“The only way to break infatuation is with reality. You have to look at him for who he is. Watch him, ask him questions about himself, let him speak to you. Get to know him better than the version of him you imagined. Your preconceptions and fear are the cause of the distance you're experiencing.”
“What if, I mean, if what he says isn't…”
“What you expected? Or if you don't feel the same way? Well, how do you feel now?”
Ashley sighed and pulled the tie out of her long black hair, letting it fall loose around her shoulders. “I already don't know what to say to him, we hung out in observation and it's just…” she wrapped the hair tie around her wrist then changed her mind and retied her hair, “awkward. We're supposed to go on leave for a couple days together during a recruiting mission and I don't know what to do.”
“Be yourself. Don't be afraid to tell him anything, and do your best to invite him to the conversation by asking him questions, even if it's hard. If he's not the person you expected him to be then speak to him honestly. Tell him how you feel. Shared experiences help, do things together away from the ship if you can. He's a friendly person, remember that.”
They had come to the express lift that would take her to the command deck and he pressed the call button for her.
She smiled at him; “I'll try. Thanks Chief,” Ashley waited for the express car quietly for a moment and suddenly, playfully punched him in the arm. “You're good at this stuff!” She looked at him, noticed his surprised expression and rubbed his arm where she'd struck him; “oh, sorry, not s'posed to punch priests.”
“Don't worry, it takes more than that to bruise me,” he chuckled at her. “Besides, I'm a Pilgrim, not a priest. You'd be surprised at what I'm allowed to do,” he winked.
The doors opened and Ashley stepped inside. “Well, thanks again. I'm on shift in five,” she smiled at him.
“See you in observation sometime.”
“Or tomorrow morning!” Ashley called out as the doors closed.
Liam shook his head as he turned and walked back down the hallway towards the rear express car doors on the other side of the garden. A smile graced his visage as he considered how he had just had almost the exact same conversation with Finn the day before.
Oz and Jason Go To Pandem Part II
It took a few minutes for the emergency landing balloons to deflate, and the Silkstream IV settled atop a large, steeply slanted stone slab jutting out from the beach sand. The rear of the ship stuck straight out into the air as the nose slowly dug into the hot, loose white and black sand.
The rear hatch of the Silkstream flopped open and Jason climbed up high enough to look around. The shoreline was less than a hundred meters behind them. “Missed the water,” he called down into the cabin as Oz hurriedly pushed their packs through the main boarding hatch and over the edge of the jutting stone.
“Good thing we had the inflatable system for low gravity planets, we'll have to tell Laura how well it worked when you see her.” He looked to the high mountain cliff side opposite the ocean. “Programming it to trigger if the parachutes failed was a bit of genius.” The lower ten stories featured banks of windows, decks, storefronts, various sports courtyards and other fixtures one would expect to see at a high end resort. Above and set behind that section things changed a great deal. There were closed off hangars, indications that the mountain stone disguised large transparesteel windows, transmitter arrays and scanning systems.
“I'm sure she'll really enjoy hearing about her husband nearly landing so hard he gets liquefied.” Jason commented as he started to take the whole scene in. “The computer must have tried to guide us to Damshir with the gyro system. According to what my visor is telling me it's right in front of us.” Closer to the edge of the water there was a three storey building two hundred meters distant and palm trees lined up in a row between it and the main resort. Outside was a large deck with a bar and seating for many patrons. There were towels, cooling baskets and other odd things strewn about. At first Jason couldn't see anyone.
As he swung one leg over the side of the stone's edge his eye caught something that didn't seem right, what it was exactly he didn't know, but there was every indication that something was off. Using the features built into the faceplate of his vacsuit he zoomed in on the shoreline, where there were dozens of reclining sunning chairs lined up. “Oh crap. Something's torn these people to pieces,” he whispered as he looked on the dozens of bathing suit clad corpses. “Looks like they never saw it coming.”
Oz finished climbing to the top of the ship and straddled the edge of the hull. He had his long coat, rifle and extra pack with him. “I'm seeing scorched earth over here, blast points in the sand that were turned to glass. What's your guess at what happened?”
Jason looked the situation over for another moment, examining the scene in the distance and then zooming in on the bar on the patio. “There are serving bots there cleaning the place up. Wait, one of them is staring right at me. One eight seven degrees.”
Oz checked the spot Jason was inspecting and saw it. “I can take him out from here. Your call, Intelligence man.”
“We should hit the dirt, find solid ground and head towards the nearest entrance to the mountain. There's a high security entrance further down the beach, it's built into the sheer edge. That's a hangar up there, but I haven't seen anything come or go yet.” He pointed to the foot of the mountain, where the grey and white sand ended and the black and brown stone began. The polished, sheer face there with large, closed security doors to the left of the resort facing. “I'd bet there are windows hidden in that rock face. We're probably seeing the tip of an iceberg. Let's go.”
“That's what I was thinking. Good plan.” Oz said as he swung his other leg over the edge and dropped down.
Jason did the same, though not quite as gracefully, and drew his sidearm. “I'm setting my pistol to high penetration, sound right?” he asked as he operated the small manual switches on the large handgun. The standard issue Freeground A7 rifle, with its double barrels and hardened stock, was slung over his back with his small bag of supplies.
“Yup, we don't know what we're up against so we might want to keep the dispersion narrow, save ammo.”
“My thoughts exactly, Major.”
A bolt of energy struck Oz in the side and he spun towards the beach. There was a security robot wheeling towards them on small treads, kicking up a cloud of white and grey sand as it went. It fired several more times, missing as Oz rolled out of the way and Jason dove for cover. Behind it were several more automations rising out of the sand between small dunes of blackened glass, scorched stone and broken outbuildings.
“I'm okay, it didn't get through the vacsuit,” Oz said as he activated his higher powered rifle and came up on one knee facing the bot. His fully automatic particle rifle rattled off bolts of searing energy, turning spots of sand into charred glass and punching holes in the trundling machine. After several hits it stopped and smouldered. “We have a lot more trouble coming,” he stated as he marked two more with his targeting sight.
“First time I've seen that rifle fired. Nice,” Jason commented as he picked up the emergency supply packs and strapped them to loops on the underside of his backpack.
“First time I've had a chance to fire it off the range. I like. Let's make a run for it, those serving bots have more balls than brains but I don't know about what's behind them.” Oz said as he nodded towards the resort, where three androids had started running towards them. One had sustained superficial damage to its middle, its split flesh revealed servos and a mass data storage unit in the place of ribs. The other two were fine for the most part, but had a silvered texture to make the fact that they were there to help patrons obvious.