* * * * *
The freighter landed on Inen’s northeastern spaceport only a few nariars from Selesta. Unnoticed, Sargon and I slipped away from the area and out onto the flat plain around the airfield.
“I haven’t been back to Tiasenne since the day I left for training,” he said once we were beyond the hearing of the men who came to unload the cargo. “It’s just as beautiful here as I remember. This was the spaceport you left from, wasn’t it?” He asked, giddy a little still at what was happening, and gesturing to the airfield behind us.
“Probably.” I agreed. “Unless Orashean cleared funds for a new one.”
“I thought I recognized it.” He laughed in sheer delight.
As we descended from the plain into a small valley, the city of Inen appeared sprawling on our left while the beginnings of long, low-lying hills rose unevenly on our right. Directly in front of us and just outside the city, my ship stretched over the horizon.
Sargon caught his breath, and I realized that he had never seen Selesta so close before. We had arrived on Tiasenne just as dawn tipped over the distant eastern mountains; by the time we reached the ship, the sun had climbed high into the sky.
Neither of us said much on the way. But the light breeze seemed to whisper warnings in the only language I could not understand, warnings I ignored.
“Wow!” Sargon whistled as we approached Selesta. “This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen—what an enormous ship!”
The main airlock at the ground level snapped open as we drew near the spaceship Selesta. The first closed compartment depressurized, decontaminated, and altered the atmosphere we had brought in to match that already present in the ship. After only a few seconds, the inner air lock door ahead opened—which was unsurprising, since the atmosphere in the ship was also from Tiasenne.
The day I had arrived, the computer had preserved only a few compartments that required specific atmospheric conditions. A few other rooms contained spatial particles, adjoining airlocks which had been exposed to space and sealed for experimental reasons on the explorer missions. Others I had sealed myself.
The corridor was dim ahead, but blinding light flooded it as we stepped inside.
“Here we go.” Sargon laughed as we stepped into the Selesta.
We walked around for a few minutes, Sargon’s eyes round as moons at everything he saw.
Then, at the intersection leading to the Valerian space fighters—
The Last Immortal : Book One of Seeds of a Fallen Empire Page 28
