Star Child by Paul Alan Page B

suit to literally disappear under infrared, radar waves, and any other type of electronic sensor.
    Resting in a near exhausted state, Jason began weeping over the death of Lexis. When he closed his eyes, images of her beautiful face momentarily entered his mind before her head exploded from the plasma rifle Learner had pulled the trigger on. The whole scene haunted him. Psychological, his status was nearing the breaking point in the darkness. Sleep would help remedy his psychosis.
    Jason dozed off and as long as the protective suit’s arms remained locked into the ladder’s rails, he had no real fear of falling. Weaved over the exoskeleton’s integrated Nano-carbon chassis was a super strengthened fibrous Muscle System; it would easy hold his weight over the pitch-black drop.
    Oceans of stars speckled at the emptiness around the spiraling galaxy, and drifting below the visual enormity Jason passionately kissed Lexis in a trance-like state. The immense stellar beauty glimmered down on them in an incalculable blaze of cosmological splendor, all paled in comparison to her warm touch. Her sweet embrace calmed his inner demons as the astral light show surrounding them became oblivious.
    They tenderly aroused one other’s passions; obsessively challenging the deep love they shared. Desires intensified with every tender stroke.
     
    Her legs encouragingly squeezed around his muscular frame when she said, “You can find me!”
     
    She then passionately moaned in succession, frantically pivoting her waist.
     
    Jason was vehemently transfixed on her desire when she said again, “You can find me, Jason!”
    Their naked physiques began encouraging each other, and Jason fervently looked into Lexis’s eyes, and he so much wanted to tell her that he loved her when she blurted again, “Find me, Jason!”
     
                  Snapping out of his dream in a state of despair, he wondered about his dream’s message. “Find me, Jason. What’s my subconscious trying to tell me?” Nothing made any sense. He was lost, and felt that all his pain would disappear if he could once again, look into her eyes. “I could easily vanish in the iris of her love.”
    Jason gathered his composure, and decided to resume his downward descent. His muscles tensed when he detached his left arm from around the ladder rung while gripping the steel with his right. He then reached down searching with his foot for the next ladder rung but when he tried transitioning his right hand down, his Power Suit would not let go of its hold. Something was wrong with the Ersatz suit. Jason began panicking in a sweaty rush of knee jerking movements; he pushed and pulled with all his might but ominously there was nothing he could do that would unfreeze his right arm from the ladder. Perilously, he now hung more than ten miles over what seemed like a conniving bottomless pit. He surmised he must have damaged the suit’s mechanics on his jump.
     
    “OK, what do I do now? Think.” Jason talked to himself trying to resolve the hairy situation he found himself hanging from. “What are my options? A: sit in this fucking suit and die, or B: I can disengage from the belly of the suit and carry on my objective.”
     
    He was now feeling the pressure of a potential failed covert mission because he needed the suit for stealthy movement. To leave the Ersatz Suit behind would be disadvantageous. Jason took a deep breath, and then gave the voice command to disengage.
    “PISH!” The seal of his helmet broke open. Jason felt a cool breeze rush across his face when the helmet’s front section folded upward. Subsequently two bulky chest segments unlocked, splaying open after unlatching from the abdominal section. Jason then pulled his arms from the suit’s upper torso where he sat partially exposed to the airshaft’s hollering wind. The deep roar hummed at a calamitous near deafening pitch causing him to waver momentarily before slumping forward. Jason now reached