Home At Last

Delithita

Stepping down to the airlock contained almost as much excitement for me, as the move to Fantasma did. The idea of a bigger hydroponics area that could go untainted for as long as I needed. Now I was returning home to Mercury. The first time in a couple hundred years. I'd left shortly after Maria's Paradigm Declaration. I couldn't wait to see my garden in Fantasma. I couldn't help but try to hurry the two tribals and Icey into their spacesuits. Icey just laughed and the other two looked rather nervous about the suits. Frowning I was getting rather flustered. They seemed to balk at the idea.

"If you two don't hurry up I will kick you out the airlock as you are! Now hurry up! I want to see my gardens and I don't want you two lost on Mercury!!" Icey merely guffawed laughter securing his helmet Del did the same. Having not quite figured out how to breath vacuum.....

Stepping out of the airlock to see Mercury's first true city, Fantasma, sprawled in fierce glory took my breath away. I don't recall ever seeing something so, so, defiant against the Cybrid scourge we had fought so long ago. The lights alone made me remember how we hid in the scarp to keep the 'brids at bay.

Giggling I almost dragged Icey along.

"Come on! I have to see my garden! And we have to go to the Deep End and celebrate our return! Surely they have constructed something resembling proper 'stills." I all but carried Icey all the way to the main city entrance. I glanced back at the other two and giggled. They were obviously not used to the paper-thin space suits. They were used to the weighty combat armor that I had made them leave behind. The residents would absolutely freak.

Stepping into the city proper was an experience. There was air, they must have constructed a force bubble of some sort. Shrugging I oriented myself easily. The old Fantasma colony, the part that had always been IN the scarp was to my left. Giggling I removed my helmet and made it vanish (a little subspace pocket trick Maria had shown me a while back) and unzipped the top of my space suit. I was not wearing my tribal armor either. What I was wearing was a loose muscle shirt that left my navel exposed. I grinned at Icey's reaction to my attire and tied the arms of the suit around my waist. Icey coughed. Glancing up he pointed to my left shoulder, the tattoo that all Children of Phoenix clanners wore. Phoenix's HERC logo from the Starsiege. I just shrugged. Not many people would remember what it was anymore. I glanced at the other two and saw that they had donned their space suits in similar fashion, but they kept their helmets under their arms. Frowning I made a gesture and they both jumped when their helmets dematerialized. Icey however was content to remove his helmet. I stuck my tongue out at him and made a mad dash for the scarp, and my garden.

------

Opening the doors to my garden was one of the most horrible things in my lengthy life to happen to me. I gazed in and saw that none of the huge stands of trees were there. It had become an open cavern with housing on the sides and a judicial looking structure in the middle. My jaw dropped open, my heart fell. My beautiful garden, 2twenty-plus years of loving labor. Gone. Without even a trace. I had spent most of my free time here, enjoying the plants. They were all that kept me at peace with myself. And when I was away, even for as long as my last stint, I could tell. Sleep got shorter, nightmares more violent, temper shorter. I heard Icey's sharp intake of breath and a surprised word. I was dumbstruck. Who could do this to my garden? After I left explicit instructions to the entire colony that it had better remain untouched until my return. I had even assigned regular patrols of guards to make sure no unauthorized people remained longer than to pass. So that no one could violate the sanctity of my garden. It was the only reminder I had of my parents, who passed away so long ago, ten years before the Starsiege began. My mind flew from there. My rose! If that was not there, someone was going to die. Invoking my powers (something I had promised not to do while on Mercury) I sped away towards the pedestal that had held my rose even during the worst of the core-quakes. I stopped dead in my light-speed tracks. The pedestal was nothing more than a stump of stone. Broken about three inches from the base. My rose was gone. My heart died. The only thing that had kept me going during the Starsiege, my sole purpose for existing. Gone. I felt my soul curl up into a ball and twitch once and fade. I fell to my knees. Grief overtaking me.

"Excuse me ma'am, but you can't be here. If you don't move, I'll have to arrest you." My tear-filled eyes came upon a man who could only be a lawman. Rose sigil on his left breast with the dark shadow in the background. I moved without thinking. I grabbed him by his shirt collar and lifted him bodily from the ground and pinned him to the wall. He struggled and I applied a bit of force, enough to begin fracturing the rock face behind him. He heard a sharp crack from behind, and felt the jag in his back, and quit flailing.

"Tell me kind sir. What by ghost happened to my garden, and what happened to my rose that I left in the care of you bumbling twits? Tell me or you will die!" I felt the presence of more people.

"Drop him or have your brain decorate that wall! Now!" Turning my head slowly to the right I noticed a few more lawmen had arrived in mere seconds. At least my patrols were still in effect. I threw my captive at the speaker and spin kicked another in the chest. The first two fell in a heap, even in Mercury's gravity they still fell rather efficiently. The second fell back sputtering up blood, from a possibly mortal injury. A gunshot flew past my ear and landed into the rock. I spun and grabbed the offending weapon and snapped it without effort.

"Sure you morons, breach the wall. Get sucked into vacuum, you idiots are not even wearing your space suits!" A burst of power and the guard ran into the last remaining guard. I stood there seething fury and anger.

The first guard clutched at his sigil and his eyes opened wide and his jaw dropped. His eyes taking in my every detail. My hair, my speech, my anger, and my references. The other four looked at him as if he had seen a ghost. Problem is, he had.

"D, D, Delithita?!" My name, not that shortened version that I tolerated from Icey, but my real name. I felt the demon in me snort in derision and subside.

"What?" My fury was still within reach; I did not want to let these brainless twits off the hook so easily.

The others did a double take, the one I had chest shot fell to the ground in a heap, just as I saw Icey come around the corner.

"What hap..."

"I did, he needs to go to med-lab, now." Pointing to my fourth victim. "You, show him the way; you idiots have probably moved it." He nodded with enthusiasm and ran at a good clip with Icey and the two tribals in tow.

The remaining three looked as if they were watching their lives flash before their eyes.

"Speak, or I end you here and now!" The demon in me had decided that perhaps the party was not quite over yet.

"There, there was an, an explosion about seventy years ago, that we believe was caused by a rebel sect that we stamped out. They planted the explosives on the biggest tree. A nanoexplosive was used, it evaporated all organics in the area, people, plants, animals. Everything." I pointed to what remained of my rose's pedestal. "That happened, because your pedestal was made of a stalagmite, there was enough vines that had rooted into it that it toppled. As for the whereabouts of the rose itself. we do not know."

"Take me to Ops."

"Ops ma'am?" I evened my dark glare at him and he squeaked.

"Yes, Ops."

"Bu, bu, but y,y,you do not have access"

"We will see about that, now move!"

/ < / << /