by Shay Zana
As her drift from the physical world comes to an end, she feels herself disintegrate, and when she opens her eyes she can see the great expanse of space staring back at her. Her connection with the Zodiacs once again did not go as she had planned. Her questions were not answered, and she has that all too familiar feeling of emptiness. Why are the Zodiacs growing more distant the closer they get to Scattered Planet?
She sighs and rubs her fingertips along her temples, the strain tiring. Those fingertips now find the small pendent hanging from her neck, a clear stone forged into a delicate design.
“Aid me, Ziva.”
Mazayus patrols the halls of Altair, examining the vivid cyan lights within the mechanistic walls throughout the interior of the ikamanu. He is heading for the dining area, where tonight’s meal should be getting served by Deo, though his cooking is not exactly the best among the crew.
Their food supplies are exactly on track with rations, and they have been careful not to overindulge throughout the years. Fitting seven years worth of food to sustain four supersoldiers aboard the small ship had been a problem when the mission was under construction, but with the oxygen garden came the obvious solution of growing and harvesting one’s own food.
As Mazayus leisurely strolls past the starboard observatory entrance, he notices a shadow and stops, peering through the entrance again to see Kitera sitting on the floor, leaning forward and resting her chin on her raised knees. Her long, black hair falls down her back gracefully; thick and shiny like a waterfall of silk. The air inside the observatory seems colder than usual. Crisp melodies of the unknown lace invisibly, harnessing a murk of awareness that is far too acute for his primitive senses. Mazayus finds himself pinned to the deck, as if the eerie atmosphere has cast a spell of immobility upon him. Perplexed, he manages to pull away from the outlandish domain and continues towards the dining area.
"Right, what's for dinner tonight, Deo? Pork, steak, beef, alien meat, what?"
Deo looks up from his cooking utensils to see Boone’s anxious face staring back at him, darting to and fro from the food being cooked. Deo shakes his head. "It's chicken, dumbass."
The mess hall is full of voices, laughter, and warmth as the crew gathers for the meal, seating themselves around the dining table. Mazayus enters the room and immediately notices the smell of chicken, curious as to what Deo has decided to prepare with it. He has been known to pair ingredients of the queerest flavours, and more often than not, managing to create a concoction of unpleasant hits on the taste palette. He takes his seat next to Natheus, who subtly bows his head and shifts his chair slightly so that he can squeeze through the tight space.
"Where's Kiya?" Boone asks Mazayus as he moves away from the kitchen bench and sits down directly across from him, knowing he was the last person to patrol the halls.
"Starboard observatory," Mazayus simply answers, reaching for his water and looking at Boone over the rim of the glass.
Deo scoffs rudely from behind the kitchen bench. "Probably doing what she's supposed to be doing and getting some damn answers for us."
The food is served as Deo eventually places the plates on the table for everyone. Mazayus examines the food, nodding in satisfaction at the sight of the chicken served with corn on a cob, mashed potatoes and lettuce... except he quickly notices a curious red sprinkling of powder atop the mashed potatoes, a cottage cheese-like substance covering, or more, drowning the lettuce, and a rather pathetic looking blob of green sauce smothered on the plate beneath the corn-cob. At least the chicken appears to be free of his kitchen experiments.
"Dig in," Deo announces impassively as he takes his own seat next to Boone. He begins shovelling down his food without even looking to view the reactions to his cooking.
Oblivious, he receives three very nervous glares.
Boone is the bravest, tentatively lifting his fork and stabbing it into the small mountain of mashed potatoes on his plate, smearing around the red powder. He eyeballs the lump on his fork, shrugs, and buries it in his mouth.
Mazayus and Natheus watch the curves of Boone’s face turn from curious, to suspicious, to frightened within a matter of seconds. The food ends up back on the plate in a slushy heap.
As Boone races over to the kitchen sink to cleanse his ruined palette, Deo is finally aware of the drama.
“What?”
Before lights out, Natheus always watches a recording of his wife and him sharing their vacation on Nirvana, the renowned island planet in the Milky Way colonized solely to be used as a resort. His wife is an ecologist, who left for Gallagher V ten years ago to aid in the planet's colonization effort. Ironically, Gallagher V exists in Scattered Planet. He is convinced the gods played a role in this.
Natheus sits on the edge of his bed, holding the small, sleek device, his hazel eyes transfixed on the screen as he watches the recordings and listens through his earchips, the holographic globes hovering at the ear canal.
She ran along the beach, looking back and smiling as he held the camera. Her tanned skin appeared darker under the red star, and her brown hair flowed with the soft ripples of the waves behind her. She stood motionless for a moment, laughing at him, and then approached smoothly to take the camera from him, sidling up next to him for a view of them together as she held the device out in front of them. He kissed her on the cheek and held her closer by the waist and she laughed again, her face beaming with love.
The recording ends, and Natheus sighs and places the device carefully on the small metal cabinet beside his bed, his earchips fading. The cold environment within the living vessel sweeps a feeling of loneliness through his gut, and the low thrum and flicker of the creature’s functions fills him with an eerie, superstitious paranoia, bringing his thoughts to the deep recesses of his mind. If this mission fails, then she and everyone dies. Natheus knows what he has to do, he knows the primary mission and he knows his training as a Paragon taught him to put personal feelings aside for the sake of the mission, but a part of him still wants to forget about the primary mission and concentrate on locating her and getting her out first. If this key they are supposed to find turns out to be a hopeless case, then there is no guarantee he will have enough time to find her before the stars give out.
People start entering the crews quarters now, preparing for the night’s sleep, and Natheus is slightly irritated by their presence, wanting to be alone for a few more minutes.
"With all divine light, I ask that you watch over her soul, guide her from the shadows and shield her innocence if whispers reveal themselves as lies," he whispers softly in a prayer to the Zodiacs, asking them to protect his wife.
Growing up on one of the most spiritually central planets in the Milky Way has resulted in Natheus’ deeper spirituality than most other Paragons. Sparta is one of the most revered planets in Serenity space, its community providing a central hub for the Zodiac religion. Not only is Natheus rare among Paragons because of the fact that he married, but also because he was recruited into the Paragon program five years after birth, rather than immediately. It was speculated that the party sent to obtain him was attacked, though this information was lost in transit, and he was only later pursued for conscription. He may have missed out on five crucial years of training and had to endure a more painful adaptation to certain modifications because of it, but he makes up for it with strong beliefs and mental focus.
Eventually, Natheus lies back on his bed and rests above the sheets, just thinking and waiting for someone to flick the lights out.
As the halls grow quiet, dark, and empty, one Paragon still wanders, his socks making dull thuds as they come in contact with the deck. Boone waited for everyone to venture off to sleep, and now takes advantage of the privacy, wanting to visit the Cipher who is considered apart from them. He tries to make his footsteps as light as possible as he heads for the observatory, but it is near impossible with his weight against the metal-like compound of the ikamanu; dense yet light as it fluctuates beneath him.
As he ap
proaches the door frame, he notices a shadow along the floor, elongated by the way the artificial UV light falls upon the room. Outside is pure nothingness, just black abyss covered by the faint entity shielding of Altair, hardly any stars to be seen in the vastness of intergalactic space. Kitera rests cross-legged on the floor, unmoving and seeming not to even breathe. Slightly tentative, Boone approaches closer and carefully steps around in front of her, leaning down to look at her face.
She is a beautiful woman, her features sharp and defined, though soft and feminine. Exotic, slanted eyes framed by long feathery lashes, thick brows that give the look of youthful innocence, chiselled bone structure, silken skin, plump lips. The face of an angel. It is said that all Ciphers are blessed with iconic beauty, and judging by the one Cipher who has ever left isolation since the isolation began, most would be convinced that this is true. Although Kitera possesses this symbolic fairness, she also has a strange, eerie presence to her. Her skin is ethereally pale, too pale, and her irises are an unnatural silver, seeming to shift in shades; haunting, like she is possessed by something from another realm. Most were daunted by these features when she first revealed herself. She is not a woman of warmth, but one of coldness. Human, but alien. Physical, but transcendent.
She usually wears a lot of jewellery, whether it be gold, silver, feathers, beads, gems or precious stones, she is rarely seen without them. One particular pendent is always present around her neck, tiny and shaped almost like a fountain of water. It is also part of Cipher culture to decorate the body and honour it with ceremonial paints and ritual body arts, she has told him, but Boone is often curious as to how the Ciphers obtain jewels. Such extraction would call for great amounts of mining and scourging up planetary soil. Such disturbance of the environment is against everything they believe in. So where do the jewels come from?
Boone stares as her eyes have rolled to the back of her head, showing the whites only, but there does not appear to be any strain or tension, and in fact it looks strangely serene. This brings him at a loss for words, thoughts or actions and he just stands and stares, greatly disturbed, but feeling an outlandish sense of relaxation, like the air is filled with contagious endorphins, both peaceful and rejuvenating. He notices the air is somewhat static too as he feels the hairs on his arms and head begin to elevate, sending a chill down his spine. This is the first time Boone has ever witnessed Kitera wholly communing with the Zodiacs, and his curiosity drives him to continue invading the spectral atmosphere.
"This isn't creepy at all..." he manages to say to himself sarcastically.
At this sound, Kitera is immediately awakened and knocked from her meditative state. The air suddenly feels heavy and warm, like a once cool breeze has been sucked from the air on a hot and humid day. Their ears pop from the change in pressure, but quickly return to normal as their systems adjust.
Boone is a little taken aback at the sharp adjustment, stepping back to regain his composure and sense of balance. "Uh, sorry, Kiya, I didn't mean to interrupt you," he mumbles, scratching the back of his neck uncomfortably. Kiya has been her nickname ever since she claimed it was given by kin, though Boone is the only one to use it.
Kitera is mildly overcome with a flush of anger at the interruption, hissing in a pestered sigh. As her awareness rushes back and her sixth sense evaporates, she recaptures her austerity with a mask of calm. She forces a smile to her lips and looks up to him, her golden headpiece falling upon her forehead delicately. "Come,” she instructs, gesturing to the space beside her with a flowing hand.
Boone complies, and happily plops down beside her, adjusting himself to get comfortable on the hard floor, his eyes shooting with the familiar look of admiration. She always notices that specific glint in his eyes when he first sees her, and it always fills her chest with the warmth of adopted kinship that they share. She smiles at him, glad to have the company of a good friend, something rare for a Cipher to have outside of their own people. In her opinion, Boone is not the most subtle Paragon of the team, in fact he is the least. He has an uncommon, light hearted spirit among his kind. Boone is eccentric, and sometimes an impulsive warrior with a love for explosions, something she has witnessed many times in the cybergrid. But his good spirits and high energy keeps the team on their toes.
She remembers reading his file before meeting him. With height at 6’7”, and weighing in at over 150kg, he is the shortest and lightest, but not by a greatly noticeable margin from Deo and Natheus. Mazayus, however, tops the charts at well over 7ft with more than 160kg to back it up. To her, a slender woman of 5’8”, living amongst such giants is always intimidating, and of course, belittling. But Boone... he is more like a gentle ogre, often clumsy despite his honed reflexes.
In his years of training, Boone was always a highly credited heavy weapons specialist, but his witty personality often discredited his professionalism, sparking concerns about his focus and commitment. But selected for the mission, his zany spark has only increased, along with his uncanny desire for explosives and heavy weaponry. He keeps his dark brown hair shaved short in a buzzcut, with a small peaking mohawk, and four symmetrical braids secured tightly to his scalp that travel his head and end in a short rats-tail. He also sports several tattoos, including one on his scalp, running alongside a braid. A bar code, as if branded in an insignia. A flame also curls up the side of his neck, breathed from the dragon guarding his back. He had showed it off to her in detail once, and also has the tendency to prance the ship shirtless when intoxicated. Seven years straight has left the crew short on regs.
He is her drunk little brother from another mother, and she is his sober sister from another mister. He had also taught her that rhyme, and she had thought it rather charming, reminding herself to tell it to her people when she returned one day.
“Knockin’ on the stars again?” Boone eventually offers as a conversation starter.
Kitera’s beauty ignites as she smiles at him, cheekbones glistening in the light of the simmering abyss. “Yes.” Her eyes dart back beyond the distance of space and her features grow obscure.
“Anyone home?”
A hush as she ponders, eyes focusing through infinite reaches. “Echoes are all I am.”
They sit in silence for a while, just enjoying the company of each other as they both gaze into the void outside. Although there are not many stars to be seen between galaxies, just watching Altair’s cyan entity flow and pulse outside is relaxing, the telekinetic energy alive with shimmering light and conscious existence, sending impulses to Altair’s core.
After a while, Boone raises his right hand in a balled fist as he flicks it across the air in front of him, finishing the motion with all of his fingers outstretched. Immediately afterwards, a cyan holographic interface generates in front of him and he begins to interact with it. After a few adjustments, the image fills the transparent skin of the observatory window, and they can see magnified views of several galaxies in the direction they are facing. Kitera smiles at the view and watches as Boone now selects Scattered Planet from a list, setting it on a drifting view of multiple layouts. They remain silent, captivated by the pre-recorded slideshow that slickly glides through Scattered Planet, skimming across spherical bodies and manifesting the aviation through multihued gaseous nebulae.
To Kitera, there is nothing more beautiful than the nature of the universe. Everything is just so real, so magnificent, so innocent and yet so harsh. Space is truly a place of wonder, too vast to be completely understood, and ever expanding beyond the comprehension of humanity.
"It's not really true is it?" Boone asks at length, still staring at the galaxy in motion.
Kitera looks to him, curious. "Speak your mind, Boone."
"That Scattered Planet used to be one galaxy sized planet? Is that even possible?" He looks at her now, his green eyes containing quiet fascination.
Glancing away to the stars again, Kitera ponders for a second, envisioning this in her mind. "Remember the First Sacrifice? The legend of Oded and the
ikamanu Icarus?" she now asks him, her shining eyes thoughtful.
"Yeah, the first Paragon to make the Sacrifice and save the Sun."
She nods. "Many thought it impossible that the Sacrifice would reignite a star, that there was no scientific evidence that the ignition of an entity would cause any effect at all. The legend of Scattered Planet could be the same story. We have come to understand the universe, and learn that not only science rules here, but gods also, who work hard to protect us from ourselves and keep their power of influence to a minimal. The Zodiacs have nothing to tell about it, but maybe it is true... either way, I do not think it is our place to know everything. Some things are not meant to be discovered."
Ancient legend tells of the galaxy as the beginning of the Zodiacs, that Scattered Planet was in fact one galaxy-sized planet, needing no star as its heat and light was generated from within its core. It was a rogue planet, part of no system, but not dead. In fact it teemed with life, thriving with immortal beings that lived in peace and harmony. This did not last. A war was released, a war that tore the planet apart from within and shattered it to pieces, creating the domain of the Zodiacs, and not only Scattered Planet, but the entire universe in what scientists theorise as the big bang.
Boone does not initially reply, but looks back to the galaxy for a short time. Kitera always does have a way of making him see things in a different light. Sometimes it is like she was born in another realm of existence, and he cannot help but think that a part of her was. Really, when he thinks about it, she is not entirely human... if at all.
A stretched silence fills the observatory once more, lasting for a considerable amount of time before the Paragon fails to contain his curiosity. "Why do you think the Zodiacs have gone distant?" he asks the Cipher.
