Re:Finally, a place to whore my work ;-)
Here’s part 3… 😀
“R-right,” Rob uttered, standing up and following the bird-man out of his quarters.
Rob stepped out onto the bridge, and was unsurprised to find Leanne sat in the pilot’s seat, clutching the steering column as she had done prior to take-off. Recognising the determined look of concentration on the twenty-four year-old captain’s face, Rob quietly took his seat behind her, not wanting to break her near trance-like state. Immortal or not, he didn’t exactly relish the idea of spending fifteen years in a Martian gulag. Rob watched as Rhopeth took his seat next to him, and as Sollain and Anna silently returned to the bridge, also taking their seats.
“Everyone buckled in?” Leanne asked, and was greeted by a general murmur of confirmation. “Good. The g-forces are going to be a lot lighter this time around but I don’t want anyone to be flying around the bridge and putting me off. Everyone set?” Leanne barely paused before continuing her monologue, not giving anyone a chance to respond. “Okay then! Here we go!”
The Griffin’s engines ignited, thrusting it toward the magnetic rails at over a thousand kilometres per second. On the bridge, everyone held their breath as Leanne guided the small craft between the two iron tracks. Rob was especially nervous, expecting the Martian security office to broadcast an order to surrender over the loudspeakers at any moment. However, the request did not come, and just before the Griffin reached the end of the rails, Rob’s body was jerked forward in his chair as the Griffin rapidly decelerated, before being thrust back into his seat as it accelerated once again, the magnetism of the rails forcing the ship to accelerate through the light barrier. Rob watched as a swirling grey mist replaced the streaks of light, indicating that finally, the Griffin was cruising at a speed several times faster than light.
“Okay, people,” Leanne stated, activating the automatic pilot and rising from her chair, “we are now cruising at a speed of 2.7 billion kilometres per second on a direct course to Vega nine. We should get there in about five days, so until then,” Leanne simply shrugged, thinking of what to say. “Carry on, I guess.” Nodding in agreement, the four crewmembers all rose from their seats and headed toward the exit of the bridge. “Rob,” Leanne continued, halting Rob’s exit, “wait up a sec.” Rob nodded, and headed back toward where he had been sitting just a few seconds earlier. Leanne eased herself into Rhopeth’s seat, making sure to dust it off first, and began to study Rob’s face. After a few seconds, Rob started to grin, nervously.
“What?” He asked, chuckling a little at the attention Leanne was giving him.
“I’m just trying to figure out,” the young captain said, “whether I’m staring at the face of a genius, a madman, or simply a lovesick puppy.”
“What d’you reckon at the moment?” Rob asked, genuinely curious as to what Leanne’s opinion of him was.
“I’m not sure,” she confessed. “There’s definitely a hint of something in those eyes. Whether it’s genius or insanity, I just don’t know. However, option number 3 is way out in front at the moment.” Leanne let out a little chuckle before she continued. “I’ve never seen you so badly bitten, Rob, and this time round, you’ve never even met the girl.”
“This isn’t like the other times,” Rob confessed, “this time round, it’s different. Don’t ask me how I know, I just do.”
“You said the same thing about that Minort girl, if I recall rightly,” Leanne reminded Rob. “And that blonde from Pittsburgh, what was her name again?”
“Amanda,” Rob said, smiling at the memory of the seven weeks he spent with the young woman the previous summer. Rob’s smile widened, however, when his thoughts turned to the Vorren girl who had been haunting his dreams. “Sheli is different,” Rob said with a conviction Leanne rarely heard in his voice. “Different even from the ones who were different themselves, if that makes any sense.”
“Yeah,” Leanne said, grasping the idea Rob was trying to convey, “I think so. Well, I guess that in a few months’ time, we’ll find out whether it’s true or not!”
“That’s right,” Rob said, looking forward to finally entering Vorren territory, even though he knew he was in for a hell of a wait…
Rob returned to his quarters an hour later to find Sollain standing outside, clutching an electronic notepad in his clawed hand.
“Sollain,” Rob said, acknowledging the giant alien’s presence.
“I have the information you wanted,” Sollain quietly hissed toward Rob. “About that Vorren name.”
“So soon?” Rob asked, surprised. “Thanks!” Rob went to take the notepad from Sollain’s hand, but the alien simply raised his arm so that it was well beyond Rob’s reach.
“I have one question, however,” Sollain said, as Rob futilely attempted to grab the pad, “why is this name so important? I know we’re heading into Vorren space, and I know that Sheli is a Vorren name, and I know that you’re the brains behind this whole idea. So, why is this name so important?”
“She asked me to come to her,” Rob said, after pausing to think about his answer. “She asks, and I go. That’s all there is to it.” Rob paused for a second, staring into Sollain’s slit-like eyes, before the alien nodded, humbly, and handed Rob the pad.
“The information,” Sollain said, before walking off down the walkway toward his quarters. Eagerly, Rob entered his cabin and laid down on his bed, studying the pad as thoroughly as he could.
“Sheli,” Rob began, mulling over in his mind the forename of the girl with whom he had become obsessed. “‘Sheli,'” he read from the notepad, “‘a name common to the upper-middle echelons of the warrior caste, typically bestowed upon the daughter of a captain or a commodore.’ She’ll be plenty rich, then.” Rob grinned to himself, before continuing his reading. “‘The name is derived from ancient Vorren, and is approximately 7000 years old. Its original meaning is believed to have meant “princess” or “figurehead”. The term given to such figures in ancient Vorren warrior myths are Shayali , from which the modern name is derived.'” Rob mulled the etymology of the word around in his mind for a while, his thoughts filled with images of Sheli, both on the cliff top, and in the grand ballroom. As he gradually drifted off to sleep, Rob’s head was filled with an image of the girl’s piercing golden eyes staring straight into his…
Rob awoke to find himself lying, shirtless, on the side of a hill, staring down on a crystal clear lake on a beautiful summer’s morning. He stared down to his right, and was not surprised to find Sheli lying there, snuggled up against him, her long hair blowing in the light breeze. Rob gently placed one of his arms around Sheli’s waist, holding her even closer into him than she had been previously.
“An untouched world,” the beautiful young woman said, as she smoothed out some of the ruffles that had appeared in her long, loose cotton dress. “The way nature intended. The way God intended. No machines. No governments. No war. Just us, surrounded by natural beauty.” As Rob stared at Sheli’s slender frame, a small bird, resembling a terrestrial sparrow, landed on Sheli’s bare shoulder. Rob put his finger out, and the bird gratefully hopped onto it, tweeting as it did so. Sheli let out a little giggle as the bird hopped around on Rob’s finger for a bit before finally flying off. As Sheli laughed, Rob found himself staring into the young woman’s face, totally enamoured with her stunning looks. Sheli stared back, equally entranced with Rob.
“I love you, Sheli,” Rob whispered into the young woman’s ear.
“I love you too, Rob,” Sheli whispered, almost quivering with nervousness. They leaned their heads closer, until their lips were almost touching, when they suddenly heard a sound coming from behind them. As one, they stared up to the top of the hill they were lying on, and Sheli let out an audible gasp as she was confronted by the sight of 250 heavily armed Pallatian warriors charging toward them, letting out the most blood-curdling war cry Rob had ever heard…
Rob awoke to find himself thrashing about in his bed, almost as if he were having some kind of seizure. After taking several deep breaths to calm himself down, Rob walked over to the window in his cabin, and reminded himself that it was, after all, just a dream, the same one he’d had the past five nights he’d been travelling to Vega Nine. Soon, however, they would be arriving at the colony, which, despite falling within Earth’s jurisdiction, had it’s fair share of alien colonists, including, Rob was very pleased to hear, almost three thousand Vorrens. He doubted very much that one of those three thousand would actually be Sheli herself, but he was sure that at least some of them would be of the same caste as Sheli, maybe even knowing the young woman…
Rob stepped onto the bridge of the Griffin, catching Leanne in the middle of her preparations to decelerate the Griffin to sub-light speeds.
“One hundred and thirty-one light years from Earth, eh, Rob?” Leanne asked, almost rhetorically.
“I guess so,” Rob replied, not fully understanding Leanne’s question. “When do we reach Vega?”
“Forty-five minutes,” Leanne replied. “We need to time it just right, we don’t want to be stranded in the middle of deep space with no rails to help us get back to civilisation, do we?”
“Does that happen often?” Rob asked, genuinely concerned.
“Rarely,” Leanne confessed, “but that’s not to say it’s not unheard of. When I was in the military, we kept getting reports of ships, which were thought lost several years prior, wandering into firing ranges in an attempt to get back home.”
“What happened to them?”
“We just escorted them off our property and sent them on their way,” Leanne said. “Don’t worry, though,” the young captain continued, trying to reassure Rob. “Only about 1 in every 20 000 ships goes missing in interstellar space.”
“Great,” Rob said, far from convinced by Leanne’s speech.
“Well,” Leanne said, looking at the clock on her instrument panel, “looks like we’re approaching Vega. We should be there in thirty-five minutes. Do me a favour and get everyone up here, will you, Rob?”
“Sure,” Rob said, somewhat nervously, as he left the bridge, looking for his crewmates.
Just over half an hour later, the Griffin re-materialised in normal space, and watching from the small craft’s bridge, Rob saw a small turquoise dot start to grow bigger and bigger in the middle of the bridge’s front portal.
“Vega Nine, everyone,” Leanne stated, pointing at the growing dot. “Home to species from all across the galaxy. We’ll be docking at one of their orbital tethers in about ninety minutes, so if you have anything you want to take down with you, to sell or to trade, now is the time to gather it up.”
“Are we actually going to be paying for these docking privileges this time?” Rob asked Leanne, allowing a little hint of condescension to creep into his voice.
“Only by virtue of the fact that it’s cheaper than splurging on extra fuel for landing and take-off,” Leanne retorted. “Do you have everything you need, Rob?”
“Sollain’s provided me with all the information he could find pertaining to the warrior caste,” Rob informed his captain. “Hopefully, someone down there should be able to recognise Sheli if I describe her to them.”
“‘Hopefully’, ‘should’ and ‘if’ all in one sentence,” Leanne retorted, sarcastically. Rob simply nodded, knowing what she meant.
“I know,” he said, “it’s a long shot, but it is my first shot. It’s not like these’ll be the only Vorrens I’m gonna meet.” Leanne nodded- they were still only at the start of their journey.
“Best get everything packed and ready,” Leanne informed Rob. “We’ll be docking soon.” Rob nodded, before heading off toward his quarters, leaving Leanne alone on her bridge.
A mere two hours later, the Griffin had docked with one of the long, thin cables extending over a thousand miles above the surface of the planet, connecting the world to an artificial ring, which hovered above the planet’s equator, day and night. Also attached to the cable was a small elevator car, which was cutting down through the planet’s atmosphere at speeds of almost 300 mph. On board this car, Leanne, Rob, Anna and Sollain were sat, restrained into their seats by tough leather-like belts that protected them from the effects of the turbulent atmosphere, which was shaking the car around on it’s tether.
“Are we nearly there yet?” Anna asked, her mind, not to mention her stomach, being somewhat troubled by the constant shaking of the car.
“Just another hour and a half,” Leanne responded. “Unless, of course, you’d fancy going faster.”
“An hour and a half?” Anna replied, trying to sound confident and optimistic. “That’s hardly any time at all!” However, there was no disguising the nervous grimace on Anna’s face.
“That’s the spirit!” Leanne exclaimed, as the car plunged ever further into the atmosphere…
Ninety minutes later, the car stopped shaking as it passed between two magnetic plates, similar to the ones that the Griffin used to propel itself through the light barrier. The car started to gently sway back and forth, before finally coming to a halt at the bottom of the cable. Breathing a collective sigh of relief, Rob, Leanne, Anna and Sollain stepped off the car, all of them (with the exception of Sollain) somewhat wobbly on their feet following their extra-long free fall.
“We’ll meet back here in eight hours,” Leanne announced to her crew. “If you find any good restaurants then let the rest of us know so we can meet up for lunch. In the meantime, Rob, Sollain, you go and gather information about this Sheli woman. Anna, you’re with me, we’ll be hitting the hardware stores, see if there’s anything we can use on the Griffin. Everyone clear on what they’ve got to do?” Rob, Anna and Sollain all nodded at Leanne, who simply smiled back at the three of them. “Good. See you two around lunchtime, then.” Rob and Sollain nodded again, before heading off into the metropolis they had come down into the middle of. “Ready, Anna?”
“Uh-huh,” the young woman muttered back to her captain, staring up the giant cable down which she and the others had just descended.
“Hey, there’s no time to stand there gawking, Anna,” Leanne said, snapping Anna out of her trance. “We’re on a tight schedule, remember?”
“Oh, erm, sorry,” Anna said, redirecting her attention to Leanne. “Hardware stores, right?” Leanne nodded, before heading off into the metropolis, in a different direction to the one taken by Rob and Sollain. “It’s a pity, really,” Anna continued, following her captain into the city centre, “I was looking forward to doing a little sight-seeing.” However, Leanne simply laughed at the young woman’s suggestion.
“There are no sights to see, Anna,” Leanne casually informed her young shipmate. “The planet was only colonised 35 years ago, none of the buildings here are older than that. There aren’t any alien life-forms here either except for the trees and plants, and there’s nothing really weird or alien about them, either.”
“OK, OK,” Anna conceded, “but this is the first planet except Earth that I’ve been to, and I’d really like a picture or two. Just something to send back to my parents, you know.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Leanne admitted, “the first planet I went to with the military, I wanted to take a keepsake home with me, so my squadron clubbed together and gave me something to remember the planet by.”
“What was it?” Anna enquired.
“A grenade,” Leanne answered, chuckling slightly.
“Charming,” Anna said, grimacing slightly.
“Nah, it was only a joke, really,” Leanne said, still chuckling. “Besides, the only thing on that planet was a load of oceans, deserts and volcanoes. Do you know what you get when you combine loads of oceans with loads of volcanoes?”
“No, what?” Anna asked, genuinely curious.
“Rain, and plenty of it,” Leanne informed Anna. “Ten inches in one hour was the record, believe it or not. We moved on foot into a canyon at 0900, and by 1500, we were swimming down it.”
“Wow,” Anna said, genuinely impressed at her captain’s story. “How long ago was this?”
“April 1 st, a few years ago.”
“April the fir…” Anna muttered, before stopping, and narrowing her eyes. “Very funny,” she spat at Leanne, who was by now laughing very hard.
“Sorry, couldn’t resist it,” Leanne chuckled, before pointing to her left. “Hardware store at 9 O’clock. Got the list?” Anna nodded, retrieving a small electronic notepad from her jacket pocket.
“Good,” Leanne said, heading towards the shop. Anna followed Leanne into the shop, but her eyes were still noticeably narrowed…
Meanwhile, Rob and Sollain were walking down the back streets of the city, searching for the colony’s Vorren quarter.
“3000 Vorrens,” Rob stated quietly to his Manduri colleague, “all around seven feet tall, you’d have thought they’d stand out amongst a colony of humans.”
“Vorrens don’t like to socialise with other races,” Sollain hissed back, “not even species they’re allied with, like we Manduri or the Endari either.”
“Then why bother to set up a colony on a primarily human world?” Rob asked, confused by the Vorren’s apparent xenophobia.
“The Vorrens see a human-Vorren alliance as inevitable,” Sollain replied, “so they send a few thousand of their people out to human colonies, just to keep up appearances. They did the same with my people 60 years ago.”
“Keeping up appearances in the most invisible way possible,” Rob commented, sarcastically.
“Yes, ironic, isn’t it?” Sollain whispered back to him. Just then, they were slightly surprised as a tall, human-looking man walked past them, toward the elevator cable down which Rob and Sollain had descended. The man regarded them as he walked past, and Rob got a good look at his sparkling, almost shining, golden eyes. Once the man, who was clad in only a pair of leather trousers and a black denim vest, had walked off, Rob turned to Sollain.
“That was one of them, wasn’t it?” Rob asked the reptilian alien. “I mean, he was only a few inches shorter than you, and the eyes-” Sollain held one of his clawed hands up in Rob’s face, silencing him.
“Of course it was a Vorren,” Sollain whispered back, “but something wasn’t right about him. He wasn’t openly displaying any caste allegiance.”
“Is that unusual?” Rob asked in reply.
“Oh yes,” Sollain confirmed, a slightly worried tone creeping into his usually calm hiss. “Nothing is more important to a Vorren than his or her caste and his standing within said caste. That man had no caste insignia, nor was he displaying any social standing pins.”
“Meaning?” Rob probed, reminding Sollain that he was not as au fait with Vorren culture as his Manduri colleague was.
“Either he has no caste, meaning he’s a member of the labour class,” Sollain said, before taking a deep breath, “or his caste does not believe in advertising their allegiance.”
“Is that a bad thing?” Rob asked. Before Sollain could reply, though, they both heard footsteps coming from in front of them. Looking down the alley, they saw five young women walking toward them. All of them were Vorren, all in their late teens, and all were wearing skin-tight, high-legged leotards, thigh-length leather boots, and beret-style hats, around which their long hair was pinned. Everything about the women, their clothes, hair, even their make-up, was coloured in the darkest shade of black that Rob has ever seen. Immediately, Sollain recognised what the women were.
“Get out of sight, quick!” Sollain ordered Rob, shoving him down behind a pile of boxes.
“Friends of yours?” Rob whispered back, as the two of them observed the group pass by them, oblivious to their presence. However, as the Vorren women passed by the human and the Manduri, the one standing at the front, the “leader”, turned her head, and stared straight toward where Rob was crouched. Although he was well out of her line of sight, Rob could still feel her gaze burn into him, somehow.
“Is there something wrong, Mistress Tyzek?” One of the girls asked, as Mistress Tyzek, the one staring at Rob, stopped and paced toward the boxes that constituted Rob and Sollain’s hiding place. The girl moved closer to Mistress Tyzek and placed her gloved hands on the lead girl’s bare hips, eventually moving them upwards so that her arms were wrapped around her leader’s waist.
“I’m sensing something unusual,” Mistress Tyzek replied, smiling as the girl continued to caress her body, “something… otherworldly.” As the lead woman spoke, however, Rob could barely suppress the urge to jump up from his hiding place- he knew the voice, knew it very well. He sneaked a quick peek over the top of the boxes, and before he was dragged back behind the boxes by Sollain- he was able to confirm what he had suspected- the voice belonged to Sheli.
“Anyway,” Mistress Tyzek said, removing the other girl’s hand from her waist, “it is of no importance. Come along, our elevator will be awaiting us.” The five of them then walked off, and when they were safely out of sight, Rob and Sollain stood up, and climbed out from behind the boxes.
“That was Sheli,” Rob said to an irritated Sollain, pointing after the young women. “It looked and sounded exactly like her.”
“If that was her,” Sollain hissed, aggressively, “then you must give up any hope you ever had of being as one with her.”
“Why?” Rob asked back, getting irritated with Sollain’s tone of voice.
“Because they-” Sollain started, gesturing down the alley where the women had walked, “are members of the Vorren True Caste, the nastiest, most sadistic caste in the entire Vorren Confederacy! Even the Vorren government fears them, sees them as evil, doesn’t like to talk of them.” Rob simply shook his head.
“That can’t have been Sheli, then,” Rob said, defiantly. “She wouldn’t act sadistically, wouldn’t go along with a group like that. Of that, I’m certain. Maybe her twin sister?” Sollain mulled Rob’s request over for a few seconds.
“Possibly,” the blue-scaled alien conceded. “Multiple births are not unheard of in Vorren culture.”
“We may very well have her surname, then,” Rob stated, enthusiastically. “Sheli Tyzek… that’s definitely it. It’s got to be.”
“Vega Nine proved to be a good stop, then,” Sollain said, smiling at Rob.