Runalli-4

Runalli—4

  By

  Roland Byrd

  Copyright ©, 2013 Roland Byrd.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights.

  Please purchase only authorized editions

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, or incidents are either the work of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locals are purely coincidental.

  ISBN 10: 1940324092

  ISBN 13: 978-1-940324-09-8

  Contents

  Part 1

  Part 2

  Part 1

  The first time I saw her was on Runalli-4.

  My body felt like used plastic, stretched too far, worn thin. But the feeling was fading as I nursed my drink. I sat at my favorite table in the far corner of the Four Moons’ Café, my back to the wall. A naked bulb, hanging directly above, lit the stained table. Conversations saturated the atmosphere like the drone of swarming insects.

  Perhaps exhaustion dulled my senses. Maybe it was my drink. Either way I didn’t notice the noise fading. The swarming buzz slowed then died as conversations dropped off one by one.

  Startled by silence, I looked up and examined the room. That’s when I saw her. But saying, “I saw her” is like saying I saw sunlight for the first time in years. It doesn’t describe her impact.

  It can’t.

  I experienced her as a man, eyes opened for the first time after a life of blindness, experiences sight.

  She stood in the main entry radiating casual confidence. Her weight rested on her right leg, her left was bent slightly. The stance tilted her right hip, accentuating her hourglass figure. She surveyed the room. A smile, like a mischievous invitation, warmed her porcelain face.

  She stole the attention of everyone in the room, the males with lust, the females with envy.

  Her skin suit gleamed metallic. Hints of green teased its surface. Light and shadow highlighted her muscles, outlined her athletic figure when she moved. Only her head and hands were exposed. Short, auburn hair framed delicate features. Her eyes, as they found mine, gleamed like emeralds in firelight.

  Her presence hit me like a force of nature, beautiful, powerful, untamed.

  In those first few seconds I envisioned a lifetime together—we laughed, loved, and grew old. I knew it was irrational. I didn’t believe in love at first sight. That was the stuff of fairy tales, something you told younglings to give them hope.

  But I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t want to. No woman had ever affected me this way.

  Glass shattered. Yanked from my reverie, I tried to sip my drink. My hand was empty. I glanced down. Hundreds of sparkling shards glittered in a pool of liquid at my feet. I dismissed the mess with a shrug and sought her eyes again.

  I found them. She looked at me, tilted her head slightly, and flashed a blinding smile. Then she winked. I sensed she knew my fantasy.

  Beckoning me to follow, she spun with dancer’s grace and dashed from the room.

  No! my heart screamed, You Can’t Lose Her!

  I jumped to follow, toppled my table, and shot straight up. Cursing Runalli-4’s low gravity, I twisted my body and missed slamming my head into the ceiling by inches. Instead my right shoulder crunched. Pain flashed through the joint like a vibro-knife.

  Why’d I removed my armor?

  Right, it frightened the natives.

  No matter, I’d fix my shoulder later.

  I tucked in a tight ball, spun and managed to land on my feet. Then I darted toward the door, toppling more tables in my wake.

  Hoxbor, the Runallian café owner, shrieked. His short green body turned purple with rage. Cursing my destruction, he darted from behind the bar and rushed to intercept me.

  Hoxbor pounced near the exit, fangs bared.

  I evaded.

  His eye stalks waved violently above his head like five angry snakes as he circled, looking for another opening.

  It might have seemed comical if not for the Runallian’s venomous bite.

  I didn’t have time for this.

  I sidestepped another lunge and yanked five hexels out of my pocket. It was more than enough to cover the meal and damage and Hoxbor knew it. I waived the money in his face. He relaxed immediately. So I stuffed the hexels in his taloned fist and stepped back.

  His visage softened to the Runallian version of a smile. Then Hoxbor started pontificating about how much he appreciated my business…

  I wasn’t listening.

  All I could think of was catching the Goddess I’d seen before she slipped away forever.

  I bolted out the door into the crystal night air. I spun like a drunkard in the middle of the street, seeking.

  Where had she gone?

  Three of Runalli-4’s moons had crested the horizon, bathing the ground in silver-blue moonlight. In the north, the fourth moon promised to rise soon. I’d ample light to search by—to no avail.

  She’d vanished.

  Then I saw it, a glint of silver near the edge of the road. I walked closer. A perfect sphere shimmered in the moonlight. I knelt to inspect it and saw a thin sheet of paper rustling in the breeze beneath it.

  I stood there for a time, staring at the page, knowing it was meant for me, afraid to pick it up, afraid to leave it lie.

  In the end, her spell decided the battle. I moved the sphere aside and read the note.

  In elegant script, it said:

  Robert,

  You must seek me.

  You must find me.

  My hair stood on end. My body tingled. It seemed I stood in the center of an electrical storm. Her words drew truth into my soul like a lightning rod.

  That’s how my quest began.

  The rest of the night I scrutinized my surroundings. I searched for a sign, a trace of her passing. Beyond reason and hope, I ached for her presence. It filled me, consumed me. With every breath my longing grew more poignant. But there was no release.

  She was gone.

  In a small corner of my mind I wondered what she’d done to me, to overpower me with the need for her.

  But I discovered I didn’t care.

  The next day I wandered, a lost soul searching for salvation she alone offered.

  None had seen her.

  No one knew her name.

  Dejected, I returned to my room and collapsed on my bed. Then sleep took me like an eager lover.

  I woke hours later drenched in sweat, tangled in my sheets.

  I wanted to race from my room and search for her again. But duty called. I’d a contract to fulfill. A quick shower and change of clothes restored some sense of reason to my mind. I buckled on my armor and left for the jungle.

  That night I searched again. I only stopped when exhaustion forced me to my room.

  So the pattern began. Work. Search. Sleep… Work. Search. Sleep…

  I continued that way for a few months. Then I allowed myself to realize I wasn’t going to find her on Runalli-4. And I stopped searching. I resigned myself to the fact that, despite her note, despite the truth I felt in her words, I might never find her.

  She was, and perhaps forever would be, an enigma...

  ˜˜˜˜

  When my contract finished on Runalli-4, I moved on.

  At first I tried to lose myself, to run from her memory. When that didn’t help I dove into work, taking every contract I found.

  The Universe is a big place; most have no concept of its vastness. There’s always new life somewhere that needs cataloging.

  When a contract was on an established world I traveled by portal,
arriving instantaneously at my destination. When it wasn’t, I’d spend months—sometimes years—sleeping among the stars in the cold confines of any ship that would carry me.

  Always running, always searching, I existed. I’d stopped seeking her on Runalli-4, but I never quit looking. I watched on every world. I waited for a sign. I was a perpetual motion machine, moving ever forward, her memory my power source.

  ˜˜˜˜

  For the next twenty years she haunted me. Whatever she’d done to me on Runalli-4, she’d penetrated my heart, my mind, my soul. Like an addictive narcotic neurotoxin, her essence permeated the core of my being.

  Assignments came and went on more worlds than I care to remember.

  Without fail, I sensed her on each.

  For years I believed the encounters were tricks of my mind. A delicate touch, like the tip of a feather, followed by vanishing laughter on storm tossed winds of Daraxis. A siren’s voice haunting, beckoning me on the seas of Bulrena. On the snow-covered slopes of Luranik’s Mt. Kimbu the glimmering mercurius movement of a skin suit teased the corners of my vision, yet vanished if I looked.

  No matter where I went or what I did, I felt her eyes on me, watching, knowing...waiting.

  There were times over the years I thought I could forget her. During them, I thought I could have a meaningful relationship. But in the dark of night, when silence covered my life like a heavy blanket, my mind sought her.

  I’d dream myself back in the Four Moons Café. Sometimes we sat at my table and talked like old friends, sometimes like fresh lovers discovering each other. Often I stood in awe of her pureness and beauty. Each time I awoke, I realized she alone grasped my heart within her delicate, eternal embrace.

  I was lost.

  My heart, a prize no woman but her