Before The Storm (Ch. 02)

Chapter Two

Sometime in the middle of his rest, she'd had another go at him, and Sketch had vague memories of her bouncing up and down on top of his cock but the moment was quick and it passed even quicker, so when he woke up several hours later to an empty bed, he wasn't entirely certain if it had happened or if it had just been an incredibly realistic dream.

He was alone in the bed, but there was an indentation on the mattress next to him, so at least he knew for certain that he couldn't have been dreaming *all* of it.

"Where's she at, Helen?" he asked the ship's computer, as he started to climb out of the bunk.

"She's in the library, doing some research on what she's missed while she's been in cold sleep," the computer replied to him. "And some research on who and what you are."

He sighed, shaking his head. "That's probably going to attract attention we don't want, but I'll deal with it in time, I guess." He paused, tilting his head to one side, hearing a funky little bass line floating through the air from down the hall. "Is... is she listening to my music?"

"She asked me to put on something to listen to, one of your favorites, and this only seemed appropriate." The track was an old Earth jazz song called Pharaoh's Dance, and it surprised him a little, because he'd sort of felt like jazz was an acquired taste that nobody had any more. It was by his namesake, and the music had always spoken to him.

Sketch grabbed a pair of pants and a muscle t-shirt. She'd already seen the sleeve tattoos on his arms, so there was no point in hiding them now, and when he was on long runs in uninhabited void, he tended to keep the ship a bit warmer to conserve on energy. An old habit because of *The Praeteritus*' historical power problems.

He could feel the low throbbing in the back of his mind, his abilities still keeping their influence strong and trained on Serena, the only recipient within lightyears. He'd been doing his best to tamp them down for a long time but now there was someone else on the ship with him, and they had their hooks in her mind, and weren't going to let go. If anything, he felt a bit more clear headed than he had in years, as if the process of linking her emotions to his own had relaxed a long clenched mental muscle inside of his brain.

He was desperately wishing he'd taken more risk over the past few years to try and get his hands on a working Ashaka over the last several years, but wishing wasn't going to gain him a whole lot, so he decided he would just have to make the best of his situation. It was definitely going to have to become a top priority moving forward, though.

Sketch walked out of the bunk room and headed down a few doors to the room that he considered his library, although there weren't any actual physical books in it. Still, it was where the best media terminal was, and Sketch had built the space so that he could either do research or just watch terrible Starless Dominion propaganda romances.

Serena had stolen one of his shirts, wearing it more like a dressing gown than anything, and was sitting bundled up in it in his usual study chair, reading from a wall of text floating in front of her. "I thought it was love at first sight, but after I did a little bit of talking with Helen, and a bit more reading, and then watched the message I had placed in storage with me, I realized I don't just know you, I grew up hearing *stories* about you all the damn time. I was just hearing the stories the wrong way," she said, looking at him.

He frowned a little bit, leaning against the doorframe. "The odds of you hearing stories about me are... well, it's almost impossible," he told her. "I think you have me confused with someone else."

"No no, you're *you*. I know that now," she said with a little smile. "The problem was that when I was hearing the stories, he would always talk about the Stormwalker, or at least, that's how I heard it. I didn't realize he was actually talking about The Storm, Walker. That Storm was a title and Walker was your surname."

"Serena, I don't know how that's possible..." he sighed.

"Here, why don't you watch the message that was left for me, because it's just as much for you as it is for me," she said. "Helen, play it again from the top. He'll recognize him."

"If you say so, m'lady," the computer replied, which took Sketch a little by surprise. The ship had never seemed deferential to anyone before. "Restarting message."

A window opened up in the air, an image appearing before him and Sketch considered it for a long moment, something vaguely familiar about it and yet somehow totally alien. But once the figure began to speak, things fell into place. It was a man, well into his eighties or nineties, but still looking relatively sharp and fit. His skin was leathery, covered in endless wrinkles, with large bushy white eyebrows over light green eyes that were starting to cloud up a little bit.

"Serena, if you're seeing this message, then I've failed to make a rendezvous, and you've been redirected because I'm likely dead. The plan was to keep you juggled around in cold sleep while we tried to find a safe place to secure you. We were going to hold you up somewhere while we figured out what to do about your legacy, and how to protect you from the Starless Dominion, but I'm guessing that either my time ran out or I had a spot of bad luck," the man said. "That means we've fallen onto our backup plan. Hey Walker, sorry we can't be meeting in person again, but, y'know, likely dead and all. I know, I know, I remember telling you nobody's dead until you've seen the body with your own two eyes, but I think you're just gonna have to trust me on this one. If I was still living, I'd still be ferrying Serena's sleeping body around. The fact that I'm not means my time in royal guard duty is up, and yours is just beginning."

"Jesus Fucking Christ," Sketch muttered. "Darren, you got *so old*. Men like us, we're supposed to die young."

"You see, Serena, the man you're sitting next to is the Storm, Miles Walker, although reports are he's been going under the name Sketch Davis these days, probably in an effort to lay low, although I can tell you, Miles, old buddy, you probably don't need to worry about it. I mean, don't go telling anyone you're a Storm, certainly, but the name Miles Walker isn't likely to spring up any database red flags identifying you as a Storm. When the Purge happened sixty years ago, the Dominion did everything they could to erase even the *memories* of the Storms from public consciousness. The Order of The Calm is long since forgotten, and you, my friend, might be one of its only remaining practitioners. But who better to protect the last remaining member of the Royal House of O'Quincy than a ghost nobody knows is alive."

"Captain, I'm not certain this is a good idea," Helen said to him.

"Me neither, Helen," Sketch agreed. "But I'm not sure I've got a choice."

"I've been trying to piece together what could've happened to you since I got sent your picture by a smuggling buddy of mine named Roscoe who caught a glimpse of one of your tattoos and was trying to understand what they were from," Darren's digital ghost continued. "He thought you might have been Blue Axe Gang or something Triad related, maybe, but I knew those tattoos from back in my youth. The picture he sent me also included a shot of your ship, so here's what I'm guessing happened. The last dispatch anyone had from you back in the day was that you were being dispatched to go and help the Tropage and the Mizzols solve a labor dispute. After that, you just vanished off the face of the Earth, and when I asked, the Calm said you had been killed in an accident on assignment. I never had any cause to doubt that... until I saw that picture of you, looking as young as I'd remembered. That shouldn't even be possible, so I'm sure there's quite a story to tell there."

"Computer, hold playback," Serena said, turning to look at him. "So, you're, what, a hundred?"

Sketch paused doing the math in his head for a second. "A hundred and ten, give or take. I think. The change from the Old Earth Empire calendar to the Starless Dominion calendar makes its a little fuzzy, but there abouts."

"So what the hell happened? And how is this even *possible*? Cold sleep for anything more than ten years or so is supposed to basically be fatal." The young woman didn't seem angry, just more perplexed by the entire situation.

Sketch moved over to sit down in a different chair, perhaps the first time in decades anyone had sat in the chair. He'd always just used the one chair before. No need for the other chairs to get any use in. "Our mutual friend is right. I was dispatched by The Calm to settle a problem between the Tropage and the Mizzol."

"I don't even know who those people are."

"It's... it's not entirely important. Both races are nearly extinct at this point. I think there's a few hundred Tropage left across all the galaxies, and the Mizzol are maybe half that, if they're lucky. At that point in time, though-"

"What point in time is that?"

"About seventy three years ago, by my reckoning. At that point in time, the Tropage and the Mizzol populations were in the low millions. The two races would fight about anything at the slightest provocation, but getting this mining space they were working on together up and running was vitally important to both species, so they agreed to have a member of The Calm come in and mediate the discussions. That was me."

"And members of The Calm were called Storms?"

"Adepts were. Adepts were the middle range of The Calm," Sketch told her, feeling a sort of joy in being able to talk about all of this again for the first time in ages. "The senior members were Counselors, and they were called Furies. The youngest members were Initiates, and they were referred to as Sparks."

"So you started out as Spark Walker then became Storm Walker but never made it up to Fury Walker?"

He chuckled a little. "Yes, my surname was of great amusement to most people in the order as well, but our histories are too important to be left in the dust of our wake. The Order did not want me to forget where I'd come from, so the surname stayed."

"And what do The Calm do?"

"We're... well, we're empaths, of a sort. We use our abilities to clear the heads of anger and prejudice and all the other problems that impede a fair and logical discussion about a situation in conflict."

"That's clearly not *all* you can do," Serena told him, licking her lips. "Considering it's taking every bit of my self-control not to rush over there and fuck your brains out again right now, I'd say your abilities have more to them than that."

Sketch felt himself blushing a little. "Well, members of The Calm are supposed to have a tool with them at all times called an Ashaka, but mine was destroyed, and I haven't been able to procure a replacement, so my control over my abilities is in poor disrepair. The Calm have four paths they can put a person down - The Calm, which the Order is named after, which is a tranquil, serene state; The Rage, which is generally reserved for defensive maneuvers, as it puts the target in a state of blind anger; The Fear, which is also generally a defensive stance, designed to cause people to lose confidence and back down from conflicts with members of The Calm; and, what you're stuck feeling, The Warmth, which is meant to induce trust and affection within a person, often used when counseling couples to reignite the spark of lost love."

"And in our case, it's just got me completely in love with you, and wanting to fuck you until neither of us can stand up."

Sketch's hand rubbed the back of his head, a pained look on his face. "Without my Ashaka, anyone who comes in close contact with me is going to get put on one of those paths, and I don't have any actual control over which one, nor can I control the intensity or duration of those effects. It's part of the reason I wanted you to get back into your stasis pod, so you wouldn't be affected by my present impaired condition."

"It's a bit late for that," Serena said with a little giggle. "Not that I really mind. I did a bit of reading on The Calm when I woke up..."

"Yeah, Helen told me," Sketch responded. "That may come back and bite us in the ass, but hopefully not."

"One of the things I spent a little bit of time on was Calm philosophy, about how a person being influenced by The Calm might recognize that influence, but it wouldn't change whatever feelings they were having enhanced, so who's to say it wasn't real in the first place?"

"Mmm," Sketch said. "That's certainly more renegade Calm philosophy, and it doesn't surprise me that's what would show up first. The Starless Dominion decided that since they couldn't control The Calm, they would paint them as monsters who went around implanting thoughts in people's heads, and used that as justification for wiping them out, even though we can't do that, not even the Furies."

"Can't do what?"

"Implant thoughts," Sketch said. "We can influence emotions, certainly, but I can't make someone think something they don't want to think. I can't make anyone do something they don't want to do and I certainly can't introduce an idea into someone's brain. We affect emotions, not induce concepts. Sending a devout pacifist down the Path of Rage won't cause them to begin violently striking out at everything around them, but it will make them more argumentative and less rational."

"So what you're saying is that I wanted to fuck you before your mind started broadcasting Warmth at me," she said, a wry grin on her impish lips.

"Well, what I'm saying is that while I'm certain my misfiring brain gave yours a good push, you had to have at least some willingness to entertain the notion, otherwise you would've just been treating me like an old comrade you were seeing again for the first time, with kindness and joy, but certainly not sexual interest."

"It's okay," she said. "Once it all sort of clicked in my head that you were this guy my old protector would tell bar stories about at the drop of a hat, I knew I was in good hands. When is the feeling of constantly wanting to *fuck* go away, though?"

Sketch shrugged, throwing his hands up in the air. "I've spent the six years since I reemerged in the world trying to avoid people, specifically so I didn't cause more harm than good. It's been a bit lonely, although I've had Helen to help keep me sane."

"Awww," the ship's computer said to him. "Thanks."

"But there's no handbook for this, no set of rules or guidelines I can turn to. The Ashaka was an essential part of the Order of The Calm, and every member from Spark to Fury was expected to have their Ashaka with them at all times, and a spare nearby and at the ready, in case of disaster. I could keep you on this wavelength for as long as we're together, or you could suddenly shift onto a different path without my even trying to influence it. And if another person showed up? Shit, Serena, it's all uncharted undiscovered country."

"Well, I guess we'll discover it together then," she said, "because I'm certainly not getting off this ship any time soon."

"I don't think that's wise," he told her. "I think you'd be safer far, far away from me."

"And I don't think you get a say in the matter. Not yet anyway. So, carry on with your story, because there's clearly a lot more to tell. Seventy plus years ago, you went to go help two nearly extinct species with a problem. What the hell happened at this labor dispute?"

"Sabotage of some kind, by one side or the other, I doubt I'll ever know which," he sighed. "Not that it particularly matters at this point. They were attempting to mine out minerals from the inside of a comet, and had built an internal chamber at the center of it so they could hollow it out and be protected while they did. When I showed up, I began mediating the dispute, right on this very ship. It had a different name back then, but these days I call it *The Praeteritus*, which is Latin for 'the past.' During the middle of discussions, someone set off a bomb along the entrance to the comet's inner chamber, causing it to collapse, trapping all the ships and miners inside. But beyond that, it also set off a radiation blast. The Captain from the Tropage delegation immediately threw me into a cold sleep pod before I could do anything and I remember thinking how loud it was when I entered stasis compared to the deathly silence when I emerged from it a long, long time later."

"You really *should* be dead," Serena said. "Shouldn't you?"

"You don't know the half of it," he agreed. "Helen, do you want to tell the part of the story while I was out?"

"Are you sure, Captain?" the ship's voice asked cautiously.

"It'll be fine, Helen."

"Alright." Helen's voice was both sultry and soothing at the same time, apparently modeled off some old Earth actress he'd never heard of. "After Captain Walker was thrown into the pod, my original captain, Dezzik, tried to get the ship out from inside of the comet, but to no avail. The radiation from the explosion was lethal to both Tropage and Mizzol alike, and while Dezzik was able to make a little bit of headway in trying to free us from the comet's prison, it was not enough. He and the rest of the crew died within a matter of hours, much like everyone else within the comet's belly. Except, of course, for Sketch, as the cold sleep pods are reinforced against radiation."

"Gods above," Serena muttered.

"As the ship's AI, my job was to protect the crew first and myself second. I had failed in that first regard, but I decided I did not wish to die, so I did what I could to preserve my condition. I opened all the airlocks and flushed all of my former crew's corpses out to the void of space, then went into power conservation mode, because I had realized, I still had crew remaining. A crew of exactly one. Sketch. Tropage ships are powered by a combination of solar panels and fuel rods, so I knew that power was going to be a concern. The radiation was preventing communications, and the explosion had wobbled the comet's path enough that it would no longer be where anyone would think to look for it. We were alone, without any chance of rescue or support. My initial efforts to widen the hole and use it for escape proved utterly futile and it started to seem like I was risking my own integrity if I continued, so instead I chose to wait. It would prove... rather a long wait indeed."

"How l-?"

"Sixty-seven years," Sketch said. "I was in the ice for sixty-seven years."

"How is that even *possible*?"

"As it turns out, the cold sleep pods on this ship were designed for Tropage anatomy, and because they'd never been tested on humans before, Helen was just sort of winging it in terms of keeping my vitals manageable, not letting me go into freezer burn or pick up any thaw warp. And she did a remarkable job. When I eventually woke up, I didn't have any muscular or nervous system damage beyond what you'd expect for a very long cold sleep. I mean, it was weeks before I was completely up to full strength - I was blind for the first few days, and I couldn't walk for nearly a week - but in the end, I came out in the exact shape I went in, none the worse for wear."

"How did you come out, anyway? It sounds like the ship was trapped pretty good."

"Meteor strike hit the comet and bashed open more of the hole from the outside, made it large enough that Helen could get herself out of the comet and into open space. Then she very slowly made her way on minimal thruster power over towards the nearest star she could get close to, and bathed in starlight for about six months before she woke me up."