Chapter 7 – The Illusion of Power
Mary Lopez momentarily forgot where she was upon waking. A pair of suns didn’t shine in the sky above her head. Soft, bronze light didn’t bath her settler’s rig. Instead, Mary blinked upon a much more familiar sky, a blue sky that surrounded a single, brilliant sun that blinded her if she gazed for even a second at its orb. Somehow, the Earth’s morning sky had travelled through all the stars to find Mary.
Mary shook her head. She still must’ve been dreaming, and she knew how impaired her judgment could be before her morning mug of coffee. The walls of her settler’s rig still surrounded her, and the interior of her shelter remained cluttered with overturned equipment and supplies. Rubbing her head, Mary grunted to recall the harrowing ordeal of her rig’s descent, how the roof had torn away and depressurized the cabin so that many of her crates, as well as herself, and jettisoned out of the rig. How had she survived? What had saved her from impact?
The sky above her shimmered like a heat mirage. Mary blinked. She peered into blue, and she giggled upon recognizing the contours of all those wings that gathered together to glow such a mosaic of sky. How had those creatures known how the morning sky appeared out of Mary’s apartment in the New Trenton housing stack? How had such alien butterflies anticipated the rejuvenating effect their painted vista would have upon her?
“Thank you,” Mary swung her feet into her boots. “It’s good to know I have friends on Wildberry.”
The blue sky vanished as the creatures winked through hues of green and blue, apparently showing their glee to have made Mary happy.
Mary grinned. “You know, the lottery offices didn’t say much about you in the brochures they supplied to the housing stack. I wonder why. You’re all fairly incredible. Do you read minds? Is that your trick? You know, I was rather frightened to think about the monsters that might’ve been waiting for me on an alien planet.”
The wings again shimmered, turning their colors silver, pearl and gold. Several drifted to sit beside Mary on her small cot, and one dropped upon the coffee maker resting on the floor, somehow sensing that Mary needed caffeine before tackling any of the tasks that day waiting for her.
Mary remained fortunate, for the packets of coffee included in the lottery’s settler kits remained in their proper cupboards, so that the coffee maker soon bubbled to the settler’s delight. Mary thanked the Maker for those friendly creatures that shimmered all around her, without whose help she might still have been searching for water. The coffee cleared her mind, and Mary ruminated about what chores first faced her. She needed to relocate her food supply, but she was confident the wings would help her locate those missing crates. She would need to plot the rows of her garden, so that she could plant the seeds of kit as soon as possible. All the tools would require inspection, and Mary needed to decide what equipment she would repair. A settler who braved a new world had much to do. As the lottery offices said, the planets were reserved for the prosperous. But for the moment, Mary had strong coffee, and she had a lightshow of friendly wings. With such companions, Mary felt confident she would master the day’s demands.
“It’s alright. I need to get accustomed to your bronze sky.”
The wings retreated to reveal the pair of mild suns that filled the planet’s sky with bronze light. Mary judged the view a lovely one, and she didn’t doubt it would take long until she loved that bronze sky as she loved old Earth’s. Leaving the rig, she sat upon the ground, sipping at her coffee while watching how that open expanse of green field that surrounded her rig swayed as the swarm of wings responsible for so much color fidgeted upon the ground.
“Do all of you only know green?”
Those wings fluttered, and a deep crimson spread over the field to replace the original green.
“Can you give me a wheat field?”
The air again shimmered as those creatures darted to and fro, forming a golden field of wheat swaying to an unfelt wind in the time it took Mary to take another sip from her coffee.
“Amazing. I would live in the housing stack for a thousand years more if doing so blessed me with such a view. Such a view would make everyone on Earth envious. Even those rich folks in their air-conditioned domes would be jealous if they knew such creatures repainted the landscape to fit every settler’s preference. They would race to come out to the stars themselves if they knew. And to imagine that all of this view now belongs to me.”
Mary swallowed. She suddenly felt very foolish. She didn’t have time to idly sit and luxuriously sip from a warm mug of coffee, not during her first morning set upon Wildberry. Where were her rival settlers? How much distance separated her rig from that of the nearest competitor to land upon the planet? How long would it take until another settler tripped upon her landing site? How long would it be after that until a settler challenged her right to her plot of real estate? She had to take precautions. She had to take steps to protect herself. She had to insure she was safe before she wasted the hours staring at whatever lightshow those wings offered her.
Those wings appeared confused, for the wheat field distorted and blinked out of existence, replaced by a thousand gray shadows, as if each creature was suddenly unsure about what color to possess.
Mary paid little attention to those wings as she hurried back inside her settler’s rig to sort through her boxes and implements. Into which crate had she packed her makeshift harpoon gun? What would she do if the weapon had been thrown from her rig during the descent? How would she protect herself? How would she fight to defend what she had earned from all those years breathing the housing stack’s stale and stinking air?
“There it is. Thank goodness.” Mary found her harpoon gun at the bottom of a pile. “Please tell me you still work.”
She hurried back outside with the gun in one hand and a homemade harpoon in the other. The wings no longer rested peacefully in the field, and they instead fluttered about the air like an agitated thunderstorm of blinking yellows and reds. Several darted closely to Mary’s face, and Mary growled at them as the wings distracted her efforts to inspect her weapon. They refused to relent until Mary turned her attention across the expanse of field surrounding her rig. Mary watched the wings stack one atop another far in the distance, taking on the color of stone as they descended from the bronze sky like falling bricks to knit a giant wall encircling her rig. There were so many of the creatures, and the ramparts stretched high and far over Mary’s head, until the completed wall bathed the settler in shadow. Amazed, Mary blinked as the wings held position. She didn’t doubt that the wings would help her, and she was thankful to find such an ally upon the planet, no doubt the best army Wildberry might provide. Only, Mary knew that the wall was only illusion, only a flock of mirage and color, a wall that would surely collapse before the power a rival settler might choose to wield against it.
“You’re all too kind,” Mary whispered to the distant wall, “but I still must protect myself. It’s every settler for herself during a planet-grab.”
Mary pulled at her gun’s mechanism and was happy to feel its spring groan properly into a pent, loaded position. The harpoon still slid smoothly down the weapon’s barrel, the trigger still felt properly tied to the spring’s release. She lifted the harpoon gun to her face, and she stared down the barrel to see that the sights remained properly aligned.
Beyond the sights of that barrel, the swarm of fluttering wings shifted and swirled. Their colors morphed into brilliant reds as they drew together to form the shape of a terrible, red dragon that swallowed the sky. The serpent’s fury burned from the center of that monster’s yellow eyes. Mary’s heart skipped a beat as the dragon curled back its long neck and gathered a breath before spouting an orange jet of flame that covered the land surrounding the settler’s rig. The fires danced and swayed, and Mary watched the flames burn as the dragon circled overhead.
Still, Mary’s attention returned to her harpoon gun.
“I’m sorry,” Mary spoke to the one wing that remained next
to her, “but illusion and color are not enough. Your dragon makes no noise, and its fires produce no heat. Sooner or later, my enemy will doubt your mirage and test its glimmer. In the end, I’ll still have to take care of myself.”
The harpoon gun felt balanced in Mary’s hand, but she still needed to test it. She needed to know that the harpoon housed in the barrel would fly straight into an intended target, She needed to know that the barb sent roaring from the gun would possess the power needed to hurt and maim. Mary needed to be confident that the weapon possessed the power to kill. Mary was thankful that Wildberry offered so many targets to her so that she didn’t have to scavenge for practice. So many targets surrounded her, so many that she could claim three or four, possible even a dozen, without anyone knowing how she practiced her aim.
The single wing perched upon the ground in front of her grew blindingly bright in the second before Mary’s finger pressed her gun’s trigger. The harpoon hissed out of the weapon. Mary Lopez had well designed her weapon and its projectile. The bolt whistled into the wing that had kept her company. The creature made no noise. It didn’t shriek. It didn’t appear to suffer or to languish in any pain. It only instantly turned black.
“There, let that be a warning to any jerk who dares challenge my claim on Wildberry.”
Every wing upon the ground of that expanse surrounding Mary’s settler’s rig lifted into the air to join with the others. Every wing turned black, and a shiver shot up Mary’s spine as the sky turned dark. She couldn’t believe how many of the creatures lifted from the ground, leaving beneath them only barren, hard rock that would be shaped by no implement or plow. The wings furiously flew higher and higher, blotting out the bronze light of those dual suns until Mary could hardly see the hand that held her harpoon gun. Something tickled at the back of her throat, and then she gasped. And then, she choked what final words she could.
“Come back. Come back.”
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