Dimension

by Shay Zana

  Sighing, Kitera just shakes her head, unable to give a solid answer, because she has been asking herself this very question for a long time now.

  In the never ending night, Altair glides through the starry wild, its cyan symbols vibrant against its dark grey skin and the nothingness of space, still radiant after seven years of no direct light. Its species, ikamanu, vaguely resemble a four-flippered whale, though with mechanical characteristics and alien markings throughout their exterior and interior.

  The ikamanu were not enslaved by humanity, in fact they formed an almost instant bond upon the first encounter, much like a dog or horse to his master. The ikamanu loyally follow at humanity’s side, exceeding the current speed limit of star shift V, translating to five times the speed of light. Interstellar travel aboard an ikamanu is momentary, and without them, humanity would not have the capability to explore and inhabit other galaxies.

  The ikamanu have no respiratory organs, nor do they have the need to feed or sleep. They need only star energy and can stay alive for many years without it, reserving the energy and outwardly displaying their reserves by the intensity of the glow in their symbols on their outer and inner selves. The symbols are all unique to each ikamanu, each creature having variations in both shapes and sizes, like fingerprints providing identification. Although the symbols and glyphs on an ikamanu can be viewed as a power gauge, their intensity does not only show the storage of their star energy.

  The ikamanu own a biological shielding and force-field-like energy known as an entity, which flows through the very fibres of the creatures in a dormant state and is connected to their central nervous system telepathically. The entity is a collective existence of many naturally occurring, microscopic organic particles that thrive off light and mimic the mechanics of stars. Radiation is absorbed but contained, the particles meshing together to generate their own atmosphere as a defence mechanism, dictated through biological equilibrium. Essentially, an entity is a hybrid of stellar and organic quantities, moulded by evolution and science.

  The hues of an entity depend on the heat intensity that the host wishes to radiate. Cooler outputs of entity appear red, just like the cooler frequencies of red dwarfs and red giant stars, and the hotter outputs of entity appear blue, just like the hottest blue supergiants. Ikamanu are able to increase their entity’s heat intensity to the highest of frequencies. Altair often wields its entity at full temperature, but keeps this level by merging the heat with the cooler hue of energy, creating an almost cyan mix, like the intermingling effect of a nebula cloud. The refreshing cyan luminosity can often be seen emanating through the walls even where there are no symbols, setting a cooling glow throughout the ship, the heat contained efficiently. The unique frequency has become a signature of Altair to the crew.

  Humanity was sanctioned by the Ciphers to augment the creatures as vessels, hollowing out their interiors in surprisingly painless effort, and installing atmospheric fields. Gravity was a natural occurrence in the species through centrifugal rotation of their cores, causing widespread speculation as to a possibly engineered origin. Many traits of the species point to that exact possibility, but the mystery ensues. A lot of Serenity’s technology is extracted from these ships, including this entity which is instilled and trained into the Paragons through nodules in their neurons, transmitting the entity through the synapses, neural pathways, nervous system, bloodstream, muscle tissue, and releasing the energy through the pores of the skin. Traits transferred through the installation process of entities are the highlighting burn of the veins through the skin, mimicking the symbols of the ships, igniting through the blood in a stunning display. Although Paragons have been trained from birth via inanimate growth procedures to wield an entity, they are not powerful enough to push the energy to maximum output, therefore can only display the cooler frequencies.

  The ikamanu are social and curious creatures, never letting an encounter with another of their kind pass by without some form of greet or interaction, either docile or hostile. However, Altair senses its crew’s desire to move with haste, so it does not let these meetings last for long, usually just indulging in a few flaunting flashes of its symbols and trading of entities for telepathic connections, much like joining minds.

  Because of Altair’s encounters with other ikamanu and the threat of hostility, the crew cannot commend themselves to cryo-stasis simultaneously. Although they do rotate their time spent in stasis to preserve resources and prevent restlessness, the soldiers often prefer to share their awakened times to train together.

  REIGNITE THE STARS

  And so the months of tedium pass us by. Days roll into nights and back into days, merging without routine or sequence. The black abyss renders us victims to its cold nature, forcing us to abide by its harsh rules. We reprise in eternity, passing through the beginning and end, enduring the realm of life and death, both beautiful and deadly.

  Nebulous dust wreaths the solar horizon with an aurora of shades. Four stars cocoon the grid, their solar particles sweeping across the dark expanse in a quadruple formation. This nursery system of stellar quantities contains four dying stars, gripped by the weapon of gravity.

  In the embrace of space, one would expect the vacancy to dull the effort of life. But for the warriors of the stars, the battlefield of space is home.

  “Entering mission phase one.”

  “Solarflares, incoming,” Mazayus warns steadily through the comms link. His bear hands leap across the spread of terminals displayed before him, the exchange of cyber data and organic processes flowing almost effortlessly through his trained mind.

  “Wouldn’t be much of a challenge without them,” Boone chirps back with mock glee, adjusting his trajectory through the space grid.

  Mazayus only hums in agreement, noting Boone’s change of course to the left flank of their formation. “Deo, take right flank, your ikamanu has the densest entity. Natheus, fall back on our six.”

  They comply with silence and movement through space.

  “Impact in minus four minutes, right flank and rear,” he supplies them.

  The line formation of four ikamanu glides through the grid fluidly to transition to a phoenix formation. The four stars surrounding them in the far reaches of distant stellar occupation react by blasting them with the first round of solarflares to hinder their objective.

  “Piss easy,” Deo remarks gruffly.

  The stars on their right and rear smoulder in vivid contrast to the backdrop of crisp night, spasming in mighty proportions with solarflares. The Paragons stay true to their mission, welcoming the onslaught of radiation as it boils at them, flung by the whim of the stars. As their vessels prepare for defence, the star warriors don the armour of their vitasuits.

  No longer clad in mere clinging alien skin, but plates of armour layered over vital organs and muscles, the Paragons brace themselves in their gravity seats, the static crack of charging entity creating a disorientating vertigo.

  “Minus two,” Mazayus updates, helmet sealing over his head and visor activating.

  Gouts of entity flames erupt into flashing lightning within each ikamanu, licking up the interior foundations and phasing to the exteriors. Bursts of star energy thresh with the electric motion of the entities, buffeting out from the vessels like whips of light. The human forms within these majestic clouts of energy are immune to its devastating effects, though they still squirm away from the tearing light, even behind their visors.

  “Minus one!”

  The boom of growing thunder. Roars of the uprising energy. A rolling reverberation that rises to a climax of a snap. Ignition.

  “Impact!”

  The burn of blue heat froths outward from each vessel as the twin solarflares collide. A screaming clamour escapes as the wash of solar particles curling around their formation grinds into the organic equality of entity particles. Under the barraging force of the mightiest power of the universe, the organic determination endures.

  “Rotate!”

  Th
ey obey Mazayus; Deo by guiding his ikamanu to slip back in the formation with a quick neural command, taking the brunt of the solarflares’ pressure off its entity, Natheus by twisting his ikamanu beneath the formation, passing on the heat to Mazayus and Boone to counter.

  Together, the four ikamanu, guided by their human pilots, deflect the solarflares in a conjoined sphere of entity energy. The highest hue of blue entity harmonising with the amber fire of the flares muddles into a lime nebula, coruscating danger into beauty.

  The solarflares pass.

  “Child’s play,” Boone whines, though an edge of excitement has caught in his voice. “Bring on the real shit.”

  “Back in formation,” Mazayus advises, though his advice is redundant as his squad have already maneuvered back into their original formation.

  “Absorption rate is low,” Natheus announces.

  “What do ya reckon?” Boone interrupts. “More solarflares or UEU intervention?”

  “If our next obstacle is more solarflares, we will need to allow our ikamanu to replenish their star energy,” Natheus answers dully. “If UEU intervention-“

  “Entering mission phase two.”

  A soft bleeping sounds within each ikamanu, alerting the Paragons to incoming contacts. UEU intervention.

  “You had to jinx it,” Boone groans in annoyance. “I swear they upped the difficulty on this challenge right before we left Earth. It never used to be this damned hard.”

  “You’ve just gotten worse,” Deo teases him.

  “Says the guy who died first in our last infantry exercise.”

  “That was a glitch.”

  “Incoming Gladiator fighters,” Mazayus breaks up the chatter. “No unnecessary engagement, our primary objective is clear: survive, and reach your destinations.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Boone acknowledges in mock military fashion, also pairing it with a mock salute in the privacy of his ship

  They break formation, shooting apart toward a star each with UEU fighter squadrons giving chase in a frenzy of directions.

  “Looks like I’m the popular one this time,” Boone remarks as he consults his feeds, identifying a bulk of fighters veering after him. Last round, the bulk of the UEU had tailed Mazayus, and the mission had quickly ended in a ball of flames for him.

  He increases speed toward his star, bulging a gleam of red through his visor. Constant flashes of his ikamanu’s entity thrive around him, deflecting attacks from their pursuers, but without a new burst of star energy, the entity will fade.

  None of the Paragons have yet completed this challenge on its hardest difficulty, each of them always ending in a plethora of flaming debris or disintegrating under the menacing waves of solarflares. In realistic conditions, such obstacles rarely occur when a Paragon makes their Sacrifice, but there is no harm in keeping sharp in such impossible conditions. This particular game is designed to manage stress levels.

  The real challenge is the actual performance of the Sacrifice, not just getting to the star.

  “Thrusters keeping,” Boone reports, “but star energy is going down the shitter.” He is forced to a pause as something ruptures against his ikamanu’s hull, sending a heave of entity bashing him over on its way to retaliate. His ikamanu is losing its focus, unable to dodge its pilot as it defends itself.

  “Boone?” comes Mazayus’ concern.

  Boone grunts as he levels himself back upward. “Damn it, hull breach in the lower sectors. The same thing just happens over and over, no matter what tactics we try.”

  They endure a few minutes longer in silence, bearing down on their designated stars while their ikamanu repel fire from UEU forces, a constant chain of cursing coming from Boone’s audio transmitter. The key to the challenge is balancing system energy distribution and entity endurance, but for one of them, the task is always impossible with the majority of attackers clustering them.

  A hitch, the team call it. There is always a hitch in these games.

  As another barrage slips through the ikamanu’s entity and breaches the hull, Boone is prepared to enfold himself in his own entity shielding as his vessel’s entity cascades past him in a brutal rush. Their two energies clash momentarily before Boone is able to dispel his focus back to hibernation.

  “Another hull breach!” he reports over the clash of combat.

  Aboard his ikamanu, Deo grinds his jaw. “Fuck this.” Setting a reverse trajectory, he abandons his star and slips through his crowd of attackers unscathed, tearing through the empty regions of space after Boone.

  “Deo, what do you think you’re doing?” Mazayus demands.

  “Breaking the rules.”

  “Negative,” Mazayus scolds. “Get back on course, Paragon! We do this by the game.”

  “Screw the game! The only way we can beat it is by breaking it.”

  “Reality is not a game,” Natheus agrees thoughtfully.

  Consideration.

  As Boone’s ikamanu endures a relentless onslaught of fire from the mob of fighters, he compensates for the lack of entity shielding by rerouting star energy from non-vital systems. Lights, oxygen supply, atmosphere, auxiliary thrusters, but he excludes gravity. He will need the quick motions of gravity to operate the feeds. His suit will take care of basic life support.

  In response to the fresh boost of energy supply, his ikamanu seems to quiver internally, propelling more speed through the main thrusters and harnessing a mighty flare of entity. An external shockwave spurts out to jolt away any fighters that were straying in too close.

  “Life support offline,” Boone reports to his team. “Only vital systems are active.”

  “Almost there,” Deo supplies.

  “What’s your plan?” Mazayus finally pitches in.

  “No plan,” Deo admits, “just instinct.”

  “You know how I feel about your instincts, Deo.”

  Deo just gives a soft rumble of a laugh, guiding his ikamanu in closer to Boone. He approaches in from the rear, sidling up to Boone’s starboard while nudging through many swarming UEU Gladiators, some crushed in the ikamanu’s entity field.

  Instantly, their attack is thwarted and the Gladiators retreat, regrouping behind the two ikamanu before their fields can smear together into one overwhelming sea of energies.

  “Now what?” Boone asks sceptically.

  “I just saved your arse, so you think of something for once.”

  A whisper in the region of space ahead rips into a crack of power, where the hulking mass of a UEU Olympian class warship materializes from the far reaches of distance. Never before has this challenge included anything larger than Gladiator fighters. It seems Deo’s rebellion for the rules has unlocked this next upgrade to the challenge. Not that he is proud of himself.

  “Shit.”

  An armada of firepower is flung from the Olympian, catapulting right for the two ikamanu and blaring out the stars in nearing proximity.

  “Move!”

  Boone was already on the move, banking to the left while Deo banks right, the area of space between them burning in their absence.

  “What have you two done now?!” Mazayus barks into the comms with a fresh spurt of disapproval.

  Neither answer as they continuously dodge barrage after barrage. Though the Olympian’s targeting system is too slow for the agile ikamanu, it is still a threat if the buzzing Gladiators render one of them immobile.

  Most of the Gladiators still have their attention riveted to Boone’s wounded ikamanu, torturing it with relentless pressure as they dart acrobatically with their sharp designs and angular proportions. Deo’s eyes skim his feeds in a moment of contemplation, knowing that it is all on him right now.

  Curving through streams of incoming fire, Deo’s vessel counters by slashing out with its entity, catching a few fighters like swats of lightning. A scalding of heavy plasma fire from the Olympian splashes across his previous position, the heat reaching inside his suit where sweat lubricates his skin. His ikamanu may be able to repel one round li
ke that, but two and he would be finished. Boone stands no chance at all with the damage of his ikamanu.

  “Boone, when I say, I need you to take a vertical dive!” Deo thunders over the hiss of plasma radiation.

  “Gotcha,” Boone returns, no hint of scepticism in his voice now.

  Deo tracks his fellow Paragon down and aligns himself at his tail, shadowing the flailing mob of hungry Gladiators. Jarring impacts rive into his own vessel’s hull, the Gladiators gaining a vicious hold of the situation, but he tunes it out as mere bitter annoyance.

  “Now!”

  Boone dives deeply, a disorientating whir of stars sifting over his vision as he creates a momentary break in fire from his foes.

  Deo dives too, meeting the Gladiators halfway in their steep descent to greet them with an orb of entity, threshing out at them in a swallowing nova. Consumed, the fighter vessels erupt on impact, their shields unable to deflect such pure power. All that remains are the few stragglers on Deo’s six, who flee in defeat, limping back to their mothership.

  The entire maneuver had lasted just a few seconds, and Boone cannot help but release a howl of victory from his throat. “Ladies and gents, the Universal Eden Union; defying the Zodiacs and sucking at it since the stone age!” This is cut short by a near impact from the Olympian warship as it snarls at them with armed teeth.

  That Olympian is unchallenged and going nowhere. They need an escape route.

  “Time to high-tail it,” Deo suggests, not letting his triumph seep in just yet. They still have the rest of the game to beat.

  “We’re outties,” Boone agrees, his ikamanu making a sharp swipe alongside the Olympian in order to pass by it. “I’ll be all good from here, thanks for saving my ass.”

  “Don’t let it go to your head.”

  The two part ways in a speed-increasing pump of entity clouds, zipping away from the lumbering Olympian as it swats them away with encouraging firepower. No point in pursuing them by conventional means, the small vessels outmatching it in both speed and agility.