by Boris Mosso
At that time, both Vectors left the giant Astral Galaxy’s gravitational hold area, finding themselves in full approach towards the still distant and smallest Lumina Galaxy; that day they crossed the first million light years which separated them, they were delayed two days according to the original plan. Despite that, the navigators and Lena were satisfied with the travel time, since the ten thousand light years leap maneuvers, covered other additional difficulties in the deep space unknown areas.
Lena began to review all the material concerning the mission and the object during that time, down to the last available drop of information; she never wanted to be surprised ever again by data contained in a file on board.
When she finished her shift at the bridge, she stayed in her comfortable quarters. She didn’t want to get those leery looks from the crewmen unnecessarily; specially after the disappointing narrative from Trivian and Renar.
The crew felt an emotional blow and Lena was still worried about it, due to the skyrocketing amounts mentioned to justify the remote times in which all of it began; which nurtured her way of seeing things, insane theories in the Council’s core and the incomprehensible expectations on the fleets’ high command. She couldn’t accept that Admiral Tronius had agreed upon sending an incursion to another galaxy, just when the fleet was leaving to Atirov’s System.
Night after night she tried to shake those stressing ideas off her mind, trying to occupy the night shift time to sleep a little more, since the journey was very much at peace at that point.
There weren’t any traces detected from any enemy spaceship following them; however, the alert systems were active in both spaceships.
She stayed in her quarters during the day at times, studying Trivian’s background information about his journeys for many hours, buried up to her neck in her relaxation pool. She commanded the spaceship’s standard operations for hours, to the diligent first Officer and to Officers who were on call in the command bridge.
She used to stay awake long hours at night, floating naked on her gravitational bed until falling into a deep slumber. She reviewed Inia’s images and brief recordings some other times. They weren’t many, and she played them time after time for hours at times, just as she did when she was a child; she rescued them in a microchip which she was able to take with her when leaving her war fleet spaceship so abruptly.
Other times, she wandered around the spaceship, walking around the long and broad rooms located in different levels. She harnessed the moment to visit the robotics’ hangars a few times, in some of those strolls, seeking to share with Drexiliander and his pilots. She also visited the STF’s installations. Gander and his second Officer, Rombar, tried to inspect the RMOD’s there, giving her more information about his deployment planning.
To give just one example, the day before she left those hangars very pleased after witnessing a simulated landing on the cracked virtual asteroids’ surface, thus, verifying relieved, that her terrestrial operations’ lead Officers remained steadfast and committed with the mission’s compliance; willing to follow her command. She understood that Gander and Drexiliander would be her backbone in the spaceship, and maybe the secretive and impervious Pranus also.
On the other hand, she distinguished a subtly harsh willingness from the lower rank officers or from other Vector’s operation areas.
A couple of times, Pranus suggested having a formal dinner with her Officers, without regarding the least the fleet’s thousand-year-old tradition, where they had one weekly camaraderie supper available with the spaceships’ high Officers, taking place in the Captain’s private quarters’ reception area; but that was in times of peace.
While she walked towards the big and long viewing corridor on the starboard side, she decided to delegate Pranus with the organization of one of these dinners, according to the strict protocols which governed it. She must be and look like an Espacian Commander. At the same time, she decided to invite Captain Irgo Fromdert and her robotics’ lead Officer along with Borlan, the few RMOD’s leader flying in the escort Vector and with whom she had never spoken to directly. With that, she intended to smooth off some rough edges emerged with Fromdert from the beginning.
When she went into the viewing side, she came face to face with a bright and shocking scenery at the same time, coming from the outside. A gigantic wandering sun emerged very close to the Vector’s position after the last leap. The event forced them to modify the maneuver’s coordinates into outer space, due to the enormous star’s gravitational hold. Therefore, both spaceships now surrounded it in parallel at full speed. Thus, coming closer against the gigantic blue ball, you could see the escort spaceship’s outlined shadow.
The sun was a blue giant dragging three gaseous planets’ systems through the space depths, although not belonging to any specific galaxy.
The performance was overwhelming. Lena felt seduced by the breath-taking view and little by little she approached the screen to watch the impressive and almighty blue star in its pervasive magnitude. She could see it without any difficulty despite its closeness, thanks to the light filters also, and the automatic heat control to each situation’s needs.
The gigantic celestial body occupied one hundred percent of the vision field in the subatomic transparent alloys’ screens on the starboard. The ferocious temperature and the gigantic and lethal Gamma rays’ surges, were first repelled by the spaceship’s energy reflecting curtain, protecting from radiation found in space and then, by the hull’s screens.
She forgot about her command, about the object, even about the war, for a moment. The monstrous blue and violet flares stirred as waves in a bright and furious ocean scouring the surface continuously.
Its reflect shuddered, in which, the Solarian Systems’ sun would fit smoothly into any of the dozens of whirlpools projected from the burning surface.
She was so engrossed that she didn’t see Renar approaching from behind.
The star archeologist stopped for a minute watching her. Lena was with her back turned in front of the huge screens with the blue giant in the background and further, the Vector’s escort moving along their side. It was an imposing and intimidating sight at the same time; without any doubt, an image hard to forget. She was wearing a dark blue tight uniform outlining her athletic body’s harmonious lines. Renar couldn’t avoid looking at her from head to toe. He thought about walking silently behind her to then go on his way, but he couldn’t stop; he had been waiting for a moment like that for days.
—The spaceship’s astronomy instruments indicated that this colossal drifter was in a very unstable phase. It could explode as a supernova in any given time, which would be a very bad moment to be in its vicinity.
Lena held her surprised startle naturally, at the same time she turned around, stopping upon facing him.
—Are you trying to scare me, Mr. Renar?
—Excuse my lack of finesse. I was just engrossed and overwhelmed before such celestial beauty… Lethal beauty, that is.
He said the last words without taking his eyes off her.
Lena backed up when she noticed the distance between them was closer to one centimeter beyond the usual distance.
—I agree, it’s an unusual and very beautiful spectacle, even for spaceship’s Captains like me, who is expected to have seen many such things in space. Those suns are generally often found in the galaxies’ central areas, not in peripheral areas and much less, roaming around alone through the universe. They’re giants carrying enormous power. You should have good knowledge about them.
—Yes, they’re like old friends.
—And what can you tell me? it’s strange to see them around here, isn’t it so?
—That’s right and without its pair.
—What do you mean?
—They’re generally accompanied by another star… a smaller one.
—I see.
—It has a short life compared to stars with less mass, like our system’s sun. They’re often found in the bright nebulae prox
imities or forming part of the moving groups, or, lastly, in young stars open clusters.
They spend all their energy freely in some twenty million years, while they produce elements such as silver and gold to honor the universe. Coming to their end, it goes amongst a great show, seen in the entire galaxy and further yet. It’s interesting that it drags three gaseous worlds in their endless journey, as if another sun was spinning around there, these planets should have been expelled by the gravitational swings produced with normal approaches of these two stars.
—Then, could it be a binary star?
—Maybe around there, in one light year or less away, another smaller star with it. Which fed this one for a very long time in the distant past… I don’t know.
Lena turned on her heels to watch the impressive star in its fullest, which little by little began to stay behind from the spaceship’s position. She rested her hand against the transparent metal and couldn’t help but be surprised before the frozen surface. How amazing was Espacia’s technology! She thought.
—What temperature would it be outside the spaceship, Renar?
Renar answered noticing that Lena had left out the “Mister”.
—Using a unified Espacian scale, it should be more than fifty thousand degrees on the surface.
—It seems impossible for us to be so close.
—It depends how you see it, since the star is so huge, you get that impression.
—You’re right. We circle it at several million kilometers away, but apparently, we barely skimmed its top. Its diameter is so big, that if this blue star was the Solarian System’s sun… Espacia would now be inside the star, along with the other four rocky planets. It has three hundred million kilometers in diameter.
—Were we notified previously?
—Yes, the decoy sensors’ system alerted us just in time.
—Did I hear about a lost sensor?
—That’s right. When the time elapsed for its return, the sensor didn’t come back. Pranus informed me about it, stopping the next ten thousand light years leap into outer space, instantly; once the coordinates were corrected we sent another sensor which did come back this time and alerted us. Even so, when incorporating the new coordinates to dodge it, we emerged very close to the giant when performing the star breakdown, remaining exposed to more than thirty thousand degrees. Then we moved away at this distance to circle it, and these marvelous spaceships held out without problems.
—Any metal treated in the original way, would have already diverted long ago. Well, in our spaceships from twenty thousand years ago, the story would have been very different.
—Yes, it would have, Renar. If you notice, it would give the impression that we pulled back from it slowly and, on the contrary, we moved at top linear speed. The flight would take more than an hour to go around this star completely.
—It’s that big. And whatever happened to the first sensor?
—It diverted. After the star’s breakdown we checked the active coordinates, if the first sensor, upon emerging from the quantum leap, ended up exactly in the middle of the moving star; it was destroyed instantly, since the temperature in the middle of this sun, gets up over twenty million degrees and the pressure is unfathomable.
—Well, I didn’t think we would have been so close to dying, this is something almost impossible. I don’t know which the possibility could be an intersection like that.
—Almost inexistent, although we just saw it. The space travel keeps on being a dangerous occupation, even in times of peace. We possess very advanced technologies, the newest in the Astral Galaxy. Even so, occasionally, spaceships disappear with entire crews inexplicably; not ever coming back again to the Solarian System.
—I didn’t have the slightest idea.
—The fleet takes good care of itself by not making those disappearances public.
Lena noticed that the star archeologist pleased her much more than at the beginning. Renar’s sad gaze conveyed clarity and trust, but that made her uncomfortable at the same time and he sensed it.
—Are you feeling okay?
Lena was about to tell him she wasn’t fine and confessing her deepest fears. She couldn’t avoid the star archeologist’s magnetic gaze.
—You look very pale…
She heard him, but her fears imprisoned her words. She was surprised and disappointed with herself upon discovering that without any explanation, Renar had the power to make her feelings surface in an unrestrained and shameful way.
—No, I… I can’t stop thinking at times, that Espacia has been invaded by the cruel Browns’ creatures and now the armoured enemy entities might be strolling around as they please amongst the Lenodon’s skyscrapers.
Renar was puzzled before Lena’s torturing thoughts and felt very much like hugging her. Honestly, those same dark ideas ran around his mind every day. After hearing Lena’s words, he imagined those strong armoured creatures walking around the Espacian tower.
Suddenly, she remembered the savagery and terror stories that flowed around Espacia and the entire Astral also, about the beasts genetically created by the enemy. They were real predatory machines released on the planetary surfaces in dozens of thousands, during the invader’s landings.
Very few had seen them face to face and could talk and confirm it at the same time.
—I hope that didn’t happen, it would be a nightmare come true. To tell you the truth, I also think about it.
Lena kept her head down, since she was overtaken by great shame.
She fought to retake her posture and strength, suddenly remembering that she was the spaceship’s Captain and the Espacian standing in front of her, was a passenger of doubtful scientific quality, who no matter what, could see her weaken in her mission commander’s position.
—Lena?
—Excuse me, Mr. Renar, I don’t know what I’m doing, forget it please.
—You look tired, are you sleeping well?
—What kind of question is that? Nobody is sleeping well in this spaceship nor in the escort one.
—I do, honestly,
—You might be the only one; you should tell me the secret of sleeping that way, some day.
—A cup of a good Driac before closing your eyes… there’s no more mystery.
Lena couldn’t stop from looking at Renar straight in the eyes again.
A few seconds went by that, far from being uncomfortable, turned out warm and recomforting, while the star archeologist looked straight at her with self-confidence and tenderness at the same time. Little by little, Lena found her inner peace again.
—I’ll keep your secret. See you later, Renar.
Lena walked away feeling certain doubts at the beginning, to then hurry the pace up towards the bridge. Part of her wished to remain there a good while more, and that upset her. Renar kept on watching her while she walked away through the two hundred meters long corridor. Her figure was lit by the blue giant’s rays from all the transparent screen’s strip, flanking its way.
A few minutes after, Lena went into the bridge. Pranus approached her once he saw her.
—Captain, we’ll be far away from the drifting sun in about ten minutes, as to perform the new leap. The decoy sensors came back already and authorized the maneuver.
―Proceed, we’ve already lost enough time on this.
12 - Yearning
Dantori walked around the main corridor coming from the Terrestrial Forces’ hangar. With his twenty-three years, he was the youngest STF from the group and without prejudging him for that, he was accepted pleasantly by the more experienced Officers in his first months in the unit. Despite that, his initial enthusiasm for the journey transformed little by little into confusion and incomprehension. One day she heard some bitter remarks about Lesir and then a week later, a disappointing conversation from Lesir himself with Betinia and Kovolaris.
He missed Espacia and the days of peace more and more, also understanding that resilience, obedience and determination was expected from h
im.
When getting to an intersection he bumped face to face into Doctor Zenda exiting her rooms.
—Greetings, Dantori.
—Greetings, doctor Zenda.
The linguist noticed certain sadness and guileless disturbance on the STF’s countenance.
—Are you okay, Officer?
—Yes, everything’s fine.
—You remind me of someone from my younger times.
—You’re still young, Doctor…
—Thanks.
The linguist was very fond of the lanky and terse Terrestrial Force’s soldier, asking him to walk with her then.
—I’m going to the Command bridge. Would you go with me?
—With pleasure.
—I’ll feel safer then. I shouldn’t fear anything, followed by an STF.
They both laughed and then began walking.
—You know? Apparently, we’re all emotionally constrained by the dramatic events developing at the time of takeoff.
—The war
—Yes, Dantori… it’s a bloody war and we’re losing it last time we heard about it.
On the other hand, I usually don’t fly in the spaceship’s fleet… I’ve traveled on board of scientific spaceships sporadically, in investigation expeditions through some solar systems known in the Astral. Maybe that’s the reason I don’t really feel comfortable here, despite the comforts this spaceship has available; I really can’t complain, but we’re going to another galaxy and that’s something I can’t still believe. I must confess I must deal with deep fears at night before being able to fall asleep. What relieves me when that fear takes hold of me, is that you guys are here to protect us, Dantori.
—I still haven’t had great deployments either…
—But they selected you for a reason, there are only very qualified Espacians in this spaceship. You must be excellent in what you do and, even so, I see you crestfallen and worried, if I may say it.
—I couldn’t tell you.
Zenda sensed a hesitant look in the young Espacian soldier and felt huge warmth.
—You can speak trustfully, Dantori, I’m not an Officer nor a crew member in this spaceship… You only have a linguist here somewhat scared and stuck in big matters. Tell me, what worries you?
