Eric_Dream

Gara III
04:13 SET
2191

Earth Defense Force soldier Eric Meelan tossed and turned in his sleep. His dream kept returning to him, night after night. It had been haunting him since his days at the Academy: an abandoned installation in the middle of seemingly nowhere, filled with armed warships, waiting to be claimed. Where this place was or whose ships they were, Meelan knew not, but he knew that out there somewhere in the endless void of space, such a place existed.

The first time he’d told his friends at the Academy, Jim Brungess and Darryl Mansel, they’d laughed it off, claiming it to be Meelan’s “overactive imagination.” Since then, he’d kept his thoughts and ideas about this recurring dream to himself. One night though, almost three years ago, he had it again, this time, being the most realistic it had ever been. He knew the place existed, and kept telling himself that it did, even when others laughed at him.

This time, though, the dream went more in depth than it ever had. Usually it ended when he landed in the installation’s hangar bay, but this time it was subtly different. This time he had people with him, though he couldn’t tell who. Three of them, the shadows covering their faces and obscuring them from Meelan’s sight. They all had on blue and white, with the exception of one, who it seemed had plain clothes on.

Now, they walked through a long dusty hallway. The walls were beige and looked as if they hadn’t been touched in decades. The dusty floor showed the same signs; as if it hadn’t been disturbed in eons. For some reason, Meelan found that he had a carbine in his hand, though he couldn’t imagine why. He only hoped that this dream would finally clue him in as to exactly where the secret ships were hidden. He clung onto that hope as he and his ambiguous companions moved along.

His psychologist had given him a suggestion as to what these missing starships were. The legend of the missing Maiden class ships was no secret among the military community, both UNSF and EDF. Supposedly, they had belonged to a far superior race years ago, but chose peace over war and collected the instruments of death in one stationary place and kept its location a secret, lest they fall into the wrong hands. The story had been told for decades, even before the Imperials left the Earth. While most usually passed it for a fairy tale, a story to get kids to go to sleep, Meelan had embraced this idea that out there somewhere this fleet existed. It certainly would do wonders for the UNSF to have such a fleet, he thought in his sleep as he led the small entourage to find the ships.

The dusty hallway ended in a three pronged fork; one leading left, one to the right, and one in the center. Without a word or a glance at the other three, Meelan headed for the far left entrance, not sure of where it would take him, but confident nonetheless. In other dreams, he’d tried the right corridor and the middle one, but they led to nothing but a morning of wondering and exercises and a return to his usual rhetoric life. The left road would lead him to something less predictable. At least, that was his hope. If not, then he wasn’t sure where to go from there.

They continued down the hallway, Meelan in front, the other three shadow-faces creeping cautiously behind. Why they were being so careful, he didn’t know; as far as he could tell, there was no one else in the abandoned installation except him and his mimes. Nevertheless, they continued their steady creep down the hallway. Meelan noticed one of the blue and white tagalongs had a sword drawn-- a rapier to be exact. Out of the corner of his eye, Meelan noticed the fine print that spiraled down the rapier. Only one man that he knew of had such fine detail work on his rapier, other than his own. That man was Jim Brungess, one of his best friends from the Academy days, also known as EAGLE. Brungess was just as good as Meelan was with a rapier, maybe even better, and it had to be a serious occasion for Brungess to have unsheathed his beloved sword.

If one of those bodies was Jim Brungess, another had to be Darryl Mansel, another Academy friend. Brungess, Mansel, and Meelan had all been villa mates, along with another named Chris Conrad. About two years back, Mansel had called upon Brungess and Meelan (Conrad was not available) to help him track down his then soon-to-be fiancée In a harrowing adventure, they had found her, and the persons behind it. The terrorists, Marauder and Anarcha, had managed to get away as was always the case, but not without a sting. Mansel had release a fury so unchecked that it had brought the whole building down. Meelan hoped never to see that side of his friend again. Mansel did not have his own sword unsheathed, which was understandable; while talented he was with a rapier, he did not possess the skill that neither Meelan nor Brungess had. He preferred to stick to his small handguns. Looking back, he could see that one of the shadows was indeed carrying a small carbine.

As to who the last wraith was, Meelan was totally unaware. Conrad, maybe? He hadn’t seen Chris Conrad in almost three years, it would be a great pleasure for Meelan to be visited by the oldest of the group, even if only in a dream. The third person’s identity did not matter as much as the destination. Their chosen route had come to an end, with an open square at the end, as if a door or a window belonged there. Meelan and Brungess moved closer to take a peek; the Mansel character stayed back. Eric Meelan grinned in his sleep as he thought of Mansel and his fear of heights.
Reaching the maw, Brungess went first to take a look out and inspect. He gave Meelan a head gesture, motioning that it was alright to have a look. Meelan crept up closer to see over...

“Alright, Meelan, rise and shine!” Commander Vayrag, his Venutian company commander barked, giving the EDF soldier a rough shove. “Up! This is your last day of patrol duty, and I’m going to see to it that you carry it out from beginning to ending.”

True, it was Meelan’s last day of horribly boring patrol duty at Gara III, seemingly the place for constant conflict. If chaos ever had a nucleus, Gara III was it.

More than a little annoyed, Meelan grumpily sat up and rubbed at his eyes, trying to clear them. In his bunker, most of the men were getting up as he was or settling into their beds, ending their patrol routes for the evening/night shift. It was time for the morning/afternoon boys and girls to step in. Though it was monotonous and rhetoric, it gave Meelan time to puzzle over the new developments in his dream. The left corridor. An empty square at the end of the corridor. Something was beyond that square, and Meelan wanted to know what it was.