She sighed, slowly passing a single finger over the control plate and dropping the shutters, closing out the dark moonscape of Pindam, closing out the universe.She sighed, slowly passing a single finger over the control plate and dropping the shutters, closing out the dark moonscape of Pindam, closing out the universe. She felt it nearly impossible to accept all that she had learned that day, and she knew somehow that Ken had meant it that way, that it was supposed to be nearly impossible. And he wasn't here to ask, anymore. As the shutters closed so too she closed out Ken, who hadn't been able to accept the last dying sight of Pin and had followed Pin into that oblivion. And so she had buried him that morning. Burial. The word made her grimace, even though nobody was there to see it. It seemed so archaic, the concept of burial. And she would have preferred a burial at sea, but there were no more seas. "Dave?" she asked for the tenth time that day, no longer frustrated when he failed to answer her. She had gone down to Cybernetics One and checked the diagnostics; everything was running to specifications, but Dave just wasn't talking to her. Someone, though, was watching out for her-- life support was still running and doors were still opening. "Oenone?" The voice stunned her, but only for less than a single firing of what passed in her anatomy for neurons; she whirled, mentally commanding every weapon she could remember extant in the Command Center to bear on the source of that voice. "Freeze." The source of the voice was a young human woman, her apparent age indicative of eighteen years, not an uncommon age for someone to pause their aging at. Her features were distinctly Terran Asian, about 160 centimeters tall with small breasts, dark hair, and just a hint of softness in her belly. |