The Mad Ranger
Since they've met on the outside, Sergei and Dmitri's mention of a obviously enemy entity known as the 'Government' had sparked certain curiosity on the Masked Man's head. Part of his combat abilities could be attributed to a 'government' as well, in fact, the Ranger had been part of a bigger and more organized civilization. Still, he had to deal with Sergei in the first place, CL couldn't risk having his true intents compromised by whatever his companion motives... Yet the mention of the government...
"Chill. You won't see me for long." - Chuckling under his breath, the Ranger lifted himself up and steadily walked towards the metal door that probably led to the bunker's insides. "But I would appreciate some doubts cleared, if you don't mind..."
Taking a hold of his damaged cybernetic limb, CL turned his gaze back at Sergei, pausing for a brief moment before speaking again. "... What is your dog friend? And what is this government you both were talking about?" - The sarcastic tone from the Ranger's voice had abruptly disappeared as the thought of canine-like beings and a certain government invoked the fears, anguishes and regrets from the dark depths of his tainted soul. It was a part of his past that he wanted to forget, yet, subconsciously, the more CL ran from it, the more it would go after him. He was spending billions to find Planet Earth, after all."
The Kingsbane
(WIP)
Since they've met on the outside, Sergei and Dmitri's mention of a obviously enemy entity known as the 'Government' had sparked certain curiosity on the Masked Man's head. Part of his combat abilities could be attributed to a 'government' as well, in fact, the Ranger had been part of a bigger and more organized civilization. Still, he had to deal with Sergei in the first place, CL couldn't risk having his true intents compromised by whatever his companion motives... Yet the mention of the government...
"Chill. You won't see me for long." - Chuckling under his breath, the Ranger lifted himself up and steadily walked towards the metal door that probably led to the bunker's insides. "But I would appreciate some doubts cleared, if you don't mind..."
Taking a hold of his damaged cybernetic limb, CL turned his gaze back at Sergei, pausing for a brief moment before speaking again. "... What is your dog friend? And what is this government you both were talking about?" - The sarcastic tone from the Ranger's voice had abruptly disappeared as the thought of canine-like beings and a certain government invoked the fears, anguishes and regrets from the dark depths of his tainted soul. It was a part of his past that he wanted to forget, yet, subconsciously, the more CL ran from it, the more it would go after him. He was spending billions to find Planet Earth, after all."
The Kingsbane
(WIP)
Harlan sits with his backpack pressed up against the cold, steel wall of the spacecraft, staring out of one of the windows, quite literally, into space. He pulls himself up with a deep sigh and leans closer to the window, staring back at the planet, which was rapidly shrinking as their vessel thrust itself deeper and deeper into space. The destruction of the facility made no sense, it was stable and its reactors hadn't been active for years. It just wasn't logical. He sighs again and his eyes flick around to the rest of his team. He keeps an eye on Relkatov for a bit longer. He was suspicious of the poor kid, he'd seen what shellshock does to people, and it isn't pretty. Something inside his head was telling him to keep the private away from firearms in case of the worst, but he shook off the thought. He looked docile enough, at the moment.
After sitting quietly for a while, Harlan pipes up and breaks the piercing silence. "Eden... It, the ship's computer I think, said something about Eden." "Any of you know what that means?" he inquires before leaning forward and placing his elbows on his knees intently.
After sitting quietly for a while, Harlan pipes up and breaks the piercing silence. "Eden... It, the ship's computer I think, said something about Eden." "Any of you know what that means?" he inquires before leaning forward and placing his elbows on his knees intently.
Christofer wouldn't be waking up for a while. Exhaustion had gotten the better of him. It was rather depressing that the last few days had just been running around, lost, confused and starving. He had had just the few meals that were given to him and one break so that he could rest. That was all. The other moments were spent walking around some strange spaceship he didn't even realize had been a spaceship in the first place, and the last ones were of him running around, somewhat aimlessly, always trying to escape something. Something...
The boy slowly came back to his sences. At first he couldn't feel or even remember Kallenger or the Galactic Federation or even really remember the fact that space travelling was a thing. He would soon be reminded of all of those when he'd start to feel again and turned his head slightly to look a Kallenger. He'd not speak a word though, not having any words to share.
After looking at the woman for a while to regain memories of him, the German slowly got on the support of his arms. Leaning onto his elbows, he'd take a look around the room they were in - as well as he could see with his darker toned turquoice eyes at least. It was dim.
Asking where they were would have been pointless, he wouldn't have understood it anyway. To be honest, the space craft they were in currently was a big enough mystery to him.
"... Are you ok?" He asked from Royanna, turning his head towards her. "What are we going to do..?" His voice would be calm as he was still a bit dizzy and still tried to recover from what had happened. He did suspect that not everything was as well as they could be...
The boy slowly came back to his sences. At first he couldn't feel or even remember Kallenger or the Galactic Federation or even really remember the fact that space travelling was a thing. He would soon be reminded of all of those when he'd start to feel again and turned his head slightly to look a Kallenger. He'd not speak a word though, not having any words to share.
After looking at the woman for a while to regain memories of him, the German slowly got on the support of his arms. Leaning onto his elbows, he'd take a look around the room they were in - as well as he could see with his darker toned turquoice eyes at least. It was dim.
Asking where they were would have been pointless, he wouldn't have understood it anyway. To be honest, the space craft they were in currently was a big enough mystery to him.
"... Are you ok?" He asked from Royanna, turning his head towards her. "What are we going to do..?" His voice would be calm as he was still a bit dizzy and still tried to recover from what had happened. He did suspect that not everything was as well as they could be...
She had opened her mouth to speak, though yet again found herself silenced by Ketin's actions. Her gun was given back to her, the safety locked backed into place with the skill of a trained expert, as well as his guilt ridden apology. He had barely even explained himself before he suddenly began to go through his pockets and general other areas of his clothing. Though tilting her head had caused her a small pain, Nirix could not resist the gesture as she watched his actions.
Medicine was not what she had been expecting, but the thought still touched her heart nonetheless. It's appearance was lost to the assassin, however. The tiny dark flask that was presented in front to her looked extremely harmless yet the darkness that hid it's contents left her slightly suspicious. Just where exactly had Ketin acquired such a thing?
"If it will help," Nirix muttered, almost timid to take it. Trusting that the medicine wouldn't kill her, the Eoclu opened the flask and downed the contents. However, almost immediately Nirix could feel her stomach churn at the foul taste from the drugs. Trying no to heave her stomach onto the floor, She forced the bile back down her throat before giving Ketin a weak smile.
The pain in her head had stopped, quite literally as soon she had ingested the medicine, however now she wanted nothing more than to vomit. A powerful drug but at a very terrible cost.
"T-thank you, Da'len. I should be fine now," She said quickly, hoping that he wouldn't offer her anymore of his peculiar medication. Next time, she would just have to suffer.
"Regardless, please be more careful with your actions. I can't help you if you I end up getting killed or if you get yourself killed,"
Medicine was not what she had been expecting, but the thought still touched her heart nonetheless. It's appearance was lost to the assassin, however. The tiny dark flask that was presented in front to her looked extremely harmless yet the darkness that hid it's contents left her slightly suspicious. Just where exactly had Ketin acquired such a thing?
"If it will help," Nirix muttered, almost timid to take it. Trusting that the medicine wouldn't kill her, the Eoclu opened the flask and downed the contents. However, almost immediately Nirix could feel her stomach churn at the foul taste from the drugs. Trying no to heave her stomach onto the floor, She forced the bile back down her throat before giving Ketin a weak smile.
The pain in her head had stopped, quite literally as soon she had ingested the medicine, however now she wanted nothing more than to vomit. A powerful drug but at a very terrible cost.
"T-thank you, Da'len. I should be fine now," She said quickly, hoping that he wouldn't offer her anymore of his peculiar medication. Next time, she would just have to suffer.
"Regardless, please be more careful with your actions. I can't help you if you I end up getting killed or if you get yourself killed,"
(Possible errors in formating of this post, editing any faults.)
When the chaotic events started to cool down, at least for the time being, the crew of the Stella Viventium finally got the opportunity to see what the Kingsbane actually looked like. Uncountable times smaller than the colony itself, Wan Nabes ship resembled more of a World War 2 ship rather than an actual interstellar war cruiser or anything else.
Approximately ranging from over a kilometer in height and being rather wide, almost 500 meters in width, the Kingsbane, unsurprisingly, werefit the latest hardware of long range weaponry. It's symmetrical features beared a pair of 100 milimiters dual rotary turrets on it's forecastle with a tower mounted 250mm triple gun with rotary function as well. In fact, most of it's weaponry were based on rotary turrets, most notably it's three-barreled 400 mm cannon mounted on what appeared to be some sort of railed vehicle, armed with 70mm machine gun. While those weapons were exclusively used in ship-to-ship combat and defenses against incoming fighter jets, it was by far what made the Kingsbane an Artillery Cruiser. Alongside the countless 100mm cannons mounted on the Kingsbane Freeboard, a large object that was supposed to be an eletromagnetic powered barrel rested, mounted on rails half in size than the freeboard itself. The same machinery would be located at the opposite side of the Artillery Cruiser.
However, the thing that drew most attention on the Kingsbane were a huge weapon mounted right in front of it's command tower. Constantly cracking with electricity, probably as an aftermath of the universal chaos, any commanding officer aboard the Stelle Viventium could identify it as a very advanced - and, consequently, extremely lethal - Gauss Cannon, supported by two support beams as long as the weapons mounted on the Cruiser.
A good portion of the same guns present in the forecastle were still present in the weather deck, albeit in a smaller amount. It possessed missile launchers of all sorts more than guns, but whatever amount of weaponry that Kingsbane didn't carried atop of it's freeboard, it compensated on it's sides, where many - probably 30 or 40, on each opposite - 100mm cannons rested. A 25th Century Galleon at it's finest.
The whole section after the weather deck were composed by a complex structure of jet and atomic thrusters as well, for some reason, giant fans. It wasn't easy to figure out how it moved, but one could tell that this last section were the Kingsbane propelling system and engines alike. While looking quite vulnerable, many missile launchers and laser turrets were mounted between the large engine cylinders on the Cruiser's behind... And no visible shields, save for an apparently obsolete one-way eletromagnetic field generator, mounted in the middle of the freeboard.
It was able to take on ships as bigger as the amount of weapons it had. It looked expensive. It looked bad. A military marvel on it's own. The Kingsbane surely reflected on it's Captain personality.
"I'LL SLIT YOUR THROAT AND TEAR YOUR ******* GUTS APART, AELYN!!! - Not too soon after getting a first glimpse on the Kingsbane, the Captain of the Stella Viventium soon got his answer, again, with screams and curses, something he would hear anytime in contact with Captain-Admiral Wanheed "Wan Nabes" Nabil Mustafa. WHAT IN THE ACTUAL **** HAVE YOU DONE TO MY SHIP???"
A video feed appeared through the communication channels that Aelyn used showing Nabes himself, with his forehead bloodied and covered in bruises as countless men and women, ran around and yelled orders to one another in the background. Lights still flickering and every now and then, a loud blasts could be heard. Still, despite his obvious disadvantage both in number and size, Wan still kept his willingness to defy Aelyn and the Stella Viventium. Chewing on a substantially big, lit cigar as smoke shot out from his nose, the Captain-Admiral persisted on his threats."... You ******* excuse of a captain, Aelyn, you god ****** clown on A BIG ******* FLOATING CIRCUS!! YOU are the one owing me answers here!"
... Curiously, Nabes' sidekick, Severin was nowhere to be seen.
When the chaotic events started to cool down, at least for the time being, the crew of the Stella Viventium finally got the opportunity to see what the Kingsbane actually looked like. Uncountable times smaller than the colony itself, Wan Nabes ship resembled more of a World War 2 ship rather than an actual interstellar war cruiser or anything else.
Approximately ranging from over a kilometer in height and being rather wide, almost 500 meters in width, the Kingsbane, unsurprisingly, werefit the latest hardware of long range weaponry. It's symmetrical features beared a pair of 100 milimiters dual rotary turrets on it's forecastle with a tower mounted 250mm triple gun with rotary function as well. In fact, most of it's weaponry were based on rotary turrets, most notably it's three-barreled 400 mm cannon mounted on what appeared to be some sort of railed vehicle, armed with 70mm machine gun. While those weapons were exclusively used in ship-to-ship combat and defenses against incoming fighter jets, it was by far what made the Kingsbane an Artillery Cruiser. Alongside the countless 100mm cannons mounted on the Kingsbane Freeboard, a large object that was supposed to be an eletromagnetic powered barrel rested, mounted on rails half in size than the freeboard itself. The same machinery would be located at the opposite side of the Artillery Cruiser.
However, the thing that drew most attention on the Kingsbane were a huge weapon mounted right in front of it's command tower. Constantly cracking with electricity, probably as an aftermath of the universal chaos, any commanding officer aboard the Stelle Viventium could identify it as a very advanced - and, consequently, extremely lethal - Gauss Cannon, supported by two support beams as long as the weapons mounted on the Cruiser.
A good portion of the same guns present in the forecastle were still present in the weather deck, albeit in a smaller amount. It possessed missile launchers of all sorts more than guns, but whatever amount of weaponry that Kingsbane didn't carried atop of it's freeboard, it compensated on it's sides, where many - probably 30 or 40, on each opposite - 100mm cannons rested. A 25th Century Galleon at it's finest.
The whole section after the weather deck were composed by a complex structure of jet and atomic thrusters as well, for some reason, giant fans. It wasn't easy to figure out how it moved, but one could tell that this last section were the Kingsbane propelling system and engines alike. While looking quite vulnerable, many missile launchers and laser turrets were mounted between the large engine cylinders on the Cruiser's behind... And no visible shields, save for an apparently obsolete one-way eletromagnetic field generator, mounted in the middle of the freeboard.
It was able to take on ships as bigger as the amount of weapons it had. It looked expensive. It looked bad. A military marvel on it's own. The Kingsbane surely reflected on it's Captain personality.
"I'LL SLIT YOUR THROAT AND TEAR YOUR ******* GUTS APART, AELYN!!! - Not too soon after getting a first glimpse on the Kingsbane, the Captain of the Stella Viventium soon got his answer, again, with screams and curses, something he would hear anytime in contact with Captain-Admiral Wanheed "Wan Nabes" Nabil Mustafa. WHAT IN THE ACTUAL **** HAVE YOU DONE TO MY SHIP???"A video feed appeared through the communication channels that Aelyn used showing Nabes himself, with his forehead bloodied and covered in bruises as countless men and women, ran around and yelled orders to one another in the background. Lights still flickering and every now and then, a loud blasts could be heard. Still, despite his obvious disadvantage both in number and size, Wan still kept his willingness to defy Aelyn and the Stella Viventium. Chewing on a substantially big, lit cigar as smoke shot out from his nose, the Captain-Admiral persisted on his threats."... You ******* excuse of a captain, Aelyn, you god ****** clown on A BIG ******* FLOATING CIRCUS!! YOU are the one owing me answers here!"
... Curiously, Nabes' sidekick, Severin was nowhere to be seen.
Aelyn-Paeryc Petrovalyc’s words, spoken soft and low in his flat, grayish voice were completely drowned out by the Captain-Admiral’s bleating curses and threats – or were they promises? His fantastically calm, level-headed demeanor was in such stark contrast to the fiery Nabes that it was almost inconceivable to imagine how a conversation between the two might be anything but disastrous. It wasn’t helping anyone that the pale-faced man’s lips began to gradually turn into a low, subdued smirk the more Nabes went on. Even after all these years, seeing just how far he could push a hot temper with his cold, dispassionate manner. Failing to respond the ‘right way’ to an angry person was what usually garnered the most entertaining results – and the Commodore was not afraid of that temper lashing out to attack his ship, even as he glanced out the porthole window with an obviously impressed, approving frown. Those were some seriously big guns. Somewhere above in one of the Administration Module’s residential quarters, Aleessa Rivierre was staring in love-at-first-sight at the Kingsbane. She had never been excessively passionate about spacecraft but look at all the guns~!
There were a lot of things that Aelyn wanted to say, presently. Things such as a quip about how he looked like he should have been captaining a planetside cruise ship with that hat, how he would have to board the Stella in order to tear out guts and slit throats. All these things would have been more than entertaining, but now he decided at last was not the time. It was ridiculous to be thinking of such trivial nonsense at a time like this – Nabes was just so very inviting to it!
At length, Nabes’ tirade came to an end, at least for the moment, and Aelyn spoke in the same quiet, articulate voice as before. He was expressionless again.
“Well Captain-Admiral, I suppose I owe you the courtesy of an explanation, even if there’s very little I know about this ridiculousness that you don’t.” he began, hands behind his back and if his voice weren’t so drab it might have classified as academic. “You and I – and apparently most of the Galaxy – have been hit with some transmission of which I am as of yet unable to identify the nature, though I am inclined to believe that it may in some small way be related to the space-time instability that your Severin mentioned earlier. It seems to have had undesirable and unpredictable effects all over the board. Somehow it forced me out of paradoxical-notspace, which is particularly curious. And before you start on another fuming tirade about how this must be my fault-“
Suddenly the man’s voice became darker, more ominous – he leaned forward slightly, and the inky black eyes seemed to shoot right through the monitor. With words hastened and chopped, he said “I would like to remind you that in contrast to the endeavors I am invested in you are completely and absolutely insignificant. My concern is the wellbeing of the descendants of the colonists of Earth, not with some two-bit petty officer on a little boat with a big gun. I have no possible reason to waste my time ****ing with you and even if I did I would do it far better than some rogue mystery-code and for sure I wouldn’t go putting our vessels on a collision course which would have rendered both nearly inoperable. So why don’t you get a hold of yourself, acknowledge that you are not in fact the center of anyone’s affairs, get off your temper tantrum and act like an adult for a few minutes so that we might collaborate on this issue and learn more about what may very well be a dire and mutual threat.”
Then, recovering from his own sudden, sharp-tongued rant, he stood up straight again, vaguely softened his expression and added in a starkly contrasting, almost conversational tone “Oh, and I would like to commend your skillful maneuvering in avoiding that collision. Were circumstances vastly different I would want you heading my crew.” weirdly, he seemed genuine in this – though it was still quite possible that it would come off as a passive-aggressive jibe.
Dallen Armston had actually done very little in regards to piloting the little transport, since it had been locked on an autopilot course. After a few moments in space she was satisfied that no action on her part would need to be taken in order to keep the vessel from crashing into a space rock, she could instead turn her attention to the auxiliary displays and poke around – she was not completely familiar with the controls for accessing the small ship’s operations data, but it did not seem to be locked nor hidden.
Ducote spoke, and coincidentally Dallen had uncovered some of that information only moments prior. “Yeah,” she said, “Looks like the thing’s locked on autopilot. Says the destination is ‘Eden’ an’ I don’t know enough ‘bout these things t’risk ****in’ with it so I guess that’s where we’re goin’.”
“Fine, but what the flying **** is ‘Eden’?” Tsuan piped in from the co-pilot’s seat, where he served no real purpose. “A planet I’m assuming, unless it’s a codename for some all-consuming black hole or some ****.” Dallen was about to protest that the very idea of programming an autopilot course into a black hole was entirely preposterous, but then she got the joke and instead merely grinned in silence.
Quite suddenly, someone spoke who had hardly made a sound since Earth City. Shanston Reltakov’s voice was soft and timid – he seemed far away or distracted, but not so that he could not maintain a coherent social interaction, apparently. “The Garden of Eden.” he said, seemingly out of nowhere. Realizing this, his eyes focused on his fellow passengers and seemed, at least for the moment, to actually be looking at them instead of through them. He continued “Y-y’know, that ancient creation legend, the perfect place that the Creator made for the first humans, and they got banished from it for disobedience.”
This visibly sparked a thought in Tze, who piped in with some mild fervor “The legendary treasure planet!” this got the attention of everyone, since he spoke a twinge louder than he had intended to. Unabashed, he continued “Reltakov made me think of one of the folk tales I picked up years ago – the legendary nameless planet, home to the first civilization in the Universe at the beginning of time. They say they reached unimaginable heights of technology but then disappeared without a trace, except for a vault hidden on their ancient world.”
Tsuan and Dallen – who had been getting along much better now, even if it was through an acidic, sniping sort of back-and-forth – seemed incredulous. Even Tze realized now that he had sounded a tad bit silly, spouting off like that – and it was Sané who made the next good point after a few seconds of silent interlude.
“The voice we heard was very strange. But most strange is what Sand and I discovered before returning to you in the hangar.” he said in his sharply accented, pseudo-Chinese dialect.
The explanation which followed was a near incomprehensible fumble to try and get everything straight, but after some innately befuddling minutes it was decided that what Sané and Sand had found was a collection of irrefutable evidence indicating that the starship they were currently aboard could not exist.
There was no estimate on how long the trip was going to be, but luckily it was this unusual conversation which propelled the group along for quite some time. Things got weird pretty quick, but it wasn’t long before the minds coming together to solve this impossible puzzle began to enjoy the collaboration. There was no bottle to pass around, but it would have been fitting.
The ship they were aboard was Interplanetary Personnel Carrier #110236 – this was confirmed with the ship’s computer. Yet IPC#110236 could be seen in a security tape of the hanger being boarded by a young man with a high hairline and goatee, dressed in a white lab coat. The impossibility of it however was that overlayed on this image was that of Platoon D and company hastily boarding the small vessel as distant explosions vibrated the camera. Two videos of the same ship lifting off, but being boarded by two very different sets of people in very different circumstances. Sand had the foresight to download everything they had found on that terminal onto a flash drive, which he plugged into the ship’s monitor to share. Sure enough, there was the video.
Accompanying files determined that the video – it was a single video – had been taken that day, capturing them as they hastily boarded, but this was impossible seeing as Sane and Sand were in the video, yet they had discovered the video beforehand.
The conversation turned the direction of time, and it was eventually suggested that the video of the scientist leisurely boarding was from a different time-stream that had somehow merged with their own. Perhaps three had come together – in one timestream the scientist boarded leisurely and took off. In another a group of ex-soldiers and an Ice Queen hurriedly dove into the little ship to escape a collapsing hangar – and perhaps in still another timestream that very scientist had fled a collapsing hangar but only his voice came through the merge; his instructions for ‘Sarah’.
None of it made very much sense, but it was entertaining. In fact, the whole idea was preposterous and nobody could really claim to be an expert in space-time relativistics and interspaciary hyperphysics. The hours ticked away and eventually people started getting drowsy. Dallen had elected with false reluctance to stay awake and man the controls to keep an eye on things, even if it seemed like the ship was more than competent. Tsuan offered to switch places with Cathorine and give her the more comfortable co-pilot’s seat, and proceeded to snore like a rusty chainsaw. Sane kicked him.
There were a lot of things that Aelyn wanted to say, presently. Things such as a quip about how he looked like he should have been captaining a planetside cruise ship with that hat, how he would have to board the Stella in order to tear out guts and slit throats. All these things would have been more than entertaining, but now he decided at last was not the time. It was ridiculous to be thinking of such trivial nonsense at a time like this – Nabes was just so very inviting to it!
At length, Nabes’ tirade came to an end, at least for the moment, and Aelyn spoke in the same quiet, articulate voice as before. He was expressionless again.
“Well Captain-Admiral, I suppose I owe you the courtesy of an explanation, even if there’s very little I know about this ridiculousness that you don’t.” he began, hands behind his back and if his voice weren’t so drab it might have classified as academic. “You and I – and apparently most of the Galaxy – have been hit with some transmission of which I am as of yet unable to identify the nature, though I am inclined to believe that it may in some small way be related to the space-time instability that your Severin mentioned earlier. It seems to have had undesirable and unpredictable effects all over the board. Somehow it forced me out of paradoxical-notspace, which is particularly curious. And before you start on another fuming tirade about how this must be my fault-“
Suddenly the man’s voice became darker, more ominous – he leaned forward slightly, and the inky black eyes seemed to shoot right through the monitor. With words hastened and chopped, he said “I would like to remind you that in contrast to the endeavors I am invested in you are completely and absolutely insignificant. My concern is the wellbeing of the descendants of the colonists of Earth, not with some two-bit petty officer on a little boat with a big gun. I have no possible reason to waste my time ****ing with you and even if I did I would do it far better than some rogue mystery-code and for sure I wouldn’t go putting our vessels on a collision course which would have rendered both nearly inoperable. So why don’t you get a hold of yourself, acknowledge that you are not in fact the center of anyone’s affairs, get off your temper tantrum and act like an adult for a few minutes so that we might collaborate on this issue and learn more about what may very well be a dire and mutual threat.”
Then, recovering from his own sudden, sharp-tongued rant, he stood up straight again, vaguely softened his expression and added in a starkly contrasting, almost conversational tone “Oh, and I would like to commend your skillful maneuvering in avoiding that collision. Were circumstances vastly different I would want you heading my crew.” weirdly, he seemed genuine in this – though it was still quite possible that it would come off as a passive-aggressive jibe.
Dallen Armston had actually done very little in regards to piloting the little transport, since it had been locked on an autopilot course. After a few moments in space she was satisfied that no action on her part would need to be taken in order to keep the vessel from crashing into a space rock, she could instead turn her attention to the auxiliary displays and poke around – she was not completely familiar with the controls for accessing the small ship’s operations data, but it did not seem to be locked nor hidden.
Ducote spoke, and coincidentally Dallen had uncovered some of that information only moments prior. “Yeah,” she said, “Looks like the thing’s locked on autopilot. Says the destination is ‘Eden’ an’ I don’t know enough ‘bout these things t’risk ****in’ with it so I guess that’s where we’re goin’.”
“Fine, but what the flying **** is ‘Eden’?” Tsuan piped in from the co-pilot’s seat, where he served no real purpose. “A planet I’m assuming, unless it’s a codename for some all-consuming black hole or some ****.” Dallen was about to protest that the very idea of programming an autopilot course into a black hole was entirely preposterous, but then she got the joke and instead merely grinned in silence.
Quite suddenly, someone spoke who had hardly made a sound since Earth City. Shanston Reltakov’s voice was soft and timid – he seemed far away or distracted, but not so that he could not maintain a coherent social interaction, apparently. “The Garden of Eden.” he said, seemingly out of nowhere. Realizing this, his eyes focused on his fellow passengers and seemed, at least for the moment, to actually be looking at them instead of through them. He continued “Y-y’know, that ancient creation legend, the perfect place that the Creator made for the first humans, and they got banished from it for disobedience.”
This visibly sparked a thought in Tze, who piped in with some mild fervor “The legendary treasure planet!” this got the attention of everyone, since he spoke a twinge louder than he had intended to. Unabashed, he continued “Reltakov made me think of one of the folk tales I picked up years ago – the legendary nameless planet, home to the first civilization in the Universe at the beginning of time. They say they reached unimaginable heights of technology but then disappeared without a trace, except for a vault hidden on their ancient world.”
Tsuan and Dallen – who had been getting along much better now, even if it was through an acidic, sniping sort of back-and-forth – seemed incredulous. Even Tze realized now that he had sounded a tad bit silly, spouting off like that – and it was Sané who made the next good point after a few seconds of silent interlude.
“The voice we heard was very strange. But most strange is what Sand and I discovered before returning to you in the hangar.” he said in his sharply accented, pseudo-Chinese dialect.
The explanation which followed was a near incomprehensible fumble to try and get everything straight, but after some innately befuddling minutes it was decided that what Sané and Sand had found was a collection of irrefutable evidence indicating that the starship they were currently aboard could not exist.
There was no estimate on how long the trip was going to be, but luckily it was this unusual conversation which propelled the group along for quite some time. Things got weird pretty quick, but it wasn’t long before the minds coming together to solve this impossible puzzle began to enjoy the collaboration. There was no bottle to pass around, but it would have been fitting.
The ship they were aboard was Interplanetary Personnel Carrier #110236 – this was confirmed with the ship’s computer. Yet IPC#110236 could be seen in a security tape of the hanger being boarded by a young man with a high hairline and goatee, dressed in a white lab coat. The impossibility of it however was that overlayed on this image was that of Platoon D and company hastily boarding the small vessel as distant explosions vibrated the camera. Two videos of the same ship lifting off, but being boarded by two very different sets of people in very different circumstances. Sand had the foresight to download everything they had found on that terminal onto a flash drive, which he plugged into the ship’s monitor to share. Sure enough, there was the video.
Accompanying files determined that the video – it was a single video – had been taken that day, capturing them as they hastily boarded, but this was impossible seeing as Sane and Sand were in the video, yet they had discovered the video beforehand.
The conversation turned the direction of time, and it was eventually suggested that the video of the scientist leisurely boarding was from a different time-stream that had somehow merged with their own. Perhaps three had come together – in one timestream the scientist boarded leisurely and took off. In another a group of ex-soldiers and an Ice Queen hurriedly dove into the little ship to escape a collapsing hangar – and perhaps in still another timestream that very scientist had fled a collapsing hangar but only his voice came through the merge; his instructions for ‘Sarah’.
None of it made very much sense, but it was entertaining. In fact, the whole idea was preposterous and nobody could really claim to be an expert in space-time relativistics and interspaciary hyperphysics. The hours ticked away and eventually people started getting drowsy. Dallen had elected with false reluctance to stay awake and man the controls to keep an eye on things, even if it seemed like the ship was more than competent. Tsuan offered to switch places with Cathorine and give her the more comfortable co-pilot’s seat, and proceeded to snore like a rusty chainsaw. Sane kicked him.
Ketin’s ears went down, and a skewed frown played over him as she returned the little black flask. Rather than reattaching it to the thin bead-chain around his neck he instead absently dropped it into a coat pocket. Why did everyone always hate the stuff so much? It only had a little bleach in it, and just because the chemical compound was so unstable that it ran the risk of self-combustion when stored in quantities any larger than a milliliter – well, only him and a very few of the most skilled creators of illegal substances in the Galaxy actually knew that so it didn’t matter! Personally he found it to be quite tasty, if a bit bitter.
But the disappointed, compunctious look he was giving her presently was more over the fact that he had not really helped, considering that she was reacting to the taste of the stuff much more severely than most others who had tried it. He often forgot that others were…unfond of it, but he had certainly not expected her to find it that repulsive. It wasn’t really that bad of an injury, either – he realized this a count later with considerable regret. That stuff was usually used for seriously intense, possibly life-threatening injuries and excruciating pain. He had been too hasty in giving it to her, too eager to help and make her feel better, too flustered that she had been hurt – he could not judge exactly how much she had been hurting, but it was surely nothing a little morphine wouldn’t have been able to fix.
Oh well.
“Good.” he replied promptly, with an unconvincing intonation of satisfaction with having helped – but her next words made him jump internally. A trace too hastily he sputtered like an idiot “Y-you won’t get killed, I-“ realizing that he was being stupid, totally defeating the purpose she was trying to get to him and speaking without thinking, his words stuttered off and hastily tried to change what had already been coming out of his mouth with little success. Without actually halting his speech, he wavered on “I – I, and I won’t either because I’ll be more careful.” It was entirely insincere and he knew it. This whole ordeal was making him nervous.
She’d rather have dealt with the pain than take his medicine, he could feel that in the back of his head.
And then, just as he was cursing himself internally for the idiocy of having done the wrong thing, he realized she had said something peculiar – and the state he was in, all flustered and beat-up from his foolhardy stunt, naturally he was going to overanalyze it.
‘I can’t help you if…’
Help? Help?
Ketin had never asked for help. The very idea was appalling. What was she trying to help him with? He looked for it but could find nothing, for one reason or another. Maybe because he was overanalyzing and looking for something that was not there? Maybe they were – as he privately referred to them – ‘cold thoughts’ – that being thoughts or intentions which were cleverly hidden, often appearing when those skilled in control of their own mind meant to hide their intentions or long-term plans from him.
And damn that weird thing that happened! Next in the rapid string of realizations coming over him as his senses and wits gradually returned from the numbness of adrenaline – was that there was a strange buzzing feeling somewhere in the general vicinity of his head, though he could not place it precisely. It was like an itch beneath the skin – but he could shove it aside for now. Surely it was nothing.
Presently, Kete had decided – with only the slightest hints playing upon his expressions as to the torrent that was going through his head – it was time to change the subject. A rapid glance through the small vessel’s main chamber via it’s sensors and monitors, three sets of eyes, the usual manner of looking around. Black marble floor, a small sitting area to one side, some laboratory equipment in the opposite corner.
Kampfer had said something which, in his flurry of introspective criticism he had forgotten entirely – so he had to glance inward at where the eye stored the recently processed thoughts in the back of his head. There it was – he’d asked where they were going and it was the perfect way to get the subject away from him.
He glanced to where Kampfer sat – or, rather to the back of the pilot’s chair in which he sat – then back to Nirix and asked innocently “So- where are we going? You said you had a job lined up, right?” She had said no such thing.
The kid stirred – he was conscious again. Royanna noticed this not by the movement beneath her hand that scritched at his hair, but by his speaking. She had been staring upward, hopelessly, deep in thought. The situation was difficult enough as it was – she knew only to a rudimentary extent where they were, and it wouldn’t help them get back to civilization – which was clearly some distance away. Not to mention that the small towns that had been built up around the power plants had now been blasted into craters of slag and debris that weren’t even ghost resemblances to what had formerly stood there. The whole place would be flooded with radiation – at this distance, Royanna was sure that even this incredible sum of detonations would affect them minimally. Minor radiation sickness if they were in the general vicinity for too long, but nobody would be growing a third arm or having their flesh slide off like wet tissue paper.
And there would be more to this, Royanna had seen these sorts of things happen and certainly she had read about enough cases. Something caused all three plants to detonate – that was no coincidence. The most likely assertion would be that it had been done intentionally – she wondered if the three identical plants that powered the southern hemisphere had suffered the same catastrophic fate?
No matter. They needed to get back to civilization, get somewhere safe to wait out whatever apocalyptic insanity was going on. The satellites, the power plants – was it connected? Surely – was it intentional? Probably – but that did not matter right now.
Unless, of course, it was some outside force launching an unprecedented attack on the capitol planet of the Galactic Empire, in which case the scenario could go very differently. If these mysterious attackers were so powerful that they could bring about these results before even showing themselves, surely it would be of little problem for them to reach the surface. The whole planet could turn into a battlefield and her and the kid’s dilemma could become something drastically more dangerous.
But the kid was awake now – he had spoken to her and that he was asking if she was okay meant more to her than she might have imagined – not that she would let this on, of course.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” was all she could say, seeming distracted by her thoughts. There was a looming dread about her that seemed to hang over the woman’s head – an indication that their situation might have been worse still than Christofer had imagined. There was a long pause after his next question, Royanna staring at the floor as if looking through it. Then, at last she said lowly, but with no indication that she might be upset at him for anything “You should get your old clothes back on.” and nodded toward where the scattered pile of Christofer’s clothing lay, having been washed, dried, and folded neatly there by whoever had delivered them the shuttle at Royanna’s request. “We’ll need to scout out the area, see if we can find some trace of civilization.” with a minute hint of encouragement and a half-grin, she added meaningfully “Right up your alley, right?” He had said he was a scout in his planet’s military, right? Roya found she was starting to muddle thoughts; it was all so overwhelming even for someone as well-disciplined as herself. She hoped her reference to him being a good scout would get a smile – either way, after a short moment of silence she would decide it might prove best to tell him flat-out and on-the-level what the situation was – a scout needed to be well briefed.
“We’ve crashed somewhere in the far northern hemisphere and it looks like we’re pretty far from any other people. Whatever caused those satellites to go haywire also caused the three nuclear power plants to the north to meltdown. I’ve only a cursory knowledge of Ardellan geography so we’ll need to find someone to figure that out. “ It helped numb the hopelessness of the situation to talk about it in this crisp, military fashion – just another mission – even if she was desperately unprepared for it.
Having turned away when Christofer went to get dressed (he also could have gone into the semi-enclosed pilots’ cockpit if he wanted privacy) Royanna would return her attention to him when he was finished. She took her black revolver from the holster at her hip, intent on handing it to him in a moment.
“My shooting arm’s still slow so I’ll let you provide us cover. You said you were more experienced with rifles, right? I think I forgot to show you this earlier, I never use the feature but you might find it useful.”
The sleek, futuristic weapon was definitely more than a regular six-shooter, more bulky and looking generally sci-fi, if subtly – but this would prove the matter. Royanna proceeded to show Christofer how to extend a vertical grip from the barrel – this would have been useless if the weapon did not already have an extra-long barrel – it was uncomfortably thin but apparently made of some super-strong alloy which made it feel as sturdy as it were welded. An equally flimsy looking wire-stock was then unfolded from within the grip, and it would also prove to be remarkably sturdy. The result was a very short, but entirely functional rifle-grip weapon. Shorter than a regular rifle and with stock and grip closer than one might like, but someone more proficient with rifles than pistols would find it at least some degree easier to use. She handed the weapon over to him.
With that out of the way, she glanced around for something to write a message on in case someone found the shuttle – then realized that even if she could find something, the idea of someone finding this thing was preposterous.
All that was left was to again open the emergency door, which unfolded into a short staircase and thumped into the yellowish grass below. There it was – a beautiful vista of craggy mountains and cliffs, carpeted in spots with what appeared to be an alien mixture of evergreen and dense jungle – stranger still, given the low temperature, though they were at a very high altitude.
And there were the terrible mushroom clouds, scarring the beautiful scene with their evil black bellows, so great at such a distance that they seemed like stationary objects, unmoving, frozen or painted on the sky. There was a sharp mountain range that marked the end of craggy cliffs and the beginning of some other flat terrain, and it provided a stark contrast between the green on their side and the horrible black on the other. It was too far off to really make out any details, but who would want to?
Royanna gave it only a momentary, sober gaze before turning her attention in the other direction. The yellow grass sloped downward there, away from the mushroom clouds, and seemed to descend into more craggy cliffs mixed with rolling plateaus that would be difficult, but far from impossible to traverse. Beyond that was only a broadloom of evergreen-jungle.
This whole thing was bull****, Royanna thought to herself.
But the disappointed, compunctious look he was giving her presently was more over the fact that he had not really helped, considering that she was reacting to the taste of the stuff much more severely than most others who had tried it. He often forgot that others were…unfond of it, but he had certainly not expected her to find it that repulsive. It wasn’t really that bad of an injury, either – he realized this a count later with considerable regret. That stuff was usually used for seriously intense, possibly life-threatening injuries and excruciating pain. He had been too hasty in giving it to her, too eager to help and make her feel better, too flustered that she had been hurt – he could not judge exactly how much she had been hurting, but it was surely nothing a little morphine wouldn’t have been able to fix.
Oh well.
“Good.” he replied promptly, with an unconvincing intonation of satisfaction with having helped – but her next words made him jump internally. A trace too hastily he sputtered like an idiot “Y-you won’t get killed, I-“ realizing that he was being stupid, totally defeating the purpose she was trying to get to him and speaking without thinking, his words stuttered off and hastily tried to change what had already been coming out of his mouth with little success. Without actually halting his speech, he wavered on “I – I, and I won’t either because I’ll be more careful.” It was entirely insincere and he knew it. This whole ordeal was making him nervous.
She’d rather have dealt with the pain than take his medicine, he could feel that in the back of his head.
And then, just as he was cursing himself internally for the idiocy of having done the wrong thing, he realized she had said something peculiar – and the state he was in, all flustered and beat-up from his foolhardy stunt, naturally he was going to overanalyze it.
‘I can’t help you if…’
Help? Help?
Ketin had never asked for help. The very idea was appalling. What was she trying to help him with? He looked for it but could find nothing, for one reason or another. Maybe because he was overanalyzing and looking for something that was not there? Maybe they were – as he privately referred to them – ‘cold thoughts’ – that being thoughts or intentions which were cleverly hidden, often appearing when those skilled in control of their own mind meant to hide their intentions or long-term plans from him.
And damn that weird thing that happened! Next in the rapid string of realizations coming over him as his senses and wits gradually returned from the numbness of adrenaline – was that there was a strange buzzing feeling somewhere in the general vicinity of his head, though he could not place it precisely. It was like an itch beneath the skin – but he could shove it aside for now. Surely it was nothing.
Presently, Kete had decided – with only the slightest hints playing upon his expressions as to the torrent that was going through his head – it was time to change the subject. A rapid glance through the small vessel’s main chamber via it’s sensors and monitors, three sets of eyes, the usual manner of looking around. Black marble floor, a small sitting area to one side, some laboratory equipment in the opposite corner.
Kampfer had said something which, in his flurry of introspective criticism he had forgotten entirely – so he had to glance inward at where the eye stored the recently processed thoughts in the back of his head. There it was – he’d asked where they were going and it was the perfect way to get the subject away from him.
He glanced to where Kampfer sat – or, rather to the back of the pilot’s chair in which he sat – then back to Nirix and asked innocently “So- where are we going? You said you had a job lined up, right?” She had said no such thing.
The kid stirred – he was conscious again. Royanna noticed this not by the movement beneath her hand that scritched at his hair, but by his speaking. She had been staring upward, hopelessly, deep in thought. The situation was difficult enough as it was – she knew only to a rudimentary extent where they were, and it wouldn’t help them get back to civilization – which was clearly some distance away. Not to mention that the small towns that had been built up around the power plants had now been blasted into craters of slag and debris that weren’t even ghost resemblances to what had formerly stood there. The whole place would be flooded with radiation – at this distance, Royanna was sure that even this incredible sum of detonations would affect them minimally. Minor radiation sickness if they were in the general vicinity for too long, but nobody would be growing a third arm or having their flesh slide off like wet tissue paper.
And there would be more to this, Royanna had seen these sorts of things happen and certainly she had read about enough cases. Something caused all three plants to detonate – that was no coincidence. The most likely assertion would be that it had been done intentionally – she wondered if the three identical plants that powered the southern hemisphere had suffered the same catastrophic fate?
No matter. They needed to get back to civilization, get somewhere safe to wait out whatever apocalyptic insanity was going on. The satellites, the power plants – was it connected? Surely – was it intentional? Probably – but that did not matter right now.
Unless, of course, it was some outside force launching an unprecedented attack on the capitol planet of the Galactic Empire, in which case the scenario could go very differently. If these mysterious attackers were so powerful that they could bring about these results before even showing themselves, surely it would be of little problem for them to reach the surface. The whole planet could turn into a battlefield and her and the kid’s dilemma could become something drastically more dangerous.
But the kid was awake now – he had spoken to her and that he was asking if she was okay meant more to her than she might have imagined – not that she would let this on, of course.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” was all she could say, seeming distracted by her thoughts. There was a looming dread about her that seemed to hang over the woman’s head – an indication that their situation might have been worse still than Christofer had imagined. There was a long pause after his next question, Royanna staring at the floor as if looking through it. Then, at last she said lowly, but with no indication that she might be upset at him for anything “You should get your old clothes back on.” and nodded toward where the scattered pile of Christofer’s clothing lay, having been washed, dried, and folded neatly there by whoever had delivered them the shuttle at Royanna’s request. “We’ll need to scout out the area, see if we can find some trace of civilization.” with a minute hint of encouragement and a half-grin, she added meaningfully “Right up your alley, right?” He had said he was a scout in his planet’s military, right? Roya found she was starting to muddle thoughts; it was all so overwhelming even for someone as well-disciplined as herself. She hoped her reference to him being a good scout would get a smile – either way, after a short moment of silence she would decide it might prove best to tell him flat-out and on-the-level what the situation was – a scout needed to be well briefed.
“We’ve crashed somewhere in the far northern hemisphere and it looks like we’re pretty far from any other people. Whatever caused those satellites to go haywire also caused the three nuclear power plants to the north to meltdown. I’ve only a cursory knowledge of Ardellan geography so we’ll need to find someone to figure that out. “ It helped numb the hopelessness of the situation to talk about it in this crisp, military fashion – just another mission – even if she was desperately unprepared for it.
Having turned away when Christofer went to get dressed (he also could have gone into the semi-enclosed pilots’ cockpit if he wanted privacy) Royanna would return her attention to him when he was finished. She took her black revolver from the holster at her hip, intent on handing it to him in a moment.
“My shooting arm’s still slow so I’ll let you provide us cover. You said you were more experienced with rifles, right? I think I forgot to show you this earlier, I never use the feature but you might find it useful.”
The sleek, futuristic weapon was definitely more than a regular six-shooter, more bulky and looking generally sci-fi, if subtly – but this would prove the matter. Royanna proceeded to show Christofer how to extend a vertical grip from the barrel – this would have been useless if the weapon did not already have an extra-long barrel – it was uncomfortably thin but apparently made of some super-strong alloy which made it feel as sturdy as it were welded. An equally flimsy looking wire-stock was then unfolded from within the grip, and it would also prove to be remarkably sturdy. The result was a very short, but entirely functional rifle-grip weapon. Shorter than a regular rifle and with stock and grip closer than one might like, but someone more proficient with rifles than pistols would find it at least some degree easier to use. She handed the weapon over to him.
With that out of the way, she glanced around for something to write a message on in case someone found the shuttle – then realized that even if she could find something, the idea of someone finding this thing was preposterous.
All that was left was to again open the emergency door, which unfolded into a short staircase and thumped into the yellowish grass below. There it was – a beautiful vista of craggy mountains and cliffs, carpeted in spots with what appeared to be an alien mixture of evergreen and dense jungle – stranger still, given the low temperature, though they were at a very high altitude.
And there were the terrible mushroom clouds, scarring the beautiful scene with their evil black bellows, so great at such a distance that they seemed like stationary objects, unmoving, frozen or painted on the sky. There was a sharp mountain range that marked the end of craggy cliffs and the beginning of some other flat terrain, and it provided a stark contrast between the green on their side and the horrible black on the other. It was too far off to really make out any details, but who would want to?
Royanna gave it only a momentary, sober gaze before turning her attention in the other direction. The yellow grass sloped downward there, away from the mushroom clouds, and seemed to descend into more craggy cliffs mixed with rolling plateaus that would be difficult, but far from impossible to traverse. Beyond that was only a broadloom of evergreen-jungle.
This whole thing was bull****, Royanna thought to herself.
As Ketin and Nirix were "bonding" Kampfer turned went on the communicator "Loki are you zere? Report" a little bit of static came on the communicator on the ship. Kampfer gave a minute and then repeated "Loki are you zere? Report" mre static then it came alife "Yes *static* I'm here my lord *static*" Kampfer gave a big sigh and said "Vhere are you now?" Loki replied "I'm right here" as a fighter plane like craft barreled roll into view of cockpit. "Good, I'll transmit the coordinates to our next destination soon" Loki chuckled and said "Aye, aye my lordship" and then barrel rolls out of view.
Kampfer then turn his chair towards the two individuals. He leans forward and smiles at them. "So..unless we have a specific location, I plan to set a course to Nu Wai 5 a desert like planet with various large cities spread throughout the desert. As he looks at them, he thinks about what he needs to do after his operation, with majority of his fighting force back at the realm of technology, Kampfer still has a pretty good fighting force even though now if he went to war with the Empire, it won't be an entire waffle stomp. Even though having all of this in his head, he was quiet happy of the less amount of work he has to do and that he now can just work on his little pet projects even more.
Kampfer then turn his chair towards the two individuals. He leans forward and smiles at them. "So..unless we have a specific location, I plan to set a course to Nu Wai 5 a desert like planet with various large cities spread throughout the desert. As he looks at them, he thinks about what he needs to do after his operation, with majority of his fighting force back at the realm of technology, Kampfer still has a pretty good fighting force even though now if he went to war with the Empire, it won't be an entire waffle stomp. Even though having all of this in his head, he was quiet happy of the less amount of work he has to do and that he now can just work on his little pet projects even more.
Even though Aelyn's way of speaking somehow demanded uppermost attention from Wan Nabes, every now and then he would look backto the urgent crisis aboard the Kingsbane and shout out orders of varying importances (such as securing an emergency stash of rolling tobacco) and curses the Captain of the Stella Viventium couldn't even imagine it could have existed if it wasn't by Mustafa.
Slowly, the Kingsbane thrusters engaged again, making it slowly face all of it's side weaponry back to the huge colony... At least, they weren't on sight of the big 100mm and 250mm gun batteries, as those still faced the spaceship's front deck. Even though Wan Nabes knew he and his crew would be already in the middle of a deadly fight if Aelyn-Paeryc in fact intended to destroy them, something about the oily-black eyed man felt off for the Captain-Admiral. Discarding the cigar completely destroyed by his angrily clenched teeth amidst his screams just moments before, Wan Nabes took another one from the pocket of his tar-stained navy officer coat, lighting it up with a handy lighter he always keeps along his cigars, puffing thick smog as the Petrovalyc spoke... And that when his 'counter-threats' began...
Holding tight on the controls of his command console as Aelyn's stare changed, Wan Nabes did barely flinch, instead, his eyes narrowed, once again baring his teeth, yet this time just slightly. Both of them, Wan and Aelyn. Both eyes, both deviousness. Both carried the burden of millions or billions of lost souls and many that haven't even came into being. Wanheed might looked like a savage barbarian commanding a vastly powerful battleship, but such power did come for a reason... And he wasn't willing to lose it out of nowhere.
"You know, Aelyn..." - Wanheed brought a comeback, bearing a coarse and dry voice as a small change of pace. "... The last commander who told me to calm down almost tore this *** damn ship in half. And after the fourty- ******* -five years I've been into service, I damn well know that ramming against other vessel is a quite tame offensive maneuver. It makes things even more beautiful with a chaotic duo of mass-signal jamming and a targeted EMP... Your last second evasive, however, heh... Heh, heh! How deserving of an amateur! Hah, hah!" - Curious personnel would peek at the screen far behind the Kingsbane's captain, which bursted in laughter - coarse laughter - after the last sentence. "HAH, HAH, HAH! Which captain in it's right mind would send a fully-inhabited mobile colony in the middle of a full scale invasion? Even worse! How could such captain even be allowed to get nearby a man like The Mad Ranger?! You bet the heads of your people and crew high like that or you're just that naive, eh? Heh, heh... Something tells me it's not the later.
Steadily, the yells aboard the Kingsbane started to tone down as it began to operate normally. It's main gun batteries grinded it's gears and slowly started to rotate around their available range, giving a pretty clear signal that they were back on operation. Wan Nabes, however, would take a bit too long to take his battle-stained face away from Aelyn in the receiving screen. "... And I'll pass you offer, heh. This man belongs to the Kingsbane and the Kingsbane alone. But I pretty damn know that even a kid sailor could maneuver that thing as good as me... It has mass teleportation technology, after all."
It's like Wan Nabes wanted to get a counter insult or just have guns pointed to him. Big cannons were so embroiled into his nature that it was the only mean he knew on how to communicate with a commander from an enemy or unknown fleet or ship... But he was clearly underestimating the Stella Viventium.
Slowly, the Kingsbane thrusters engaged again, making it slowly face all of it's side weaponry back to the huge colony... At least, they weren't on sight of the big 100mm and 250mm gun batteries, as those still faced the spaceship's front deck. Even though Wan Nabes knew he and his crew would be already in the middle of a deadly fight if Aelyn-Paeryc in fact intended to destroy them, something about the oily-black eyed man felt off for the Captain-Admiral. Discarding the cigar completely destroyed by his angrily clenched teeth amidst his screams just moments before, Wan Nabes took another one from the pocket of his tar-stained navy officer coat, lighting it up with a handy lighter he always keeps along his cigars, puffing thick smog as the Petrovalyc spoke... And that when his 'counter-threats' began...
Holding tight on the controls of his command console as Aelyn's stare changed, Wan Nabes did barely flinch, instead, his eyes narrowed, once again baring his teeth, yet this time just slightly. Both of them, Wan and Aelyn. Both eyes, both deviousness. Both carried the burden of millions or billions of lost souls and many that haven't even came into being. Wanheed might looked like a savage barbarian commanding a vastly powerful battleship, but such power did come for a reason... And he wasn't willing to lose it out of nowhere.
"You know, Aelyn..." - Wanheed brought a comeback, bearing a coarse and dry voice as a small change of pace. "... The last commander who told me to calm down almost tore this *** damn ship in half. And after the fourty- ******* -five years I've been into service, I damn well know that ramming against other vessel is a quite tame offensive maneuver. It makes things even more beautiful with a chaotic duo of mass-signal jamming and a targeted EMP... Your last second evasive, however, heh... Heh, heh! How deserving of an amateur! Hah, hah!" - Curious personnel would peek at the screen far behind the Kingsbane's captain, which bursted in laughter - coarse laughter - after the last sentence. "HAH, HAH, HAH! Which captain in it's right mind would send a fully-inhabited mobile colony in the middle of a full scale invasion? Even worse! How could such captain even be allowed to get nearby a man like The Mad Ranger?! You bet the heads of your people and crew high like that or you're just that naive, eh? Heh, heh... Something tells me it's not the later.
Steadily, the yells aboard the Kingsbane started to tone down as it began to operate normally. It's main gun batteries grinded it's gears and slowly started to rotate around their available range, giving a pretty clear signal that they were back on operation. Wan Nabes, however, would take a bit too long to take his battle-stained face away from Aelyn in the receiving screen. "... And I'll pass you offer, heh. This man belongs to the Kingsbane and the Kingsbane alone. But I pretty damn know that even a kid sailor could maneuver that thing as good as me... It has mass teleportation technology, after all."
It's like Wan Nabes wanted to get a counter insult or just have guns pointed to him. Big cannons were so embroiled into his nature that it was the only mean he knew on how to communicate with a commander from an enemy or unknown fleet or ship... But he was clearly underestimating the Stella Viventium.
Like usually, Nirix was slightly wry of Ketin's behavior. She could feel that something was bothering him, yet he was so good at masking whatever it was that it was hard for her to tell. Yet questions were asked-the one from Ketin left Nirix puzzled at when she had ever told him of her next job-and she had not given any answers.
"I do, in fact have a job. It's located on the Planet Daedalus, in the Roma system" Nirix explained, glad that she could at least remember the coordinates and had visited the planet once before. Daedalus was a fairly chillingly planet, home to extreme snow storms and frigid tundras. Last time she had visit it had been seventy years ago but she hoped it hadn't changed too much. If her contact knew any better, he or she would be waiting for her in the space port, hopefully with something warm in wait.
Standing up and stretching, Nirix sighed at the thought of visiting somewhere warmer, before looking towards Ketin. As much as she wanted him to come with her, she had no idea how long this job would take or if he would even come with her to it. He may of wished to say his goodbyes and cut all ties with the Eoclu now...
"I hear Nu Wai 5 is nice this time of year, but a job is a job" She said with a mere shrug.
"I do, in fact have a job. It's located on the Planet Daedalus, in the Roma system" Nirix explained, glad that she could at least remember the coordinates and had visited the planet once before. Daedalus was a fairly chillingly planet, home to extreme snow storms and frigid tundras. Last time she had visit it had been seventy years ago but she hoped it hadn't changed too much. If her contact knew any better, he or she would be waiting for her in the space port, hopefully with something warm in wait.
Standing up and stretching, Nirix sighed at the thought of visiting somewhere warmer, before looking towards Ketin. As much as she wanted him to come with her, she had no idea how long this job would take or if he would even come with her to it. He may of wished to say his goodbyes and cut all ties with the Eoclu now...
"I hear Nu Wai 5 is nice this time of year, but a job is a job" She said with a mere shrug.
There were a lot of things that Aelyn-Paeryc Petrovalyc wanted very badly to say, all of a sudden. This fact disturbed him slightly, as he was not happy to realize that he was becoming so invested in this back-and-forth with Nabes. He wanted to shoot down every point the bearded man made, to patiently explain to him just how little he knew of the situation. Wanted to explain that if his intent had been to jam the Kingsbane’s signals and ram into it, he would not have ordered the evasive maneuver. Wanted to explain that he was clearly underestimating just what kind of human resources it took to maneuver a vessel of this size. Wanted to put the business end of that fat cigar as far into the man’s eye socket as he could go. Wanted to explain that when he had arrived here, it had not been an invasion of any scale – in fact, he had started much of this with his own occupation of the planets’ orbit. Wanted to explain that ‘mass teleportation’ played no part in the operation of the Stella Viventium, and that it was the notspace drives which transferred it between realspace locations.
He wanted to do these things because – though it would not show – Wan Nabes was starting to get on his nerves. Aelyn did not like that however, and he recognized silently that it was time to move on. He tried not to think about how infuriating it was to have extended an olive branch in the form of complimenting his antagonist’s skills only to have more pomposity thrown back in his face. Tried not to think about how dangerous it was to his own existence that these things were bothering him at all, and tried not to think about how his self control seemed to have dwindled over the past several days.
Much of Aelyn-Paeryc’s success depended on being underestimated, in fact. Situations like these had arisen in the past, and where overwhelming size could not bully his way to victory, the plight of an unarmed civilian colony ship would – but then, usually in the latter case his notdrives were in peak operating condition and he could effortlessly throw almost anything he wanted into a paradoxical state of nonexistence where the unfortunate inhabitants would eventually die of oxygen deprivation or food shortage with no possibility of returning to realspace. Sure, these drives had not been entirely disabled, there was still some chance that he could use this technique – but it was risky, even more so now that the strange signal had somehow managed to force the ship back into realspace, a feat which should have been impossible.
Let him underestimate, thought Aelyn-Paeryc as expressionless eyes stared through the screen and hid his private thoughts from wandering speculation. A pause had followed, more hard staring in both directions, each seeming to wait for the other to strike, each betraying nothing but thinking furiously.
“Well Captain-Admiral Nabes, I believe we have wasted enough time on childish bickering. Clearly nothing productive will arise from our correspondence due to your complete inability to sacrifice even a minute fraction of your mountainous ego for the betterment of mankind. I’m sure you have your reasons. At any rate, I will reiterate that I have no motive to attack you in any way, that my vessel is unarmed but not undefended, and that if you choose to attack me it will result in catastrophic losses on both sides. That said, I bid you all the best fortune in your future endeavors."
The screen went black, and future hails from the Kingsbane would be directed to the automated voicemail system.
Aelyn-Paeryc turned around to look at Dorin Harkahn, who had set up a small operating station of some sort involving a whole plethora of different terminals, laptops, cables, monitors and other assorted technical equipment.
“Did I stall him long enough?” He asked, with the faintest grin. It became slightly less faint when Dr. Harkahn gave a silent thumbs-up high in the air while finishing typing something one-handed.
“We’re good. I piggybacked the comms signal and I think I managed to get most of the emergency diagnostics and error reports. We’ll know how it affected their systems and it might help us crack it.” Aelyn-Paeryc did not, of course, require the explanation, but Harkahn liked to talk sometimes and he saw no reason not to let him.
“Is the connection still open?”
Harkahn looked startled. “Yeah, why? We won’t be able to send anything larger than a text document over a bandwidth like that.”
Some minutes later, the Stella Viventium began to slowly heave itself further away from the Kingsbane, away from Earth IV and all the absolute ridiculousness that had occurred there in so short a period as a few days. It was sickeningly, bitterly humorous that after all he had gone through, it was the mysterious signal that had provided him with the most relevant information. The robot had been a dead end, all his battles with Kampfer had been for nothing – but he had that code now, that signal, and he was confident that his expansive analysis team would be able to glean something from it.
The Stella slowly, slowly drifted its’ bulk away, trying to put as much distance as it could between it and everything else. This would prove completely ineffective and make no real progress in movement, but it might put enough distance between it and the Kingsbane that the notdrives might again operate without interference.
Within the hour, the entire engineering staff had gone thrice over the notdrives, using all their limited knowledge of the system to at last deduce that yes, it would most likely be safe to use them again, at least in the regard that the signal had not damaged it. Severin had mentioned some reason that he should not use it, but that was rapidly becoming irrelevant now. Caution, however, would quite suddenly be thrown to the wind when a new announcement was made.
It was a familiar voice calling from down the hall. Aelyn had made his way to the notdrives and done his best to determine their operating condition. Over the steady humming of the engines he could hear that voice.
“Captain! Captaiiin!” (It was unknown exactly what rank or title Aelyn-Paeryc Petrovalyc held aboard the Stella. He never answered the question when asked, insisting it was up to them. As such, everybody seemed to call him something different.)
The voice was that of Isha Lastrow; the short, dark-skinned girl with the fluffy black hair whom he had never, never seen anywhere but on the master bridge. She lived and breathed comms – for her to come sprinting to find him shouting from afar something more than significant must have happened. That, or the master bridge had disappeared, which did not seem likely. It hadn’t.
Panting raggedly with exertion and sweating madly – she had not thought to remove her heavy green hoodie before making the sprint, that plus jeans made for sub-par running attire – the small girl barely caught her breath before trying to get her point across. Luckily there wasn’t much to it. She held out a slip of paper to him, a print-screen taken from the master bridge.
“We found Isandril!”
One quarter hour later, the Stella Viventium disappeared without a trace. No sound, no visuals – it was there, and then it was not.
The parting gift that had been left for the Kingsbane – or, really for Wan Nabes – would ideally be popping up on many of the terminal screens aboard his vessel. Most ideally it would be appearing first on whatever terminal constituted that which Nabes was most likely to view first, but that would be left up to chance. A simple text document had popped up on a couple of monitors. It was short but sweet.
[So long, and thanks for all the fish<3]
How much did Nirix know? Kete was not actively thinking about this, but it was still hanging around in the back of his thoughts. How careful did he need to be? She knew about Adrusade now – it made him sick to think of that, but there was a sort of liberation in it too. After all, she knew about it and had not alienated him…yet.
But did she knew about his mindsight? His electromagnetic integration with technology? He would most likely end up assuming that she did know about these things and slip up sooner or later.
“Daedalus, huh?” Kete stood as well, rummaged around inside his coat for a handkerchief which he then used to wipe some of the soot from his face, and pat down the larger of the two skin-deep wounds he had received, that one being over his right temple.
Ketin had never heard of the planet Daedalus – no matter how seasoned the traveler, nobody could ever know all worlds – and a quick Galactigoggles search through the nearest aethernet adapter yielded results of four planets, six influential politicians, twenty three towns and cities, one carrier airship, two suns, forty three comets and other astronomical bodies, and one very prominent prostitute. He did not have enough time to look into all four of the planets, so instead he poked into that part of the back of his head which mirrored Nirix’s most current, present thoughts for something he might be able to use.
The name of a city there – ‘Ronin’ – had passed through her mind, either consciously or subconsciously. He was granted a microsecond’s worth of memory – he remembered it as a cold, icy place that was generally dismal for the majority of the year. He remembered a sun called…Rama? Roma. That was it.
Without the slightest indication that he had spent the last couple of seconds doing lightning research and mindreading, Kete said conversationally “Oh, Daedalus huh? I’ve got a friend there in Ronin.” Now he paused, taking a look at the handkerchief, deciding that he was fine and re-inserting it into an inner pocket. Innocently, with an adorable shyness to it, a very vague hint that there might be some real, probably minute concern beneath all the layers of aloofness and masking. He looked up at Nirix, gave a little smile. Y’don’t mind if I tag along, right~?
He wanted to do these things because – though it would not show – Wan Nabes was starting to get on his nerves. Aelyn did not like that however, and he recognized silently that it was time to move on. He tried not to think about how infuriating it was to have extended an olive branch in the form of complimenting his antagonist’s skills only to have more pomposity thrown back in his face. Tried not to think about how dangerous it was to his own existence that these things were bothering him at all, and tried not to think about how his self control seemed to have dwindled over the past several days.
Much of Aelyn-Paeryc’s success depended on being underestimated, in fact. Situations like these had arisen in the past, and where overwhelming size could not bully his way to victory, the plight of an unarmed civilian colony ship would – but then, usually in the latter case his notdrives were in peak operating condition and he could effortlessly throw almost anything he wanted into a paradoxical state of nonexistence where the unfortunate inhabitants would eventually die of oxygen deprivation or food shortage with no possibility of returning to realspace. Sure, these drives had not been entirely disabled, there was still some chance that he could use this technique – but it was risky, even more so now that the strange signal had somehow managed to force the ship back into realspace, a feat which should have been impossible.
Let him underestimate, thought Aelyn-Paeryc as expressionless eyes stared through the screen and hid his private thoughts from wandering speculation. A pause had followed, more hard staring in both directions, each seeming to wait for the other to strike, each betraying nothing but thinking furiously.
“Well Captain-Admiral Nabes, I believe we have wasted enough time on childish bickering. Clearly nothing productive will arise from our correspondence due to your complete inability to sacrifice even a minute fraction of your mountainous ego for the betterment of mankind. I’m sure you have your reasons. At any rate, I will reiterate that I have no motive to attack you in any way, that my vessel is unarmed but not undefended, and that if you choose to attack me it will result in catastrophic losses on both sides. That said, I bid you all the best fortune in your future endeavors."
The screen went black, and future hails from the Kingsbane would be directed to the automated voicemail system.
Aelyn-Paeryc turned around to look at Dorin Harkahn, who had set up a small operating station of some sort involving a whole plethora of different terminals, laptops, cables, monitors and other assorted technical equipment.
“Did I stall him long enough?” He asked, with the faintest grin. It became slightly less faint when Dr. Harkahn gave a silent thumbs-up high in the air while finishing typing something one-handed.
“We’re good. I piggybacked the comms signal and I think I managed to get most of the emergency diagnostics and error reports. We’ll know how it affected their systems and it might help us crack it.” Aelyn-Paeryc did not, of course, require the explanation, but Harkahn liked to talk sometimes and he saw no reason not to let him.
“Is the connection still open?”
Harkahn looked startled. “Yeah, why? We won’t be able to send anything larger than a text document over a bandwidth like that.”
Some minutes later, the Stella Viventium began to slowly heave itself further away from the Kingsbane, away from Earth IV and all the absolute ridiculousness that had occurred there in so short a period as a few days. It was sickeningly, bitterly humorous that after all he had gone through, it was the mysterious signal that had provided him with the most relevant information. The robot had been a dead end, all his battles with Kampfer had been for nothing – but he had that code now, that signal, and he was confident that his expansive analysis team would be able to glean something from it.
The Stella slowly, slowly drifted its’ bulk away, trying to put as much distance as it could between it and everything else. This would prove completely ineffective and make no real progress in movement, but it might put enough distance between it and the Kingsbane that the notdrives might again operate without interference.
Within the hour, the entire engineering staff had gone thrice over the notdrives, using all their limited knowledge of the system to at last deduce that yes, it would most likely be safe to use them again, at least in the regard that the signal had not damaged it. Severin had mentioned some reason that he should not use it, but that was rapidly becoming irrelevant now. Caution, however, would quite suddenly be thrown to the wind when a new announcement was made.
It was a familiar voice calling from down the hall. Aelyn had made his way to the notdrives and done his best to determine their operating condition. Over the steady humming of the engines he could hear that voice.
“Captain! Captaiiin!” (It was unknown exactly what rank or title Aelyn-Paeryc Petrovalyc held aboard the Stella. He never answered the question when asked, insisting it was up to them. As such, everybody seemed to call him something different.)
The voice was that of Isha Lastrow; the short, dark-skinned girl with the fluffy black hair whom he had never, never seen anywhere but on the master bridge. She lived and breathed comms – for her to come sprinting to find him shouting from afar something more than significant must have happened. That, or the master bridge had disappeared, which did not seem likely. It hadn’t.
Panting raggedly with exertion and sweating madly – she had not thought to remove her heavy green hoodie before making the sprint, that plus jeans made for sub-par running attire – the small girl barely caught her breath before trying to get her point across. Luckily there wasn’t much to it. She held out a slip of paper to him, a print-screen taken from the master bridge.
“We found Isandril!”
One quarter hour later, the Stella Viventium disappeared without a trace. No sound, no visuals – it was there, and then it was not.
The parting gift that had been left for the Kingsbane – or, really for Wan Nabes – would ideally be popping up on many of the terminal screens aboard his vessel. Most ideally it would be appearing first on whatever terminal constituted that which Nabes was most likely to view first, but that would be left up to chance. A simple text document had popped up on a couple of monitors. It was short but sweet.
[So long, and thanks for all the fish<3]
How much did Nirix know? Kete was not actively thinking about this, but it was still hanging around in the back of his thoughts. How careful did he need to be? She knew about Adrusade now – it made him sick to think of that, but there was a sort of liberation in it too. After all, she knew about it and had not alienated him…yet.
But did she knew about his mindsight? His electromagnetic integration with technology? He would most likely end up assuming that she did know about these things and slip up sooner or later.
“Daedalus, huh?” Kete stood as well, rummaged around inside his coat for a handkerchief which he then used to wipe some of the soot from his face, and pat down the larger of the two skin-deep wounds he had received, that one being over his right temple.
Ketin had never heard of the planet Daedalus – no matter how seasoned the traveler, nobody could ever know all worlds – and a quick Galactigoggles search through the nearest aethernet adapter yielded results of four planets, six influential politicians, twenty three towns and cities, one carrier airship, two suns, forty three comets and other astronomical bodies, and one very prominent prostitute. He did not have enough time to look into all four of the planets, so instead he poked into that part of the back of his head which mirrored Nirix’s most current, present thoughts for something he might be able to use.
The name of a city there – ‘Ronin’ – had passed through her mind, either consciously or subconsciously. He was granted a microsecond’s worth of memory – he remembered it as a cold, icy place that was generally dismal for the majority of the year. He remembered a sun called…Rama? Roma. That was it.
Without the slightest indication that he had spent the last couple of seconds doing lightning research and mindreading, Kete said conversationally “Oh, Daedalus huh? I’ve got a friend there in Ronin.” Now he paused, taking a look at the handkerchief, deciding that he was fine and re-inserting it into an inner pocket. Innocently, with an adorable shyness to it, a very vague hint that there might be some real, probably minute concern beneath all the layers of aloofness and masking. He looked up at Nirix, gave a little smile. Y’don’t mind if I tag along, right~?
All that Wan Nabes could do were laugh. Laugh upon the cowardice of his rival, who left the glorious presence of the Kingsbane behind with his tail between his legs. Who were Aelyn-Paeryc Petrovalyc next to the feared Wanheed Nabil Mustafa? The man who rode 35 full years alone in the even more feared Kingsbane before it even have acquired this name? What threat Aelyn and his big scrap chunk could pose next to what Captain Wan Nabes and his glorious ship have been through? He was no more than an insect, albeit a big one. A microbe to the real enemies of Wan Nabes and his crew... The ones he would begin to worry the most now. All Wan Nabes had to worry about were them. The Ranger and his doctor friend were only small means to achieve his only one dream of destroying his sworn enemy.
But the Captain had to see with his own eyes the price of the confidence his 35 years of service brought upon him. He was doomed to lay his eyes on the status screens of the main bridge of his ship, showing pretty clear graphics of how much background radiation that the antimatter reactor he was so proud off were generating. Not only that but the Stella Viventium's Notspace Drive. The teleportation technology from Kampfer's forces. The forces contained with Earth VII. Captain-Admiral Wan Nabes' five minutes of divine glory and unstoppable, throat-sore laughter slowly turned into a brooding feeling of anguish and soon, fear. His biggest weapon against his enemy, The Ranger, have been probably killed in action down in Earth VII. The Legendary Mad Ranger. Killed and now, all of his crew will be. Each one of them will be ceremonially decapitated while Mustafa will get to see his Kingsbane being dismantled, day after day, until it's nothing. That's when, he too, would have his life purged.
No. It couldn't end like this. "... CREW, ON YOUR POSITIONS! Enginery! Increase the core's power to it's maximum output! Damage Control! Release two rescue units and locate the remains of CL! Graviton Anchors aweight! Thrusters to 400% output! Prepare for Dimensional Barrier Tunneling! WE'RE FOLLOWING THAT DAMN EXCUSE OF A CAPTAIN! ... And get your **** done already, Severin!" - With the exception of the later, Wan Nabes' orders would rumble like thunder even in the darkest parts of his ship and his crew, obviously, wouldn't question to any of it, attending immediately to his demands... And that's the Stella Viventium crew started to detect background radiation related to a exotic hyperspace drive... The next thing they and Aelyn knew, wherever they were, even if that place was the Notspace, the Kingsbane were right behind their tails...
But the Captain had to see with his own eyes the price of the confidence his 35 years of service brought upon him. He was doomed to lay his eyes on the status screens of the main bridge of his ship, showing pretty clear graphics of how much background radiation that the antimatter reactor he was so proud off were generating. Not only that but the Stella Viventium's Notspace Drive. The teleportation technology from Kampfer's forces. The forces contained with Earth VII. Captain-Admiral Wan Nabes' five minutes of divine glory and unstoppable, throat-sore laughter slowly turned into a brooding feeling of anguish and soon, fear. His biggest weapon against his enemy, The Ranger, have been probably killed in action down in Earth VII. The Legendary Mad Ranger. Killed and now, all of his crew will be. Each one of them will be ceremonially decapitated while Mustafa will get to see his Kingsbane being dismantled, day after day, until it's nothing. That's when, he too, would have his life purged.
No. It couldn't end like this. "... CREW, ON YOUR POSITIONS! Enginery! Increase the core's power to it's maximum output! Damage Control! Release two rescue units and locate the remains of CL! Graviton Anchors aweight! Thrusters to 400% output! Prepare for Dimensional Barrier Tunneling! WE'RE FOLLOWING THAT DAMN EXCUSE OF A CAPTAIN! ... And get your **** done already, Severin!" - With the exception of the later, Wan Nabes' orders would rumble like thunder even in the darkest parts of his ship and his crew, obviously, wouldn't question to any of it, attending immediately to his demands... And that's the Stella Viventium crew started to detect background radiation related to a exotic hyperspace drive... The next thing they and Aelyn knew, wherever they were, even if that place was the Notspace, the Kingsbane were right behind their tails...
Aelyn-Paeryc Petrovalyc spun on a heel, wasted not a second and proceeded with the utmost haste to the main bridge. Coat fluttering behind him, he was approached on either side first by Harkahn and then by Isha, both of them briefing him with the new developments not unlike the president in a generic action movie.
At 2100 hours, a breakthrough was made in the research and analysis department regarding the mysterious code – which Harkahn had already thoroughly distributed to all parties involved. Harkahn himself regretted that he had not been involved in the discovery – past writing up a hastily strewn algorithm to use as a base for translation. Within moments, the entirety of the Stella’s mainframe – including the wealth of data that they had received from the robots before their disappearance – had been cross-checked and scanned for leads. It was immediately apparent that the code of zeroes and ones did translate to a message, but that detail was still in translation. Hidden in the substructure of the code however, had been a very neatly outlined set of galactic coordinates. A drone was notskipped to the location and sure enough, there it was. There was no doubting it, especially when the drone reported radiation that had previously been present in only a single place in the Galaxy – that being the Notspace Drives of the Stella Viventium.
Within seconds, it was all over BrainPal™ and everyone knew their part to play – what to do in the case of actually discovering the ancient, lost city of Isandril had been gone over and over again.
Though he had stupidly wasted the vast majority of his combat resources on Kampfer, there was bound to still be at very least enough for another small excursion team – but this time they would take no chances. He hated to admit it, but Nabes had a point - keeping the bulk of Stella’s civilian population anywhere near them at this time was a bad idea to say the least, especially when they only had the vaguest notions of just what they might find when they arrived. To make things worse, in the seconds before engaging the drives it appeared they had a tagalong.
“Heads up Captain, Kingsbane’s on our tail.”
“Detach the command module at my command and overcharge the drives. Send the civilian module to our safe haven in the M’Draan system. If that cigar-sucking bastard’s going to follow us, make sure he follows us.”
“Understood. Three minutes until clear for disconnection. Notspace Drives operating at two hundred percent capacity allocated to Command.”
“Harkahn, update on the research team.”
“Fifteen minutes, Captain.”
“I managed to dig up an old Mk. II armored transport. Thing’s practically indestructible – give me twenty minutes and I can rig it up with some autoguns and a halfway decent force shield.”
“Do it. Combat team?”
“We were ready ten minutes ago.”
“How many of you? Gotta’ make sure this old thing’ll fit everyone.”
“Research team three plus myself.”
“Six guys from the reserve security team and me makes seven.”
“Loadout?”
“Only the best. You might have used up all your big guns on the Lord of Tech Support but this armory is still stocked enough for a small army. “
“Get the research team armed as well.”
“Keep it light though, we’ve got equipment to move.”
“Focus on data collection, leave analysis to the Stella.”
“Hey Ael, think we could put up a barrier around the planet when we get there? Just in case Captain Nemo manages to find us.”
“Possibly. Isha, once we’re there I want you to look into that. It’ll be hard on the engines but we can’t take chances with Isandril. I don’t know what that bastard wants but if he’s going through the trouble of dimensional boring then it’s more than just a grudge.”
“Will do. I got some repairs done after that first thing with the satellite death ray so our Notspace field generators should be able to cover our asses, but I’ll figure that out later. Having some trouble disconnecting – Hey, clear the separation area!
“We’re treading some iffy water here. I keep thinkin’ about what that physicist Severin said, about there being some kind of grave danger from all the teleporting and dimension stuff.”
“Personally I’m inclined to believe him, I didn’t get the feeling he was manipulating us. It doesn’t matter though – obviously we’ll minimize our impact on spacial stability but we’re going to have to take the risk.”
“Hey what about those old turrets mounted on the hull, those things still work? Could get some of the initiates off Security to cover them.”
“Nah, we haven’t used those in decades. Besides that, even if we could get them to work they’d be about as effective as a cheesecloth condom on a ship like Kingsbane.”
“Great space, do you ever stop?”
“Best friends forever, Yascra~!”
“Ready to move.”
“Hit it.”
The squat, but still gargantuan Command Module disconnected itself from the massive, triangular platform with all the towering protrusions scattered atop it, heaving slowly apart and within seconds both had vanished in an instant.
There were two ways to go about entering and using Notspace. One could go in stationary, with intent only to stay in that one relative position – requiring them to re-enter realspace in order to actually move again. One could not actually move in Notspace. The other method was to enter with the intention of going somewhere. In this case, the vessel would slip into Notspace, be propelled along the theoretical barrier between existence and non-existence, to ‘wrap around’ the Notspace and ‘resurface’ in another location in realspace. The process of calculating this was probably beyond the limits of comprehension of the human mind, and how Paeryc Petrovalyc had invented such a thing remained an impossible mystery – but then, they might be on the verge of uncovering another piece to the puzzle, now that they had found Isandril.
In less than an instant, the massive civilian module had reappeared in the immeasurably distant M’Draan system, where it would park spaciostationary and wait for further instructions. The less massive Command Module reappeared in a much nearer system – mostly as a test-run – and it had made sure to make itself well known. The Kingsbane would have little trouble following it.
Aelyn-Paeryc’s concerns were confirmed – not only would the Kingsbane be more than capable of following them, if they weren’t incredibly careful it showed very good potential of catching up. The Stella had speed on its’ side, since transitions between realspace coordinates were instant – but it left a distinct trace, not unlike the ripples made by a frog as it dove underwater, and again as it resurfaced somewhere else. Aelyn-Paeryc did not doubt that the people aboard Kingsbane now knew what to look for. There was also the matter of being unfamiliar with dimensional boring technology and the crew recognized they would have to prepare for anything.
Subspace distortions confirmed that they had only seconds before the Kingsbane would be practically on top of them.
“We can not let that psychopath anywhere near Isandril. Get that bastard off our tail.”
This was going to get messy.
Again, Stella disappeared and resurfaced in a system sixteen lightyears away. It remained there for perhaps a minute before again transitioning to a system at one of the farthest reaches of a spiral arm of the Galaxy. Again, again, choosing destinations as unpredictably as Isha could manage. They would be half a step ahead of the Kingsbane – their only real hope was that the Kingsbane’s method of teleportation might put more stress on their systems. Aelyn was confident that the Notspace drives could handle this, even though they were being run seriously to the limit and risked overheating – he hoped that transitioning so rapidly would do more damage to Kingsbane than it was doing to Stella, though it was a slim chance. Presumably dimensional boring took as much power as it sounded like it should, and it must not have been a systems-efficient process – but they couldn’t know. Aelyn hated that.
The chase seemed to drag on for hours – each transition was instant, each minute between transitions dragged on eternally. Skip skip – skip skip – skip skip. At one point, they even started to try and determine if there was a pattern to their relative locations to each other – maybe that way they could resurface in such a location that the Kingsbane would materialize itself inside a sun? It didn’t seem likely. Nobody was quite sure what kind of predictive implements it was equipped with. A lot depended on exactly how they were being followed as well – more information that they did not have access to. Presumably, dimensional boring would act as a ‘straight line’ digging straight through Notspace – while unable to actually enter it, there was no reason it couldn’t dig through it. If this were the case, Stella would be as a frog on lily pads and Kingsbane the predator in the water. With each leap there would be a ripple and the pursuit could proceed linear, but each leap kept the prey one space ahead. It was not a sustainable method, but it was all they had.
The scenes before the grand windows of the main bridge changed so rapidly that it was starting to become disorienting. The broad panorama showed first a star-dusted sky, and then the whole of a gas giant swirling with deep neon hues. A tri-solar system. A cluster of stations. They even skipped right into the line of an oncoming interstellar battle fleet as it was just preparing to launch war upon the nearest system – it was a lucky break that they managed to disappear again before collision, or worse, open fire on an unknown entity appearing from nowhere. Aelyn hoped that they might fire on the Kingsbane as it kept on their tail, but he doubted that. Luck had not been on his side lately.
Or had it? The signal had led them straight to Isandril.
It occurred to Aelyn with a dreadful sinking feeling in his stomach that it was no coincidence. It couldn’t be. But then how? And why?
Dangerously close to a black hole. Amidst a cloud obscuring crimson gasses. In the oncoming flow of a tight-knit asteroid field – they did take some minor hits on that one, though it was mostly auxiliary damage to storage bays in the lower decks.
“So I know this might not be the best time, but can I formally suggest we change the ship’s name to ’Heart of Gold’?.....No? Nobody? Infinite Improbability Drive? Nothing? You guys are no fun.”
The Stella appeared in the sky of a planet only now dawning on their second Bronze Age and inspired a religion which would span the millennia. It appeared over a mid-level ‘earth-like’ planet and promptly cause mass hysteria leading to the eventual end of the world some decade later. It appeared back where it had started, looking to be just another, if slightly brighter star in the apocalyptic sky of Earth IV – and then it was gone.
There was a near collision with one of Grimlock Kampfer’s remaining spaciostationary bases, though the transitions occurred so rapidly that it would appear on most station computers as having been an error. This would crop up rumors aboard the station about a giant space whale, which would go viral and cause an economical boom on a far off planet when merchandise started being produced.
And then it became apparent that the chase needed to end.
Gaelan Yascra had found, in the very farthest reaches of his armory, something neat. It was a small assortment of notbombs that had – probably due to clerical errors – gone untouched for centuries. It had given him an idea which he rapidly brought up over BrainPal™ for validation. The bombs worked similarly to Aelyn’s golden bullets – a one-time conversion from realspace to notspace, obliterating the target more thoroughly than even the most fundamental forces of nature. There were six of them.
The Stella appeared in a large plot of open space, and the bombs were deployed. Largely as a test run to see if the notfield generators were operating again – and through a miracle of impeccable timing – they were cast into the farthest reaches of the Galaxy, where they detonated simultaneously. Also coordinated in this one-time symphony of impressive mathematics was the final skip of the Stella itself. The result was that it would appear to have left from one point, and reappeared simultaneously in six, drastically spaced out. The bombs were small, but their detonations would create distortions almost identical to that which the hulking Command Module would. Hopefully this would, if nothing else, buy them some time.
Everyone aboard the Stella was moving and bustling, preparing for the excursion of a lifetime, readying themselves for a job that they had only dreamed they might have the chance of participating in. Only Aelyn-Paeryc and Alexia Patrovalyc stood motionless to gaze in silence.
In the far orbit of an unnamed desert planet which orbited an unnamed star, the Command Module of the Stella Viventium hung and looked down on a marble of crimson and fiery burnt orange – upon which the first sentient beings in the Universe had once built a great city. Upon which they lived and died. Upon which Paeryc Petrovalyc had once stood in paradoxical impossibility and learned the secrets of paradox itself. Upon which Aelyn-Paeryc Patrovalyc would follow the trail of his brother, and it would lead him home.
As Kampfer heard there destination and coordinates he gave them a nod and turned around on his seat and punched in the numbers. With the numbers been inputted he sent the numbers to Loki flying by the ship. He goes ahead brings the ships engines into live as the hyperdrive system kicks in. After a few minutes of charge, the ship jerked forward causing the inhabits of the ship to jerk as well. Soon the cockpit that only saw the vast blackness of space turned into an almost LCD induced trance of various shades of blue going down a tunnel.
With the Hyperdrive enabled and traveling to there destination, Kampfer was about to get up, but didn't. Instead he was getting a notification from Zetta that the Stella command module has appeared once more and is being tracked. With that literally in mind, he brought up a small galaxy map, that plotted there route to the planet but also has a small blimp that identified the Stella. He didn't give an order yet, and just followed the blimp as it poofed into different areas in the Galaxy trying to predict in where it was going. He also got a notification from one of his spacestations that got a glimpse of it but for a mere second. As he continue to follow the Stella on the map with anticipation seeing where Aelyn was going to stop.
Finally, the Stella stopped, but it stopped at a planet he hadn't been for a very long time. Kampfer grinned at that and so he gave the order to Zetta for to relay "Send a 3 Battleships under command of Ascendant Knight Odin, mission task: Capture or kill the Captain of the Stella, destroy anyone who gets in your way - Zetta from Kampfer"
Once the order has been given he turns the chair around and grasp his hands together and says "Well its gonna be for a little bit, so just do as you wish, there's food and alcohol in the fridge, the common area has some games and even a TV" as he points to the various places on the ship. "As for me, I am going to continue on my research on Hard light" he says as he makes his way to the small lab setup has and starts to begin his work
With the Hyperdrive enabled and traveling to there destination, Kampfer was about to get up, but didn't. Instead he was getting a notification from Zetta that the Stella command module has appeared once more and is being tracked. With that literally in mind, he brought up a small galaxy map, that plotted there route to the planet but also has a small blimp that identified the Stella. He didn't give an order yet, and just followed the blimp as it poofed into different areas in the Galaxy trying to predict in where it was going. He also got a notification from one of his spacestations that got a glimpse of it but for a mere second. As he continue to follow the Stella on the map with anticipation seeing where Aelyn was going to stop.
Finally, the Stella stopped, but it stopped at a planet he hadn't been for a very long time. Kampfer grinned at that and so he gave the order to Zetta for to relay "Send a 3 Battleships under command of Ascendant Knight Odin, mission task: Capture or kill the Captain of the Stella, destroy anyone who gets in your way - Zetta from Kampfer"
Once the order has been given he turns the chair around and grasp his hands together and says "Well its gonna be for a little bit, so just do as you wish, there's food and alcohol in the fridge, the common area has some games and even a TV" as he points to the various places on the ship. "As for me, I am going to continue on my research on Hard light" he says as he makes his way to the small lab setup has and starts to begin his work
"C-Come here..." - By the moment Wan muttered these words, a completely new scenery appeared in front of the Kingsbane Main Bridge. "... Your ************... !" The Captain never knew he would use the Barrier Tunneling so much like that. He knew it was supposed to be activated only under the strict orders from Severin, yet, his determination on not being caught by another enemy thousand times worse than an would-be Aelyn refrained the Captain from all it's rational thought... Or did it make him think rationally?
The crew worked all the sweat of their bodies off to maintain the Heavy Artillery Cruiser at the best shape they could amidst the constant travels under the Barrier Dimension. The communications department working in joint with the radar tower, just so they could find and track down Aelyn's 'new' ship. The engineers doing their best just so the antimatter core wouldn't collapse under itself and generate a beautiful singularity, which would bring the birth to a new black hole.
All of this happening while Captain-Admiral Wan Nabes constantly pumped his fingers on the Command Console in front of him, frantically requesting visual feed from Aelyn. In actuality, communication via visual feed were by far one of the most advanced technologies available for a combat fleet, such mean of chatter were mostly useless to the most skilled of the commodores, yet, Wan insisted on having only the top-notch visual feed equipment installed on his Bridge, just so his enemies could stare at a laughing chimney of cigar smoke while they are bombarded with 100 and 250mm shells.
Then, in a rare instance where the Kingsbane appeared alongside Aelyn's Command Module, a message from the Kingsbane immediately made it's way to the spacecraft... Moments before it would warp into Notspace. "GET BACK HERE, AELYN, YOU ******* FOO--" - ... And that's when they started reappearing dangerously close to a 'explosive' device of unknown function. Wan Nabes instincts, however, were far more quicker to act on that occasion. A yell echoed from more than three different branches adjacent to the Bridge with the immediate order to "RAISE THOSE ******* SHIELDS IMMEDIATELY!!!". Funnily enough, that was one of the messages hailed back to Aelyn's.
It was easy to say that Mustafa's unquestionable and fearful authority over his crew was the reason they didn't have nasty breach right into the Core Compartment. The Kingsbane used a primitive, but unbelievable effective shield technology: Eletromagnetic Repulsion Fields. Four generators, each on one extremity of the ship, when powered up, would generate an artificial force akin to an entire planet's magnetosphere, however, concentrated on the 'humble' kilometer of the Kingsbane. While most shielding technology were based on generating a wall of theoretical energy around a ship, the Kingsbane could do wonders with eletromagnetism... Such as completely dissipating the Notspace Bombs distortation fields. The Repulsion Generators, redesigned from common eletromagnetic motors by Benedict Severin himself...
Speaking of which...
"... Your capacity to put society as we know in risk of unexistance while I'm away is incredible! Stop this madness immediately, Mustafa!" - Maybe it was too late for it, but the wheezing voice of Doctor Severin finally echoed through the Kingsbane's Bridge and, unsurprisingly, a few sighs of relief could be heard here and there as the Head Scientist and First Mate of the Kingsbane came in.
"You told me to not get lost from Aelyn, Severin, THAT'S WHAT AM I DOING, ******* IT!!"
"Correct. And as soon as it booted, the INDRA gave me a report of anomalous readings over the Antimatter Core. It's like you want Aerthia to be our trail in the end!"
"You know what??? **** yourself, you ******* egghe--"
Merely pushing an infuriated Captain aside, Severin immediately turned off the video feed from the inside of the Bridge and once again attempted communication with the Stella Viventium's Detached Command Module. It was easy to notice from Aelyn's part, still, that the Kingsbane decreased the frequency on which it followed him...
"Captain Petrovalyc? Captain Petrovalyc, please, come in. This is Star-Class Astrophysicist Benedict Severin speaking on behalf of the Heavy Artillery Cruiser Kingsbane... Captain, come in..."
... And that's when energy signatures of the small interceptation fleet from Kampfer started to ping out in the Command Console. Luckily, the Kingsbane's piloting crew managed to avoid their presence by just a few seconds before travelling through Dimensional Tunneling straight into his battleships... The fate of Aelyn, however, was not yet known for Wan Nabes and Severin.
"... What an interesting person, this Aelyn... It looks like we ain't the only one fleeing after all... But this Kampfer fellow will cast us doom if he keeps this madness as well..."
The crew worked all the sweat of their bodies off to maintain the Heavy Artillery Cruiser at the best shape they could amidst the constant travels under the Barrier Dimension. The communications department working in joint with the radar tower, just so they could find and track down Aelyn's 'new' ship. The engineers doing their best just so the antimatter core wouldn't collapse under itself and generate a beautiful singularity, which would bring the birth to a new black hole.
All of this happening while Captain-Admiral Wan Nabes constantly pumped his fingers on the Command Console in front of him, frantically requesting visual feed from Aelyn. In actuality, communication via visual feed were by far one of the most advanced technologies available for a combat fleet, such mean of chatter were mostly useless to the most skilled of the commodores, yet, Wan insisted on having only the top-notch visual feed equipment installed on his Bridge, just so his enemies could stare at a laughing chimney of cigar smoke while they are bombarded with 100 and 250mm shells.
Then, in a rare instance where the Kingsbane appeared alongside Aelyn's Command Module, a message from the Kingsbane immediately made it's way to the spacecraft... Moments before it would warp into Notspace. "GET BACK HERE, AELYN, YOU ******* FOO--" - ... And that's when they started reappearing dangerously close to a 'explosive' device of unknown function. Wan Nabes instincts, however, were far more quicker to act on that occasion. A yell echoed from more than three different branches adjacent to the Bridge with the immediate order to "RAISE THOSE ******* SHIELDS IMMEDIATELY!!!". Funnily enough, that was one of the messages hailed back to Aelyn's.
It was easy to say that Mustafa's unquestionable and fearful authority over his crew was the reason they didn't have nasty breach right into the Core Compartment. The Kingsbane used a primitive, but unbelievable effective shield technology: Eletromagnetic Repulsion Fields. Four generators, each on one extremity of the ship, when powered up, would generate an artificial force akin to an entire planet's magnetosphere, however, concentrated on the 'humble' kilometer of the Kingsbane. While most shielding technology were based on generating a wall of theoretical energy around a ship, the Kingsbane could do wonders with eletromagnetism... Such as completely dissipating the Notspace Bombs distortation fields. The Repulsion Generators, redesigned from common eletromagnetic motors by Benedict Severin himself...
Speaking of which...
"... Your capacity to put society as we know in risk of unexistance while I'm away is incredible! Stop this madness immediately, Mustafa!" - Maybe it was too late for it, but the wheezing voice of Doctor Severin finally echoed through the Kingsbane's Bridge and, unsurprisingly, a few sighs of relief could be heard here and there as the Head Scientist and First Mate of the Kingsbane came in.
"You told me to not get lost from Aelyn, Severin, THAT'S WHAT AM I DOING, ******* IT!!"
"Correct. And as soon as it booted, the INDRA gave me a report of anomalous readings over the Antimatter Core. It's like you want Aerthia to be our trail in the end!"
"You know what??? **** yourself, you ******* egghe--"
Merely pushing an infuriated Captain aside, Severin immediately turned off the video feed from the inside of the Bridge and once again attempted communication with the Stella Viventium's Detached Command Module. It was easy to notice from Aelyn's part, still, that the Kingsbane decreased the frequency on which it followed him...
"Captain Petrovalyc? Captain Petrovalyc, please, come in. This is Star-Class Astrophysicist Benedict Severin speaking on behalf of the Heavy Artillery Cruiser Kingsbane... Captain, come in..."
... And that's when energy signatures of the small interceptation fleet from Kampfer started to ping out in the Command Console. Luckily, the Kingsbane's piloting crew managed to avoid their presence by just a few seconds before travelling through Dimensional Tunneling straight into his battleships... The fate of Aelyn, however, was not yet known for Wan Nabes and Severin.
"... What an interesting person, this Aelyn... It looks like we ain't the only one fleeing after all... But this Kampfer fellow will cast us doom if he keeps this madness as well..."
Apparently the Ranger had thought that Sergei wanted him gone. More or less it was not all that right - or wrong. To be honest, Sergei wanted nothing to do with the Ranger, but the stranger had caught his interest. More so than many others that had wandered onto the cantonment. So there was at least that...
He wasn't all done with them yet.
The man sighed in a long fashion, didn't shake his head or anything, but took a deep breath before picking up the teacup and leaning back in his little seat.
"Why do you seem so fascinated over a simple canid?" He'd ask, taking a sip from his tea again. Surely the species wasn't anything new to him. Sergei had worked alongside the anthropomorphic creatures for quite some time now and had gotten used to them all together - although him not seeing them as much could be taken in two ways. The Ranger's fascination with them was... Strange... Yet it awoke a few questions in his mind, the most fleshed out being what did he want of them, but that'd have to wait until the time was right. He had the feeling that the Ranger wasn't yet all soft when it came to the subject. The timing wouldn't be right, it wasn't ready.
"I do not know where you are coming from, but most locals should be well aware of the species all together." The man placed the cup back onto the table, calmly, maybe to take his point of them being completelly normal sight across. Or then it was just his ordinary way of doing things. Which ever the case, he'd lean back again, slowly, letting the Ranger clear his thoughts before directing him at a more specifying question. "Or is it the fur color you question?"
Sergei wouldn't directly answer the Ranger's questions. He wouldn't be bringing up the government for the time being and wanted to focus on this one subject at the moment.
He was taken away from the Ranger for a brief moment when he could hear a voice near his ear.
"Sergei??" Nothing surprising it was the albino, as if they weren't talking about him already. "Are you ok in there? You've taken a painfully long time..."
Sergei was sure that the canid would keep on asking questions and spamming his earpiece until he'd see that the man was indeed fine.
Well, what a better time to invite a new person to the room.
"Open the door, your point of interest is waiting on the other side." The man switched off the device to hear if the Ranger would agree or if he was going to decline the offer...
He wasn't all done with them yet.
The man sighed in a long fashion, didn't shake his head or anything, but took a deep breath before picking up the teacup and leaning back in his little seat.
"Why do you seem so fascinated over a simple canid?" He'd ask, taking a sip from his tea again. Surely the species wasn't anything new to him. Sergei had worked alongside the anthropomorphic creatures for quite some time now and had gotten used to them all together - although him not seeing them as much could be taken in two ways. The Ranger's fascination with them was... Strange... Yet it awoke a few questions in his mind, the most fleshed out being what did he want of them, but that'd have to wait until the time was right. He had the feeling that the Ranger wasn't yet all soft when it came to the subject. The timing wouldn't be right, it wasn't ready.
"I do not know where you are coming from, but most locals should be well aware of the species all together." The man placed the cup back onto the table, calmly, maybe to take his point of them being completelly normal sight across. Or then it was just his ordinary way of doing things. Which ever the case, he'd lean back again, slowly, letting the Ranger clear his thoughts before directing him at a more specifying question. "Or is it the fur color you question?"
Sergei wouldn't directly answer the Ranger's questions. He wouldn't be bringing up the government for the time being and wanted to focus on this one subject at the moment.
He was taken away from the Ranger for a brief moment when he could hear a voice near his ear.
"Sergei??" Nothing surprising it was the albino, as if they weren't talking about him already. "Are you ok in there? You've taken a painfully long time..."
Sergei was sure that the canid would keep on asking questions and spamming his earpiece until he'd see that the man was indeed fine.
Well, what a better time to invite a new person to the room.
"Open the door, your point of interest is waiting on the other side." The man switched off the device to hear if the Ranger would agree or if he was going to decline the offer...
As he awoke further, Christofer would slowly start to grasp a bit further on what was going on and what their situation was... Although still mostly in the shadows, he could sence from the other individual that all wasn't right. The look and distant feeling he got from her.... Kallenger didn't seem like she was all there. The boy started to worry. What was wrong? He couldn't bring himself to ask her any questions though, feeling as if it was not good to interrupt her deep cycle of thoughts and it might have been best to just leave her solve them herself...
Luckily for him, the situation would start to ease up again and he was relieved to see at least some sort of positive emotions from the woman. The grin was a nice change, and the boy did blush lightly upon being complemented on his scout's job. It was flattering. She hadn't even seen him do anything useful... Like there he was, again, just sitting still and clutching on the tail somewhat nervously.
"W-Well... Usually I know where I'm going, but..." He'd start nervously, his voice dying down slowly until it became all silent. The boy would pause for a bit, regaining his thoughts and taking on a slightly more serious tone yet still talking somewhat quietly. "I'm not leaving you behind, I don't want you to get lost or be left alone in... here..." He took a break and paused again. "If... If that's what you ment to say..." Christofer tried to soften his words a bit, not trying to see too rebellant. Kallenger was the more experienced one here. Here... Here being a big and important word.
The German had no idea where they were and he did not want to anger Kallenger. What the boy wanted the least now was for the woman to get mad at him and leave him behind, alone... So he'd stay silent for now, listening to what she had to say about the area.
"N-N-Nuclear power plants??" Even the word was enough to get him scared, let alone the thought of it after realizing how dire the situation could be. The boy was now visibly shaking, too afraid to even go look at what might have been waiting for them on the other side of those walls that were the ship around the two. Royanna saying that she didn't know the area all that well didn't help the case either. The boy was basically crying, trying to hold back the sobbing just to seem a bit stronger even if the situation was way too intimidating for him.
They were going to die.
No
They were already dead.
He sat there for a while, trying to calm himself down and try to stop himself from almost crying. He knew that in situations like this there wouldn't really be anything that he could do to help. If Kallenger really thought that the boy was going to be of any help she was wrong. He would die out there. He wasn't ment to survive a meltdown and God knows how close they even were to those things. Heck. He could burn down instantly when he stepped outside.
Nevertheless, there most likely was no turning Royanna's head around, and the woman was prone to somehow be able to ensure Christofer to go out alongside her...
The boy was reluctant on switching to his own clothes because of the predicred radiation outside. Would it really be a good idea to get them contaminated? He would never be able to wear them again. Although... It was likely that they wouldn't even be able to make it out of there... It didn't seem like a huge possibility to him anyway...
In the end, Royanna managed to win him over and he would go change into his actual clothes, feeling a slight warm sensation from feeling his own clothes, familiar and safe, and putting them on himself, feeling more comfortable than he had ever felt. But at the same time as the feeling made him happy and he could experience the strong feeling of joy, he shortly got back to the state of near tears. He was going to die like this...
Kallenger's calmness helped him a little bit to keep himself together and he'd try to stay calm while he listened to her talk. He was hoping that it could distract him from the dead they'd soon see. He'd try to feel at least some other emotion than fear upon facing the inevitable. He'd try... If he would have been aware of his actions outside of his head, the boy would have noticed that he had, in his nervousness, taken a hold of Kallenger's hand and was holding it little shakily.
He lifted his head upon being handed the gun.
"I don't know how it's going to help us. But... If you say so..." The things she had done to the gun were impressive, and she had seriously at least tried to put some toughts onto it, but Cristofer was still unsure... If it was going to be an immediate dead out there... What was the meaning of all this? And even if it somehow miraculously wasn't going to be an immediate dead... What did they need the gun for?
Maybe it was for the best for him to not know for now...
Once they headed outside, the German would request a chance for one last embrace, mostly to boost his comfort levels and to just be able to spend at least a little bit longer with the only other person that was with him. If the request wasn't denied, and even if it was, Christofer would stick to as close as possible to Kallenger, allowing her to move somewhat comfortably still, but there was a possibility of some stressed fur shedding onto whatever she was wearing.
He'd be positively surprised upon not evaporating instantly as they stepped out of the ship. The weather wouldn't bother him either because of the newly developed coat of fur he had. But the sight was sure to make him freeze on place. He was terrified of it and he would have probably stayed there staring at it with his eyes wide and tail between his legs if it weren't for Royanna turning him around to look away from it.
Without any questions asked, the boy would follow closely behind with his grip tightly holding around the handle of the gun.
It was a disaster but they were alive...
Luckily for him, the situation would start to ease up again and he was relieved to see at least some sort of positive emotions from the woman. The grin was a nice change, and the boy did blush lightly upon being complemented on his scout's job. It was flattering. She hadn't even seen him do anything useful... Like there he was, again, just sitting still and clutching on the tail somewhat nervously.
"W-Well... Usually I know where I'm going, but..." He'd start nervously, his voice dying down slowly until it became all silent. The boy would pause for a bit, regaining his thoughts and taking on a slightly more serious tone yet still talking somewhat quietly. "I'm not leaving you behind, I don't want you to get lost or be left alone in... here..." He took a break and paused again. "If... If that's what you ment to say..." Christofer tried to soften his words a bit, not trying to see too rebellant. Kallenger was the more experienced one here. Here... Here being a big and important word.
The German had no idea where they were and he did not want to anger Kallenger. What the boy wanted the least now was for the woman to get mad at him and leave him behind, alone... So he'd stay silent for now, listening to what she had to say about the area.
"N-N-Nuclear power plants??" Even the word was enough to get him scared, let alone the thought of it after realizing how dire the situation could be. The boy was now visibly shaking, too afraid to even go look at what might have been waiting for them on the other side of those walls that were the ship around the two. Royanna saying that she didn't know the area all that well didn't help the case either. The boy was basically crying, trying to hold back the sobbing just to seem a bit stronger even if the situation was way too intimidating for him.
They were going to die.
No
They were already dead.
He sat there for a while, trying to calm himself down and try to stop himself from almost crying. He knew that in situations like this there wouldn't really be anything that he could do to help. If Kallenger really thought that the boy was going to be of any help she was wrong. He would die out there. He wasn't ment to survive a meltdown and God knows how close they even were to those things. Heck. He could burn down instantly when he stepped outside.
Nevertheless, there most likely was no turning Royanna's head around, and the woman was prone to somehow be able to ensure Christofer to go out alongside her...
The boy was reluctant on switching to his own clothes because of the predicred radiation outside. Would it really be a good idea to get them contaminated? He would never be able to wear them again. Although... It was likely that they wouldn't even be able to make it out of there... It didn't seem like a huge possibility to him anyway...
In the end, Royanna managed to win him over and he would go change into his actual clothes, feeling a slight warm sensation from feeling his own clothes, familiar and safe, and putting them on himself, feeling more comfortable than he had ever felt. But at the same time as the feeling made him happy and he could experience the strong feeling of joy, he shortly got back to the state of near tears. He was going to die like this...
Kallenger's calmness helped him a little bit to keep himself together and he'd try to stay calm while he listened to her talk. He was hoping that it could distract him from the dead they'd soon see. He'd try to feel at least some other emotion than fear upon facing the inevitable. He'd try... If he would have been aware of his actions outside of his head, the boy would have noticed that he had, in his nervousness, taken a hold of Kallenger's hand and was holding it little shakily.
He lifted his head upon being handed the gun.
"I don't know how it's going to help us. But... If you say so..." The things she had done to the gun were impressive, and she had seriously at least tried to put some toughts onto it, but Cristofer was still unsure... If it was going to be an immediate dead out there... What was the meaning of all this? And even if it somehow miraculously wasn't going to be an immediate dead... What did they need the gun for?
Maybe it was for the best for him to not know for now...
Once they headed outside, the German would request a chance for one last embrace, mostly to boost his comfort levels and to just be able to spend at least a little bit longer with the only other person that was with him. If the request wasn't denied, and even if it was, Christofer would stick to as close as possible to Kallenger, allowing her to move somewhat comfortably still, but there was a possibility of some stressed fur shedding onto whatever she was wearing.
He'd be positively surprised upon not evaporating instantly as they stepped out of the ship. The weather wouldn't bother him either because of the newly developed coat of fur he had. But the sight was sure to make him freeze on place. He was terrified of it and he would have probably stayed there staring at it with his eyes wide and tail between his legs if it weren't for Royanna turning him around to look away from it.
Without any questions asked, the boy would follow closely behind with his grip tightly holding around the handle of the gun.
It was a disaster but they were alive...
To say the Eoclu was concerned was an understatement.
The prospect of having Ketin join her on a job was nerve-racking. While he had indeed proved that he could handle himself in very dangerous situations, more than once she might add, the idea that he could be used against her or even worst made her sick. He was her responsibility, something she didn't take lightly.
"A friend in Ronin? What are the chances you would stay with this friend until I get back Da'len?" Nirix said, testing the waters. She highly doubted that he would actually stay and that even said friend, existed but still...The thought was nice and Ketin would be kept from danger.
With a sigh and hesitant glance, Nirix decided the only true way she would be sure would be for a test. Once they had entered hyperdrive and Kampfer had departed with them, she set her test in place.
"If you really want to come along, you must first spar with me. No weapons, no tricks, just hand to hand combat." She explained with a small smile. It was meant to appear harmless, a small jest if you will. Though it showed the slight tension held at this idea.
So much for masking her emotions
The prospect of having Ketin join her on a job was nerve-racking. While he had indeed proved that he could handle himself in very dangerous situations, more than once she might add, the idea that he could be used against her or even worst made her sick. He was her responsibility, something she didn't take lightly.
"A friend in Ronin? What are the chances you would stay with this friend until I get back Da'len?" Nirix said, testing the waters. She highly doubted that he would actually stay and that even said friend, existed but still...The thought was nice and Ketin would be kept from danger.
With a sigh and hesitant glance, Nirix decided the only true way she would be sure would be for a test. Once they had entered hyperdrive and Kampfer had departed with them, she set her test in place.
"If you really want to come along, you must first spar with me. No weapons, no tricks, just hand to hand combat." She explained with a small smile. It was meant to appear harmless, a small jest if you will. Though it showed the slight tension held at this idea.
So much for masking her emotions
Sergei then could hear something that was supposed to be a sigh of frustration coming from the innards of the Mad Ranger's mask. Taking out his Revolver - making sure to make Sergei see that he was unloading it - as he started to fumble with it, the Ranger looked sideways as Sergei answered questions with more questions. The Masked Man knew he would be on this kind of kind of a long while. "If your dog-friend's species is a common sight from where you came from, then I'll be wasting my time with him. Heck, he even doesn't look like them, to be honest." - It was easy for Sergei to notice that the Masked Man sounded a tad nervous, stammering his voice as he spoke those words, like he tried to cover something from under the veil. In fact, there was many interesting things to notice about the Ranger's appearance and behavior alike.
Now that he was a bit more assured that Dmitri wasn't what he was looking for, the Masked Man let out what appeared to be a grunt, leaning against a wall nearby, reinserting the bullets unto his weapon's cylinder and stashing it back on the holster. Slowly, the hopes of having his quest coming to an end right there at Earth VII were fading away as the truth about Dmitri's appearance turned out to be nothing more than a sick coincidence. Dmitri, Sergei and anything else in that underground bunker-base were proving to be rather disposable for the Ranger, his focus on getting out of that planet came back as his main source of concern at the moment. Yet, something was left answered by Sergei...
"Yes, it could be about his pale-white color, but I think I'll pass that for the time being. You haven't told me about that government of yours, though. We may have an enemy in common, bud."
Far into Earth VII's high-orbit, the same distortion akin to the spy drones sent to gather info on Kampfer's Forces appeared. Yet, it was focused on a single point rather than in a wide area like before. Not many seconds after the anomaly could be detected, a single personal spacecraft apparently popped into reality itself. It appeared to be a light personnel carrier, a somehow bigger version of a hybrid combat fighter outfitted with cargo big enough to store fuel, arms and a small amount of personnel. That kind of vehicle were widely used as search and rescue operations, specially because it was equipped with latest technology of communication and surveillance devices.
Whoever held the position of commanding officer in that hybrid fighter didn't think twice. The order was to go straight into low-orbit and pierce Earth VII's atmosphere as fast as it could, more precisely, towards the point where the Mad Ranger was last seen; The Jungle. They were quite aware of the fleet stationed nearby and the small war going on the planet so there was no spare time for them...
Now that he was a bit more assured that Dmitri wasn't what he was looking for, the Masked Man let out what appeared to be a grunt, leaning against a wall nearby, reinserting the bullets unto his weapon's cylinder and stashing it back on the holster. Slowly, the hopes of having his quest coming to an end right there at Earth VII were fading away as the truth about Dmitri's appearance turned out to be nothing more than a sick coincidence. Dmitri, Sergei and anything else in that underground bunker-base were proving to be rather disposable for the Ranger, his focus on getting out of that planet came back as his main source of concern at the moment. Yet, something was left answered by Sergei...
"Yes, it could be about his pale-white color, but I think I'll pass that for the time being. You haven't told me about that government of yours, though. We may have an enemy in common, bud."
Far into Earth VII's high-orbit, the same distortion akin to the spy drones sent to gather info on Kampfer's Forces appeared. Yet, it was focused on a single point rather than in a wide area like before. Not many seconds after the anomaly could be detected, a single personal spacecraft apparently popped into reality itself. It appeared to be a light personnel carrier, a somehow bigger version of a hybrid combat fighter outfitted with cargo big enough to store fuel, arms and a small amount of personnel. That kind of vehicle were widely used as search and rescue operations, specially because it was equipped with latest technology of communication and surveillance devices.
Whoever held the position of commanding officer in that hybrid fighter didn't think twice. The order was to go straight into low-orbit and pierce Earth VII's atmosphere as fast as it could, more precisely, towards the point where the Mad Ranger was last seen; The Jungle. They were quite aware of the fleet stationed nearby and the small war going on the planet so there was no spare time for them...
Royanna Kallenger was mostly oblivious to the fact that her hand had been taken, but she was well aware of the sudden despair that had come over her friend. The descent would begin easy – as they rounded the low crest of the hill a better view of the slope was given – more like a steep meadow than anything, and it would be no more difficult to descend than a park stroll. Past that, another rise obscured the details, but it didn’t seem too bad yet. Far beyond, the forests could be seen – it appeared they might be forced to tread them soon, but no assumptions.
She had yet to speak again, merely indulging her companion’s silent request for embrace and holding onto him for a good minute or two, and allowing the sobering silence inflicted upon them by the terrible clouds to linger as if in respect to the masses of recently deceased – though she tried not to think about that.
Surprisingly, the weather was cold and with a bitter, sharp wind-chill, but not unbearable. One might have expected hellish heat and flesh-cooking radiation, but they were at too great a distance from ground-zero.
She could tell by the way he glanced to the ominous clouds behind them that he was worried about just that.
“The radiation won’t have any effect on us for a good few days at the least.” she said, maintaining a relatively casual, conversational tone in order to further calm the frightened Christofer. “If I know Ardellan engineers they would have put a number of dampening fields surrounding each plant, to lessen the effects of a potential meltdown. Obviously the inner measures failed, but I think the outermost fields would have stayed up, at least at partial strength. That, plus – take a look up ahead – it’s all downhill from here. Within an hour or two we’ll have the bulk of all those canyons and mountains behind us.” This was true – the expansive steppes and plateaus and craggy cliffs that they had just barely kept from crashing into separated them from the far off detonations and would act as excellent shields as long as they were below the peak height.
A little smile, recalling past memories that might further help keep things as easy as she could hope for with him. “Nah, don’t need to worry about that. Hell, one time in training I got hit full-blast with a facefull of gamma radiation. It’s what I got for thinking myself an expert mechanic at seventeen, thought I could modify the power core of my mentor’s ship and make it more efficient, earn some brownie-points and a pat on the head. Don’t remember what I did wrong, but it was a very unpleasant experience. Spent almost a week trying to get over the sickness – but I got over it with no long-term effects. If I can take a power core’s worth of radiation at point-blank in the face and get over it, I think you and I can handle some background radiation at a distance of a hundred or two miles, huh?”
They came to a short drop, where rolling plain descended a sudden six feet and then continued. The whole landscape it seemed had been formed from the remnants of a whole number of ancient earthquakes. It proved little trouble to descend the drop – Royanna was careful as to not go crashing and hitting her wounded shoulder, and they would make it down fine in a matter of seconds. Ahead, more easy terrain.
Another matter that had been bugging her returned to mind, and she decided to address another of the boy’s prior insecurities. She knew he felt useless, that seemed to be a common theme with him. With a sober undertone, she said “No, the radiation isn’t what we need to worry about. The danger is in whatever might be living around here. Personally I doubt there’s anything dangerous, but on the slim chance there is something or someone dangerous I’ll be damn glad I’ve got you to back me up. I’d be in seriously dire straits if I didn’t have you here with me – and I’m confident that if you do need to use that gun, you’ll do just fine. I know a good soldier when I see one.”
I knew twenty, she thought bitterly.
Some small part of her wanted to express her appreciation for his concern over the possibility of separating, but she decided against it. Not a very military way to act…As if she was even part of a military anymore. There was still the lingering issue of what awaited her back in the Capitol City. High-Commander Malbec had some words for her and she was still convinced that they would be spoken from behind the barrel of a very big gun. Or maybe she would just be sent off to some obscure prison where the Empire sent those that they wanted simply to go away? No, she couldn’t be thinking about this. What mattered was now.
Then, after another long period of silence – they rounded the next hill and found a steeper series of small, rocky ledges which would prove to act not unlike a very scattered staircase, and seemed to be stable enough to traverse - Royanna said with some lightheartnedness “Cheer up kid. We’ve already proven that we work well as a team. As long as you don’t go running off on me we’ll be able to handle anything that comes our way, I’m confident of that.”
A miniature valley at the base of the rocky descent, upon which the opposite end proved similar. It was when they had reached the top of this next small precipice that it became apparent that their course would require some editing. There was a very sharp drop quite suddenly, and it was far too long a fall to risk trying to climb down. Luckily, there seemed to be something of a natural path running along the edge of this cliff face, the bottom of which was a carpet of jungle trees and evergreens. They would be moving southwest now, rather than only south – but that didn’t matter.
What did matter was that it became further apparent that the path was not a natural one at all – it was a very old and rarely used trail, and it lead to a very small building that could be seen at the bottom of an oncoming slope.
“Hey, stash that inside your jacket for now.” Royanna said, having just thought of the idea. “It didn’t occur to me but we’re not in an active combat zone and I don’t want anyone thinking we’re here to start a fight.” Apparently the fact that they were most certainly going to go explore the little building needed no words.
It was an old radio tower – or some kind of wireless relay point, at any rate. The little white building was only slightly larger than a mobile home, and from it sprouted a great, and very rusty communications tower. The thing creaked gently with age, though there did not seem to be any danger of collapse.
Royanna poked her head through the doorway, which had been left open. It was something of a bunker, and nature had largely reclaimed it. The air was damp, the floor overgrown with moss, vines encroaching through windows that had long since broken. She half expected to see a skeleton dressed in military fatigues sitting in the chair – luckily there was no such spectacle. There were consoles lining the wall, obviously used long ago to operate the radio. The metal was browned with rust and vegetation had sprouted liberally among the old dials and broken screens. There were some shelves, but nothing of use.
But when Royanna saw the emblem on the wall, she froze. She hadn’t seen that emblem since she had been in classes studying Imperial history. It was the signet of the Galactic Empire – the stylized G and E – but instead of being locked together in a symmetrical diamond shape, it was asymmetrical, with the E sprouting from the top and creating a more polygonal shape. It was the signet of the Old Empire – the regime which had first brought the Empire into power. The one that the monster Devil Eye had been a part of when he committed his atrocities and war crimes. This old bunker, she surmised, might have been used in one of the initial battles, when the Empire was just starting to grow from an underground enclave into a real power.
It was interesting, but held no other significance at the moment. There was nothing useful in the old bunker and so Royanna would proceed out and continue down the pathway, gradually descending with the occasional loose rock, and a dense forest sprawling out below.
“Oh, sure!” Kete said with a dismissive wave of the hand, sounding – as usual – so genuine that it came off as almost artificial. “We’ll have a lot of catching up to do so I’m sure I won’t be in your hair too much.” A goofy, reassuring smile as he looked up at her, continuing absentmindedly brushing the remnants of ash from his coat and face – more just to occupy his hands than anything.
The way he perked up at the mention of alcohol in the fridge was somewhere between adorable and deeply concerning. It seemed he was just about to go enthusiastically peruse the supply, but was stopped when a rather unusual suggestion caught him off guard. He seemed to consider this for a moment, looking down, scratching at an ear. “Spar, huh? Well I’m probably a little out of practice but I guess it’s important to stay active during hyperdrive trips. At least if what I read in that magazine was true. Okay~!” There was, conveniently, a sizable plot of open space toward the center of the ship’s living quarters that would do perfectly.
He shrugged off his coat, leaving him in a red short-sleeve shirt and making the absolute myriad of scars that marred his arms visible. It was a flaw in Kete that he usually forgot about them – granted, they were light enough to not appear overwhelming or gruesome, but they were there. All shapes and sizes – far too many for someone of Kete’s apparent age. Had that mote of trivia been revealed yet? Damn the muddled thoughts of coexisting minds – he needed to keep better track of these things. Hanging the old, beloved coat on a chair some distance away, he sauntered back to the designated ‘combat zone’ and promptly took up a rather humorous combat stance – something one might expect from an old western. Not over the top, but surely he couldn’t be serious. Given his expression it would appear he had no idea what he was getting himself into. Sure there was no legitimate or serious danger, but still! “I should warn you, I tend to have super good luck when it comes to this stuff. I think the ears must have a similar effect to rabbits’ feet.” At no point had he showed any sign of being aware of Nirix’s tension. Oblivious, as oblivious as he seemed to be about everything.
But the silly stance would be whisked away with the first motion.
It was the skill that had taken him the longest by far to master, because in combat he and his opponent had to become a single entity. He was both of them, moving together in the rhythm of two minds, moving like clockwork, each movement an equal and opposite reaction to the next. The worst part about it was that it did not appear to be intensely honed reflexes, as in the case of any seasoned fighter or the Eoclu herself. Reflexes involved predicting the possible method of attack and then reacting accordingly – but Kete did not display this. He was fluid. Eyes did not dart about in assessment of the situation from second to second, but seemed – what, distracted? He was like two magnets being pushed together – they seemed completely unable to make contact, as if each were a force that was keeping the other at length. If a person tried to clap their hands together while constantly dodging the contact with one hand, they simply would not clap. Similarly, Kete’s incredible, seemingly predictive – or was it luck, or skill, or what? None of it made sense – had a sort of dampening effect on the sparring. He was the hand that dodged, she was the hand that attacked, but both hands were his own and he would have to be obnoxiously clumsy to bungle that up.
Kete was, in this way, the ultimate enemy – he who could predict every motion, every feint, everything – because he was both people in a fluid harmony of motion.
But he did not strike back. Even with his impossible deftness at avoidance, there would be very few opportunities to effectively return fire, very few openings given by a fighter who had at least three times his experience – yet when the rare and precious opportunity did present itself, he didn’t take it, didn’t show any attempt at a strike or exploit of an opening. Nothing. Like trying to catch a fly – the wind from the movement always blew it out of reach, but it never had any intention of striking in return.
And perhaps the worst part? He could do this for hours. It was as if he was determined to simply wear his opponent out – he seemed to have boundless energy, barely exerting himself at all. In reality, this was a carefully maintained efficiency of energy output - it was tiring to fight with reflex since the brain was working overtime to keep muscles tensed and ready for anything, to analyze the combat situation and adapt, adapt, adapt. But there was no need for this in Kete – all he had to do was maintain the energy needed to match the speed of movement because his opponent’s brain and senses were doing all the hard work for him. One could do anything for longer if they weren’t stressed, and Kete was infuriatingly unstressed. Something of a feat of inner control.
It would go on like that for as long as Nirix wanted to keep it up. He wasn’t taking this seriously – he couldn’t be. Was he even paying attention? It certainly didn’t seem that way. Was he merely toying with her? She had managed some very, very close misses – but misses nonetheless. Kete was far from invincible, and tended to operate in extremes – his eye granted him incredible, nearly omnipotent abilities, but if that wire was cut it would all come to a halt, and he would be nothing but a foxkin halfie with some pretty good training. It was the same here – he proved to be completely untouchable – but all it would take was the slightest slip-up and there would be no middle ground.
Was the brat smiling? Grinning maybe. Was he finding this amusing? Was he trying to get under her skin? Silently antagonizing her, trying to manipulate her into a slip? Mostly it appeared that he just wasn’t really focused, which was probably just as frustrating. Was he overconfident? Was he surprised at his own incredible luck?
Or maybe he was just Kete...Being Kete.
She had yet to speak again, merely indulging her companion’s silent request for embrace and holding onto him for a good minute or two, and allowing the sobering silence inflicted upon them by the terrible clouds to linger as if in respect to the masses of recently deceased – though she tried not to think about that.
Surprisingly, the weather was cold and with a bitter, sharp wind-chill, but not unbearable. One might have expected hellish heat and flesh-cooking radiation, but they were at too great a distance from ground-zero.
She could tell by the way he glanced to the ominous clouds behind them that he was worried about just that.
“The radiation won’t have any effect on us for a good few days at the least.” she said, maintaining a relatively casual, conversational tone in order to further calm the frightened Christofer. “If I know Ardellan engineers they would have put a number of dampening fields surrounding each plant, to lessen the effects of a potential meltdown. Obviously the inner measures failed, but I think the outermost fields would have stayed up, at least at partial strength. That, plus – take a look up ahead – it’s all downhill from here. Within an hour or two we’ll have the bulk of all those canyons and mountains behind us.” This was true – the expansive steppes and plateaus and craggy cliffs that they had just barely kept from crashing into separated them from the far off detonations and would act as excellent shields as long as they were below the peak height.
A little smile, recalling past memories that might further help keep things as easy as she could hope for with him. “Nah, don’t need to worry about that. Hell, one time in training I got hit full-blast with a facefull of gamma radiation. It’s what I got for thinking myself an expert mechanic at seventeen, thought I could modify the power core of my mentor’s ship and make it more efficient, earn some brownie-points and a pat on the head. Don’t remember what I did wrong, but it was a very unpleasant experience. Spent almost a week trying to get over the sickness – but I got over it with no long-term effects. If I can take a power core’s worth of radiation at point-blank in the face and get over it, I think you and I can handle some background radiation at a distance of a hundred or two miles, huh?”
They came to a short drop, where rolling plain descended a sudden six feet and then continued. The whole landscape it seemed had been formed from the remnants of a whole number of ancient earthquakes. It proved little trouble to descend the drop – Royanna was careful as to not go crashing and hitting her wounded shoulder, and they would make it down fine in a matter of seconds. Ahead, more easy terrain.
Another matter that had been bugging her returned to mind, and she decided to address another of the boy’s prior insecurities. She knew he felt useless, that seemed to be a common theme with him. With a sober undertone, she said “No, the radiation isn’t what we need to worry about. The danger is in whatever might be living around here. Personally I doubt there’s anything dangerous, but on the slim chance there is something or someone dangerous I’ll be damn glad I’ve got you to back me up. I’d be in seriously dire straits if I didn’t have you here with me – and I’m confident that if you do need to use that gun, you’ll do just fine. I know a good soldier when I see one.”
I knew twenty, she thought bitterly.
Some small part of her wanted to express her appreciation for his concern over the possibility of separating, but she decided against it. Not a very military way to act…As if she was even part of a military anymore. There was still the lingering issue of what awaited her back in the Capitol City. High-Commander Malbec had some words for her and she was still convinced that they would be spoken from behind the barrel of a very big gun. Or maybe she would just be sent off to some obscure prison where the Empire sent those that they wanted simply to go away? No, she couldn’t be thinking about this. What mattered was now.
Then, after another long period of silence – they rounded the next hill and found a steeper series of small, rocky ledges which would prove to act not unlike a very scattered staircase, and seemed to be stable enough to traverse - Royanna said with some lightheartnedness “Cheer up kid. We’ve already proven that we work well as a team. As long as you don’t go running off on me we’ll be able to handle anything that comes our way, I’m confident of that.”
A miniature valley at the base of the rocky descent, upon which the opposite end proved similar. It was when they had reached the top of this next small precipice that it became apparent that their course would require some editing. There was a very sharp drop quite suddenly, and it was far too long a fall to risk trying to climb down. Luckily, there seemed to be something of a natural path running along the edge of this cliff face, the bottom of which was a carpet of jungle trees and evergreens. They would be moving southwest now, rather than only south – but that didn’t matter.
What did matter was that it became further apparent that the path was not a natural one at all – it was a very old and rarely used trail, and it lead to a very small building that could be seen at the bottom of an oncoming slope.
“Hey, stash that inside your jacket for now.” Royanna said, having just thought of the idea. “It didn’t occur to me but we’re not in an active combat zone and I don’t want anyone thinking we’re here to start a fight.” Apparently the fact that they were most certainly going to go explore the little building needed no words.
It was an old radio tower – or some kind of wireless relay point, at any rate. The little white building was only slightly larger than a mobile home, and from it sprouted a great, and very rusty communications tower. The thing creaked gently with age, though there did not seem to be any danger of collapse.
Royanna poked her head through the doorway, which had been left open. It was something of a bunker, and nature had largely reclaimed it. The air was damp, the floor overgrown with moss, vines encroaching through windows that had long since broken. She half expected to see a skeleton dressed in military fatigues sitting in the chair – luckily there was no such spectacle. There were consoles lining the wall, obviously used long ago to operate the radio. The metal was browned with rust and vegetation had sprouted liberally among the old dials and broken screens. There were some shelves, but nothing of use.
But when Royanna saw the emblem on the wall, she froze. She hadn’t seen that emblem since she had been in classes studying Imperial history. It was the signet of the Galactic Empire – the stylized G and E – but instead of being locked together in a symmetrical diamond shape, it was asymmetrical, with the E sprouting from the top and creating a more polygonal shape. It was the signet of the Old Empire – the regime which had first brought the Empire into power. The one that the monster Devil Eye had been a part of when he committed his atrocities and war crimes. This old bunker, she surmised, might have been used in one of the initial battles, when the Empire was just starting to grow from an underground enclave into a real power.
It was interesting, but held no other significance at the moment. There was nothing useful in the old bunker and so Royanna would proceed out and continue down the pathway, gradually descending with the occasional loose rock, and a dense forest sprawling out below.
“Oh, sure!” Kete said with a dismissive wave of the hand, sounding – as usual – so genuine that it came off as almost artificial. “We’ll have a lot of catching up to do so I’m sure I won’t be in your hair too much.” A goofy, reassuring smile as he looked up at her, continuing absentmindedly brushing the remnants of ash from his coat and face – more just to occupy his hands than anything.
The way he perked up at the mention of alcohol in the fridge was somewhere between adorable and deeply concerning. It seemed he was just about to go enthusiastically peruse the supply, but was stopped when a rather unusual suggestion caught him off guard. He seemed to consider this for a moment, looking down, scratching at an ear. “Spar, huh? Well I’m probably a little out of practice but I guess it’s important to stay active during hyperdrive trips. At least if what I read in that magazine was true. Okay~!” There was, conveniently, a sizable plot of open space toward the center of the ship’s living quarters that would do perfectly.
He shrugged off his coat, leaving him in a red short-sleeve shirt and making the absolute myriad of scars that marred his arms visible. It was a flaw in Kete that he usually forgot about them – granted, they were light enough to not appear overwhelming or gruesome, but they were there. All shapes and sizes – far too many for someone of Kete’s apparent age. Had that mote of trivia been revealed yet? Damn the muddled thoughts of coexisting minds – he needed to keep better track of these things. Hanging the old, beloved coat on a chair some distance away, he sauntered back to the designated ‘combat zone’ and promptly took up a rather humorous combat stance – something one might expect from an old western. Not over the top, but surely he couldn’t be serious. Given his expression it would appear he had no idea what he was getting himself into. Sure there was no legitimate or serious danger, but still! “I should warn you, I tend to have super good luck when it comes to this stuff. I think the ears must have a similar effect to rabbits’ feet.” At no point had he showed any sign of being aware of Nirix’s tension. Oblivious, as oblivious as he seemed to be about everything.
But the silly stance would be whisked away with the first motion.
It was the skill that had taken him the longest by far to master, because in combat he and his opponent had to become a single entity. He was both of them, moving together in the rhythm of two minds, moving like clockwork, each movement an equal and opposite reaction to the next. The worst part about it was that it did not appear to be intensely honed reflexes, as in the case of any seasoned fighter or the Eoclu herself. Reflexes involved predicting the possible method of attack and then reacting accordingly – but Kete did not display this. He was fluid. Eyes did not dart about in assessment of the situation from second to second, but seemed – what, distracted? He was like two magnets being pushed together – they seemed completely unable to make contact, as if each were a force that was keeping the other at length. If a person tried to clap their hands together while constantly dodging the contact with one hand, they simply would not clap. Similarly, Kete’s incredible, seemingly predictive – or was it luck, or skill, or what? None of it made sense – had a sort of dampening effect on the sparring. He was the hand that dodged, she was the hand that attacked, but both hands were his own and he would have to be obnoxiously clumsy to bungle that up.
Kete was, in this way, the ultimate enemy – he who could predict every motion, every feint, everything – because he was both people in a fluid harmony of motion.
But he did not strike back. Even with his impossible deftness at avoidance, there would be very few opportunities to effectively return fire, very few openings given by a fighter who had at least three times his experience – yet when the rare and precious opportunity did present itself, he didn’t take it, didn’t show any attempt at a strike or exploit of an opening. Nothing. Like trying to catch a fly – the wind from the movement always blew it out of reach, but it never had any intention of striking in return.
And perhaps the worst part? He could do this for hours. It was as if he was determined to simply wear his opponent out – he seemed to have boundless energy, barely exerting himself at all. In reality, this was a carefully maintained efficiency of energy output - it was tiring to fight with reflex since the brain was working overtime to keep muscles tensed and ready for anything, to analyze the combat situation and adapt, adapt, adapt. But there was no need for this in Kete – all he had to do was maintain the energy needed to match the speed of movement because his opponent’s brain and senses were doing all the hard work for him. One could do anything for longer if they weren’t stressed, and Kete was infuriatingly unstressed. Something of a feat of inner control.
It would go on like that for as long as Nirix wanted to keep it up. He wasn’t taking this seriously – he couldn’t be. Was he even paying attention? It certainly didn’t seem that way. Was he merely toying with her? She had managed some very, very close misses – but misses nonetheless. Kete was far from invincible, and tended to operate in extremes – his eye granted him incredible, nearly omnipotent abilities, but if that wire was cut it would all come to a halt, and he would be nothing but a foxkin halfie with some pretty good training. It was the same here – he proved to be completely untouchable – but all it would take was the slightest slip-up and there would be no middle ground.
Was the brat smiling? Grinning maybe. Was he finding this amusing? Was he trying to get under her skin? Silently antagonizing her, trying to manipulate her into a slip? Mostly it appeared that he just wasn’t really focused, which was probably just as frustrating. Was he overconfident? Was he surprised at his own incredible luck?
Or maybe he was just Kete...Being Kete.
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