Event Horizon
by Merethe Walther
Twin orange suns blaze against the purple ocean as Sabine runs along the beach, heels kicking up clouds of sand. She’s abandoned her armor and wears nothing but a thermal suit.
“Lieutenant Mason.” Her eyes glitter; she beckons me with the crook of her finger. “Are you coming?”
In my eagerness, I stumble after her and she laughs. It’s like music in my ears. I begin undressing, piling my black-and-red armor beside her blue-and-yellow until I’m in my thermal suit as well. I lay my plasma rifle beside hers.
The air is frigid, crisp with the tang of salt. She charges ahead over the dunes, and I know she’ll be waiting for me by the lighthouse, dripping wet with ocean spray, grinning like a madman even as it soaks her to the bone.
I start jogging; the sound of distant explosions pulls my attention away — a reminder of what I’m running from. Of what’s happening out there. I turn to stare at the sky. Black clouds are gathering; a storm is coming. The sound of screaming filters in. I curse under my breath and pick up the pace.
Sabine waits, just outside the lighthouse, hands tucked behind her back as the waves crashing against either side of the cliff swell over the rocks and engulf her. She kicks open the half-rotten door and ducks inside.
The lighthouse hasn’t worked for who knows how many years now. The planet’s rising tide eradicated its use, leaving it listing to one side, suns-bleached and sagging like an old man.
As I walk in shaking off water, Sabine greets me from across the far side of the room, near an old stove covered in moss and rust. She kneels on the floor beside a cooking station she’s set up. She’s shoveling the steaming contents onto plates. The lighthouse creaks and groans as I stride over.
We eat in silence, and although she smiles whenever I look at her, there’s worry at the corners of her eyes. It’s almost like she knows. Why I’m here. What’s happening.
“Do you remember when we first found this place?” She gazes at a salt-flecked window.
“Yes” — I wipe an errant grain of rice from her chin — “I made a crash landing while you were on patrol.”
She wrinkles her nose, a smirk fighting its way through. “When I got here, you were clomping around so loud I wasn’t sure if you were human or Daxian.”
I nod, but a voice at my ear breaks my concentration.
“ — an ambush… overwhelmed — ”
I tug the earpiece; yank it from my suit and toss it to the bottom of the barnacle-covered steps.
“I wish we could just stay,” Sabine says. “Don’t you?”
I peer around. The smell of the ocean and the faint whiff of sunlight from her skin overwhelms me. I know she waited for me all day, just as all the times before. But I’d been delayed. More assignments; more orders to follow. There was always something.
“Yes,” I whisper. “More than you know.”
“What if we don’t go back?” Sabine lays against the rotten floorboards. “Just say, ‘To hell with the war!’ Two derelict soldiers won’t impact an intergalactic struggle.”
I stare at her; want to commit every moment to memory. Every detail. The way she smiles, the sound of her voice, but my vision fades; the stream is interrupted and everything goes fuzzy and dim.
Not yet, I think, willing the imagery to refocus; the memory to establish once more. Please not yet.
The image spasms and buffers ahead. Sabine’s sitting up now, pain in her eyes, tears down her cheeks. “Is your ‘honor’ really that important to you?”
“It was before,” I want to say. I can’t remember what I told her. Maybe I said nothing at all. Maybe that was what enraged her.
Sabine’s shoulders slump. “I know we promised not to talk about it. I don’t want to fight. If you really want to go back… Knowing we’ll be…” She touches the insignia sewn onto her lapel.
I touch the insignia on my suit, too. I don’t need to see the designs to know her crest looks nothing like my own. If the first time Sabine saw me, she fired a plasma rifle through my eye, she would’ve been hailed a hero by her government. I would have been just another casualty. The war would have gone on without me.
But she didn’t. She’d smiled. And now…
“Let’s sleep at the top of the lighthouse tonight! Under the stars,” says Sabine.
It was cold that night. I knew we wouldn’t last thirty minutes. I had to leave by 0400 — I wanted sleep before my patrol.
There was always something, wasn’t there?
“Maybe next time,” I tell her.
Her smile fades.
I reach out to run my hand along her cheek, but I pass through Sabine; the edges of the projection in my cabin glitch the touch sensors of my glove. I curse. My ship vibrates beneath me, systems powering down, alarms ringing. The simulation shuts off and I’m back in the cockpit, the screams of my squadron dying in the explosions echoing through the radio.
Below, a planet’s surface yawns; warning bells screech alerts as I go down, the space around me a mass of mangled black-and-red and blue-and-yellow ships interspersed with Daxian green. My ship finally succumbs to the damage and shuts off.
I try to envision Sabine’s face instead of the explosion that rocked her ship a short while ago; instead of the chunks of burning metal that shredded my engine after.
The ground rises to meet me as if reaching for an embrace. I close my eyes. Think instead of holding her one last time at the top of that lighthouse — cold be damned — of the fragrance of sun and ocean salt as I kiss her.
“I’m coming, Sabine,” I whisper, girding myself for impact. “We’ll sleep under the stars together. I promise.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Merethe Walther is a professional editor, author, and short story writer whose work spans many genres and has won awards with Readers’ Favorite and Writers of the Future. When not writing — or explaining how to pronounce her name correctly — you can find her playing video games and board games, reading, and spending time with her husband and cat in Atlanta, GA.
