“But why in the world would they give you such an important mission?” asked Martin.
On our way back from the Cabal we gave Martin the short version of the story, only he kept asking questions. And so, the short version turned into the long version, and then expanded into speculations and lore dumping.
When a man of science wants to know more to understand things, no force in the universe can stop them from satiating their thirst for more knowledge. Except death. I learned the hard way that Martin is a bottomless pit of curiosity. When there’s something he has become interested in, there’s very little I can do to stop him from investigating or even distract him from interrogating.
‘I met the Great Fay, Galavant, a few nights ago,’ I explained to Martin what I told the Wizards. ‘He requested me to reject Uderach’s next request; no matter what it was, I was to reject it outright. All I got from Uderach was he wanted something to retrieve for him. All I can think now is that it must be related to this; some object in the Ark Ship that I should’ve brought back. The timing is ‘too perfect’ to be a coincidence. Padrict disappears and makes a deal with Isadal, Galavant asks me to reject an offer, Uderach comes with an offer, and, now, you guys ask me to go bring back Padrict from an Ark Ship.’
Everyone in the group had agreed that everything was related. They couldn’t confirm everything since all the information they had was of Padrict and Isadal. However, the biggest problem was that Uderach wanted something from the Ark Ship, and this came as Padrict was sent there by Isadal. The conclusion was that Isadal must have sent Padrict over to bring back that same object, only he hadn’t come back, which meant he was still looking for it.
That still didn’t answer Martin’s question that I was given a mission that must have been too high for my rank, and given my history it didn’t make sense that such sensible information and mission was given to an ‘ex-convict.’
Tedet was the one that asked the question to them, because I didn’t give much thought to it. His line of thinking was that everything was too coincidental for even my involvement, by the Cabal, to be one as well. Too many coincidences, not enough information. We also couldn’t believe the Cabal was just throwing darts in the dark, hoping to get a bullseye, or, at the very least, hit the board.
‘Okay, but why us?’ had asked Tedet.
‘You’re both mechanics, you know the ins and outs of a spaceship. We thought you’d be able to fly them.’
As you can imagine, this didn’t fly for either of us — excuse the pun. And our obvious reaction to the handwavy explanation was enough to prob another explanation from the Arch Wizard.
‘To be honest with you, the Council didn’t want to do this. At all. They—We don’t trust you one bit for this mission. But we believe you’re our best bet to bring back Padrict without any complications. You’ve been pardoned by us despite your deep involvement with an enemy. If any other person, that Padrict knows, were to talk him to come back, it might just turn him completely into a fugitive, landing him square into the hands of the Fay. Whatever he’s been doing there, it’s possible he might even finish his work. So, your mission is also to convince him to come back. That we’ll give him a fair trial and pardon him.’
‘Will you?’ I had asked her, and I meant it as a reproach.
“She said she couldn’t be sure,” I explained to Martin. “But that, at the very least, they couldn’t let Padrict fall further into the hands of the enemy and lose any upper hand we could have.”
“This is all so very complicated,” Martin complained.
“It gets worse. The Rain — which Isadal reigns over — is supposed to be on our side in the upcoming war. What is up with us trying to screw with each other when we’re so close to breaking out into a real war?
“And then the Storm, who is supposed to be allied with the vampirids, is also trying to screw with Uderach. That’s Galavant and his request. What is happening? What kind of pre-war politics are these?”
“Is it possible they want to get rid of you?” asked Martin, concerned that maybe this was a plot to eliminate me.
“I doubt it. I seem to be too important to be taken off the board. Besides, they wouldn’t sacrifice a mortal, let alone two, for this.”
I was looking at Martin from the rearview window and his face dropped, the angle of the mirror didn’t allow me to look at his face, so I turned in my seat and looked at him while he stared at the floor. Nothing occurred to me, I didn’t know what to say. I could see that he was concerned about me, but so far, I was concerned about him.
In reality, there was nothing for us to fear. Our biggest trouble would be related to the trip and not Padrict. There should be no reason why a wizard like Padrict would attack us, and unless he took a Faery with him, I couldn’t see real danger. On the other hand, outer space was not a place for Faeries, so Padrict should be alone. There could be vampirids or demons, but not faeries, and I doubt that any of those two would be there.
There’s something about the emptiness of space that makes the supernatural shudder. Faeries avoid it like it is lethal to them, but there shouldn’t be a reason why it would. That one, is still a mystery for the magical societies. On the other hand, demons have no reason to go to space, souls are down the gravity wells, and unless we become a system-wide civilization, they wouldn’t waste their time with a few people. Vampirids are much the same, but if there was a creature that would expand to space before anyone, it’s them. That may be the reason why Uderach was hoping to snatch me. The question is, why would the Faery want a wizard to go to space too?
Whatever this object, that both Uderach and Isadal want, is, must be so important that they want it before the other. My mission, then, is two-fold: bringing back Pradrict while, collaterally, stopping the package from reaching Sovail. It should be easy, but nothing ever is.
What kinds of complications are we going find, up there, to make my life miserable?
“I don’t think this mission will be that simple,” said Martin. “But there isn’t any evidence to assume it wouldn’t be, either.”
“If life was simple, it would be rather boring, anyway,” I tried giving an excuse.
“Sometimes, I wish it was just a little more boring.”
Tedet grunted as he drove, and I saw his pimples turning blue. That is, normally, a sign of anger, but it doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve angered him. Instead, I think Tedet was angry that our conversation made him feel uncomfortable. He must have agreed too much with our conversation.
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Frisch-Tecklegot Surface Station, also referred to as Free-Teck.
From here, private spaceships can be launched into low orbit, to be captured and slingshot by a skyhook to reach escape velocity. Free-Teck was the first mass driver of Bathering. A hundred years ago, Al Patreck had a running river that was used to power and cool off the mass driver. Now that the river has mostly run dry, as it deviated towards another direction, the station is required to produce energy from another source and pump the water from underground. The same water that is pumped and used to cool is also used to store most of the station’s power as it uses gravity to cool off and drive turbines toward the underwater reserves.
However, the cost of a launch has increased through the years, and it would’ve been shot down if the city hadn’t already become a hub for space launches. It’s a miracle that Sovail has a lot less gravity and escape velocity than Earth. Most of this technology was already developed, but not implemented as much on our home planet, except for the Luna and Mars stations. Mass drivers were thought to be the best way to launch spaceships to orbit, but soon skyhooks began resurfacing in Sovail, all the same.
“We’ll be launched into orbit through that pipe,” explained Martin. “You can’t see it from here, but it goes all the way to that mountain. Everything is under vacuum. Once we leave the pipe, we’ll engage the first stage of the rocket. The mass driver doesn’t get us to orbiting velocity, it only assists the rocket reach low orbit, reducing the amount of fuel needed.”
“Less mass, less energy,” said Tedet. “I was already aware the biggest problem for space-faring technology is mass. Especially when it comes to launch.”
“That’s the reason for the skyhook, as well. The rocket only takes us to low orbit, where we’re picked by the tether, and then flung as we reach the peak of the spin. The remaining fuel of the first stage will be burned after being flung to increase our apoapsis — the furthest point of our orbit — to the point we reach escape velocity.”
“The first stage is then released to space,” I concluded.
“Never to be seen again, yes,” confirmed Martin. “With the second stage, we’re much lighter, much more maneuverable. It’ll help us turn back to Sovail. Burning in reverse of our trajectory, reducing our apoapsis, and returning back to a slow orbit back to Sovail.”
Burning in the opposite direction seems counterintuitive to what we’re used to. Normally, you simply move toward where you want to go, but orbital mechanics don’t work intuitively like that. You have to think strictly about how you’re going to change your orbit, because that’s the most efficient way to move in space. That is, unless you are capable of outputting massive amounts of thrust with little fuel, then it’s possible to make almost a straight path by simply moving at a constant acceleration, generating your own artificial gravity as you go. But that kind of technology is not possible yet. Not only is it faster, it would be much more efficient.
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“It’s going to be a long journey,” I said while sighing. “We’re going to be back after days. By the end of next week, most likely, if everything goes right and we return the moment we arrive.”
Our engines are efficient, and they normally output incredible amounts of thrust, but it is nowhere near the kind of thrust needed to generate the type of acceleration to make space travel simple and widely available. People do have their own spaceships, but they don’t get to go to space every weekend like they are going on a trip. It would be nice, but it isn’t that simple.
Walking into the building, we were received by a receptionist who took our names. The ship was already prepared, S.A.W. Ravan had explained to us just before we left. We were leaving today, ‘the earlier, the better,’ she said.
Normally, we’d like to take our time; prepare for the vacations. But not only was the Council pressuring us to act, we also thought that finishing this quickly was better. I didn’t want Uderach to keep pestering me about his package, I wasn’t going to ship him anything no matter how much he asked. Although some persuasion could’ve changed my mind, I rather not have it come to that.
In the end, all we want is to get the job done quickly, so we can go back to our lives and prepare for whatever is to come. I’ve been attacked several times, and maybe these vacations are going to take my mind off the trouble I’ll get from the vampires, at least for a few days.
And so, we walked into the waiting hall. To one side, they had a small area where people could load big cargo on rented ships, as well as rent or buy space suits. When we approached the man at the counter, he asked for our launch permissions. Martin offered the permit to launch, as well as his certificate and license of space pilot imprinted on his face. The man scanned the topology of Martin’s face, which had engraved, like fingerprints, all the necessary information in a two-dimensional space, but with a three-dimensional shape. Tedet also had his driving certificate and license ‘tattooed’ on his face — we refer to topological tattoos as skin relief, or skall (don’t ask why). I had never had my face skalled, only the tattoo on my forearm that we all get to refer to our several governmental and non-governmental accounts, which are sometimes updated.
You’d think face recognition is the future, as all our faces are uploaded to a data center that receives our facial ID to be accessed. The reality is that having your information recorded and encrypted on you, at all times, is better than having to rely on a connection that could still fail. Especially in space, where the transfer of sensitive information could be easily destroyed by all kinds of radiation and interactions.
Or if you’re a wizard, and you get to convince every government about our problems without stating what we are to the public.
We waited for the time of departure and walked towards the launching chamber. In it, the shining walls were made of steel. Giving them a tap, I knew they were at least a meter thick in order to sustain the strain of forces and to disperse as much as possible the heat generated by the launch and sequence before it.
The launch procedure took at least an hour. Then, after a few minutes, everything would be over. It takes a long time to prepare for something that only lasts two minutes.
I had never been to space before. I had repaired many ships and knew about the inner workings to the finest detail. I’m sure of my work, and I know many other mechanics do an honest job — even when they scam people for money — they know that a bad job leads to certain deaths. I knew this ship would hold us perfectly well, but that did not make me any less scared of what could very unlikely happen.
The countdown in the screen before us reached its end and the drives began pushing the capsule forward. The seat behind me started eating me whole. My suit began contracting itself keeping my blood pressure high, sustaining my consciousness for a little longer. The Gs only increased as the drive kept pushing us forward.
To my right, I heard my lover breathe rhythmically, while I was beginning to lose consciousness. I could not hear or see Tedet, but I knew he would be having it worse. As much as tried copying Martin, my brain could not receive enough oxygen and my sight was lost in a black curtain. I did not realize how long it took us before I finally awoke. I felt the wrong sensation of weightlessness and panicked for a few seconds.
Martin was laughing when he saw me desperately and futilely reach out for something to hold on to. When I realized my situation, I managed to calm down, but I quickly turned to see how Tedet was holding, only to see an unconscious alien being held to his seat by just the straps on his suit.
“He should be okay,” I said, talking to Martin, but it was mostly a message directed towards myself. I knew everything should be okay, but that didn’t make me any less concerned for my best friend.
“Radera are tough,” answered my boyfriend. “Tougher than humans. It’s interesting to see one so vulnerable to something so simple as gravity. I wonder if they’d be fine if they were to live on Earth. Higher gravity would severely affect how they distribute their blood.”
“Do you think a fraction of change would be enough?”
“Lower gravity helps them, in a way. But higher gravity is the opposite story.”
Before long, Tedet managed to regain his consciousness, slowly sobering up to the microgravity environment. He clicked and croaked, shook his head looking for something to understand, and asked what had happened. We answered that we were about to reach one of the skyhook stations orbiting Sovail. His response was a whistling purr that I interpreted as a groan of displeasure.
“I’m going to pass out, again, won’t I?” he asked.
“Most likely,” answered Martin.
And so, he did, as the skyhook swung us around, creating artificial gravity from the centrifugal force. While the liftoff felt like we were very quickly being pushed toward the back of our seats, the slingshot felt like we were being thrown away. Despite the mostly similar production of Gs, the inner ear has the uncanny skill to easily differentiate a constant downward force, even when it keeps on increasing to unnatural levels, from an angular motion — we could tell we were being flung rather than being carried along.
Tedet lost consciousness for only a fraction of a second, just as the forces let up at the end of the slingshot maneuver. To that he croaked and turned red. He commented on the excitement he felt as it happened and wondered why not every part of the flight could be like that. Meanwhile, I felt sick, given that my inner ear just got the ride of the century, during those tens of seconds, only to be left floating in microgravity in an instant. Martin only mentioned he had a headache.
With our orbital course in a highly elliptical pattern, all we had to do was engage the automatic maneuvers that will send us toward the ghost spaceship from centuries past. It all sounded like we were explorers of ancient civilizations. But rather than feeling like we were on our way to El Dorado, I had the ominous sensation we were instead on our way to “El Macabro” — the Macabre — the cursed ship. If Davy Jones had any jurisdiction in space, this would be his capital ship.
“Did you know that there are no myths of space faring?” I spoke aloud, to catch the attention of both my best friend and my boyfriend. “Despite the centuries, no one has ever come up with supernatural phenomena that exist in space. It’s all naturalistic. The most we get are aliens from far away, with superior technology. They roam around or zip by, and then we never see them again. But these are assumed to be natural.”
“I guess that would be understandable,” responded Martin. “For centuries space has always been the realm of science. Everything we see out there is always explained by science. Every idea we had of what space used to be was quickly debunked and replaced with a natural explanation. Space had always been a place of unknowns, but never a place of fantasy.”
I nodded. “Space is not a place for fantasies. Thus, the supernatural hold no power over it. Space is the only place where mortals have unparalleled power. Not one single supernatural creature dares step on it.
“We don’t know what it would do to them if they ever did. Some theorize instant death. Some, completely weakening. But not one of them has ever set foot. Only vampires have come with us, and only because we humans carry our demons with us.”
“What about the Faery?” asked Tedet. “How did your Faery come to Sovail?”
“The leading theory is that the spiritual realm is not a place that exists alongside a specific place in the mortal realm, but that it connects to it. The spiritual realm must be divided into many, each region for each world, inaccessible to one another until those mortal worlds connect. The exchange of ideas and mythos bridges those gaps.
“In fact, there used to be two Fay for each shared concept. The Winter and Summer Fay were two, for humans and radera, until our concepts merged, and so did the Faery. Those that we didn’t share, remained unchanged.”
“And the vampires and torviela?” continued asking Tedet.
“They are not entirely spiritual. They could not merge.”
“If I may,” interrupted Martin. “If the Faery merged. Are they a hybrid of both?”
“No. They are the same.”
“They look the same? Like how they have always looked?”
“Ah!” I exclaimed in understanding. “You mean their looks. That is a great question. To our surprise, the answer was that they don’t have a look, or a figure if you will. It is our mind that makes an interpretation. Generally, that means the collective mind gives them their look. Humans think some Faery look like humans, while radera think they look like radera. So, Faery look like either depending on who is looking at them. Elves look like elves, to either, because elves are purely human faery. While ertgue—”
“Ertgetkgu,” Tedet corrected with a hard-to-pronounce word.
I gestured with my hand presenting Tedet and nodded at him as thanks. “Look like… themselves. Like ertgue.” I shrugged apologetically to Tedet. He accepted it.
A silence spread in the cabin as we all moved our eyes toward the windows that opened to outer space. Even the cheapest ships or capsules have a window or cupula that lets you see the outside. No human will ever get used to the view unless you see it every single day. The windows are not necessary, but they are always built out of tradition.
“Wow.”
It was in unison. Even Tedet uttered those same words, mimicking our speech, but it was genuine. The view was awe-inspiring, and we weren’t even looking at the planet below us, but at the ever-expanding darkness that was peppered by tiny little lights. The glow of the main star, Haehai — which we still call Sun in English — on the window only added to the surreal view. It was like looking at the night sky, but something was different about it. The darkness was slightly darker. The depth was slightly deeper. The everlasting was slightly more… everlasting.
I wanted to touch it. Grab it. I wanted to hold it, make it mine. Somehow, possesses it. Something tugged at my innermost instinctual need to have it. I wanted it so badly, like it was a need.
“I want it. I want to…” Martin reached out with his hand.
“Yeah,” Tedet agreed with the same gesture.
I found myself doing the exact same thing, only wordless. All three of us tried to place our hands on the window from our seats. We all looked at each other’s outstretched hands and, a few moments in, the symbolism dawned on everyone. The laughter and croaking were genuine.
“This is the kind of thing that makes us all the same,” proposed Tedet, between a beet-red face.
It was after this that I began feeling the slight push from the ship’s thrusters. The correction in orientation and the sudden acceleration. The computer beeped once, barely audible. It showed the estimated and projected path that the ship would take to reach a LaGrange point made by two satellites that orbit Sovail. Although only one of them is big and orbits the planet close enough to be seen and considered a moon by our standards — named Ereila, but commonly referred to as moon — the other — named Okeuge — is still big enough to mess with the stable orbits and points.
The paths in the screen shifted until the slight acceleration diminished slightly and the computer beeped again, announcing we were en route to our destination. With this continuous, but slow, acceleration, we were looking at a four-day, three-night trip.
I readjusted myself in the seat and released myself from my restraints. The little light that told us we had to remain buckled to our seats, had turned off. The rest did the same. While we moved towards the window, we touched the glass, expecting something that never came.
Instead, to fill the gap left by broken expectations, I decided to open my big mouth and ruin the moment by saying: “Space Ghost Ship, The Lost Ark. Here we come.”