It took a couple of hours of tumbling and adjusting for our pod to get close enough to Salvation. Ro was still in and out of consciousness, the launch to orbit had made it harder on her injuries but it was a risk I hope would pay off.

Ah back in space again. Life had started to feel normal. Different, but normal… I mean before all the wars and despair started again.

Staring down to Biterra left me rife with emotion again, similar to when I had left Earth. Well, maybe not as emotional, but still, I had put down roots on Biterra and I couldn’t help but wonder if my little slice of land would stand the test of time until I returned, or that maybe a Solari would take up residence in my little cabin. The latter made my blood pressure skyrocket at the thought.

The pod began to auto align to salvation, just in time as Ro had started to show signs of heading downhill, she had become unresponsive.

“C’mon this is taking fucking ages,” I muttered to myself. My frustration was a ten out of ten. For everything we managed to do this felt like it was going way too slow.

“We’re almost there Ro, hold on,” the fear gripping my vocal cords as I tried to reassure her.

The small pod was thrashed about as it got closer to the docking port before finally letting out a thud and some loud snaps as it latched onto Salvation.

I quickly unbuckled my harness and flung the belts off as fast as I could so I could get Ro ready for the medics. Just as I unbuckled Ro the airlock hissed and opened.

“Quick, she’s unresponsive,” I shouted as a group of people rushed in, picked Ro up, and whisked her away to medical.

I fell back into the seat of the pod, exhausted, with my eyes closed. I heard thuds of footsteps enter through the small airlock.

“Jeremy?” I said, keeping my eyes closed. I couldn’t handle seeing that smirk of his, and I knew if I locked eyes with him, he would have went straight for a joke.

“What’s this?” Jeremy inquisitively asked as he grabbed the only thing I brought with us. A nice piece of Solari tech.

“A Solari Rifle.

“Fuckin‘ be careful with that,” I yelled as he started aiming it around. ”It will act on your thoughts, or maybe impulses, who knows.”

“You’re joking right?” A look of intrigue came over Jeremy as he swung it around a bit more, finding it funny to see my cringed reaction as I waited for it to fire.

“Alright alright, I guess I’ll take this to the labs for them to look over. Get yourself looked at as well, rest, and come find me.”

I had forgotten about the large laceration in my arm from the Iron Hill fight, it was still crudely wrapped. Its stinging pain turned into a more dull ache that I managed to put in the back of my mind until Jeremy ever so nicely pointed it out.

—

“What did you say cut you again?,” asked doctor Sted. She had a concerned look over her face as she adjusted the lamp and held my arm with her two hands, her thumbs pulling the massive laceration apart so she could get a better look.

“It was a Solari blade that did it”

“Hmm, well, it hasn’t healed at all,” she stated, getting a closer look, seemingly unbothered by the pain she was causing.

“If anything it looks like it has started killing off your flesh. Did you rub some alien dirt into this or something?”

I scoffed at her last remark, “do you really think I got that primitive down there?

“No I didn’t rub dirt into it. Solari blades are different.”

Sted looked at me intrigued but doubtful.

“Their blades are made out of something that gives it a purple tinge… it, it hums when it comes in contact with blood.”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“Carter, stop before I put you with the rest of the space-crazies,” said Dr Sted before she began to cut away the dead areas of flesh and stitched it together in an attempt to get it to heal. It was disgustingly painful but I had other things on my mind, Ro. I was more concerned about her, she was in really bad shape when they got her off the pod and I couldn’t play it cool any longer. I needed to know how she was.

“So… is Ro going to be okay?”

Dr Sted looked at me like you would a child who doesn’t know any better, a half smile with a sigh of ‘you poor clueless thing’.

“She’s stable for now but suffered a lot of trauma, it’s too early to tell. Let her rest, she’s been through a lot.

“And look after that wound, redress it frequently. Now you go get some rest too.”

The trip up to my quarters was interesting to say the least. Usually, most people you passed aboard Salvation would keep to themselves or exchange brief pleasantries as you passed each other but now it seemed different. Now it had stares and snarky comments thrown into the mix. In the elevator I had a lady scoff, roll here eyes at me, and say “disgusting” as she crossed her arms and faced the elevator wall. In the hallways I had several people bump into me on purpose, I could tell by the way they pushed their shoulders into me on collision.

To my surprise my door had graffiti scribbled over it. Miltech scum. Hmm that can’t be good. Nope nope.

After all recent events the obvious increase in Miltech hate didn’t seem to affect me much as I entered my quarters for some much needed rest.

—-

The following morning Jeremy swung by my place. It didn’t seem to bother him I was still sleep deprived and had a laceration that was literally eating at my arm — it was back to the grind.

“Interesting bit of tech you snagged down there,” he said coolly.

“How so?”

“Well you were right about it—“

“Yes yes I was right, I know,” I interrupted.

“Well anyway, it will help. I’m guessing they had a similar situation to us down there that’s why they resorted to blades too with limited fire power.

“Out here it will be a different story though, so knowing how their tech works should give us more of a chance.”

As we made our way down to a meeting with SecMajor Henderson in the Mortifera. Jeremy filled me in briefly of what they had been up to before and after they left Biterra.

Once the battle broke out, the other unknown ships burned out of orbit of Biterra and retreated. However, Salvation and the Mortifera were locked in battle with the Dominus and its fleet in orbit for awhile after Ro and I crashed down to the surface before Dominus made a jump. Yes, a jump of its own accord.

Salvation retreated and made its way to the closest planet to Biterra and held while the Mortifera tried to chase down the Dominus. Henderson still furious at being outwitted by Fletcher again, made the Mortifera scour the system in hope they would accidentally ‘bump’ into them. Jeremy warned me not to bring up this topic or let it veer that way in conversation when we entered the bridge.

“About time, living on Biterra time are we Corporal Carter? Well your little play holiday is over now,” said Henderson as we entered the bridge.

“Feeling relaxed after my three year wait for you to not capture the Dominus.”

The bridge went dead silent, everyone was certainly ready for my death but I remained with a satisfied smile on my face, made bigger by the sight of Jeremys shocked expression. Henderson went red with rage but even she couldn’t help but to crack a smile, I think I had somehow unlocked a pinch of respect from her for being ballsy enough to bring it up.

“Ahem” Henderson cleared her throat before continuing.

“So we picked up a signal while waiting for you to get ass back to Salvation Carter. It’s faint and unintelligible but we know it’s man made.”

“As in from humans?”

“You got it, not from Earth either,” answered Jeremy.

“We’re hoping our unknown cosmic friends or just the unknown? Will help us jump there. All we gotta do is follow the signal each time in pulses past us.

“When are we going to leave,” I asked.

“We’re already well on our way,” said Henderson.

—-

Salvation spent the next week following pulses of signal as they gradually grew stronger, like a guiding beacon. We were still many light years away, going at a cosmic snail’s pace, until finally we started hitting disrupted space — a good indicator we were about to hit an anomaly. Sure enough we did. In fact, it was another high-pitched, black out inducing anomaly, one that jumped us through a shortcut toward the signal. It was strong enough to decipher.

We all waited impatiently for the broadcast to be played in its true form, until finally, it played across the bridge…

“We welcome you to visit Nuvora City, the premier city pit-stop for cosmic travellers.

“ Non-residents are to dock to the Miltech spaceport.”

It’s a fucking advertisement for a human planet!

“What the fuck is that?” I said, this time out loud.

We all exchanged looks of disbelief with the sound of scoffs and laughs filling the room. We just came from our newly settled planet that was half middle-aged and half modern, to now following an advertisement broadcast for a city. Wild was an understatement.

“Well that’s an odd,” said Jeremy “looks like it might be some PTO for us.”

“I could use a night out in the city,” quipped Henderson.

“Wow even the SecMajor wants in on this,” I laughed before getting a dead eyed stare down from her.

Both Henderson and Jeremy agreed that Salvation should go into holding position on an outer planet while the Mortifera approached and docked to the spaceport. This was mainly to keep the passengers of Salvation in the dark about our upcoming discovery of a human settled city on the far flung edges of space. It would of thrown Salvation into chaos if they were to find out, passengers and crew were getting tired of being in space and with multiple uprisings quashed, this had the power to tip the scales.

Before Mortifera undocked from Salvation I went to medical to visit Ro. She was still in an induced coma and it killed me knowing she was missing out on this.

“You’d never believe it, we’ve followed this mysterious signal across the universe and it’s turned out to be nothing but an advertisement for a city,” I began to tell Ro.

“Stay strong, I’ll tell you all about it when we get back, and I want you to be awake for it, got it?” I squeezed her hand before hopping up and racing back to Mortifera for undocking.

It was time to check out Nuvora City.