Camp Sunrise: One More Night
Posted on 27 Mar 2023 @ 2:08pm by Chief Petty Officer Ibis Xeri & Major Porter Wallace
Edited on on 07 Jun 2023 @ 11:00pm
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Korix, Camp Sunrise
Timeline: MD09, concurrent with Pathfinder in Orbit, following Camp Sunrise: Council of War
2227 words - 4.5 OF Standard Post Measure
Wallace stared into the ocean, his shadow slowly elongating in front of him as the day star set at his back. The waves were softly lapping at the shore. For everyone else that was the only sound to be heard. He, however, heard another. Between the slap, slap, slap of water, there was another sound, a tight hum that hid in the silence. It didn’t come from nature or any artificial machine or construct; it came from somewhere within him. Nerves and excitement twisted into one string stretched taut over frets. In a few hours, this one note would become a rising symphony and, if his old skills had not left him, he would deftly conduct its rising structure.
The Korinn had left ten minutes before and he’d been busy carefully arranging the homemade explosives in a tattered green satchel. Wallace had woven this satchel himself out of dried seaweed so he could carry tools from the sheds to the worksites easier. Along with the grenades, it now held a long silver boning knife, and a plasma torch about as long as his forearm and the plasma reserve bottle. (The pickaxe, an orange resin handle two-feet long and a sharp carbon fiber head, was waiting for him at their shack.)
Resting on top of the pile was the data recorder and the PADD with all the letters. Other than his family, the two most precious things he was taking with him off this rock.
Spindly shadow legs approached on the sand, until Ibis settled beside him and pulled her knees against herself. She'd done her best to glean what she could from the flight manual and now the light was waning. What was left of the daylight at their backs was shrouded in clouds and smog. "What's on the padd?"
“Last letters home to loved ones just in case. These are the last letters from every Marine on the Sunrise.”
"Oh, like final logs. Mine is to my mother. Apologizing for joining Starfleet so, you know, she can rest easy knowing she was right." Ibis chortled.
“I can’t wait to meet her,” Wallace deadpanned.
"Who did you write yours to? Marcus?" She'd never met him, but Wallace had mentioned having a brother, Marcus.
“Umm, no. No. I. Uh,” Wallace shuffled nervously on the sand. “I wrote mine to you.”
That didn't add up. She chuckled like it was a joke. But when he didn’t laugh, Ibis looked askance at him in the fading light, to see if he was just messing with her. "No. Seriously?"
“Yeah, seriously. If you’d asked me then, I would have said it was because you were virtually my only friend. I don’t think you realize just how important you were to me back then. You had Rafe, for a while, and a bunch of friends. And then all those, you know, ‘guy friends.’ I had you. I just had you.”
“Oh.” She seemed stricken with the thought. A decade before the Sunrise, during their tours on the Nimitz, she’d always known he was lonely, but she hadn’t thought of herself as his only friend or that she mattered to him like that… or even considered that he cared at all who she had been with. She stretched out her skinny legs in the sand and leaned back on her arms, searching the waves. "I used to think I could read your mind, Porter. I was gifted at reading. I liked you. I just never thought you wanted anything else to do with me. You even told me you didn’t."
“I don’t think I knew. I don’t think I wanted to know.” He twisted toward her so he could look into her eyes. “When I lost Elizabeth and our daughter it was like someone hollowed me out, carved out all the love I had. I didn’t think I had anything else to give anyone after that. Then you came along, eighteen-year-old Crewman Ibis Xeri. At first, I thought I was staying around you because you were naive. Time passed and you grew up and I told myself I was sticking to you because you were an optimist in a harsh universe and someone needed to watch your back. Few more years went by, and I convinced myself we were just friends. Then you got sick here. And I realized I was around you because you filled up that hollow place. You didn’t need me. I needed you.”
“For Altha’s sake,” Ibis breathed, fixed on the gleam in his eyes and all the sincerity of his soul in there. It made her feel as if she were reading again and she was suspended, absorbing the entire confession through his eyes. “When did you become such a poet?”
“Getting beat by giant dolphin-people on occasion has made me introspective in my old age.” He pulled the PADD out of the sack and held it up to Ibis, a wry smile playfully flirting with his lips. “You want to read the letter I wrote?”
She snatched the padd, not knowing what to expect anymore. “More poetry?” She tried to imagine how confusing it would have been to get a confession of love from Wallace, dead and gone, before all of this had happened. But when she flicked the screen on, she laughed as she saw it, then read outloud, imitating his gruff, understated voice for effect, the way she remembered him years ago. “Ibis, Thanks for everything. You’ve been a great friend. Sincerely, Wallace.” Amused, she flipped the padd over. “What, is there more on the back?”
“Succinct and to the point. I’d be more poetical now… ‘Ibis, my moon, sun, and stars: thanks for everything. You’re hot. Sincerely, P. Wallace.’”
“Well, I have gotten some sun,” Ibis demurred, passing him back the padd. She’d seen her own reflection and knew the truth— she was a whisper of her former self. But she smiled anyway, preferring his version of the truth.
He chuckled and started pushing sand together into a mound between his legs. In their shared silence, Wallace heard the hum again. The shadows were getting longer. It would only be a short time now. Plans never survived being put into motion. Step one was the only certainty, everything after was a hope. That was the point of the letters and last logs. A person just never knew.
“Maybe I wouldn’t write that. Well, maybe that you’re super attractive,” Wallace joked, still playing with the nascent sandcastle. His face grew solemn, “I’d write that you are my everything. That I thank the fates or whatever deity or Q entity for allowing me the chance to tell you that I loved you. I’d say that if I die in a few hours, that I will die for something I love and not because I hated the universe and that’s a great gift that you have given me. The greatest.”
She added some broken shells to the sides of his castle, a jagged parapet. “I would have given it to you a long time ago.” She bumped her bony knee against his. “But I’m glad you’ve got me now.” As meaningful as it was to hear him express it, with the reality of the risks to get to the ship at the guard station, she didn’t like him talking about dying in a few hours time. She'd rather envision something more positive. “We’re going to go back and start fresh.”
“Fresh…” Wallace plunked his thumb down in the middle of the castle, creating a courtyard with high sand walls. “New teeth. Physical therapy so I don’t feel so old. I’m only 52, but the way I move I might as well be 102. A shower.”
“Goddesses, I’m going to live in the shower.”
“No more beaches. We’ll summer on Andoria in a snow drift and winter in the Antarctic on an ice floe.”
“Ice. I remember ice.”
“Food. Milk. No, ice cream. Every meal. Steaks and pork chops and french fries. One of those sweet Vulcan salads I always liked. No seafood. Definitely no sushi.”
“Uttaberries”
“Coffee.”
“Cheese. Whole charcuterie boards. Gonna stuff my cheeks like a squirrel.”
“Underwear.”
Ibis snorted. “I never thought I’d miss wearing bras.”
“I chafe easily, so the last eight years have been hell.” Wallace cut a moat around the castle with the side of his hand. “Olivia is going to hate us for the underwear alone. You barely can get her to put on those wraps as it is.”
“Olivia…” Ibis sighed, her heart heavy for the girl and heavier for herself in having to learn how to try to be a surrogate for Laura. “It’s going to be a lot of adjusting for her.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t have the heart to ask about any extended family Olivia might have. Jimoh, he knew, had an extensive family on Ceti II. They’d cross that bridge when they came to it. He flattened the castle with his hand and put on a smile. “Speaking of Olivia, I would have expected her to be out here stomping around and complaining at us by now about how we treat her like a child.”
“It has been too peaceful,” she agreed, trying not to let it concern her. Ibis stood and dusted the sand off her legs. An always pointless endeavor. Sand just was. She glanced back at the shacks where they sat a ways from the shore, but against the setting sun they were mostly in shadow. It was no sense shouting over the sound of the ocean. There was a drizzle starting in the air and Ibis looked up. Of course it would threaten to rain. “Getting close to time?”
The clouds had come from the direction of the sun and caught Wallace off guard. The day star had already been covered up. “Yeah.”
“Let's get the kids ready for the walk.”
They wandered up the soft sand, stepping into the hard-packed dirt alleys between the empty wrecks until they found their own. Wallace almost made a joke about getting everything packed, but the hair on his arms began to stand up. Ikemba wasn’t there. Neither was Olivia. Foolish! They should have come back immediately instead of hanging on the beach like bums.
With a groan, Wallace charged into their shack. A moment later he burst out. “Ikemba is sleeping, but Olivia isn’t in there. Check Laura’s!”
Ibis was already whipping open the clinic door and calling. “Olivia?” It was very dim and she let her eyes adjust, looking side to side and walking around the beds. She burst through the backdoor to check in the courtyard area where she had sent them to play. It was silent, empty, with the tall grasses between the shacks whispering in the breezes. “Olivia!” She called again, feeling the panic rise in her throat.
She looked inside each of the shacks behind the clinic. None of them had doors any longer, but she imagined Olivia curled up on one of the benches and hiding, sulking and waiting to be found, all to intentionally make Ibis worry as some kind of payback. When she wasn’t in any of the old clinic buildings she started looking around the other abandoned buildings, calling. Olivia never went into the other shacks, claiming they made her feel creepy with people not there. But Ibis was at a loss and went through them anyway.
Wallace appeared, leading Ikemba by the hand, the pickaxe in one hand, and his handmade satchel over his shoulder. “Find her?”
“No! She’s not in any of the clinic buildings. I went through north row—”
“Okay. Okay. Calm down. Let’s think,” he took a deep breath in and closed his eyes. The hum became a discordant melody that he struggled to take control of, but then he started slow the tempo. Time slowed, thought slowed and he played back his conversation with Olivia that day. “The Bay. I told N’to to get the pups out into the Bay where the slag is before it begins to get them clear. She wanted to go this morning.”
Ibis’ eyes went large with the realization. That was right. He had said that. And if Olivia had told him she was going to the Bay, then she’d have been determined to. Under the water it was a maze, and Olivia was always overestimating herself. Ibis barely finished the thought. She was already tearing off.
“Meet us at the rendezvous!” Wallace called after her, hoping she heard as she rounded the shacks and disappeared.
As she dashed, her head turned one direction, then the other, judging time and distance. The bay was out of the way from the guard station on the other side of the comms tower. Maybe if she ran as fast as she could. Maybe if Olivia would get out of the water right away. Maybe they could catch up to the plan in time. Maybe. They had to. There was only one way off this island. And that way didn’t include leaving without Olivia.
