I plunged.

I could see the clouds part through the quartz windows, thick, tremulous clouds blotted out my vision of anything but the swirling blanket that covered the planet in a never-ending storm.

I could see flashes of light as I fell like a stone, the speed of my descent pushing me back into my chair, the clouds got stormier and stormier as I dropped, the clouds going darker and darker until it was nearly black. The weak running lights on the nose and wings were smothered.

Storms were always a problem for flying, they played hell with the radio, which stopped me from telling my altitude, left very little visible and cut me off from even listening to music.

It was, to put it lightly, shit, and left me bored out of my mind as I continued to fall, and fall, and fall.

I kept my elevation pointed down, diving to clear the clouds around me for minutes, then the better part of an hour, then two, the heat of it gave off more light than my ships lights, coming around my window, growing in brightness as I picked up speed and accelerated towards my destination.

At one point, I decided to flip on the radio to try and pick up something, anything, to listen to, even if it was garbled and unrecognizable, only to be met with unnerving noises, chimes, and tones, repeating over and over again.

Some were urgent sounding, blaring to get my attention like a distress signal, some had a robotic voice, speaking in a heavily accented variant of the common tongue. It sounded old and outdated, but that was to be expected if it was from hundreds of years ago. I could barely understand what it was saying, but after a few minutes of listening to it loop, I figured it was calling for people to get into shelters.

A few were entirely made from irregular noise. Muttering, whispering, white noise, crying, and on and on. I made sure to switch off those channels, not waiting for anything else to come through.

I had listened to hell before, and I didn’t want to get burned a second time.

It took two and a half hours in the dark, the storm raging around me and bored out of my mind, waiting for the clouds to pull back before I dove down past them.

I didn’t understand what I was seeing for a moment, it was dark, then light.

A bright light shone through the front window, making me flinch back from it to no avail. I pulled up, shielding my eyes with my other hand as my well-honed senses told me when I was level. I took tiny sips of light, my eyes fluttering, then I blinked rapidly, and then I got to squinting.

Despite the dark clouds I had flown down through, it was bright out. The sky was blue without a cloud in sight. I stared for a moment, wide-eyed and confused. The warbling noise on the radio suddenly cleared to the sound of a woman singing a song in a language I couldn’t understand, high in pitch and both clipped and long, depending on the words she spoke.

I checked my coordinates as I flew level, my ship cooling off from entry as I made my way down to altitude. I turned down and down until I could see the surface of the planet below me through the front.

It was green.

Not the dirt but from trees.

To God damn many trees.

They were so thick on the ground they blotted out the land below them.

“Fuck me, that’s a lot of wood, If I cut down just one, I would be relatively rich. I don’t think I can land like this, though.”

I checked my location.

I had a bit of distance to cover, but the sea of verdant green went on and on without limit.

I watched it go by as the song rolled on.

It hit differently, the song and sight, even the clicking of the heat shielding on the exterior, cooling in the air as it cooled.

The strings felt more vivid, the voice clearer than normal. It made me want to dance a little and live life a little.

I had to check myself.

Just like at the station, I knew deep down this sight was a place I could see myself settling down. I couldn’t do it here, obviously, but maybe on Raphiel. I pondered that, then I threw it out.

Raphiel was supposedly a beautiful place, lush and verdant. A little slice of utopia.

And the government, the empire and its emperor were overbearing busybodies who needed something signed in triplicate before they sold you beer. The government lived in your pocket and demanded obedience to the state.

Was the beauty worth it? Was that worth my freedom?

It sat there in the back of my head with no answer. The loss of freedom came with perks and safety. I would have to give up my way of life, my standards, everything I knew from it. I would gain prosperity, never go hungry, and get the best amenities the universe had to offer, the best infrastructure.

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Due process and rights guaranteed by the state.

I would never need to worry about my life or anything else. It would give me everything I needed, handed to me on a silver spoon.

I couldn’t see myself doing that, but I couldn’t see it as wrong either if it gave you a place like this.

Lucky Raphiel bastards, growing up never tasting freedom, made accepting the perks with no downsides so easy.

I couldn’t settle it yet; my story wasn’t finished.

I sat there, then I locked the controls, grabbed a drink and just listened to the radio as I flew. Song after song came on, and I found myself throttling down so I could just relax and take it in.

The tension I felt for this place was not present.

As I flew, the trees started to clear a bit, becoming more sparsely populated. I couldn’t make out the ground, but it was down there. Somewhere.

I slowed and slowed, opening my airbrakes, which doubled as radiators to help cool down the Junkers internals before part two.

I slowed to costing speed as I came to my final destination. I found a gap in the canopy of green trees and cut my momentum with a few quick loops, hovered, then quickly, before I started falling again, I turned on my vertical thrusters and slowly lowered myself down.

I checked the altitude and blinked.

I hadn’t checked it since coming down, but it had gotten a number that just wasn’t right.

It told me I was several times cruising altitude. Suggesting I was closer to a low orbit altitude than the ground. I gave the board a few slaps as I lowered myself down and down, and it fixed itself to a proper altitude.

I wound down, put out my gear and with a small hop as the thrust got caught under the body, I cut my engines and thunked down, cutting my engines and getting out of the chair.

I was already ready, I had given the old Keepers advice a think-over and stowed the Anchor properly on my ship. All my gear was set up, so I got ready to head out, Turning on my bike in its two-by-two configuration, I opened the bay and rolled down and out of the bay into…

I was greeted by a grey, barren landscape.

Chunks of rock and gravel spread as far as the eye could see.

I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing things before heading back up and into the pilot chair.

Green and trees, grass and shrubs.

“What the hell is going on,” I muttered to myself.

I set my time peace so I could get back in and headed down to the hold.

The grey, barren landscape showed itself as I looked out the bay.

Two totally different views of the outside.

The keepers’ words echoed in my head, and I couldn’t help but tacitly agree with the old fart.

‘What you will experience below will not make sense to you.’

I didn’t understand, but I supposed I didn’t need to, not for this job.

I locked up the Junker, hopped on my bike, pulled out the doodad he had given me, the Way finder, and got it working.

Straight.

I snorted and got rolling, roving over the bumpy, uneven, desolate ground. I checked the wayfinder when I heard it whirr. It had changed, left and backward. I followed its direction for a few hundred feet before it changed again to forward in the opposite direction I was facing.

I spun around, and instead of a rocky wasteland, I was greeted by a desert.

Looking around, there was no more wasteland, no rocks, just dunes of fine yellow-brown sand and the bright light of the sun.

I stopped for a moment, trying to understand what had just happened, but I had a sudden feeling overcome me. My neck started to tense, goosebumps forming where I didn’t know goosebumps could form.

A sudden, instinctive understanding of something accompanied it.

I was in danger.

My heart kicked up a notch, and I started forward in the direction the Wayfinder guided.

Forward, smoothly turning left, a multipoint turn to drive in the opposite direction backwards, a small stint where I had to lead my bike from in front to move to the left and then forward again. I followed the stupid little box. Dread slowly building as I went along, driven by the knowledge that I was being followed by something I couldn’t see.

All I could do was keep following the direction the Wayfinder gave me, like a dog following a scent.

I hunted the artifact while I, in turn, was hunted for god knows what reason.

Knowing my luck, I was being hunted because whatever it was wanted a new hat or something.

Whatever it was, never showed itself, but regardless of that, I kept my eyes on a swivel.

A part of me wanted just to stop and wait. Stand my ground and relieve a little tension with a few dozen shots of lead and plasma. I doubted that even something from here could survive it.

I didn’t divert from my course, however.

I had not come for senseless violence or hunting, I was on a mission, I was here to get something and leave. The empty landscape was continuously lulling me into a sense of security. It wasn’t a dense set of tenements with a gang in it or a transport. I wasn’t doing a stakeout and watching someone or one of the rare cases where I looked through papers for a trail. There was nothing to keep my head in the game except myself and the subconscious feeling of being hunted.

Honestly, being hunted didn’t even keep my head in the game, it was just me because, despite the feeling of dread, there was nothing here.

No slobbering beast or demon or whatever.

Another part of me felt like a fool who let my emotions stretch their legs as much as they had in recent days.

All I could do was keep myself focused on the task at hand.

It took me 30 minutes after I picked up the pace to reach an incline and took a more solid, dense path up a hill. Gaining altitude, I crested it and found myself on a plateau.

It was totally unnatural.

The landscape had gone from sand to a crumbly hill to a perfectly smooth surface of ash-grey material. It wasn’t natural, not some stone or material of mortal make, nor was it an artifact material as it lacked the hexagons they were known for.

I stopped my bike and took in my surroundings, checking the landscape for features and taking in the sights.

In the distance, a giant structure was cut off from the horizon but tall enough to peek over. A pyramid, large even at the distance I stood from it.

It shone slightly and was made from yellow and white marble with gold trim. Whatever it had been, it was a ruin now, and far off besides, it wouldn’t be worth a detour, assuming I could even get there. The greenery was still nowhere in sight, just sand, sand, and more sand as far as the eye could see.

In the distance, towards the way the Wayfinder was pointing, was a series of black shapes that I couldn’t make out in detail, but they should be of considerable size, too.

They seemed to be my destination, the place I had come for, and a place that contained a horror and something I coveted greatly.

And far, far off in the sky was a small black speck. The dark spot, for it had little definition beyond its colour, almost looked like a bird. It was also, after a short observation, it was coming towards me.

I decided to rev my bike engine and head towards the dark shapes. With any luck, the shape would give up chasing me when I hid among the shapes that hid the item I came to see.