Riding a lurid string of color amongst a black endless void, the silhouette of a leaf held steady among the current. It was a flat, wide vessel colored white and red. Though against the bright luminescence of the jump current it was a mere shadowt. The engines were dark, as riding the jump currents needed no power once you were inside, just a clever navigator and skilled pilot.

  Embedded in the center, an almond-shaped pod colored an onyx black against its white and red wings. One of its faces a shutter letting out what little light was to be had inside the leaf-vessel. Inside, beyond the pod was a very tightly quartered living space. A bed, a shower-bathroom combo, a kitchen, all split between a very small compartment. No space to be wasted when your vessel is built for battle. A loud set of chimes went off as a feminine voice announced the hour, and estimated time of arrival to a destination named in a series of numbers.

  Welcome aboard my ship.

  "Time to wake up," The kind voice of my friend and vessel construct, Dalliance, rang over my intercoms as the shock of cold air woke me from my sleep. "Exiting warp in ten minutes, Ashildr. The requested combat zone has been locked in as your exit point. Please get ready."

  "I'll get ready now. Do you have to keep yanking my blankets off?" I asked, groaning as I reluctantly roll myself off the bed. The answer to my complaint, as usual, was silence.

  I ran through the shower, got dressed, and sat down in the pilot’s chair within’ six minutes. I had it down to an art at this point. With a practiced, fluid motion, I swept a finger along the skin-tight, flexible metal choker. Drawing off a long silver bar that snapped easily shape as it left my neck. I spoke into it, and watched as black netting wove itself into a weird fluid-like consistency, then held the bar vertically to my face. The netting gently grabbed on to my face, enveloping my vision quickly upon contact.

  Once my helmet finished bringing itself into existence, the display flickered to life, my vision clearing and populating with various statistics and icons. Including a small feminine avatar marking Dalliance's presence. She waved with a smile once I had loaded in. The form she had chosen for herself was lithe, with short hair and a fluttering summer gown. I asked her why the dress, apparently she's always wanted to see a planet in the spring, in person. Or as close to in-person as a construct can get. I love her.

  I heard the cords snake from my pilot's chair, plugging snugly into ports installed in the back of my head to feed me data from the vessel. Music swelled in my ears as I moved my hand over the glowing dust particles that made up the controls of my ship. A pretty dull routine at this point in my life, but that anticipation of dropping into an ongoing battle made everything a little more colorful.

  “How are we looking, Dalliance?” I asked, watching her small avatar as she bobbed her head to the music. She was repeating a small animation, turning pages in a large notebook. Usually meant she was busy with something. My displays populated with additional controls that I saved for combat, and a static scan of the battlefield. Probably take when Dalliance woke me up earlier. 

  "Here is the snapshot. You'll be exiting…here," a small dot pinged below a thin part of the enemy formation. The situation looked terrible for the coalition I was flying in to assist. But, I was called in to help by a friend so the least I can do is make an appearance, and at least try and offer some support. Maybe even make an impact? Unlikely, though it's been known to happen, something to hope for.

  “Exciting drive now, prepare for reentry.” Dalliance announced, the hum of the drive increasing as she woke it up from hibernation. This was always my favorite part. Entering and exiting jump space was always jarringly beautiful. 

  “Just another day, let's finish this and get back to stargazing." I stretched in my chair, willing the rest of my grogginess away, popping my neck, wishing I hadn't drunk all of the coffee before hitting port.

  "Talking to yourself again, Ash?" Dalliance asked, her avatar raising an eyebrow as she twirled her hair. Don't look at me like that, you'll be with me.

  "Well, you too." I adjusted my displays and got comfortable. Hopefully, this wouldn’t last too long. They usually come to agreements pretty quick...

  Ah, flames?

  A whole lot of heat washed into my box, a blaring alarm, an explosion followed by a rush of bone-chilling cold. I realize only as it happened, that I have been ejected from my vessel. The hiss of my emergency hatch sealing is barely audible over the roar encroaching vacuum. The following silence was punctuated with a short click as the hatch fully sealed, protecting me from the dangers of the void.

  Honestly, it was the last thing I expected, failure. I sigh in frustration, and do some breathing to relax. Not much else to do now is there, Ash.

  It was more dire than I imagined I’d when I dropped out of the jump current. I ran over the situation again and again in my head, thinking of what I could do better. Much easier to do, now that I was much calmer and not fighting for my life (Kind of out of my hands at this point). I felt the tether between my box and vessel grow taught as we were pulled into the gravity well of the planet.

  Quick review is; that I essentially walked into a trap, its pretty annoying to think about, especially since I should've noticed it from the initial scan. Overall, I swooped in on the wrong zone of the fight. Positioning myself into a place to assist felt too easy, and it emboldened my allies. Which drug the fight out longer than you normally would've wanted, wrong choice Ash. Once I had gotten my tasks handed down, finding a rhythm was simple and it wasn’t long before I was on a roll. 

  Our chances of winning went up in smoke when one of our cruisers crumbled twenty minutes after I arrived. It opened up a vector for the enemy force to exploit, and the next thing I know several other vessels had already started to flank my beautiful non-attention-paying self. So, it was my turn to get rolled out of the void. It only took a few good hits to disable my vessel and send me spinning. Dalliance should be able to take care of the damage, and any fires, hopefully. My only wish is that it's not a heap of trash by the time we hit the ground. I trust her though.

  As the temperature of my box began to rise, I caught one last glimpse of my craft plummeting into the atmosphere of the planet below, with me right behind it. The roar of atmospheric entry shaking my box. Standard procedure, extremely nerve-wracking. They say it’s for better personnel and equipment recovery after crash landings occur but we all know if you’re crashing, it’s never somewhere safe, friendly, or easy to get to. The displays and visions shut off as the cockpit spun up its suspension protocols.

  The box’s systems were designed for emergency ejection to follow and land after one’s ship had hit the surface, though since this was a fight I already had it reroute for evasive actions. That tether often snaps during reentry, but it disconnected in this case as the new grid coordinates were plotted by the system. It would likely take some time for my friends to find me and recover myself and my ship, but I was okay with that at this point...as long as they came for me.

 Now that the automated emergency systems had activated, the cords of my chair withdrew from the back of my head, and the chair began to lay back. With a word and gentle tug: the helmet's material snapped back into the faceplate, and I gently wrap it back into my choker. Time to get comfortable.

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  Ultimately I'm not as upset as I thought I'd be. survival comes first, I’ll figure out what to do after a short nap. I wait patiently, drumming my fingers on my chest as I wait for the rest of the emergency system kick in. Deafening the noise, leveling temperature, and a lot of sleepiness as the torpor system kicked in. Naptime for Ash! Hopefully, Dalliance deems the area safe enough for me to reactivate right away, or at least soon.

Not soon enough…I realize in retrospect.

  My dreams were vague and amorphous, like usual. Sometimes certain moments stood out more than others. I visited some of those locations that love to pop in and out with some amount of consistency. Dream Portland, back in the dream Columbia province, back on dream Old Earth. Sometimes I got to visit dream Helsinki. Won’t ever see those places in person again, not like anyone (that was alive when I left) ever wanted me back anyways, a big part of the reason I signed up for the whole star pilot program.

  Being aware of these thoughts tipped me off though, I was waking up. Waking up from the long suspension animation type naps always started out like this. Kind of like my whole body rebooting from square one, the brain first, self-awareness second, then as the temperature slowly dropped from the resting warmth the rest of your body follows.

  Alright, initial self-diagnostic feels...groggy, my eyes are really tired and won’t open yet. Give that one a few minutes. The last thing I remember was being shot down in a coalition scale battle that I was late too. I will move my fingers, they twitch in response. 

  Everything was sore, but intact and moveable. The rest of my body slowly follows. Every joint popped, sounding like someone twisting bubble wrap as I forced myself to sit up. If anything was actually wrong with my brain at this point I wouldn’t notice until I talked to Dalliance. The only thing that irked me was the soreness, like someone had set a boulder on me and left it there. Probably meant increased gravity outside?

  “Dalliance, you there?”

Total silence was my loving reply.

  Oh, wait...Not good. I grope around in the darkness, and ended up falling off the chair and crawling across the tight quarters of my cord jumbled floor until I felt the emergency latch for my hatch. Inside opening only, unless you have the really fancy techno-crowbar. I pulled on it, cursing how weak I felt at the moment. As it clicked into place, the hissing slowly followed. Must be real fucking low on power if it’s taking that long. I impatiently swipe my helmet into place, tapping the faceplate in confusion as the material remained opaque on my side.

  Odd, old fashioned way it is I guess. I take several deep breaths. Oh, a draft. I took a moment to bask in the sensation of the light breeze rustling my clothing, the hatch finally decided to open. Felt nice though.

  I slowly breathed in, exhaled all the way, and there it is. I mentally reach out and grasp the little wisp-like tendrils of energy at the edge of my senses.

Magic

  That’s the colloquial term anyway, the prevailing theory is it’s essentially ambient cosmic energy that can be channeled. It’s channeled through technology, or ritual, or through your body. Every culture has its own way of doing it. I run through my breathing exercises, visualize the pathways, and watch as my vision is suddenly assailed by bright daylight light.

  “Fuck, man!” I shout and shut my eyes tight, crawling forward, then out, tumbling onto the ground below. Stone? Smooth, hard, uniformly bricked. That cannot be good right? I slowly open my eyes, the first thing entering my vision being the canopy of a massive tree. Shouldn’t that be knocked over? Why am I not in a crater? “I better not have slept for…” I rolled to my side to get a better look at the world around me. A ruined, well-overgrown stone city. Not a person or crater in view, “…long.”

  “Dalliance!” I shouted again, sitting up once more as my body caught up with me.

Nothing,

  Well...

  I start looking around aimlessly trying to get a bearing on my surroundings and self. I feel like, and probably look extremely lost, one of the things you typically don’t want. But I did get a good grasp of where I woke up.

  A small shrine-like stone structure sat in rubble around my box (which isn’t shaped like a box, by the way, it's more of an almond. It just feels like a box when you’re in it though.) From the way it had collapsed, it seemed like it was once built around my box. There were several wooden bowls filled with various flowers, over-ripe mango looking things, pretty rocks, and what seemed to be nuts? Like a bunch of walnut-sized acorns. Let's not try and eat those yet.

  No immediate sight of my ship, my clothes are…intact. One of those standard form-fitting black shirts(long sleeve), knee-length bloused pants and knee-high leather boots, and black leather gloves that fit my hands very snugly. I love the gloves and boots with all my heart; one of my buddies commissioned them to be made from an actual cow back on old earth. I’m going to kiss him if he made it out of that battle...if I ever see him again.

  Above me, and to the right of my box was a very large tree, judging by the bark and the one or two trees I saw as a child. Oak? I didn’t get to visit the parks very often. Speaking of parks, this place is absolutely covered in plants. I probably spent a good five minutes just staring at all the greenery in awe. My helmet seemed to have been damaged, or maybe not having Dalliance took away some of its functionality. That's probably the case seeing as I now have to manually control the flow of my magic energy at this point. Main reason we received training in flow control, to begin with. Stating the obvious but, this sucks.

  The stone I’m sitting on is cut into approximately one square foot paving bricks, worn smooth by erosion, with some cute looking blades of grass growing between them. Vines clung to walls, bushes and flowers thrived where the stone wasn’t present, and despite being legitimate-looking buildings most of the stonework was falling apart. That's because of plants right? The sun feels really good right now, it looks like summer too. Dalliance is probably loving this view from the ship.

  I pat my body down, nothing broken, muscles atrophied, oh and extremely hungry. Damn it, I could've ignored that for a while longer. I clutch my stomach as it voiced its demands. Those fruits are looking extremely tasty now. I crawl over, grabbing one of the fruits to inspect it.

  I was never very good at the survival portions of training. Barely passed those in fact. But it looks like an overripe mango; it feels like an overripe mango. Must be a mango, hope I don’t die.

  I peel back the bottom of my helmet by shifting the faceplate with a finger. The black material shifts and crawls away to reveal my mouth and jaw. I set the mango down, remove my gloves, pick it up reverently with both hands...and take a bite. Definitely just over the normal taste-good date for a mango, but the risk was worth it. Tastes exactly like a mango. Always too much prep work to eat one without getting all sticky though, the juices are getting all over my hands.

  After downing two more mangoes, I finally feel alive enough to get up and start walking around. I find that one of the pots next to my box is water. I start to get the feeling like someone knew I was in here or something. I wash my hands, now extra suspicious of my surroundings. These bowls can’t be more than a few days old at most, and there are quite a few of them in the nooks that are much older with moth-eaten cloth and giant acorns with small sprouts growing out of them. Wait, cloth? I lift one of the bowls and pick one up, it folds out into a white and red patterned jacket with wide sleeves. The kind you would typically keep closed with a belt. I throw it in a half-assed attempt to look like I belong here. Strangely convenient that it was placed here. I'm beginning to feel like someone is just setting me up for a false sense of security. That could just be the survival paranoia kicking in though.

  However, now that I've snacked, washed my hands, and acquired a cool new jacket, I should find my vessel.

  I take probably, six steps before I hear shouting in the distance. Well, distance was the wrong word to choose. The shouting is quickly getting closer. Finer details; rapid footsteps, boots, metal, also a quiet set of bare feet.

  I get the distinct feeling I’ve seen something like this in a movie. I turn around and expediently rummage around in my box for a moment, catching a lucky break as I pull my trusty hunk of roughly sword-shaped sharp metal from its container just as four visitors busted into my new home…area. Its more like a really big, dual-edged machete. Good thing my equipment didn't bounce around as much as I thought it would!

  They all slow to a stop, I guess the courtyard is some kind of dead-end? They’re all pretty sweaty, and must've been running for at least a few kilometers. They haven’t noticed me yet, the three bigger masked folks are surrounding the fourth. I lean my trusty sharp paddle against my box and sit on my hatch as they begin their little pokey-whacky, hand-over-the-thing dance. One of them, shorter, feminine looking? Can’t tell from here? I’ve always been bad at people watching. They're clutching a roughly head-sized, black, cubic…

Wait…that’s mine!!