City of a Hundred Gates, City of Worlds—Ahskra, metropolis of many millions of souls. So long has the city stood that few know its origin, its ancient history; fewer still(if any indeed) know how the gates—portals each to another planet—came into being. Many are the stories that have been told, and many those that still unfurl, for Ahskra is the hub of worlds, the centre of trade for many of those disparate souls who call it, and the realms connected to its gates, home.
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Old Ahasker was seldom a pretty sight after the fall of night, nor did it do wonders for the ears of the listener, with cries and shouts of anguish reverberating against the ancient brickwork and mud buildings, sometimes every hour, sometimes more regularly.
This was not surprising to those residing within, or at least familiar with, this section of Ahskra. What else would one expect from the neighborhood that has housed the Free Gate since time immemorial? Why else would Old Ahasker be sequestered from the rest of the city behind mile-high walls, with its only open border being that of the fell Dersha Bog, a fetid swampland filled with all manner of bloodthirsty beasts, whether of human stock or not?
It was only common sense for the Sveni, the seventy-seven families who through providence or ambition have come to rule most gates and districts within Ahskra, to continue the age-old practice of keeping Old Ahasker walled off from the rest of the city, with passage out requiring a pass. Passage in, of course, was free to all, for few who entered through the Free Gate and came unto the Planet Skrira ever returned to Ahskra.
Certainly, many are the tales of brave adventurers and capable merchants who went to that anarchic planet and came back rich, powerful, or both—yet for every story of success, there surely are a hundred thousand souls who would never have their names spoken again in the taverns and tea-houses of the City of Worlds.
As any a young bravo strolling the streets with feather in cap and leopard fur over shoulder could tell you, many of those unfortunate souls met not their ends on the open waters or in the fetid jungles of Skrira, but rather in the maze-like streets, the dank dens and bargain bordellos of Old Ahasker itself.
One such man stumbled out of a bar, drunk past all reckoning and blissfully unaware of his impending doom. His right hand still clutched a bottle of spirits(half-full) and with this treasure he zig-zagged his way across the narrow alley, arms swinging, drink spilling, looking very much like a disoriented skier in slow motion. A fair-haired and pale-skinned man, which was rather uncommon for the denizens of Old Ahasker(being mostly of Skrirati stock, and with only the boatless barbarians of the far south of that planet being so palely hued, most of them were far darker).
Indeed, this man had been through the Free Gate but twice, many years ago when he had fought as a merc in the War of Purple Leaves. His pay was long since spent, and now he was just another vagrant seeking a brief slice of paradise in one of the most uncaring quarters of Ahskra. Pausing for a nice long gulp, the man did not notice a shadow flitting over the weather-beaten tiles and rotting reeds that served as roofs for the souls living along the alley; one of hundreds of unnamed alleys that twisted their way like veins in lungs through Old Ahasker.
“And once I... I seen the tall tall places, aye!” the stumbler began to sing, taking another decent sip of what gut-wrenching booze still remained in the bottle. “And up and up we go, up and and up we went! Sword’s on the shoulder fair... Sword shouldered, smiling fair... Fuck...” Losing the refrain, the man ground to a halt. One suspicious eye stared into the now empty bottle, while his left hand struggled with the leather strap that kept his breeches on. Just as he began to piss, he flung the bottle away from him, shouting aloud when the satisfying sound of glass shattering against brick pierced his ears.
Still swaying, still pissing, the man began searching the few pockets he had to his name, searching for the tin coin or synth disk which he knew he would not find. Still, if ever a drunkard has one thing in their favor, it is the ability to hope even in the face of the starkest of adverse realities.
Naturally, reality soon reasserted itself and it became clear in the man’s mind that he had no coin whatsoever to his name, and worse, no drink.
Well, he figured as he tied his breeches around his hips once more, time to head back and see who’s gonna share some of the good stuff.
And so the man turned back to the bar, and to his death. There was no sound, not at first, nor did he see anything—no, he grunted as he felt something pierce through his stomach, and over that spike of utter torment he felt as the blood spurted over his back where whatever had entered him had gored an exit wound. And then, just like the feeling one gets when jumping from a swing in mid-flight, stomach churning, brain feeling as if it floats in jelly, the thing that had pierced him began to suck, to absorb his very flesh, which he felt liquefying within him, moment by moment.
The man would have screamed, he would have begged and howled and moaned for mercy, and indeed he began to do so when a sudden shadow fell over him. Something pierced into his lungs, into his left leg, then, once more into his torso.
As his sight dimmed with pain, as his brain tried to work past the torment of having its body pierced by what felt like iron spikes the thickness of a man’s forearm, of having his flesh liquefied and absorbed, the man at last came to see the true form of his hunter, of his doom. And this time, despite the pain, despite everything, he screamed. The sound came out wet and slurping as blood gurgled from his mouth, yet he screamed and screamed, the liquid frothing down his chin, his eyes stretched wide and white.
And then he screamed no more, for nothing but a sack of skin and bones slumped to the ground after the four metallic spikes slid out of it. Once more a ripple of shadows, and the hunter was gone. All was silent in the alley, all still, with only the occasional cry of someone being robbed, ravaged or slain piercing Old Ahasker’s damp night air.
Ovlak Aslenia Derrigor Karhasker was not in a happy mood; not at all. No, today was a day of wrath and fire, of teacups flung at servants and priceless Artani oils being thrust from windows or hacked apart as she made her ponderous way from her boudoir, through the gallery and down the steps to her throne room.
Ovlak of the Karhasker Sveni, ruler of the entire planet Huskuuru, Aslenia was not a person who you wanted to make angry. Indeed, through her centuries-long corpulent existence, many thousands of souls—whether innocent, guilty or something in between—have discovered to their peril how boundless the Ovlak’s wroth can be.
As her grav-chair descended the stairs, floating four feet above them, Aslenia continued to curse and shout, her thick voice slamming against the walls and scattering servants before her, making them flee like rats before a flood.
Those laboring in the great tower of House Karhasker, stretching far into the sky and built into the very cliffs east of Ahskra, knew very well how dangerous their mistress was when in one of her moods. No mere conveyance was her chair, no, but rather a defensive platform in its own right, with a dense nuclear battery and four barrels sticking out on each side, ready to discharge high-energy beams which could render a person’s makeup to the atomic in the span of milliseconds. And even if the Ovlak’s life-extending chair was not such a lethal object in its own right, the ancestral great-axe she wielded as she glided along the halls(her painting slashing axe) was terrible enough a weapon to give the greatest of warriors pause.
“Greedy! Fucking! Leech! Merchants!” she shouted as she swerved into the great hall, her axe’s double blade glowing with a baleful yellow light as it slashed through a three-millennia old tapestry hanging along one wall. Her pudgy legs were kicking with each swipe, her rabid eyes scanning the room for any signs of less clothy and more fleshy targets upon which to unleash her ire.
“Meki-Dokar scum! Half-Sveni bastard whelps of dickless dogs! Corner my market! Corner my market!? I’ll show them what-”
“Your Excellency Aslenia, they are here.”
The Ovlak’s chair spun about, and her axe came with it, swinging out in a deadly arc to decapitate whoever it was who dared address her august personage, dared approach—
The axe hit nothing but air, and she brought her left arm up to halt the swing. Before her chair knelt a wizened, scrawny old man, head bowed, bald pate displayed.
“Your Excellency,” her vizier said again, “the Meki-Dokar delegation has arrived.”
She eyed him, fingers twitching where they gripped the haft of her weapon. For a minute or more there was utter silence. Ovlak Aslenia’s anger still boiled and raged, but some far-buried mental instinct told her not to slice the kneeling old fool into many asymmetrical chunks of flesh. Training a new vizier, after all, was not something she had the patience for right now.
At long last, Aslenia gave a shuddering, almost petulant sigh and affixed her axe to the magnetic clamp installed on the right-hand side of her throne.
“Show the bastard ilk in then, Gormimus,” she said with a lazy wave of the hand, already gliding up the stairs to her dais. Her throne swiveled around and slotted into the space carved for it in the pink marble, though with its deadly barrels still very much above ground and primed to fire.
Finally settled, Aslenia’s eyes scanned her hall. No guards stood along the pink walls(she kept none in her hall, trusting to her throne, axe and auto-turrets hidden within the walls to keep her safe). What irked her was that none of her servants, other than the bent-backed vizier, were at hand—no cupid-faced boys bearing trays full of sweetmeats, no maidens fair ready to pour whiskey into goblets, no—
A great grinding of gold-plated steel reverberated through the hall as Gormimus pressed the button which made the door(twelve by sixty feet) slide down into the depths of the tower palace. It took a full three minutes for the thick metal portal to descend, every second of which the Ovlak promised a slow death to the absent servants who had abandoned her to such a dire lack in repast. Her vizier seemed patience itself as he waited beside the grinding door, arms folded behind his back and eyes staring at the empty bottom part of the wall where just this morning his favorite Asservian tapestry depicting the fall of Ghaskalex had hung. After the Ovlak’s assault, all that now remained was a crumpled cloth upon the floor, with the tapestry above being nothing but red sky, the tops of trees and walls—any context lost.
When the door finally slotted itself firmly open, the Meki-Dokar delegation entered without being bade to do so, a breach of protocol that sorely angered Aslenia. Yet, the insult went still further—those that entered were clearly not of Meki-Dokar blood, nay, they weren’t even Sveni! Three ragged beggars, slaves, mendicants—the Ovlak cared naught what they were—slouched into the room. At least, two of them did, with the third borne aloft between them on what seemed to be a silver platter with many wires looping out of it and into the human atop.
The two bearers were wide-shouldered, a man and woman, with scarred and beaten visages. The unfortunate being atop the platter, though, was so pierced by pipes and wires that no good guess could be made as to its original form. Aslenia cared naught, for her attention was solely fixed upon the smooth, crystalline screen that had been installed into the being’s torso.
She scoffed as the two brutes made their way toward her throne, careful not to drop their burden.
“So this is how the Meki-Dokar conduct business among Sveni, eh?” she demanded when the troupe finally came to a rest before the stairs to the dais.
The two bearers, eyes downcast, said nothing. A gurgle came from the platter-being, then the distinctive sound of liquid flowing through pipes. Six seconds later, the crystalline screen flickered into life to show a room of bare white stone, with three benches carved from the wall. Atop each sat a person, each wearing a hat of considerable height and intricate decoration. The man seated in the middle, gaunt with a coppery beard hanging to his chest, spoke up. As he did, the mouth of the platter-person started moving, the words spewing from its lips sounding exactly as Aslenia knew the man to sound.
“Ah, the celebrated Aslenia Karhasker! I thank you, my dear fellow Ovlak, for seeing us at this time. We have much to discuss, indeed we do.”
“Stuff your shitty words down where they belong and come to the point, Ysivir. I received your missive, I read the figures, so what the fuck more do you have to say for yourself and your mongrel family?”
The man on the screen was still smiling, and he sketched a mock bow. Aslenia was startled when the thing atop the platter also bowed, so much so that she almost incinerated the trio of messengers on the spot. Her hand hovered over the trigger button as she met Ysivir’s gaze.
“Why my dear—why so hostile? It is with good intentions that we come to your tower, after all. Business knows no barriers, as my grandfather used to say.”
“Piss on your business and piss on your grandfather, miserly leech that he was. Get to the point, so that I can order your two slaves and their dinner thrown down the mountain. You, Ysivir, wrote to me that you’ve set up gorp pens on Jeriskar, Terimbun and Lop. You even went so far as to tell me you’ve started growing gorp right here on Krask, less than a day away from Ahskra via the subrails. You’ve cornered me, you copper-haired son of a whore. Stole my single most profitable export, ready to over-supply it to the markets and cut me right out of the equation! Somehow you’ve gotten the genes and in the age-old slimy fashion of your rotten excuse of a Sveni house, now you’ve come to gloat about it? Is that why your little beggar brigade has trooped their way here? If so, we have nothing more to say to one another. Gormimus!”
“Yes your Excellency?”
“Fetch my bath-bearers. Have them dispose of this rabble.”
“Certainly, your Excellency,” said the Vizier, casting one last forlorn look at the violated tapestry before heading out the great doorway.
“As little as I value my messengers, dear Aslenia, I doubt the time has come to send them plummeting just yet. Why, you haven’t even heard my proposal!” Ysivir exclaimed, his voice coming out in a tone of mock-indignation.
“And just what, other than sticking your gangrenous digits into my gorp fruit trade, do you wish to propose? Talk, dog, for soon such a chance shall no longer belong to you.”
“Ah, always such haste! Such impatience! Why, my proposal is simple: you breed gorp, we breed gorp. Now, as much as it might pain you to hear it, our breeding pens on the continent’s northern plains are well on their way to producing their first harvest. You know what that means my dear? Of course you—”
“For fuck, say your say, Ysivir!”
"Very well.” Ysivir’s face became deadly serious and he leaned forward on his bench, eyes twinkling. “You Karhaskers, despite not being of a mercantile bent, have successfully bred gorp worms for many millennia, exporting their fruit to all of Ahskra and well beyond. I see no reason to end this proud tradition of yours, indeed, my offer is this: let us share the market, my dear. There is no need for a price war—indeed, you would come off badly second, considering that we now have pens on four planets whereas you, as always, have access only to Huskuuru. So, my dear, dear Aslenia, let us work together! Let us merge our markets, set our prices, and so generate profit for all concerned. Indeed, if—”
“Hear me, Ysivir,” the corpulent Ovlak interrupted. “Know this—you are correct. I will not win a trade war, seeing as you Meki-Dokar scum have had so many thousands of years in which to hone your skills as two-bit peddlers. No, I am not that unwise. However, there shall be war, there shall be a great bloody war and in the end I’ll make sure that the spikes upon my parapets will be decorated with all your long-hatted mongreloid heads! That is all!”
“War? War!? There has never been a war among Sveni! What you propose can only-”
The man, or rather his flesh puppet, spoke no more, for this time Aslenia did slam her fist down on the trigger. There was a bright flash of light as the barrel let loose its beam of energy, swiveling from left to right. Three heartbeats later, there was nothing but ash on the floor and silence in the great hall. Ovlak Aslenia studied this once-human detritus, then looked up as someone entered through the great gate.
“Ah, Gormimus, just in time! Now, do clean up this mess.”
Aslenia then noticed the eight naked men, all as heavily built as oxen, standing behind her vizier.
“And bid them bring my bath. It is high time I enjoy a pleasant stroll through my gardens, eh Gormimus?”
On the Gates
If you’re reading this helpful little pamphlet, whether sold to you by urchin, priest or knave, then it means that you’re in Ahskra, and new to boot! Now, I’ve met many folk new to this great city and its many splendorous sights, and all ask me the same thing: Oh Silanki, oh sage, explain to us the gates! Well my dear consummate traveler, my beloved tourist carnevaleer, that I shall do, and I shall do so briefly yet in language filled with flowery delight!
———
Forsooth, it is I, Silanki Premo Dontori, best-traveled traverser of Ahskra and surrounds! Many are those foolish adventurers who chase gate after gate, planet after planet, wandering thirsty across deserts, feverish through jungles and sun-burnt across the seas! Gormless gallivanters one and all, for all the pleasures of the planets, of the all too wide cosmic expanse, are to be found right here, in the City of a Hundred Gates, in the Mother Metropole, Ahasker herself!
Now you, dear friend, being wholly new, either entered through a gate or came from afar across the oceans or continents of Krask, greatest planet in this arm, or any arm for that matter, of our illustrious galaxy!
So why, you ask, if having entered through a gate, should I educate you on the matter? Why must I explain their nature if you, oh strider of worlds, have tasted their far-flinging bounty for yourself? Why, dear sir, madam, or other applicable title, ‘tis quite elementary: not one gate is the same, whether in form, functioning, or, most obvious of all, destination.
Let us say that you, illustrious traveler, have entered our city fair through the Beggar’s gate, perhaps borne through the void via ship to that most barren of places, that near-empty rock called Herkau’s Folly. You spent some time among the now-civilized tribes who reside within those caverns and tunnels, marveling at their seamless grasp of the old magics, tech lore so long-forgotten that the mountains themselves do not remember!
And then, first leg of the journey done, you were led along the halls to the Beggar’s gate: A simple steel box with a door, barely the length and breadth of a single person. And my friend, you stepped through, as mavericks tend to do! How did it feel? Mere seconds, yes, yet gut-wrenching all the same, with colors sans names whirring past your head, the sensation one of falling, flying, rising, indeed, it feels as if you are moving in a formless, eternal ether! And then, less then a minute later, you step through into Ahskra, stepping out of another closet, though one daintily engraved, for before the Wyr Beggar came to claim his land, a baron had indeed used that very closet, that once-inactivate gate, to hang his coats!
Ah yes, oh fellow wanderer of the worlds, the gates are manifold in their variety!
Let us take the Free Gate, rumored by some to be the oldest by far, though I myself believe that this honor belongs to the Eternal! Regardless, after paying your fee to whichever gang happens to find themselves in possession of the gate and surrounds, you step up to that great, towering obsidian portal, and you walk through... and walk, and walk and walk! I hope you brought along food, friend, and drink aplenty, for some wander mere hours through the black void, while others are unlucky enough to be trapped in that limbo realm for weeks! No uncommon sight it is to see wagons stacked with naught but water barrels and dried foods, entire merchant caravans clearing away half their inventory space merely so that they can bring along enough provender for the uncertain journey!
And so we move to form, with the Serdinine Gate itself an amethyst hoop floating six feet in the air, and the Scale Gate being naught but a wooden frame mortared into a mausoleum's entrance. Then there is that great attraction, that ever-stretching monolith that is the Dead Gate, a towering structure of red sandstone stretching half a mile into the air, and being two-hundred yards wide!
Form, function, location: whimsical and wonderful in their myriad variety as the gates are, their true power, their true majesty, lies in the very mystery of their existence! Many are the scholars and magi and witch-folk who through the long ages have attempted to ken, to replicate, to further harness the great power that the portals bring. All to no avail!
Once there was an attempt to detach a great stone block from the Dead Gate, through pulleys and traction machines and entire herds of slaves pulling with rope and chain. Not an inch did the block move, and not a scratch did these labors leave. I speak true, friend, for if there is one constant that all gates share, whatever their parent material, their shape, their paired locations, why, they are all wholly indestructible! No tech-mad magi can tear them apart to delve deep into their inner mysteries, no jealous Sveni Ovlak can destroy their rival’s most hallowed property! And is this not how things should be?
Should we travelers not revel in the fact that all the myriad worlds are connected eternal, with Ahskra fair at their very heart? Yes, a million-fold yes! And so I, humble Silanki Premo Dontori, bid you a fond adieu and wish you many happy travels in this greatest of all cities, Mother Ahasker!
———
Proceeds from the sale of this pamphlet go to the Dontori Guild of Ahskran Venturers. If you’ve paid more than three tins, you’ve been scalped! For those new to Ahskra, or merely curious, we of the guild say this: Be sure to seek our other pamphlets for enjoyable and informative reading, listed here
~On Ahskra ~On the Sveni ~On the Square ~On Old Ahasker ~On Feg Crags ~On Krask ~And many more besides!
The ship floated in the void, solar sails furled this far from any suns, its dark grey hull pitted and scored from those collisions that it had calculated as either insignificant or unavoidable. There was not a single window to be seen, for it had none, yet sub-surface sensor arrays aplenty existed, so never could it be said that the behemoth was blind. It was near the bottom of the vessel, far from the vast engines that took up the greater bulk of the ship, where its most precious cargo was stored, where Shaba awoke.
It was all very groggy and vague at first, a world not of concrete sight but a fuzzy realm where all was one yet shifted and swam without cease. Time itself was... strange, unfamiliar, and Shaba could not distinguish a minute from a second from an hour, indeed, found it very difficult to even conceive of an existence wherein such temporal terms held any cogent meaning. Understanding came slowly to her, knowledge, and once her brain had parsed who she was, where she was, what she was... reality slotted into place. Her surroundings cleared, and her body sensed. It was this latter change, the return of feeling, that made Shaba snap fully awake.
“Ship release vitae pod one,” she croaked, her voice soft and hoarse and unfamiliar, as if it was another who stood in the room, another who had spoken those words. The ship complied and Shaba tensed as the feeding tube inserted into her stomach detached its teeth from her flesh. Such pain she could bear, but when the head of the tube suddenly flared up to a great heat, when it slid out and cauterized the gaping wound she knew had been bored into her, filling it with layers of synthetic stomach tissue and muscle, she screamed. The ragged timbre of her voice echoed against the walls of her room, slamming back into her ears. It was only when the pipe had fully detached and she saw the pink-red glow of the filled orifice that she stopped, gasping and huffing as she struggled to slow her breathing.
Next, the forty-seven fine metal wires that had been affixed to her scalp, the neuro-regulators, detached themselves one hooked barb at a time. Again the pain was great, though not so great as before, and Shaba gritted her teeth as she bore through it. When at last she was sure that she was no longer pierced by tube or hooked by wire, that she was no longer part of the slab-like machine which kept spacers alive yet slumbering on their journey, she began twitching her toes. The sensation felt wholly strange, as if a million ants danced upon the tip of each digit. A shudder ran through her body, an uncomfortable creeping sensation that lit her every muscle on fire.
Shaba lay there for what she reckoned to be about ten minutes, not daring to twitch a muscle, to raise an eyebrow or lift a finger. And then she summoned every ounce of will that she possessed, and sat up. Again a fiery spasm of muscles, but Shaba was on the move now, willful and determined to do what had to be done. Her bare feet touched the smooth metal surface of the floor, her hands pushed her body away from the pod. The nanites that had kept her unrotting and oxygenated for who knew how long shimmered and then dulled as their programming rendered them dormant. For the briefest of seconds she stood, legs quivering, and then her knees buckled. Shaba slumped to the floor, elbows and knees banging against it, and the next thing she knew, she was retching.
Her throat heaved and heaved, the sound of her groans accentuating each expulsion of what nutrient sludge yet remained undigested within her stomach. Again she had to force herself into immobility, long hair stuck in sticky strands to her face, cascading across the floor. After a few minutes the crawling began, purposeful yet laborious as she made her way to the bathroom like a wounded walrus cub on a strand, one painful shifting of knees and arms following another.
It was with a great spurt of strength that Shaba heaved her body up by grabbing the edge of the counter which housed the sink. Her legs still trembled, they still felt as if they were but a thousand shards of bone unable to support the body above them, yet they held.
Shaba’s right hand shakily neared a button, her index finger extending to push it. Water streamed from the tap and she shoved her head under it, washing her face and gulping the cool liquid down a throat that had not known such a sensation since... how long?
With a start she raised her head and looked into the mirror. A stranger stared back at her, one with hip-length raven hair intersected by thirty-seven bald strips down her scalp and a wrinkled, saggy face—in fact, the skin over her entire body was grooved so, as if she had spent an inordinate amount of time suspended underwater. Her eyes had sunken bags around them, but as she stared deep, as she saw them shift and analyze, Shaba knew that it was she. Haggard though she was, withered away, that same light, that same fire still blazed within her being.
“Ship date,” she commanded, keeping her voice calm even while filled with a sense of dread mixed with excitement at what the answer would be.
“Two hundred and seventy six,” came the toneless robotic voice.
Shaba saw her lips twitch, her eyes narrow, felt as she gripped the counter even tighter. Nearly three hundred years... nearly three hundred years since they had left Aspakia’s orbit. By now her brother Aure, his husband, their children... all... Shaba shook her head, shoved the thought away. She had known from the start what this mission would entail, had been told quite bluntly that the projections for reaching Jilan, ancient origin planet of her people, would have the colonists spaceborne for at least a century. The time for regrets and second thoughts was long gone, it was far too late for such sentiments to cloud her mindscape. And with the full realization of this, Shaba fell into that familiar, comfortable groove where she was focused solely on the mission.
“Ship full analysis all vitae pods.”
“Podrooms one two three fully functional all life signs green.”
Shaba accepted this with a nod, knowing that even if all her fellow humans had not made it, she and the ship would still have continued with the mission. One did not need full-grown persons to colonize a planet, after all.
“Ship full analysis all gene stores.”
“Gene stores one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve fully functional all life signs green.”
That was that, then. Now was the time to wake the others, to wait out the month in transit and prepare themselves mentally and physically for—
Shaba pricked her ears. It wasn’t that she had heard anything, no, it was the lack of sound that perturbed her. The engines were down.
“Ship explain stasis.”
“Top priority override: Halt. Awaken Captain Shaba. Deliver transmission.”
Shaba figured that the ship would’ve told her this once she’d reached the deck, but knew that she was still far too weak for that journey even if it was one of only a hundred meters.
“Ship state transmission source.”
“Location Aspakia. Identification unknown.”
This was strange, worrying in fact. The ground control crew had gone into vitae pods as well, centuries ago now, to be woken when the ship neared Jilan. To wake into a world that had moved on, that had perhaps even fallen... no, another fought Shaba had to shift away. Even if the transmission had no ident, it didn’t mean that things have gone to shit back home. Or former home, Shaba idly reminded herself. Suddenly she remembered the only other time in her life she had received such a mysterious transmission, and the niggling suspicion that she knew exactly who was responsible began to bloom in her mind.
“Ship display transmission.”
The mirror flickered, and gone was Shaba’s withered form as the screen displayed rows of text. Shaba checked the message id first, noting the sequence of twenty-one numbers and comparing it to the one she had memorized so long ago. An exact match. She felt excited and a bit terrified all at once, knowing that a message from him could mean only one thing: a change of plans.
She read on, her eyebrows lifting sentence by sentence. Sure, she thought, plans change, but something on this level, something deviating so far, so absolutely from the core mission... well, there was nothing for it then. It had to be done.
“Ship prepare for heading.”
Again the screen flickered, and a dumbed down version of the nav console on deck appeared before her. Space was relatively empty around them, she saw, yet there was a cluster of stars well in reach of the ship. She began tapping in the nav data encoded within the transmission, already knowing in her gut that their new heading, her new mission, would be found there. Sure enough, a blue circle sprang up around the cluster, lower left side. Going over the scans, Shaba figured that the local sun was yellow and had at least three sizable bodies orbiting it. Further knowledge would have to wait until the ship came into scanning range, though.
“Ship take heading.”
A mere six seconds elapsed before she once more heard the familiar, almost soothing sound of the engines vibrating throughout the great bulk of the ship.
“Ship state transit time.”
“Approximate: One year and seventeen days.”
Shaba sighed, but figured that it could’ve been worse. There was no way she was going back into the pods for that length of time, doubted in fact whether her ravaged constitution would survive the process required for reentry. And seeing as the transmission had very clear guidelines as to when the others should be awoken—as late as possible—Shaba would have to spend at least a year alone, just she and the ship floating ever on through the void. This she accepted. After all, what was another year to her, she who was now three hundred and three?
Yes, Shaba decided, she would be patient, diligent in her exercise and calm of mind. First, though, she was going to walk, crawl, slither—whatever it took—back into her room, open her cupboard, and pour herself one—no, three—glasses of that fine Andorian wine which Aure had gifted her when she had visited her only family that final time. Yes, wine, then a good meal... perhaps she might even come to enjoy the extended solitude.