Beyond the Conscious Breath
Steve Husk
A short story from the
Trorgan-Renndigan War series
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Steve Husk
_______________________
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
_______________________
Today's appalling hallucination was starting earlier than usual.
Bloppta-glokk's long neck recoiled below the water's surface. The enemy was still searching. Were they able to see past these same confusing obstructions that clogged Bloppta-glokk's sight of them? Convoluted waveforms, their oscillations changing constantly, yet taunting Bloppta-glokk to predict their pattern. Dense calculations, so far beyond Bloppta-glokk’s education, yet demanding to be solved. This was always the part of the vision that confused Bloppta-glokk the most.
The surrounding light started changing. The waveforms were going flat. The calculations were zeroing out into nothingness. The enemy's metallic face appeared from behind the vacated images, breathing vacuum, spitting fire into the dim waters. Bloppta-glokk's hind legs would not pump fast enough. Liquid flames roared out and enveloped the Renndigan Doer's bulky torso from behind. Bloppta-glokk’s muted blue scales bubbled from the heat.
Searing pain evicted Bloppta-glokk from the unwanted vision.
Bloppta-glokk remained still, afraid to move until absolutely sure that only cool water occupied the chamber. Renndigan Doers were not known to experience such vibrant and traumatic waking dreams during pregnancy. Even from the beginning of this expansion campaign, serving the dual role of alien representative and expansion contingent operations analyst was causing dangerous levels of mental and biological stress, which the physicians chose to combat by prescribing multiple pharmaceuticals. Bloppta-glokk noticed only a decrease in appetite and an increase in nausea. The physicians also ordered that Bloppta-glokk's quantum brain cell implementation therapy be halted until after the current expansion campaign reached its conclusion, and most certainly until after the birth. This decision threw Bloppta-glokk into a well of anger and depression, which in turn resulted in a few bouts of fetal distress that were answered with even more pharmaceuticals.
None of this explained to Bloppta-glokk why the painful visions started only two days ago.
Bloppta-glokk looked out the observation transparency and into deep space. Several procedural ships were retreating from their positions less than two kilometers away.
Light puked out from the black.
Bloppta-glokk's body tensed. Something was seriously wrong. Expansion contingents had strict rules about opening a travel wormhole so close to known ship formations.
A blet-t-t class battleship appeared out of the wormhole's mouth in a slow tumble. Shreds of metal framework dangled where the weapons mounts should have been. A large portion of the engine mount was ripped completely from the framework, the edges glowing in a dark orange. The command module was fractured in many places, and looked to be venting water. Bloppta-glokk recognized the scarred markings on the command mount. This was the Lakk-grigg, one of the three ships sent to the water planet of the Grakk system to remove the last remnants of Trorgan presence. Bloppta-glokk coughed up an unintelligible scattering of air bubbles. Childhood friend, Krulgg, served as a propulsion technician on board that ship.
The wormhole disappeared.
Where were the other two assigned battleships?
Three tug ships approached the blet-t-t and attempted to subdue its helpless tumble with towing beams. Medical and technical ships swarmed around the remains and scanned every inhabited portion.
Thousands of barely macroscopic blaigs converged on the solid wall to Bloppta-glokk's right. Their transparent shells pulsed, then each released a combination of chemicals that produced a specific color agreed upon by the entirety of blaigs participating in this conveyance. The colors formed a pattern. It was text information the blaigs were receiving from one of the medical ship scans. Everything was written in the dark red shade denoting medical catastrophe. There was an enormous amount of information. None of it was written in light red.
Bloppta-glokk hummed a command to the blaig conveyers, requesting flight recorder information from the Lakk-grigg. They responded that nothing was recovered.
One passage grabbed at Bloppta-glokk's attention. A charred Doer body was found floating in an engine mount maintenance pool. The water was still burning from the engine plasma that spewed in from an explosion. Only the body's internal ID marker revealed it to be Bloppta-glokk's friend.
Bloppta-glokk howled in sorrow. There would have been nowhere for Krulgg to flee from the plasma. This death followed the script of Bloppta-glokk's premonitions all too precisely.
The sorrow nearly disallowed Bloppta-glokk from realizing those supposed premonitions came after Krulgg's death.
#
The transport ship knifed through the dense cloud cover, and descended to within a meter above the ocean's churning red hued surface. A hatch unfolded inward, and Bloppta-glokk stepped up to the doorway's edge.
Four small surface-skimmers shot past Bloppta-glokk and kicked up sprays of water on their way towards an island chain on the heat-blurred horizon, each piloted by the brainwaves of a nah-eed eel. If there was one attribute that coerced Bloppta-glokk into embracing the undesirable realm of jealousy, it was the nah-eed's abilities of mind over mechanisms.
A robbla stepped to the edge of the doorway, then spread its black glossy wings and took fight behind the nah-eeds. No, Bloppta-glokk realized with an amused gurgle, it was the robbla's ability to touch the clouds that Bloppta-glokk would commit sin for.
A separate hatch in the transport's hull unfolded, releasing a surge of water and six smooth-hide oulffs. Bloppta-glokk was not alone in puzzlement over the fact that the oulffs were the only dual-gendered species to evolve on Renndigan, yet their anomalous-rendered insight became priceless when the first expansion contingents began encountering dual-gender races. The oulffs introduced their fellow Renndigans to the terms and concepts of 'he' and 'she,' and even created the third person unigender pronoun of 'ze' to compensate for the pronoun deficiency of alien languages.
Bloppta-glokk stepped to the edge of the platform and watched the Renndigans depart towards their assigned tasks. Every one of them seemed eager to do their part to ensure the successful expansion of Renndigan holiness. Bloppta-glokk wanted to believe this eagerness resided within zim as well. After all, zis Decider personally requested zis presence here so they could converse during the upcoming Decision Elite conference. Being invited to a conference was the highest honor a non-member could receive, yet Bloppta-glokk felt the eagerness inside being drained by the venue itself. This outpost planet was never named because nobody expected to be here long. The sun was entering into its red giant phase, and geological surveys determined that the planet had already lost over forty percent of its oceans to evaporation. This was not a world they wanted to occupy, let alone colonize.
It was the military's unexpected and disastrous failure in the Grakk system that forced this unwanted place upon them.
The waters below seemed the same color as the catastrophe text that announced Krulgg's suffering. Bloppta-glokk never bothered looking up at the sky. Ze sounded a distressed hiss, then dove off the platform and swam to the ocean floor.
Bloppta-glokk followed other Doers into a mammoth canyon. The steep walls were brilliantly illuminated with vast star charts and solar system maps displayed by billions of blaig conveyers. The dual breathers were intermixed on one side of the canyon. All the dry air breathers, outfitted with special masks, were gathered in the same group. Three Deciders were gathered on the opposite side. This was the first time Bloppta-glokk had ever seen a Decider other than the one that petitioned Decision Elite to be zis partner. They were huge creatures, at least twelve meters high and easily forty meters long. These three have been in this same location since the Renndigans first arrived here earlier this year, and would probably remain here until they were moved by hand-built transports or simply died where they sat. Bloppta-glokk used to feel pity towards Deciders for their seemingly helpless existence, until ze experienced firsthand how that species earned the name they bore; on the day they met, Bloppta-glokk's Decider psionically communicated constantly changing calculations to blaig conveyers so they could display a live representation of every planet in the solar system, while simultaneously performing an analysis of every Renndigan offensive weapon's potential against the Trorgan Space Military's defense grid projectors with the visual aid of an entirely separate group of blaig conveyors, and while simultaneously conducting a verbal strategic conversation which was quite honestly over Bloppta-glokk's head. Pity, Bloppta-glokk realized, had no place in their fledgling relationship.
Bloppta-glokk swam towards a small cave opening in the furthest and least lit corner of the canyon. Zis own Decider was inside, unmoving like a rock on the silt ocean floor.
"I will dispense with our customary greetings, my beloved Doer, so that I may immediately address the dreadful visions you recently experienced," the Decider spoke in a combination of grunts and air bubbles.
Bloppta-glokk gradually landed on zis feet before the massive creature. Decider eyes devolved many centuries ago, but Bloppta-glokk considered it a sign of respect to address zis Decider face to face. "I saw it again on my journey here. It was the same experience as all the other times."
"Any speculations I might offer without first bearing audible witness to your thoughts and interpretations would be aimless."
This was one aspect of their relationship Bloppta-glokk simply didn't understand. The Decider was downplaying zis own mental capabilities, supposedly for Bloppta-glokk's psychological benefit. Although, the act wasn't convincing; the most probable truth was that the Decider not only already diagnosed and correctly interpreted the consecutive visions, but also deduced at least a dozen alternate interpretations to account for any additional scraps of information Bloppta-glokk might interject.
"I believe the visions were from the point of view of my friend, Krulgg. I do not know if a living conscious being can see through the eyes of another, especially at the distance we were from each other, but I felt as if I was watching Krulgg die in battle at Grakk. Through zis own eyes. As the battle was unfolding."
"A highly resourceful deduction." The Decider released a thick wave of air bubbles to show its sensation of awe. "However, I wish to pose an antithesis variable. Are you still undergoing pharmaceutical treatment?"
"Yes."
"Are you still carrying your unborn child?"
"Yes."
"The answer, in a literal sense, is within you. I have taken on the task of consulting with several specialists concerning the condition under which you currently reside. They have confirmed that such convalescent pharmaceuticals, while administered in doses that would have no adverse affect on an unborn child, could still cause specific changes in the neurochemistry of a patient in the third quadmester of pregnancy, thus affecting that patient's subconscious state. You are not the first to undergo the waking hallucinogenic effects of such a condition, although that does not diminish the sorrow I feel knowing that my beloved Doer has endured disturbing visions on such a personal level."