CHAPTER 15

2210

Rogue Planet Exoginos

Riley’s scream echoed spread into the void as he fell. He reached out for anything to hold onto but he was surrounded by nothingness. He didn’t fear heights but he had never fallen in such a way that it seemed he would never see the ground again. He felt as though he was going to be sick.

“Sky!” he yelled. “What’s happening?”

“Why are you asking me?” she replied, scanning their surroundings. “You’re the one who considered it a good idea to walk into a rippling black hole without any understanding of what it was.”

Riley tried to focus on the screen as the scan loaded while struggling to keep the contents of his stomach down. An icon continued to spin on the screen, returning no results. “Sky!” he shouted.

“Sensors are detecting a faint energy signature. The source is too faint to register on the scanners, but my analysis of external temperature and matter interaction suggests that something is out there.”

“What does that mean?” Riley yelled.

“It means you need to stop shouting and focus, Riley. You’re not even falling!”

Riley stopped flailing his arms and realized he wasn’t falling. He relaxed, lowered his head, then slowly eased himself back into the chair. The gravity in the void was rapidly fluctuating between strong, normal, and weak. The darkness surrounding Riley slowly faded, gradually replaced by an atmosphere. As soon as the void disappeared, Riley fell. He landed on his feet with a heavy thud and slowly regained his bearings. He looked up and saw that it was dark, without a single cloud. Five moons were stationary in the sky, with equal distances between each. It was completely still. Riley couldn’t hear a sound, other than those coming from Vindex. There was no wind, nor any birdsong. Riley felt uneasy. He couldn’t see the ground, even in the light of five full moons. Being surrounded by the void made his skin crawl. It felt as though it would consume him. Riley turned again and froze when he saw a structure before him, one that hadn’t been there previously. He was tiny in comparison and wondered how something so enormous could appear from nothing. He began walking toward it.

Two huge doors served as the entrance to the structure; one was closed, while the other was slightly ajar. As Riley climbed the slope and approached the doorway, he gazed up at the structure. It was the most magnificent thing he had ever seen. With each step closer to the door, he became more light-headed. When he reached it, he stopped, took a deep breath, then stepped inside. Somehow, the building appeared even larger internally than it had externally. From the floor to the ceiling and everything in between, the structure glowed bright gold. Riley couldn’t make sense of the place, but he had long since given up trying to make sense of anything.

There were glimmering lines across the floor that formed a path from the entrance. The structure itself felt like one enormous piece of metal that was hollow inside. Every step Riley took made a metallic clink. At the center of the room, there was a black pyramid, several meters high. Riley felt insignificant next to it. The pyramid comprised three segments, seemingly held together by glowing purple light. The surfaces of the pyramid were covered in glyphs unfamiliar to both Riley and Sky.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Riley approached the pyramid and raised his hand.

“Haven’t you learned that everything here wants to kill you?” Sky asked. “Why are you walking toward that thing?”

“I already saw myself do it and I know it didn’t kill me.”

Sky fell silent. The floor on each side of the pyramid was marked with three black circles. Each circle was connected to the pyramid by a glowing line. Riley stepped into the nearest circle. The floor vibrated gently, then the structure’s interior lights went out. He was surrounded by darkness, other than the glowing segments on the pyramid. The three segments of the pyramid rotated, each in a different direction. The floor rumbled and Vindex lost its footing and fell back. Before it hit the ground, a bolt of purple lightning shot from the pyramid and engulfed Vindex in an orb of purple energy. The light lifted the mech into the air. Riley cried out as the energy coursed through his body, visible under his skin. It felt as though his suffering lasted for hours and then, suddenly, the bolt faded. Vindex dropped to its knees, shoulders lowered, mirroring Riley in the cockpit. His body was limp, held in place only by the safety belt. The purple light still glowed beneath his skin but it was gradually fading. Riley opened his eyes and wondered how long he had been out. As he slowly regained his strength, he looked up and saw that he was no longer in the structure. He was standing outside, in the same spot as when he first came through the void. Riley raised Vindex to its feet. He looked around, trying to find the structure, but it was no longer there. All that surrounded him was darkness beyond the scant light around the mech.

“Riley,” said Sky, “take a look at this.” Sky displayed a full system status on the screen. Everything was at a hundred percent: the quantum drive power gauge, the temporal drive gauge. All primary and secondary systems were maxed out. Riley stared at the screen intently.

“It appears that whatever happened in the structure hyper-charged the suit’s power levels beyond what should be possible,” said Sky.

Riley had been scowling but the revelation that the mech was now at full power slowly turned his expression into a grin.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Sky, “and I strongly advise against it.”

“Why?”

“The mech’s subsystems shouldn’t operate at a hundred percent. We should find a way to purge some of the energy before attempting a jump. Otherwise, you could end up vaporizing both of us. I can only speak for myself but I find the thought of being vaporized to be terrifying, and I would prefer to stay in one piece.”

Riley grunted. “Do your thing.” He disconnected from the control module and relaxed in his seat.

Sky assumed complete control of the mech. She activated all its weapons, increased their outputs to maximum, then she used them, blasting energy cannons at every rock in sight and shooting powerful beams into the sky. Riley rode shotgun while Sky piloted Vindex, roaming violently across the planet, blasting anything she encountered. In those hours, Sky expended more energy than she and Riley thought possible. By now, the energy levels should have been significantly depleted.

Sky displayed the power status on the screen. “How is this possible?” she exclaimed. None of the systems had fallen below a hundred percent.

“Well,” Riley said and put his helmet back on. He raised his hands and reconnected to the control module, then pulled up the temporal drive systems and activated the pre-programmed time stamp.

“This is insane, Riley,” Sky warned. “We’re on a different planet, in an entirely different star system. These parameters are highly unlikely to work. The arrays need to be recalibrated for traversing space and time.”

“Calm your nuts,” Riley sighed.

“I don’t have nuts,” she replied.

Riley hit the red button on the screen. Vindex’s systems were activated. The armor shook intensely as a wave of bright energy flowed throughout each part of the mech. An alert appeared on the screen.

Warning! Warning! Unit Systems Overloading. Safety Systems failed. Eject Immediately!

Warning! Warning! Unit Systems Overloading. Safety Systems failed. Eject Immediately!

The emergency lights flashed repeatedly in the cockpit. Riley took his left hand from the control module and reached for the eject lever beneath his seat. He grabbed the lever for a moment, then let go of it and reconnected his hand to the module. The mech was shaking so violently that everything was a blur. Riley closed his eyes as the vibrations grew and the glow from the time drive penetrated the cockpit.

With a thunderous bang, Vindex exploded into an intense burst of light.