“Burn in plasma!” Robin mumbled in his helmet that he was about to take off. He recognized the man that came to greet him, even if he had to think really hard to remember his name.
“Mr. Walzor, right? Seeing you here is kind of unexpected. What is Seka Security doing all the way out here on some barren moon?”
“Taking a witness into custody!” The Seka Security official answered with a smile. That was a smile, right? Robin wasn’t sure and the situation disrupted his peaceful mind pretty hard. What did they still want from him?
“Sir, thanks a lot for giving me a ride and all, but please excuse me for being direct: What the hell do you want from me? I’m a witness? For what? And since when does the government take witnesses into custody, I thought that was reserved for criminals!”
“You don’t have to worry too much, but I’ll have to take you to Gaunus. A few people want to have a talk with you there. After that, you will be free to go… probably.” Walzor gave Robin a smile and this time he was sure it was a forced one. What was going on here? He was brought to Gaunus? That’s where the UAS had this system’s headquarters. Niu went there just a few days ago to take her final test.
“Probably? What is this all about? Hopewing? I didn’t do much, you should have a talk with the Alaris family, if you wanna know more!” Robin defended himself but calmed down after thinking about his backup plan.
While they talked he followed the man deeper into the ship, which’s thrusters were just powering up again.
“Aww-www-www-www….” Robin stopped and gibbered for a moment.
‘Damn, that’s uncomfortable! Just how much energy are they pumping through this fucking ship?’ Shuddering once more, he continued to walk on, the officer, who also had stopped, threw him a concerned gaze.
“You are alright?”
“Yeah, it's just cold in here.” Robin flatly replied, “You were just about to tell me what all this is. If I’m not a suspect but a witness, at least tell me what I have witnessed.”
“To be frank, there are many different topics. If we look at the most flashy happenings of Rucasur in the last months, you always were on site. Smugglers, Beakrath, AHC, Hopewing and now mysteriously dying only to come back to the living… I’m sorry, Mr. Turlward.
While I was in charge of some of the investigations and am pretty sure you just attract an unhealthy level of bad luck, there are people, superiors of my superior, who want to know how this could be all pure happenstance.” The officer explained with an awkward grimace.
After hearing the list, if Robin was honest, he could somewhat see why there were people interested to find answers. However, he didn’t plan on entertaining them and he definitely won’t go to some distant planet, not this way at least. After sorting his mind, Robin nodded and turned into the left hallway they just passed. Walzor quickly hurried after him.
“That’s the wrong way, I’ll bring you to a prepared room where you can rest.”
“Nah…” Robin waved him off without stopping, “You said I’m taken into custody, right? Well, going this way will lead us to a privacy booth. We will stop there for a moment, so I can make a call.”
“You want to make a call? Mr. Tulward, please don’t make this harder for us as it already is. I promise you, after reaching your room, you can call whoever you like. I was only told to take you into custody, not to prevent you from communications or anything. You aren’t a prisoner… not really.” Walzor tried to stop him.
“If I’m taken into custody, I’m allowed to make a private call. That’s basically law since who knows when. You want to deny me that?” Robin asked and stopped in front of a door.
The officer was visibly torn between different approaches but ultimately nodded and let Robin go in.
***
Landom gnashed his teeth. That damn boy made it really hard to support him. Of course he understood that Robin wasn’t happy to be brought to the UAS headquarters out of the blue and against all reason. But he was just some small officer, a foot soldier of Seka Security, it wasn’t as if he had any say in this! There were some really important people that wanted answers, the kind of people you don’t wanna mess with.
“Damn it. Who does he even wanna call? It’s not like he needs a lawyer or that one would be of help, none of his friends has enough weight to put pressure on the big shots involved. The Alaris family maybe, but they would never step in before officially positioning themselves.” Mumbling, he walked up and down in front of the door. Just as he was about to stop this mess, the door opened and Robin stepped out.
‘What did he do now?’ Landom's mind raced as a smug smile played across the young technocrafter's face.
“Thanks for waiting. You can take me to my room now.”
“I really wanna help you, but you’re not making it easy for me. Who did you call?” Landom sighed and began to guide Robin through the ship again.
“Just a friend!”
“Fine…”
They remained silent until reaching the room. It wasn’t a prison cell or anything, more like a private, comfy room. Fully monitored and locked from the outside of course. Well, okay, maybe it was a cell, a comfortable one.
Landom asked a ship’s crewmember to bring Robin some food and made his way to his office. He began to do some of the extensive paperwork that came with this job and stepped to the window after he was done a few hours later. Far in the distance he could already make out a planet that should be Gaunus.
“How long did I… no, Gaunus is more than a week away. It only has been hours at most! What the hell is going on?” Confused, Landom opened a comm channel to the captain on the bridge.
“Sir?” He heard the pretty annoyed captain.
“Captain, why can I see a planet from my window? Gaunus should be days away…”
“That’s Rucasur, Sir. There was a change in our destination. We will arrive in 13 hours.” The captain explained and Landom had to calm himself down or else he would have stormed into the bridge right now.
“Why was there a change? Who gave these orders?” He finally asked.
“I have no idea Sir, important people from the UAS. Orders are: Meet up with the escort and return to Rucasur as fast as possible. It’s signed with a high clearance level.”
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“We have Tulward aboard, there are really…really important people waiting for us!” Landom snarled.
“Sir, I also don’t know who gave you orders, but mine came from the UAS headquarters… the headquarters!”
“Oh, shit!” Landom cursed, closed the call and sat back on his chair. The main headquarters? That’s utter bullshit. While Robin is interesting, that’s only for the regional level. Most people at main HQ didn't even know the Mereus Cluster existed, let alone an unnamed technocrafter. Why would they suddenly butt in? Was this about something else? Maybe it wasn’t about Tulward at all?
“Wait… we're meeting an escort? Why would we need an escort?” He stood up and looked back out of the window. Rucasur was still resting in the dark void far away.
“There are no ships here that could play escort. In the Mereus Cluster, the UAS has only stationed the big…” His mumbling stopped as their carrier began to reduce speed so abruptly that even the internal dampening couldn’t ease out all g-forces. Landom held tight to the windowsill and before he had a chance to curse, he saw the air in front of Rucasur beginning to ripple - that’s what it looked like. Captivated, he didn’t even notice when an alarm on the ship began to blare and shout warnings.
Landom knew what he observed, he already saw it a few times in movies before. Never in real life, mind you.
The anomaly grew stronger and began to shine slightly. There was no air that could ripple out here… that was space itself cracking and bending!
Moments later, a bright flash blinded him and the carrier convulsed, shuddering as space itself erupted in a silent tempest. After his vision returned, Landom’s eyes went wide and he sat on the floor.
“What the fuck…”
***
Robin was chilling in his room. He used the time to train with his mutation as he still had a long way to go. His passive energy detection could really use some work and he also realized that it was now easier for him to filter out specific elements with his senses, cleaning up the image he saw.
He really hoped they weren’t on their way to Gaunus anymore. When he had called Mrs. Hutton before, the head of historical research of the museum in Seka, she sounded pretty confident and motivated to get him back to Rucasur. Timothy had told him she was the right person to contact about the Drel outpost, as she had quite good connections into the UAS research branch.
After he told her the short version of his story, she was skeptical at first and asked some questions about the different things he had seen. After he described the datapad-thingy in his hand down to the last detail, she apparently began to believe him and, as if doing a 180° turn, nearly lost her mind. She only yelled and stammered something along ‘I’ll get you to Seka’ and ‘no one will bother you’ before she hung up. Robin had to send an additional message, because he couldn’t even state his basic demands: He was going back to Seka as a free person and she was the only contact from UAS research he would negotiate with.
Thinking back, Robin began to chuckle.
“She really lost her shit for a moment. Timothy was right, the UAS will do everything to get their hands on such a facility. Hopefully this goes as planned.”
Standing up he walked over to the little window of his ‘room’ that definitely wasn’t a lock-up. “I should be able to see Rucasur by now, right?”
He let go of a breath he had held and finally calmed down when he saw the planet in the far distance. However, suddenly his body began to itch like hell. He was already accustomed to the carrier's power level, so where did this reaction come from?
“Are they building up power somewhere? What… HOLY Fu-u-u-u-CK!” Robin stuttered as the prickling rose to unheard intensity. He really wanted to rip off his skin just to make it stop, but instead it got worse and worse.
‘Outside?’ Robin wondered as the energy level was already so high that he could even tell it’s direction, despite only training that skill for a short time.
‘Comes from damn far away, is Mereus about to explode?’ He guessed confused as the itching nearly drove him insane. In addition, he suddenly was pressed against the window as their ship hit the brakes hard, without giving a warning in advance.
*MEEP* *MEEP* *MEEP*
“ATTENTION! INCOMING…”
An alarm tore through the ship's silence, blaring into every corner and corridor, but was lost on Robin as his mind was already out of order.
Suddenly there was a bright flash outside the window and his senses spiked, nearly knocking him out. Also, the whole ship began to vibrate as if it was about to break apart. After a few seconds everything was over; his passive sense calmed down, the bright light was gone and the vibrations stopped. Robin, lying sprawled on the floor, slowly crawled up.
“What the fuck was that? And what does one have to do to make a ship as big as this vibrate? Did the generator explode or something?”
*MEEP* *MEEP* *MEEP*
“ATTENTION! INCOMING CAPITAL SIZED SHIP! ATTENTION!”
*MEEP* *MEEP* *MEEP*
The alarm repeated its warning one last time and went silent. Robin staggered back to the window and took a look outside.
He couldn’t see Rucasur anymore, the view was obstructed by a ship, the biggest one Robin had ever seen. Speechlessly, he remained glued to the window and observed the enormous battleship hovering majestically in the void.
It was hard to get a sense of scale, he only found little indicators here and there that gave him some idea of what he was seeing. The fact that everything was still tinged in gray didn't help matters either.
“ROMAS, you there? Can you see that?” He silently asked, as if afraid of waking up the monster outside.
* Accessing Interface…
* Visual connection established
“Just how big is this thing?”
* 1.247m in length, 151m in height, 356m in width
“Holy mother…” Robin gasped. That was a big ass ship, a frickin’ Capital-sized battleship of the destroyer class. The pinnacle of mankind’s achievements in mobilizing weapon-based platforms for war.
It was a lengthy ship, with a bulky rear that got thinner from the middle onwards. Its side’s edges flattened out a bit, giving the ship a menacing feeling. Its nose also hinted at a sharp end. At its rear, the four biggest thrusters Robin had ever seen were pulsing with energy. Each one was at least the size of the carrier he was traveling with right now. Long, rectangular tubes that glowed with a bright gray light, in stark contrast to the black of the endless void.
Once more, Robin missed his color vision - that should be a bright yellow, right? Such advanced ships normally were driven by Photon-Beam Propulsion.
Concentrating back on the big ship, he inspected the most noteworthy thing - the weapons: two enormous turrets at the bottom side of the ship and one turret on its top. That later gun alone was as big as one of the thrusters, easily reaching a length up to 200m.
Robin had seen a documentary once, in which they showed the aftermath of such a Capital-sized ship of the destroyer class having bombed the surface of an abandoned planet. He couldn’t even remember the reason, just the crater that looked from space like someone took a bite out of the celestial body. They mentioned that ever since then the gravity of the planet was totally messed up, magnetic poles shifted and the climate changed to a civilization-ending shitshow.
Now he finally understood how such craters were created and it made him shiver in fright and excitement at the same time.
*Ding* - Ship’s comm opened
“This is the captain speaking.
Please remain calm. We’re coming in on Rucasur hot, which pushed us a little too close to the endpoint of a Cap-sized jump. All crew members remain on their stations. No ship damage reported. Injured please head to infirmary. We are now under the direct protection of the UAS IGD Eschaton, all protocols are to be upheld.
Destination: Rucasur, ETA: t -12:51h"
*Ding* - Ship’s comm closed
Robin kept standing in front of his window for a long time. Not only marveling about the impressive ship that flew beside them towards Rucasur, but also the reason why it was here in the first place.
“I already estimated it up all the way at the peak of the scale, but maybe I still underestimated the greed of the UAS…”