Ansolon Season 02 / Episode 06
by Alan Tripp
— 2412 —
Thunder Strike cruised through the red hued clouds of the Hell’s Keep region of the Malstrom Expanse.
The Kitty Hawk-class intel science carrier replaced the Kerala-class battlecruiser of the same name, which had given its all fighting on the frontlines of the Iconian War.
Her name was the same as were her crew … Well, some of her crew as they’d gone from a smaller ship to a much, much larger one.
But the ship itself was definitely a completely different beast from the one Capt. Urshyra Sollace had commanded for the past several years.
Not that she minded the upgrade, mind you.
The Kerala version had first seen action over a hundred years prior, born in the early 2290s.
Whereas this ship had been born in the present … 2412 … Just six months prior.
Toss in the fact that in addition to the larger ship itself, it came with its own fighter wing of assorted fighters, bombers, recon, surveyors, etc.
They were out on a standard patrol, meaning she as captain actually had a bit of free time.
And for Urshyra, free time equaled boredom.
For once she was even caught up on all her paperwork and so far (knock on a bulkhead) no one on board had any sort of emergency or crisis or problem of any sort that they felt needed her attention.
So restless, the captain took to walking the decks of her command with no particular destination in mind.
And that mindless wandering seemed to have led her here … to the Arboretum.
Much of this place was familiar. … Not that she did not know her ship, so much as much of what was here had been literally transplanted from the original Thunder Strike.
When she first learned that her ship would be decommissioned and this one (still under construction at the time) receive the name, she made the request that the Arboretum be ported over from the old ship to the new.
So it was she found herself following the same old trail she had these past several years until she stood atop the cliff, overlooking a waterfall that poured into a small lake – a lake located in the heart and hull of a starship out among the very stars themselves.
THIS … was her favorite place to be aboard this ship, just as it had been on the previous.
It had gained even more meaning since her meeting with Samuel Windwalker – a medicine person of the Bear Tribe Medicine Society back in 2294 when they first met.
He’d given her a sacred medicine bundle for her to keep until the Spirits revealed to her at some future time just who was meant to serve as keeper of that bundle.
That encounter had altered the course of her life … at least from a spiritual sense.
She settled down into a lotus position atop the cliff, reached into her pocket and retrieved the small tobacco pouch she normally carried there.
Reaching in, she retrieved one pinch after another as she offered a pinch of sacred tobacco to each direction, Earth, Sky, Tree of Life and the One Great Being from whom she believed the People were descended from and part of.
At least according to her personal spiritual path.
Closing her eyes, she felt the Earth beneath her and the Sky above.
She felt the energy of the surrounding life like someone dipping their fingers into a pool of water.
It wasn’t long before her mind drifted on the winds of Spirit, allowing her spirit guides to lead her through the great web.
Then brief moments of panic.
Took a few minutes to realize the panic was not her own but that of another.
She could not say how she knew, but she knew someone out there needed their help and needed it with all haste.
But how does one figure out with certain clarity enough specifics to know where, how and who to help in the physical world?
That is *if* the sensations or feelings she was experiencing were true.
And like a thunderclap, her eyes snapped open.
And as they opened, they locked with the eyes of a great grizzly bear (a new holographic addition) whose gaze seemed to cut straight through to her soul.
‘So,’ it seemed to say. ‘What will you do now?’
Respectfully,
Capt. Ushyra Sollace
CO, U.S.S. Thunder Strike