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Author’s note: I didn’t intend for this story to be longer than Discord would allow in one post. I certainly didn’t think it would require multiple chapters. But the characters and setting deserve the development and context, so I’ve begrudgingly given it to them, knowing that this is going to take a lot longer to write than I expected. I suppose the Yoniverse is a big place, and it’s just about to get a bit bigger! -H
“Amya, we’ve already checked everything in this sector, right?” “Right.” “I don’t remember seeing THAT before…” omo was pointing to something outside the viewport of their Yonian Recon Cruiser, and when Amya’s gaze followed her brother’s gesture towards Yorlion-II (they had started naming planets with number designations after the sector, since they had been to so many by now), she saw what appeared to be light blue circles peaking out between the swirling, atmospheric clouds. Amya’s golden eyes widened. She had never seen anything like that before. What could it be? Some new unspeakable horror of the Kalsiksi? A weapon? A trap? The circles were formed close together across the equatorial line along the planet’s surface, but looked like they were branching out, in a perceivable pattern; like a spinyon web pulled tight along the horizontal axis. It was beautiful in a way. Almost… “Whatever it is, it’s definitely made by conscious beings,” Amya said to her little brother. As they watched, the circles on the edges became brighter, almost glistening, and seemed to become more complete. “It looks like they’re still building it! Want to go have a look?” Amya knew the answer before she had even finished asking the question. Yomo was always the careful one; thoughtful, methodical, cautious. He had been that way ever since they had been separated from Father. A Kalsiksi force invading your home planet had lasting effects, and every Yonian handled it differently. Amya knew her little brother wouldn’t want to take the risk. “Come on!”, she said, “Maybe they can help us find Father!” She didn’t like feeling like she was manipulating Yomo, but Amya knew she was right. They had been exploring planets for months, looking for any sign of anything that might be useful or helpful to their people. So far their search hadn’t yielded much success. Apart from the strange mineral called kaiyos, which was said to have frequency bending properties, and a fruit with black juice - which they named Dripping Night - they hadn’t found much. But the Yonians were a naturally resourceful people. They had to be, ever since the secrets of the magic had been lost to them. And even if there had never been any magic, the desperation of a constant flight for survival had led them to view everything as a either a resource or a trap. There was no in-between when you were running for your life. “Okay,” replied Yomo hesitantly, “If you think it might help us find Father. But I think we should come in from the moon-side where it’s darkest to try to avoid detection until we’re sure what we’re dealing with.” He pulled the safety belt around his shoulders and keyed in the command to take the ship from autopilot into manual flight. Most Yonians would have plotted the course into the nav and let the ship do the work, but they had learned early on that the threat detection and obstacle avoidance systems on their Yonian reconnaissance craft had never been upgraded like those in the Fleet. Their father’s ship had every conceivable feature that the Yonian engineers could come up with. There was never enough time between skirmishes with the Kalsiksi for the attention and skill of their support crews to update the aging hardware on old recon ships like the one Amya and her brother had found. They had learned their lesson the hard way, after plotting a course down through the opaque atmospheric clouds of Yoria-VII. The ship hadn’t detected a mountainous region hidden inside the gaseous giant. Or picked up the high frequency tension of a gravity storm until it was too late. Only moments after descending into the mysterious, gray vapor, they felt an enormous rumbling that caused the hull to shudder and buck like an untrained Yoxen bearing it’s first rider. The instrumentation of the ship had gone haywire, flashing seemingly conflicting readings of the altitude and barometric pressure. The surface tension across the hull should have increased predictably as they descended through the atmosphere, but, despite suddenly seeing a black mass directly below them and sloping away along their heading, the sensors indicated that they were gaining altitude, then losing it, then flattening, all while the ship’s computer automatically navigated the route it had determined would be the best course to land them safely on the new planet’s surface. Luckily they only scraped the hull of their ship as they slid down the mountainside toward the soft loam of the planet’s surface. A thorough inspection revealed that the gravity storm had loosened almost every bolt and fastener on the frame of their old recon ship. It had taken them days to tighten and double check every nut and clip before verifying that they could safely continue their search of the stars. Ever since that accident, Yomo had be practicing piloting their ship via the manual controls, just like the old pilots used to do. With no one to teach him, it had been arduous learning, but in the vast, nearly empty vacuum of space, he was able to test the controls without fear of hitting anything. Yomo had always been an adept student. A quick learner, his analytical mind had helped him to nearly master the dated controls - at least as well as any Yonian could, given their circumstances. While Amya strapped herself in to the copilot’s chair, her brother took the yoke in hand, three fingers delicately applying counter pressure as his thumb gracefully maneuvered their ship toward the dark side of the planet. The line of circles grew larger as they descended, and began to assume the faint hint of depth and shape. Upon closer inspection, it became clear that what appeared to be flat circles when viewed from above were actually domes spread across the planet’s surface. Suddenly, the faint hum of the ship’s Yorum Drive died. Yomo immediately knew what was happening, and as the lack of the almost imperceptible vibration through the ship became apparent, he was already deploying the gliding sails that allowed Yonian reconnaissance ships to coast through air currents without the risk of the electrostatic couplings igniting combustible gas pockets on unknown worlds. At least, he tried to deploy it. “Looks like the actuator’s jammed again”, Yomo said to his sister, the muted orange yello of his body hardening in frustration. “Get ready for a bumpy landing.” End Chapter 1 |
Comic coming soon...
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“We’re coming in hot!” Yomo shouted to his sister as the proximity indicators flashed from yellow, to orange, to red. Amya could feel her yello being lifted by the centrifugal force caused by their rapid descent, straining against the straps of the harness. The ground was approaching fast, and there was no way the ship would survive the impact. In all likelihood, they wouldn’t either. Amya reached out, formed the end of her arm into the shape of a shallow bowl, and placed it on the back of Yomo’s head, a sign of connection and intimacy among the Yonians. If these were to be their last moments, she wanted him to feel the comfort of their connection before they passed on.
All of a sudden, the ship started to do something unexpected. Despite having no power to the Yorum Drive, and the actuators in the wings of the craft being jammed, they started to ascend as a light blue light filled their view. Though the ship had been rapidly descending at near terminal velocity only moments before, with destruction certain to follow in mere moments, it seemed that they had not only avoided the crash - at least temporarily - but they were indeed reversing direction, albeit at a much slower pace.
“What’s happening?” Amya asked her brother. “What is that blue light?” “I don’t know,” Yomo replied, the sense of consternation clear in his words, “This doesn’t make sense. The ship is dead…” And yet, despite the impossibility, the two were now floating in reverse. They had travelled in a wide arc through the apex of what had been their rapid descent toward certain death on the crags of the planet’s surface, looping through the curve, up, backwards, and yes, descending now.
The craft touched down with a soft thump, settling on it’s hull in a patch of loam that Amya hadn’t noticed while they were hurtling toward sudden death. Outside the viewscreen, the blue light faded and disappeared into a single point of bright blue light, then went out.
Behind the light was a creature they had never seen before. The rounded curves of it’s torso and appendages made it appear nearly cylindrical, yet flat on the front. It’s head was a slightly trapezoidal sphere, on which rested the strangest shape Amya hade ever seen - puffy and rounded, like a cloud, but perfectly symmetrical on both sides.
“Amya, what is that thing?” asked Yomo, the trepidation breaking through his thoughts and into his speech. “I have no idea”, Amya replied, “but I think it just saved our lives.”
Amya and Yomo looked at each other in disbelief and awe. After years of running from the ruthless Kalsiksi, jumping from world to world in a seemingly vain attempt to find something - anything - that could help their father in the battle for their species’ survival, the two young Yonians had just had their lives saved by something (or someone?) that they had never met. Was this a trick? A trap? What was going on?!
The creature that had emitted the light had moved one of his appendages towards his midsection, where is paused for a moment while it secured the device it was holding, then smoothly glanced up at the ship, nodded, and began to walk away. It’s movements seemed somehow unnatural, almost mechanical, yet clearly meant to imitate natural movement. It’s pace was neither fast, nor slow, but seemed purposeful as it strode off toward it’s destination.
“What do we do?”, Yomo asked. Amya’s thoughts were racing, but she couldn’t seem to put any of them into words. It was almost unthinkable that they could have encountered a new species. Being raised in the upper echelons of Yonian society, Amya and Yomo had been present for many conversations in their father’s house about the various beings that inhabited the other yalaxies in the Yoniverse, and nothing they had ever hear of or been taught about in their classes was even remotely familiar to this. “Amya? Amya!” Yomo reached out toward his sister, meaning to rouse her with a touch.
“How did it do that?”, Amya asked, her question trembling as it entered her brother’s mind. “I’ve never seen anything like before; never heard of anything like that. We were going to crash. We should have passed on. But it… it… what? Manipulated the gravitational field around the ship? How could it have done that? How is it possible?”
“I don’t know,” Yomo replied slowly, methodically, as if he was really putting thought into his answer, “but I think we need to find out. Whatever it is… however they did it… maybe it could help Father.”
Of course, their father! Leave it to Yomo to stay on mission, no matter what. The reminder snapped Amya out of her thoughts and back to this situation at hand. “You’re right, Yomo, let’s go see what we can find out.”
Amya strode to the the emergency hatch on the side of the ship - since there was no way to open the main loading bay with the hull resting flat on the planet’s surface. With a practiced series of movements and the two typical THUNKs as the levers withdrew their locking mechanisms, a brief WHOOSH filled the cabin as the atmospheric pressure inside the ship normalized with the environment outside. A pale, yellow light shone in where the seals had been withdrawn, and with a push, Amya flooded the interior of their craft with the muted glow of the nearest star.
End Chapter 2
