A Ring of Stars – The Temple of Pain (Interlude 2a)

The Colony.

Susan Starrider was leaving the protection of the Node Field – the Field which protected the Covenant Sphere and her home planet within it – for only the second time on this trip. Her destination was Kin, a planet located in a star system only a few light-years out-of-Sphere, where a new Adami colony was springing up. There Susan was to meet her future husband, a Starbard Level Five named Francis Christian. She had seen his image many times via the Nexus, but as her first face-to-face meeting with him approached, her excitement was all but overwhelming.

Both Susan and Francis were part of the Deep Space Service, but they belonged to different branches of it. Francis was by nature a diplomat; not surprisingly, he had joined the Circle of Starbards. By contrast, Susan’s own people, like most ethnic groups within the Red Tribe, were nomads with a warrior’s ethic, so she preferred the military arm of the Service, the Deep Space Fleet. She had never been commissioned for work out-of-Sphere and she felt safe within the Node Field. One would be quick to think of Susan, a famous air-cycle rider, being the first in line to venture out-of-Sphere, but even for a Doer experience was the best teacher of courage – and Susan’s trip with the other Four Stars out-of-Sphere had been her first.

Her black hair was longer now, for she had allowed it to grow for the first time in a long time. She wanted to look more feminine, to be attractive to Francis. That concern alone preoccupied her more than she liked, and she fumed at herself during the whole journey for behaving like a silly schoolgirl.

Chris Alan would’ve laughed quietly (and ironically) at Susan’s nervousness. He knew better than most that there was some reason for concern at this meeting. Susan was a Doer; her betrothed was an Inspirer. That made them an even odder couple than Chris Alan (a Protector) and his wife Autumn (another Inspirer). A Doer and an Inspirer normally found each other a complete enigma (as in, “how can such a person even be?”); their cognitive processes were mutually opaque. But Susan wasn’t trained as deeply in personality theory as Chris Alan or her betrothed, nor was she as naturally good at it. All Susan knew is that if opposites really did attract, then she and her betrothed were living proof of it.