"It's almost time." The Captain had invited the duo to the bridge. "Just stay calm. The acclimation might give you a headache, but the Healer is here to make sure nothing goes awry."
It was finally time for them to breach the veil.
"We'll just have to eat another one of those beans right? It shouldn't be too hard." Don was very nonchalant about this. They had a month to prepare for this moment. At this point, whatever happened, happened.
"You might be safe from split decay, yes, but there are other physiological risks to a sudden increase in split, vomiting among them. Stay calm and inform us if anything feels wrong." The Captain nodded at the Healer, relinquishing control of them to her.
"This is it Don . . . Keep a hold on Mercedes would you?" The dog, a little too big to be called a puppy anymore, was seated between Donovan's legs. She was seated, not calm. Her tail was polishing the wood down with how fast she was wagging it, and she was choking herself against Don's arm in her excitement. At the very least Mercedes was remaining disciplined, she wasn't whining or barking.
"I know." He ruffled the fur around her ears. "Good girl Mercedes."
There was a loud pop, and the background once choked in darkness found itself littered with specks of light, the same sight they were used to seeing in the night sky.
But there was something different.
Something they had been expecting, but was off-putting nonetheless. The stars where not the white lights they were familiar with, a collage of red and orange with some pricks of yellow. There was a part of Donovan that wanted to belch at the sight of it.
He hadn't realized it until now, but he was something of a purist when it came to the night sky. It was an inviolable beauty, the result of billions of years of natural processes, and one in which man had no hand in manipulating. The white was pure, a symbol of hope to him and many others.
Now it just looked like the bloody aftermath of a murder, even the black 'empty' spaces had a red tint from the countless indistinguishable red stars that filled the gaps. A red that made him angry, irritable.
Diana had a similar reaction, but her focus was more on how ugly it looked, unappealing to the human eye. To her it looked like a blistering, infected, necrotic wound. The work of some incompetent doctor having failed to properly treat a patient. It saddened her to see the universe in such a state, it's glimmering beauty lost forever. A memory relegated to images and diagrams.
Anger and sadness was where their emotions diverged, united in disgust of this abomination they now found themselves in. But hate it though they may, this was home now. They had to survive here, thrive if they could, and they could no longer pay heed to appearances. It was time to get to work.
"Do you feel anything off?" The Healer asked the two of them that question upon seeing their expressions. Naturally, she had assumed something had happened. As she couldn't understand them, they just shook their heads. At least body language for yes and no answers could be translated properly.
As they were seated on a somewhat lower level than the captain, they didn't have a complete picture of what was going on outside, but there was definitely something in front of them.
Given its distance, it was probably pretty big too. Planet sized at the very least, and it gave off light. Definitely not a star, it wasn't nearly bright enough for that.
"Do you see it? The Great Csillacra?" The Captain called down to them. "You will get a better look at it soon, but for now keep your focus on your bodies."
"That's the Great Csillacra?" Don was incredulous. He understood it was going to be massive, this ship was a mere branch after all, but he didn't expect it to be quite THAT big. "How far away are we from it?"
The Scholar answered his question this time around, he actually had a grasp on the distances they were familiar with. "Right now we are a similar distance from it as the average distance between your star and its closest planet were."
Immediately Don sent a request to ARC to get a size estimate of it. With the complex imaging equipment on board and a distance reference, it was a simple trigonometric calculation for ARC to give a rough estimate on the volume.
'400 - 600 thousand km diameter depending on measurement location and given a sufficient margin of error. Estimated to be around 1/25 the volume of our sun. Is that the Great Csillacra?'
An almost instantaneous response, something to be expected given the simplicity of the calculations involved. Don replied with a 'Yes, we'll talk later.'
"Hey Diana, ARC says that thing's almost a 25th the size of the sun. Is that even possible?"
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"How should I know? I'm not a physicist or whatever the relevant scientist is called." She wasn't as much snapping at him as she was wondering why he would ask her something she couldn't know the answers to.
"I'm not talking about the gravity or shit like that, I'm talking about trees, you seem to know about them. Isn't there some sort of genetic limitation to their growth?"
Don had long since conceded that there were just some things that wouldn't make sense with their current understanding of the laws of the universe, he just wanted to know if there was any connection to botany on this subject.
"I don't think there is a built in genetic limitation, no. Usually trees just get too big to support themselves or are killed by something external. Height may have a limit as a means to keep them from becoming unbalanced, but total volume and maximum width are unrestricted in most cases I believe."
"Okay then." Don made a mental note of that. "In that case, how long do you think a tree would have to grow to get that big?"
"That's what you're worried about right now?"
- - - - -
They didn't doubt ARC's calculations, not in the slightest, but they couldn't fully wrap their heads around how large the Great Csillacra was.
A planet was barely within their scope of understanding, what they were drawing closer to definitely fell outside of it. The Oberlux barely qualifying as a twig in comparison to the mighty trunks they could make out.
How thick might those pieces of wood at the base be? Hundreds of kilometers? Thousands of kilometers? They would have to be thick and strong enough to support the rest of the branches under the weight of a fierce gravity wouldn't they? Or was there some other force at play here?
Regardless, the distance between their jaws and the floor only grew shorter the closer they approached.
Mercedes' hyper disposition mellowed over time as well, the excitement now gone as she was confined by Don. The dog still found time to tug at the end of Donovan's sleeve, an invitation to play. This was of course reprimanded, if only for the moment.
"How does this thing dock itself?" Don had a sudden question pertaining to the structure of the Oberlux, it's erratic outer layer not being conducive to a streamlined or easy procedure.
"Just shut up and watch Don. They know what they're doing."
As if on queue the ship lurched, turning around to face the opposite direction.
"A deceleration maneuver." Donovan instantly identified the intent, this was something he had to do plenty of times to land a craft.
The thud was not a sound they had heard this ship make in the past though. Maybe it was part of the process?
"You two can get up now." The Captain called down to them. "How are you feeling?"
"I'm feeling alright, Diana?"
"Nothing out of the ordinary here."
"Good." The Captain gestured for them to follow him. "It is time for your audience."
Both of them turned to look at each other, incredulous at the flippant disregard for safety during a docking procedure. "Isn't it hazardous to stand up when docking?"
"Docking? We already finished." He called over the Courier. "Please inform the Arboreal Maiden of our arrival, though I am certain she already knows. Relay that we are ready to meet with her at her earliest convenience."
The Skwiven shot off down the stairs as it had done before, this time it would not be returning with water.
He turned back to address his crew. "Until further notice, you are granted leave. Make sure those not here are notified. As for you cadets, it has been a pleasure to have you along. I hope you have found it a similarly pleasant experience." He turned to the pair again. "Let's get going, it is quite the walk."
- - - - -
"How much further?" Diana wasn't yet at the point of sweating, but her legs were starting to hurt. She hadn't been subjected to the same training regimen as the two of them, only her walks with Mercedes interrupted her otherwise sedentary lifestyle.
"It shouldn't be much longer at this point, a few minutes at most." The Captain pointed to an outcrop, a branch, in the distance. "A ride awaits us over there."
"A ride? Is it an animal?"
"No, the Great Csillacra is far too large for a mount to traverse it. It is a ferry."
"Cool." Don wondered what it looked like. He was told that the Oberlux's shape and construction was unique among ships, so he couldn't use it as a reference.
He wondered what their design philosophy might be. Ferries were not something he was all too familiar with, there was no purpose in designing a ship to fill a niche that didn't exist. You lived on the station you worked on, if you worked on one. If you needed a ride elsewhere, you could hitch one on any number of other miscellaneous ships.
"Did the Courier get on one ahead of us?" Diana didn't see anything fly by when they started walking over. It was fast, but it wasn't that fast.
"No. The Skwiven don't need them."
"Then how do they get around? This place is massive!"
"It's one of the mysteries surrounding them. They travel so quickly around the Great Csillacra you could be forgiven for thinking they teleport."
"They can teleport?" A surprising development for Donovan, but not out of the realm of possibility. Humanity had figured out a limited form of teleportation, jumping, without Split. With how little he knew it might be feasible for a living being to do it with assistance.
"No, we know that much at least. The Great Csillacra itself confirmed they move as they would normally, they just receive some sort of assistance."
"Assistance how?"
"Like I said, we don't know."