Chapter 21: Destruction

Location: Unknown; Small yacht

That blasted collar is finally gone! I can’t believe it! I can’t stop myself and kick it through the room. “Take that you stupid piece of shit!” I'm just so happy. No more shocks, no more…

I hear the sound of a cleared throat. “Language!” Maja shouts in an amused tone. Oh, my excitement got the better of me. Shoot, that’s embarrassing.

“Sorry,” I mumble, my head must be as red as a tomato.

Where was I? Right, no more blocked magic, and finally no more restricted movements! Can I free more Mages this way? “Hey Maja, could you do that with other collars too and can you do it if I plug it into a tablet?”

“Sure, that should be no problem.”

Nice, now I just need to find a tablet… After searching the whole ship, I finally find one in a drawer in the General’s room. Maja crushes all security passwords, then she makes a disgusted sound. “Eeek, that’s full of porn!” I just tell her to reset the tablet. Okay, I threw it away and then told her to delete everything.

I wrap a uniform around my hands and grab the tablet, then I clean it in the sink. Luckily they are waterproof. Sighing, I roll it out and it comes alive without issues. Maja reinstalls the OS and I now have a clean tablet – inside and outside.

The next few days fly by. I manage to repair the grav chair at the captain's console and spent a lot of time floating around the ship while sitting in the chair. I’ve always liked those chairs. The rest of the time I spend talking with Maja, eating, and sleeping. It’s boring. At least Maja knows some stories she heard on the station she grew up on. I tell her about my life before and after testing as a Mage and she doesn’t pity me. I’m thankful for that.

All in all, we get more comfortable around each other and after a week it just feels like we’re two old friends living together. I can’t imagine what would have happened if she blamed me for Sean’s death…

We’re already way closer to the star system and the sensors start showing a clearer picture. It looks bad! There’s debris everywhere. The whole system looks like an enormous bomb has gone off. But that’s not possible, right? A bomb to destroy a whole system? And even if, who would do that? Nah, must have been a natural disaster. There aren’t any signs of civilization. Most likely the system has never been inhabited. Maybe I’m the one to discover it. Can I name it? Sara’s system. I like the sound of that.

It looks like there were eight or nine planets once. The three closest to the sun look pretty much intact, but the planets further out are either destroyed or have huge craters on their surface.

A day later Maja starts with the deceleration and finally, after twelve days – just like she said – we reach the outermost planet. Or better, we reach the outermost cluster of debris.

It’s every bit as bad as the scanners showed us before. What once was the outermost planet of a star system is now completely destroyed. It’s hard to navigate through all that but Maja insists on taking a closer look. As she is currently flying the ship, I let her. If one can fly us through that safely, it’s her. A few hours later, we’re there.

“Sara, do you see this?” Maja activates a holographic overlay before the front-facing window. The overlay has several pieces of debris marked in red. I’ve absolutely no clue what she means.

“Uh, noo? What is it?”

“It’s tristanium.” Wait, tristanium can’t be found on planets. I tap a few virtual buttons, then the window darkens, and the hologram zooms in. It has switched to the external cameras to give me a closer look at one of the tristanium pieces.

This isn’t raw tristanium! “Holy smokes, Maja, someone created this. It’s processed tristanium!”

With a chuckle she confirms. “Took you long enough. My guess is, that it’s part of a destroyed ship or station.” A ship or station. A freakin artificial construct! Someone has been here before. Then something happened and destroyed everything. Hope flares alive inside me. Maybe there is a wormhole left in the system. That would be my way out!

“Maja, we have to fly closer to the sun. Let’s check out the more intact planets.” I can barely hold in my excitement. Maybe there is a chance to find survivors?

“Agreed. I’ll set us on a circular course, that way we can avoid most of the debris. We’ll start at the innermost planet, as it’s more efficient.”

“Okay, let’s do this. How long does it take?” “Probably another two days… We have to fly slow, some nasty pieces are flying around unpredictably.”

“That’s alright, Maja.” Not that we are pressured for time. There is still plenty of food and water.

As we fly further in, there is a planet with what probably were gigantic rings around it. The planet itself looks the most intact so far, but the rings are in pieces. There are also a few destroyed moons. Maja detects a bit more tristanium, but we decide to ignore it. The next planet in line is currently on the other side of the system, so we don’t get to see much of it, but the scanner suggests that it once has been massive. Now only parts of it are left.

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Next is an asteroid belt, we detect more structures. Some even look intact, but we still decide to fly further in as decelerating for every interesting asteroid would use too much fuel.

The further we move in, the more debris is floating around outside of the planets’ elliptical pathways. I guess that those once were starships. I’m coming more and more back to the massive bomb theory, I had in the beginning. The signs are there. A massive war happened in this system.

After a good night’s sleep, we have finally arrived. I’m disappointed. The planet closest to the sun is too close to it… It’s just a burned-down piece of rock. There aren’t even any structures, I suppose it was too inconvenient for the system’s inhabitants to build something there. Maja sounds quite annoyed as well. “Well, that was a lot of wasted fuel… I should have thought of that. The distance is too small.” I try to comfort her but she just huffs in annoyance. Well, to the next planet then.

After almost two weeks with her, I notice that while acting mature, she is still more of a teenager… Not that I’m much older anyway, but still. One has to play the grown-up here. The next planet is another disappointment. While there are pieces of space stations floating around, the planet itself has a completely toxic atmosphere.

Things change when we near the third planet. “That’s it,” Maja shouts in my ear. “That planet has the perfect distance to support life. It has to be the one that was inhabited.” The holographic projector again marks lots of pieces floating around. Way more than around all the other planets. Unfortunately, massive clouds cover the view of the planet’s surface. “And look at all that metal. There have been way more structures.”

It's hard not to share her excitement. It’s our first major find after all. I sit there in the Captain’s chair with a massive grin on my face. Then I notice something else. “Maja, look on the moon! That structure looks intact. We should check it out. Maybe there’s still data in the systems.” Maja agrees and our yacht prepares to land on the single moon orbiting the planet.

Ugh, I have to prepare! I turn around and leave the bridge, Maja can handle landing alone. I remember seeing a spacewalker suit in the General’s wardrobe. Those suits are similar to shipsuits, but bulkier and they have a larger fresh air supply. I could go out in only my shipsuit, but why should I risk it? One sharp piece of metal and I’m gone. Removing my outer clothes, I only keep wearing the skintight shipsuit and then put on the bulky spacewalker suit. It’s a bit large, but I can work with that.

“Prepare for landing Sara, we’re one minute out.” That’s enough time to check all the seals. Everything checks out and I sit down on the bed. Now I just have to wait till we land. I wait. A few minutes later, I’m confused. Didn’t Maja say it’s only a minute? Just as the thought runs through my head, I hear her amused voice in my ear.

“You know that we’re already on the ground, right?” What? There wasn’t even a bump when touching down.

“Nooo? There was no rumble, how would I know?”

“Hah, I’m just too good a pilot. The best you’ll ever meet.”

“Yeah, yeah, have your fun. Let’s move out. Please ready the airlock.”

“Already done, come on I want to check out the place.”

“Chill, I have to grab a few more things.”

I’m talking about weapons. Who knows what awaits me out there? Luckily, the General left an energy blade and a laser gun right here for me to take in a drawer. I take them in annoyance. I wish I could just throw a fireball with my magic. Shoving the thought away I step into the airlock. I’ve got more important things to do. Let the exploration begin.

“I’m ready Maja, let’s get out of here!” Excitement enters my voice and Maja happily obliges. The airlock cycles and I take in the moon's surface. It’s rocky and dusty with lots of craters. The structure we saw from space is right in the center of one of the bigger craters around 200 meters away from our landing place.

With a deep breath, I take my first step out of the ship. Maja closes the airlock behind me, and I immediately notice a stark difference. Gravity is way lower than the standard planetary gravity that every starship with gravity generators sustains. I take another step, this time I try to jump a little and the effect is immediate. I float forward and come back to the ground after three meters. This is so cool!

Wait a moment. Low gravity, does that mean?

Excitement fills me and I decide to simply test it. I focus on a patch of ground next to the station. My magic surges and with a purple flash, I moved 200 meters in an instant. YES! It may be more exhausting, but I manage to use my power while there’s gravity! This is so cool!

I manage to get myself back together. Focus! Now, how do I get inside? “Maja, can you detect any openings?”

“Uh, about that… I lost my connection to the ship during the jump. This never happened before when we tried it on the ship. Might be the distance. We have to upgrade my wireless module.”

She is silent for a moment. This is annoying but understandable. Space Mages in the republic don’t jump around on their own. They stay on starships, where the wireless connections are always close. “Hmm, can you get back to the ship? There should be an antenna cable somewhere, we can jury rig it to your tablet and I can use it as a relay.”

“Sure, no problem,” I reply before concentrating again. Magic surges and I am back next to the ship. I can’t stop myself from grinning.

Is the republic lying? Can novices jump inside of gravity? I have to test it on the ship later. I simply believed them earlier. Now I have my doubts. But why would they lie? It makes no sense… Switching off gravity is cumbersome. Hmm, maybe I’m just weird? I have that Master's ability… My Space Sense, and I did jump onto a ship with gravity. Another mystery to solve. Maybe I advanced to Junior in those two years? I need another testing orb when I’m back in civilization.

Or it’s simply that even Novices can use their power when there is less than planetary standard gravity? That would make sense. But why did no one tell me? Ah right, they wanted to keep us on a short leash and as we’re always on ships, it doesn’t matter. It still doesn’t explain how I was able to jump onto Sean’s ship…

Enough of that for now. I have a tablet to modify. Five minutes later, I’m back next to the structure. My tablet looks like an abomination, but it works. Maja has a stable connection to the ship and runs the scanners. “There! 50 meters to your right, right on top of the station. There is a damaged plate of tristanium. Your energy blade should be able to cut through. It’s a bit high, but with the low gravity, it shouldn’t be a problem to climb… No, wait! I’ve got the coordinates. Let’s try a jump. We don’t have to worry about messing up and landing outside of the moving yacht anymore.” Excitement has entered her voice and it’s true, I never allowed her to do it on the ship. The risk of messing up was too great for me, but now… Yeah, we can do this.

“Okay, lock them in, I’m ready.” I feel the coordinates settle in my magic, just like with S-57 almost two weeks ago. After two years, it still feels weird having someone else interfere with my magic, even if it’s a good thing. The coordinates are set, I power up the spell and jump, just to appear exactly where Maja wanted a fraction of a second later. Success!

“That’s amazing! I can’t wait to do that again.” I have to agree. Having the coordinates set requires less concentration from my side. Jumping this way is better all along. And with Maja on my side, I don’t even have to worry about S-57 messing up. That one time was enough, even if it worked out. Maja is just superior. Nah, that’s too weak a word. Maja crushes S-57 in every discipline, hell she even crushes me. Her processing power is something else. But he still saved me. Do not forget that, Sara!

Okay, the damaged plate is right beside me. Time to cut that structure open and expose its secrets.