“Rolynd.”
“…”
“Rolynd.”
“…”
“Rolynd, we need to move again or they’re going to lock onto our signal.” Someone urged him.
But still, the sixteen-year-old Rolynd had no answer. His uncannily cyan eyes were lost in thought, hidden beneath his hair dyed black.
Through the spaceship viewport before him, the infinite twinkling stars were spread out across the inky void of space like so many unblinking eyes. Where could they go? The entire universe was under Incandestine control… Or so the seven teenagers packed into the Sparrow were taught to believe, but they were not about to give up because of that, least of them Rolynd.
He knew better than to accept anything at face value. He knew nothing was perfect, least of all humankind. Their escape had proved that. The Incandestine Empire’s supposed control over the entire universe was undoubtedly the same.
The Sparrow was a small, threadbare vessel. It had been called the S-P10 by the staff of the Daedalus Facility, but the teens affectionately referred to it as the Sparrow during their training exercises, given the craft’s birdlike silhouette. It had only a cockpit, engine compartment, loading bay, and one bathroom. There was no kitchen or even beds, and there were certainly no unnecessary adornments anywhere to be seen. Even the Empire's livery adorning the grey floors, walls and ceilings of its interior had only been etched, yet to be coloured in. In its current state, the spaceship wasn’t much more than a box with wings. The only reason that Rolynd and his allies had commandeered it was the fact that it was the only vehicle left spaceworthy after their fight with the Daedalus Facility’s security forces in the hangar.
“Listen, if we’re discussing where to go next, can it be somewhere with food? I’m getting hungry. There was no time to eat before everything went to shit, and this metal coffin doesn’t even have a working toilet.” A boy called from outside the tiny cockpit. His short blonde hair and bright yellow eyes were barely visible, poking up past grey metal from the engine compartment below.
“We’re all hungry, Charlie. Try and keep it in.” The smallest among them said. She couldn’t have been older than fourteen.
The older Charlie was not amused. His eyes narrowed on Phee’s ignorant face, framed by light brunette bangs. “Listen, Phee, you’re not the one powering the ship, are you? If I run out of energy, we’re all screwed. Not like you’d understand how tiring this is, since you’re powerless and everything.”
“Sh-shut up! I’m a late bloomer! That’s what the doctor-” Phee began to retort.
“Enough you two. All this noise isn’t helping Rolynd think.” Cut in a third voice. It belonged to a girl around Charlie’s age, who had first spoken to Rolynd. She had red hair tied back into a ponytail, giving her a no-nonsense look about her.
“…Thanks, Sophia.” Rolynd finally said.
They were getting irritable. It was the inevitable outcome after the adrenaline wore off, leaving them tired, hungry and traumatised.
Rolynd stole a glance to the corner of the cockpit on his left, where a girl was curled up into a ball, arms wrapped around her legs, rocking slowly back and forth. The tips of her dyed black hair were stuck together by clumps of crusty dried blood, the same blood that had been splattered all over her torso.
“This can’t be happening. It can’t.” the bloodstained Effie muttered over and over.
Beside her, another girl with dark purple hair and dark, purplish-brown skin tried to comfort her, her palm on the other girl’s left shoulder. “I know. I don’t get it either. Her predictions were always right.” Carmen said, empathising with her friend.
“Until now,” the silver-haired Aleister whispered from Rolynd’s right, out of the earshot of the wounded and healer. The tinkerer was busy inspecting the innards of the Sparrow’s flight systems beneath an open panel in the floor. His long, silver hair hung down, seemingly worming its way into the depths of the machinery like living creatures.
“Hrrmph,” Rolynd grunted.
Despite the obvious facts of the situation, Rolynd could not bring himself to agree with Aleister’s sentiments. The predictions that Princess Catherine made with her unique powers had never been incorrect before. Rolynd did not see why that might suddenly change. That led to a simple conclusion in his mind: Catherine had known she would die, and yet still she had continued with their escape plan. Why? The heir had to have known that her death would only make the escaped Chimaera’s captors more fervent in their pursuit. If the late Incandestine heir had seen her friends’ current predicament and wagered her own life on that future, did that not suggest that there was some hope for them?
“…If I had just stuck around for three more years I’d have graduated from the Chimaera program. I’d probably have my own spaceship or something, running missions for the greater good. But instead, I’m stuck here in this tin can, waiting to be blown into smithereens by the Intercessor’s main cannon. Does this ship even have shields?” Charlie complained loudly to himself from the engine compartment.
“No,” Aleister replied. “This ship barely has cushions on its seats.”
Sophia was not amused by their conversation, but she kept her words to herself, staring out the viewport alongside Rolynd.
“What do you think they’ll do if they catch up to us?” Phee asked Charlie.
“If they catch up? You mean, when don’t you? What do you think they’re going to do? They’ll have our heads!” Charlie railed.
“Guys!... That’s enough!” Carmen hissed from the corner of the room, gesturing with her head to the nonresponsive Effie beside her. Carmen glared at them with her violet eyes threateningly wide.
Charlie seemed a bit taken aback, but he wasn’t done venting his frustrations. “I was just teasing- Ugh. Whatever. We wouldn’t be so fucked if Effie hadn’t messed up and killed the damn princess in the first place.” He said callously.
“You…!” Carmen began to shout.
Effie interrupted her by throwing the friendly hand off her shoulder, and promptly disappearing entirely, leaving Carmen to half-fall onto the floor with nothing supporting her. Strange purple spines could be seen protruding grotesquely from the palm and fingers of Carmen’s hand, but they retracted back into Carmen’s body as she got angrily to her feet. “Great. Look at what you’ve done!” she bellowed, gesturing at the empty space where Effie had been.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Sophia got to her feet from the hard metal chair beside Rolynd, ready to start mediating. But Rolynd was faster.
“ENOUGH!” the young man shouted, still sitting. His voice reverberated violently throughout the whole vessel, causing the others to cover their ears in fright and pain. The entire spaceship shook with the volume of his voice, the lights in the cockpit flared red, and an alarm started blaring before Aleister promptly silenced it. Rolynd got to his feet, turning to look Charlie in the face.
“Your bickering is not only annoying, but it is driving us apart. Charlie, would you have preferred being left behind with The Twins?” Rolynd asked pointedly, enraged.
“…No,” Charlie grunted, looking at a piece of wall that had suddenly captured his attention.
“Then shut the fuck up and stop stressing the others out. I want you to apologise to Effie when she comes back.”
“Alright. Fine.”
Rolynd turned to address the others, too. Phee, Sophia, Carmen and Aleister. They watched him cautiously. Perhaps even fearfully. Rolynd hated to see them that way, but he compartmentalised the sentiment. “Do you know the last thing Catherine said to me?” he asked them.
Phee slowly shook her head. The others followed suit in their own manner after a short delay.
“She said to do whatever it takes to keep you safe. I’m not about to let her down so easily,” Rolynd told them.
“Respectfully, Rolynd. You still don’t have a plan… do you? We all know that there’s nowhere to go. We’ve already jumped five times into empty space. Eventually, Charlie’s strength will run out, and then we’ll be stranded.” Aleister said. His voice was calm. Logical.
“We’re already stranded. We can hardly fly to even the smallest moon. As soon as we go near any sort of communications device, General Lucina will be onto us with her wormhole generators in an instant.” Rolynd said matter-of-factly.
“But you have a plan?”
“Yes. We’ll plot a course for the Boundaries.”
“The Boundaries? You mean to go looking for Rogue Planets or something? Didn’t we learn that they were all destroyed by the old Initiative?” Sophia asked him.
“That is what we are taught, but is that really the case? Could every last planet have been destroyed?” Rolynd countered. “Do not forget that they were born from the probability controllers, the same as the gemstones in our fusion bodies. Dehumanisation is prohibited, just the same as Rogue Planets. And yet we exist, and the Chimera Project exists, so why shouldn’t the Rogue Planets?”
Phee seemed to be convinced by Rolynd’s logic, but the others were still reluctant to agree.
“The Empire has Probability Controllers on the Boundaries, programmed to automatically create and dispense star-killers. There’s no way anything exists out there but an empty void.” Aleister warned.
“There’s only one way to find out. If any of you have a better idea, you’re more than welcome to suggest it.” Rolynd said. No one spoke up, so Rolynd continued. “Let’s go then. Aleister, did you manage to crack their navigation systems?”
“Yes, but the system still doesn’t allow lock on outside established Incandestine space. If we’re going past the boundaries, we’re going to need to manually input the flight data.” Aleister replied.
“Take us to the Boundaries first. We’ll see if there’re any signs of life. If not… Just go.”
Aleister bent over the controls, his hair freakishly returning to work once more. A gold and white holographic display appeared in the centre of the cockpit. It was a solar map. By Aleister’s manipulation, the map began to zoom out, from the scale of planetary systems to galaxies, to galaxy clusters and eventually to galaxy superclusters.
Once it was fully zoomed out, the entire universe was contained within that map. All the bits that mattered anyway. Anything outside the boundary of the sphere that denoted Incandestine-controlled space was procedurally exterminated by the Incandestine Empire’s Probability Controllers; machines that could influence the quantum fluctuations that pervaded every picometre of reality.
The Probability Controllers were a relic of a different time in human history when science and technology were allowed to grow untethered to any moral quandary. One with access to such a machine could simply escape to a world of their own creation, with people designed to agree with them. Of course, such a time could not last. Probability Controllers could create anything, seemingly from nothing – including an infinite supply of more Probability Controllers. It took only one such device to fall into the hands of extremists before the entire universe was at risk of complete destruction. Like the prophecy of Ragnarok from the primordial Norsemen of Ancient Earth, space and matter all across the universe were written and rewritten, created and destroyed for countless ages. That was until the Incandestine Initiative found a way to create Universal Law; a new law of nature that prevented sentient beings from being directly probabilistically altered. The fighting soon ceased, and the Incandestine Empire rose to power. At least, that was what the education system of the Incandestine professed.
“Charlie. Take us.” Rolynd ordered.
“On it,” Charlie said, twisting the bloodstained sword of ominous crystal in his hand. The organic material turned like a key, expending its power into the Sparrow’s experimental gemstone drive.
Reality warped and shifted around them.
In the blink of an eye, the view outside the cockpit had changed entirely, looking out into uncharted space outside the Boundary of the Incandestine Empire.
The view was completely and utterly black. Devoid of any light, and life. Not a single star to be seen.
Carmen gasped. The sound of Charlie’s laboured breathing could be heard echoing through the threshold from the engine compartment. The others were silent as their final hopes were mercilessly crushed.
“Damn…” Rolynd let out.
But just as he was about to give up entirely, he felt a pull unlike any other human experience. The alien sensation was impossible to describe with any more accuracy. Something in the infinite reaches of black space was calling to him.
No – it was calling to them… or perhaps, to the non-human parts of them.
“Aleister. You feel that too, don’t you?” Rolynd asked the silver-haired boy, who stared unblinkingly into the endless void.
“…Yes. I believe I do.” Aleister muttered. He seemed troubled by what he was experiencing.
“Me too,” Sophia said. Phee and Carmen murmured their agreement.
“Something’s out there,” Rolynd said. “In the spaces that are denied even names.”
Without needing to be told what to do, Aleister input commands into the Sparrow’s console once more, the signals travelling down the strands of his hair, directly into the commandeered flight systems.
“Charlie,” Rolynd called.
The rustling sound of Charlie finding his feet made its way into the cockpit. “Give me just a second.” The blonde boy said, wiping his palms on the leggings of his form-fitting flight suit. There came the sound of a resonant clunk, and reality warped and shifted around them once more.
In another blink of an eye, everything had changed.
The view through the cockpit’s windscreen was what captured everyone’s attention right away.
A planet filled their sight, lit by warm golden sunlight from beyond the view of the viewport, but that mattered little. Without needing to be prompted, Aleister rendered the port side of the Sparrow invisible. Through the new space, a star was blindingly visible.
But how? What technology could hide a sun from the Incandestine’s sensors? Aleister wondered. Since becoming the authority on human development, the Incandestine Empire kept all the best inventions to themselves, for the sake of preserving peace among the populace.
Meanwhile, all the other Chimaeras looked down on the Rogue Planet beneath them. Green, forested land and blue swathes of ocean. Brown and yellow savannah. Rows of white mountains. Even the reclusive Effie had reappeared at some point, joining them in their unbridled curiosity.
“It’s inhabited. There are people down there.” Carmen noted.
Indeed, traces of smoke billowed from industrial centres from a continent in the southern hemisphere.
But rather than focus on those details, Rolynd continued to concentrate on the feeling that persisted to pull on some part of his being. It had reached a tremendous crescendo just after the escapees had warped in. But now, it began to fade away, almost like it had done its job guiding them here.
With that, he knew that they had not arrived here by miraculous coincidence. They had been called. But for what purpose?