unforeseen problems. This new ship design was unique, and engineers had a way of missing the obvious. There would be no second chance out here, no rescue.

«Captain?» he heard inside his ear.

The bone induction implant behind his ear bothered him sometimes. He understood its necessity, but he didn't have to like it. A sudden voice inside your skull could throw you off. But then, you couldn't always depend on an atmosphere to be around to carry sound. He'd instructed the crew to never use it to contact him except in an emergency. They probably thought he was just old-fashioned.

He didn't mind if the ship's A.I. contacted him—it was important to learn how it functioned in its thought processes. He'd had many conversations with it, and it was learning, fast. But if something were going wrong, conversations with it might reveal that fact before it became a ship function problem. Her, he reprimanded himself—he had to learn to think of the A.I. as female.