The Khanon Belt, our dear home.
Whether you see it as a shattered planet drifting through an uncaring sun or an asteroid belt capable of holding life is purely semantics that miss its beauty, the miracle of its existence, of our existence…
Of MY existence.
For centuries since the colony ships crash landed -or arrived… or realized they had landed long ago, we’re still figuring that one out…- we were stuck in the Valvion landmass, so named after the Mothership Valvion that all our ancestors came from regardless of nation.
To our east the infinite everything of space, beautiful and ready to devour anyone daring to challenge it.
But to our west…
Westwards distant landmasses were always tempting us, daring us to reach them. And yet hopes weren’t enough, passion wasn’t enough, ambition wasn’t enough. Only through cooperation were we able to finally break that metaphorical occidental barrier.
On the 620th Year in this promised land of ours, the Shooting Star Express, the first public Meteorotive made its maiden voyage. His Royal Highness Magnus the 7th, then Crown Prince Dopell, part of the trip.
And look at us now… where once reaching Station One was so momentous we called it the Westward Break, here we are carving new paths through Station 22, and it’s not even the furthest we have explored…
…and yet…
…and yet there’s still so much to do, so much to see. We’re not even at the halfway mark of this ring we call our home.
“So uh… who’s the monologuing bimbo over there?”
That monologuing bimbo of otherworldly beauty is your expedition leader my friend!
“EEK!”
The bald man that just commented on the most unique passenger in the wagon exclaimed in a voice three octaves higher than his regular speaking voice.
Behind him stood a tall, blonde woman with tanned skin. Her shirt was held closed more by her corset than any of its buttons, any eyes led to her ample cleavage -and it was more a question of “when” rather than “if”– would see the front hook of lacy lingerie peeking through. The corset continues into a short skirt, tight enough to highlight her hourglass figure but loose enough to let her move easier, her height helped by boots that go up to right above her knees.
Ironically, for someone so clearly enamored with showing herself off, her face was the most covered element of herself, with her wild and wavy long hair covering the left half of her face, though whether intentional or not, all this did was instead highlight what she does show off of it even more.
The casual observer might be distracted by the sexiness she exudes.
The knowing observer might instead notice the tightrope balance of function and style that she’s clearly trying to keep
Both observers would be equally blindsided by the gun she keeps in a belt on her hip that looks at a glance like any other accessory in her distracting getup.
The lady of the hour walked around the table where the bald man and other men were sitting until she got to an empty chair.
Her every move was exaggerated, performative, she swayed her hips and took strides less like a seductress and more like an actress playing the part of a seductress on a theater stage.
She sat with her back facing everyone else in the table, lifted her right leg with a flexibility that would make ballet dancers flustered, and crossed it over her other leg in a sweeping gesture before leaning to her left and resting her elbow on the table as if she was in a bar ready for a drink.
“So, what’s your name, friend?” She asked the bald man.
“Rupert, ma’am.” He replied meekly, the part about “expedition leader” still echoing in his head.
“Do you have a wife Mr. Ma’am?” She said in a tone that made it clear she was taking a jab but not giving anyone the space to laugh or heckle.
“No…” Then, realizing how silly he would look calling her “ma’am” in the current circumstances completed “No I don’t.”
“A girlfriend, then?” Then, as if realizing something, she spun on the chair so fast she made her table neighbors take half a step back “Sorry! Sorry, that was very rude of me, let me start from the top: Do you like women?”
“Yes?” Rupert confirmed, utterly confused.
“And you’re single?”
“I am…?” Rupert confirmed, so flummoxed by everything that the normal impulse to get a head full of weird ideas when a hot woman asks if you’re single was nowhere to be found.
“Then here’s my own majestic and totally unsolicited advice for you…” she said while leaning forwards in the table “You will remain single for as long as you’re the type of guy that calls women you don’t know ‘bimbo’.”
“…eh?” Rupert exclaimed in almost a whisper as his head made whirring noises.
“Now, make no mistake…” The blonde woman leaned back and took on a more casual tone “‘Bimbo’ isn’t necessarily an insult, in fact, say it to the right woman in the right circumstances and you’re flattering her to the heavens a back. Why you might even be validating all the effort she puts in every morning before facing the world!”
Everyone at the table was quiet, trying to understand where this was going.
“But!” She exclaimed, startling everyone at the table at once “That’s assuming you know the woman and know what she’s all about. And to be fair, there’s worse things you could call a woman than ‘bimbo’, but that’s not the point!”
“My! Point! Is!” She punctuated snapping her fingers “No woman wants the kind of guy that calls random women ‘bimbo’ like that. And I can assure you even if you get lucky it’s only a matter of time before she gets tired of it, you understand?”
“I… guess…?” Rupert confirmed.
“Great!”
The woman quickly stood up and in a fluid motion so casual nobody saw it out of the ordinary…
BANG!
…she took the gun out of her belt and fired it upwards.
The room went silent after shocked gasps and short screeches, including an oddly high-pitched one that wasn’t from Rupert.
“Oh don’t get your panties in a bunch, people. It’s a blank.” The woman explained while holstering back her gun “You think I would put a breach on the vessel while we’re in high atmosphere?! That’s not the way I want to leave this gorgeous mortal husk of mine… that was the only blank in the barrel, mind you.”
The woman then made a mental note of the fact that everyone’s reaction was shock and silence, not one of them was on guard or reaching for something to defend themselves… however none of them were trying to stoke the fires of panic either.
“Now that I have your attention though, it’s time for introductions” She walked up to a wall with assorted luggage and instruments as she spoke “I am Doctor Regina Tempest, the leader of this expedition you all signed up for.”
Whispering followed this introduction. Regina knew the cause and dreaded needing to address it.
“There will be time for hush hushing and whispy whispers later. For now, let me go over exactly what we’re going to do.”
She pulled a blackboard from the messy pile of luggage and took a piece of chalk from her cleavage, letting out an annoyed “oh…” when only half of it came out.
“We are currently en route towards Station 22.”
Regina quickly drew a series of circles of variable size that indicated how far from Valvion they were traveling.
“BUT!” She then drew a smaller circle near the one that she marked with a “22” pointing at it “Our objective is actually here: Minor Landmass 22-57a”
She turned the blackboard around where a map should’ve been taped.
Should’ve.
Regina let out a frustrated “Rusted teeth…” before sifting through the pile of luggage for the fallen piece of paper. When she found it, the tape was adorned with some dust, making her grumble.
She taped the two top corners and the middle of the bottom, before taking a deep breath that refilled her grandioseness.
“An earlier expedition by my esteemed colleague and overall despicable prick Doctor Adam ‘chews with his mouth open’ Alphonse found remnants of a vessel that seems of the same kind as Mothership Valvion.”
Then, in the brief moment where she decided to breathe, the tape gave out and the map fell to the ground, rolling itself up.
Barely holding in a groan of frustration Regina continued.
“My objective there is to examine any salvageable consoles to determine the origin of the ship, while your objective is to help me carry the equipment. There will be no combat involved outside of MAYBE the odd creature that decided that was a good place to nest, but even then I can take care of that and it should be merely deterred from attacking, we’re the ones trespassing after all.”
There was an expectant silence. Regina knew the question in everyone’s minds, so she sighed and opened the floodgates.
“Any questions?”
Over half of the men present raised their hands.
She knew every one of them had the same thought in their head right now and just picked at random.
“You.” She indicated a rotund man that looked like a compacted mass of muscle.
“Are you THE Doctor Tempest?”
“Yes” She replied dryly.
“The Man Death Forgot? That Doctor Tempest?”
“The very same.” She answered with restrained annoyance.
“But you’re a woman…”
“Thank you for noticing, friend!” She exclaimed dripping with sarcasm “Yes, I am that Doctor Tempest, the very same Doctor Tempest that everyone took for dead in three cave-ins, one flash flood, one forest fire, and four hostage situations.”
“What about the one with the grazer stampede?” asked a voice in the corner.
“That was Doctor Reginald Eden” Regina clarified “He’s the health check up sort of doctor, not the chemistry science-y sort of doctor.”
Whispering started sweeping the wagon but silence then swept even harder when Regina quietly raised her gun to the air.
“I assure you that your confusion doesn’t get to the level of my frustration on the matter.” She said levelly while holstering the gun “Imagine becoming a legend both in scientific circles and amongst people from just how much you’ve survived against all odds while making leaps in quite a number of fields… yet everyone remembers you as a man even if you dress as scantily as possible and keep a strict diet and beauty routine so that when they see you the fact that you’re not only a woman but the hottest woman they’ll ever see sticks in their heads.”
The whole room was experiencing the same confusion Rupert experienced earlier while Rupert himself was starting to feel deja vu.
“I once revisited the town where that one group of raiders, The Reds, held me and three other people hostage…” The grandiosity in Regina’s voice was completely gone and she started having a conversation with nobody in particular “I told this girl, she wasn’t in the situation but was born in the town. Man, she grew so fast, she’s gonna be so pretty in a few years if she eats well. Anyways, I told her how much it annoyed me that everyone thinks I’m a man when the legends spread, and she told me that at least to her what happened was not that the idea of a beauty like me being capable of all that was inconceivable but rather that the idea of a beauty like me hanging out with all the expedition groups full of men was the inconceivable part so she assumed only a man would hang out near so many other guys like that.”
She then shrugged and turned to the crowd and said.
“So really, it’s you guys’ fault, not mine.”
The silence hung in the air as Regina fished for the other half of the chalk in her cleavage.
“Any other questions? I’ll only accept those not related to my legend as The LADY” she emphasized this word heavily pointing at everyone with the recovered half of the chalk before continuing “The Lady that Death Forgot.”
Silence.
“None?”
Everyone looked at each other with shrugs.
“I know you guys are probably used to taking odd jobs where you’re told not to ask questions, but this is all above board, you can ask anything you want.” Regina said appealing to the ego of a crowd she was rightfully assessing more and more was in it for the romantic idea of adventure but only wanted a job.
She took a square of paper from the left cup of her bra and unfolded it to reveal the sort of important official document that probably shouldn’t be folded seven times across its height and four across its width.
“Fully funded by the Western Expansion Committee.” She slapped the paper lightly before folding it back up and pressing on the creases once again as she did so “It’s taxpayer money so if any of you wants to know what you’re getting into, you and your families are entitled to it.”
Regina’s frustration piled up further until a lanky guy with hair too short to be called an afro but on its way there half raised his hand.
“Yes?!” Regina pounced metaphorically and almost literally at them.
“Why is there a ship like that so far away from Valvi-”
“GREAT QUESTION!” Regina exclaimed abruptly, cutting anything else the short afro man was about to say “In fact it’s such a good question that it’s the whole reason we’re going!”
The grandiosity came back to Regina’s voice suddenly as she addressed her disparate crowd with the expertise of a veteran performer.
”You all know the foundational myth of our dear world. Mothership Valvion landing in the Khanon Belt, the promised land that our forefathers’ forefathers dreamed of finally a reality…” She took a dramatic pause “…but what if the events are more messy than that?”
She started drawing in the blackboard excitedly and quickly as she kept talking.
”There is a theory that Mothership Valvion actually landed centuries ago, and they just realized they lived in a ship at all…” Regina looked away from her intense scribbles and turned to her crowd “It would make sense, aligning with the God Children Parable, wouldn’t it?”
To her satisfaction, her crowd was starting to nod. Whether out of obligation to their employer or otherwise, she had them now.
”But there’s also the more controversial theory as of late…” She said with a big dose of suspense “What if the Khanon Belt is fragmented BECAUSE of the collision of Mothership Valvion with it?”
Everyone was silent, but for once it was the attentive silence of people hanging on her every word.
This crowd wasn’t made out of thrill seekers with nothing to lose or criminals using the Blazer moniker to hide themselves. They all looked like decent people that just wanted to provide for themselves or family and wanted to do something other than a “normal” job.
There’s no other reason they would be taking a cozy logistics job with a government organization instead of roaming the Western Belt by themselves.
But they were still in the Blazer ballpark for a reason, for that romantic idea of the new frontier, of new discoveries.
And here she was, telling them that this wasn’t no mere busywork, she was offering them to be part of history, of learning more about the foundational tale that everyone hears when they’re kids and they wonder where everyone comes from.
”The ship we’re going to check can be any number of things” Regina said, her one uncovered eye so bright with passion that it could light up a cave “It could be a forward scout from before the Mothership landed, it can be a fragment of the Mothership, it might even be completely unrelated which will only raise more questions!”
The whispers resumed, but their cadence was completely different now.
Feeling like she accomplished what she set out to do, Regina checked her wristwatch and decided to close the briefing without any extra hype.
“In about 4 hours the vessel will land. We’ll unload everything and spend the day on the station’s premises to rest before heading to the actual research spot. Make sure to rest, you’ll need it.”
She then took her dramatic strides towards the door and said…
”Until then, if anyone needs me… too bad! I already blessed you all with enough of my presence.”
The Khanon Belt, as the name suggests, is effectively an asteroid belt where every asteroid has enough gravity to hold an atmosphere and life, though this gravity has its limits. In fact, after entering into high atmosphere any vessel is left more to the whims of the Sun than those of anything in the Belt.
This is where Meteorotives come in.
These vessels don’t really fly towards the other sections of the Belt, rather, they enter high atmosphere and stabilize themselves as the counter-clockwise rotation of the Belt happens. They just wait and then go back down rather than move forwards.
Better technologies have been developed and refined since then, in particular the “Voidslasher” or as it’s more colloquially referred to: “Missile Express”, a vessel that’s designed to travel from one landmass edge to the next inasmuch of a straight line as the slight curvature of gravity allows.
Meteorotives remain, however. Though their main purpose is the transport of cargo to already-explored frontiers and the vast majority of them are vessels over 30 years old.
All of this is to illustrate the fact that reentry in a Meteorotive is not rough… just because “rough” would be a very welcome improvement.
Unlike take off where the passengers only have to deal with a shot of g-force, landing is a process that involves in no particular order: The turbulence of reentry into the belt’s peculiarly dense upper atmosphere, the heat rising from said reentry, the thrusters shaking back and forth as they adjust the fall trajectory of the vessel, and as the last point hopefully illustrates: Freefall for a bowel-emptying amount of time.
And that’s all already rough if you were in a passenger or pilot seat… but Regina’s vessel was just a transport vessel where the cargo bay was modified to accommodate a load of really squishy humans.
Modifications that, due to budgetary reasons, only pass the bare minimum of safety regulations, banking on extra measures being taken by those inside the cargo.
Fwooooooosh…!
With one last burst of the thrusters to decelerate the fall, and the familiar hiss of depressurization, the door of the cargo bay opened, with 13 Blazers hired as muscle stumbling out.
The passenger ledger says it’s 15 of them, so it’s safe to assume the other two will join them whenever their travel ailments pass.
Clapclapclap!!
Regina, slightly shaken but nonetheless determined to remain as glamorous as ever, was waiting for them outside already, clapping as if at the end of a show.
“Congratulations my friends!” She exclaimed, extending her arms wide open “This sort of reentry destroys even the most seasoned blazer, there is absolutely no shame if it took the wind out of you. Even I’m willing to admit I-”
She hadn’t finished speaking when, as if having been given permission, all 13 Blazers crumbled.
Some collapsed on the spot, some puked right then and there, some managed to make a bit of a run towards a more appropriate place before either collapsing, or puking, or both in no particular order, and sometimes at once.
“Bit rude if you ask me…” Regina added, annoyed at the chaos unfolding around her.
Unlike the Meteorotive that brought them to the station, the accommodations prepared for the Blazers were more befitting of a human, since for one they were built with humans in mind.
In the grand scheme of things it wasn’t a luxury resort on the northern edge of Garrem, but most of the Blazers came from the sort of background where a working toilet or running water was unheard of.
Most of them… except for one.
His name was Charles Summer North the Third… but all other 14 Blazers, Regina, and even the logistics officer that couldn’t be bothered with two names let alone three and a numeral, only called him “Charlie Something-or-other”.
This was, apparently, not the first time that Charlie was called that by his peers and by this point he was more baffled than annoyed.
Charlie Something-or-other decided this was the perfect time to start telling his peers about the time where he stayed in eastern Lamorant, on a resort with heated pools, and how he spent every night with a different and very hot lady of the night or two.
His boasting stopped then and for the rest of the expedition when two voices exclaimed, in beautiful unison but cacophonous lack of parity something to the less-eloquent effect that “yet, here you are with us”.
As his convoluted name might suggest, Charlie came from money, though unlike his grandfather who owned land, or his father who owned even more land, Charlie spent all of his money thinking it bottomless, or that he could always ask his father for more… and then a hostile takeover cut him off from any money, with his own trust fund depleted and the settlement being used to pay some of his debts.
Away from the rambunctious mess that had developed from shutting Charlie up, two other Blazers were talking outside while smoking.
Laurel and Grisham they were called. Laurel was the sort of portly that comes with middle age, though he had a couple of scars and unhealed bruises to his name, while Grisham was the kind of person you saw and the first thing that came to mind was the word “square”.
They both bonded when a fight broke out in the cargo and Laurel stepped in trying to stop it exclaiming “AIGHT WHOSE BALLS NEED TO BE CRUSHED FOR THIS TO STOP”.
Grisham, who was admittedly one third of the scuffle, immediately broke off. excited to have met a fellow Perrian all the way here.
Perrith is a big plain on the northwest of Valvion, known for keeping their grazers free range instead of holding them up in farms. When grazer disputes exploded, mostly between males asserting their dominance, it was tradition to sling a rock to the grazer’s testicles from a distance as to either calm them down or make them so enraged the dispute would end. Regardless, the impact would often turn the hit grazer sterile, preventing further disputes.
The advent of laws to treat cattle more humanely put this practice to an end as a widespread thing, but its impact remains in the language.
Though to this day the biggest controversy is the semantics of if what the practice entailed could be called “crushing” to begin with.
“You think the boss is really the Doctor Tempest?” Grisham asked his smoking partner.
“Does it matter?” Laurel replied “She can be Blodia incarnate for all I care as long as she pays us.”
Grisham looked up to the sky almost in reflex.
It was night, which in the belt meant one of the two other planets in the system eclipsed the sun for a few hours. But the one eclipsing right now was Emerith, the green planet and not Blodia, the red planet.
How would a planet incarnate anyways? Grisham knew the planets held some weird power, and people used that phrase all the time, but why did they use it?
“Yeah but…” Grisham continued “What if we ARE actually doing something, you know, important and stuff?”
“That why you became a Blazer, Grish?” Laurel asked.
“Kinda yeah… like the teleserials and stuff…”
Laurel let out a small, smoke-filled chuckle. It wasn’t a laugh of mockery but one filled with admiration for a youth full of ambition.
“She’s a strange woman…” Laurel said stomping on what was left of his cigar “It’s what I think.”
“And I think she’s hot as hell.”
A third, squeaky voice, entered the conversation.
Smith was one of his names… though nobody ever remembered which. He was a skeletal thin man that walked with really awful posture.
“She’s got the showers all for herself and drilled some spy holes earlier, wanna see?”
Without saying a single word, Laurel and Grisham followed Smith.
A melodious humming could be heard from the shower room as they approached the previously-made peep holes. And when they peeked in, the promise was indeed fulfilled.
Regina stood humming in the showers, washing her bare body.
Her physique was even more amazing laid bare than with her scant clothes on. She washed her body meticulously, bending over with amazing flexibility to reach her legs, rubbing her toned torso sensually, making sure her breasts displayed all of their suppleness as they slipped from her hand, showing off the firmness of her butt as she slapped it with a small giggle, all the while her hair rested through as many curves as possible…
And despite her skin tone having the signs of being the product of an active life under the sun, there were no tan lines to be found anywhere.
It was such a spectacle in fact, that none of the peeping trio ever thought about the fact that it WAS a spectacle.
What are the chances that Regina was as grandiose on her own as she was in public?
What are the chances that out of all the booths she would pick the one where Smith drilled holes?
…what are the chances that all or her motions seemed to be in service of them?
All of these were questions that burned to ash as the sensual visage of Regina seared into their brains.
The next day, Smith’s squeaky voice was heard protesting about being given less rations than the others on breakfast, stopping everyone else in the line and making Laurel a couple of spots behind him impatient.
“Do you want me to be more on the bone huh?” He exclaimed showing off his arm.
“Quiet down! That was just the fee for the show.”
Regina’s voice interjected from behind Smith making him turn pale and stand upright for the first time in years with an audible crack.
“Show, boss?” He asked meekly, his eyes darting everywhere.
“Yeah! Hope you enjoyed it!” Regina said in a tone that had an “or else” implied “Like hell I was gonna let you guys be witness to my unchained majesty for free…”
Regina vaulted over the counter and signaled the poor food employee to continue with the line as she handled this.
“I saw your record Smith” She said resting her face on her hand and looking him up and down “You requested your payment for the expedition to be sent to your mom and five siblings back in Station 2.”
She smiled a smile of genuine warmth for a fraction of a moment before it transmuted into her regular impish smile as she straightened up.
“I wasn’t gonna take food out of their mouths, so I’m taking it out of yours instead!” She she poked at his bony chest with her finger, then turned around in perfect timing to Laurel having the same ration realization that Smith just had.
“Yours too Laurel! With the bonus of your wife and daughter not knowing you were peeping at your employer!”
“How kind of you ma’am…” Laurel replied with undisguised sarcasm as he walked away with his paltry plate.
“Now, you might be wondering, what about Grisham?” Regina said jumping over the counter again “Well, his rations are the normal amount, but he’ll learn later down the line that his pay was cut thanks to the Regina’s Wondrous Dance of Sensual Delights Tax.”
As she walked away, she stopped for a moment and added…
“Like… really cut. I’d feel bad, but I know what I’m worth and you all came out of this with a bargain because I’m that nice.”
After that eventful breakfast, the expedition started proper.
Out of the 15 Blazers, 3 had to stay behind as backup, though they were kept busy helping the warehouse staff move the camp’s supplies around.
The remaining 12 had varying signs of trepidation at the idea of another bumpy ride after a meal, but to their partial relief, landmass 22-57a was not only within sight, but a blazer suicidal enough could jump off from Station 22 and not have their body be lost in whatever gravitational mess the void between lands is.
For now though, they were being transported one by one with their assigned equipment via elevator.
By the time everyone had gathered at their destination, Regina was already waiting for them.
At first everyone only saw her back, she was wearing an open trench coat and a hat.
“My friends!” She then turned in a theatrical gesture with her arms extended “Today you will be part of history.”
Under the trench coat, her attire was different from the one in the Meteorotive. She still wore a button-up shirt that was in a losing fight with her cleavage and underwear, but instead of a corset and skirt she had denim pants that were just as tights, though they also looked really easy to move in. Her high boots with heels were also replaced by regular boots, causing her intimidating height to become merely the height of a tall woman.
Within the confines of the trench coat framing all of this, many pockets with devices of unknown purpose could be seen.
Notably, however, the belt with her gun was now accompanied by a second belt with a gun. Both belts rested diagonally from her hips in an X shape, and all the small notches and pockets seemed to be full.
After pausing for way too long as if wanting to show herself off first, Regina lowered her arms and continued.
“Those of you with the metal thing you nail to the ground will be on the back of the line.” She indicated pointing at three of the Blazers with metallic gray devices and lengths of wire “Those are the communication relays, only nail one to the ground when one of the rolls of wire runs out, pick which of you will be the first one”
She took a cursory glance after the three started arguing who was going first.
“The ones with the machetes and thick clothing will be at the front.” She indicated the two Blazers with thick boots and pants “You’re the ones that will help our path, just… make sure to not get too excited cutting things, will you?”
She started pointing where everyone should be as she continued the instructions.
“You six will surround me, front, flank, and back” She pointed all around here before adding “Those rifles only fire concussive rubber, so if anything does come up the goal is to deter, not kill.”
She finally took a silver briefcase with one hand.
“And the task of carrying the instruments goes to….” She paused for unnecessary suspense as the only person not assigned to a task waited “Mr. Ma’am himself!”
Regina extended the suitcase with one hand and handed it off to Rupert, who then got startled by the weight of it and almost fell.
“Why me?” He muttered absentmindedly after recovering and standing upright.
“Because…” Regina said without missing a beat “After going through all of everyone’s documents and history you are the only one with the skills needed to handle this very delicate task.”
“…really?” Rupert asked with the smallest tinge of hope in his voice, only to be met by Regina barely holding her laughter.
“Oh no, you believed me? I’m so sorry…” She said clearly not sorry “No it’s because you were last in the roster, everything was assigned in alphabetical order.”
Shockingly, nobody laughed. It had only been a day and they all now knew that any of them could’ve been in his position with Regina involved.
“Alright, time for you gentlemen to earn your bread, let’s go!”
They started making their way through the overgrown forest on the outside of the relay as everyone tended to their tasks. Those at the very front made passage easier for a bigger party of people, those in the back made sure the cables were firmly in the ground, and those surrounding Regina and Rupert were on the lookout for… for…
“Say boss…” One of the ones looking out at the flanks said “What are we lookin’ for?”
“You mean in general or you guys specifically?” She asked.
“I meant me and the other five, but I guess in general, yeah.”
“Well, we’re looking for something that looks like a cave.” Regina raised her left hand as if to hush someone that never meant to say anything and added “Now what do I mean by ‘looks like a cave’? Well, it’s not quite an erosion-induced depression in the mountain but more like a big thing that crashed into the mountain so hard it opened a hole and caused a bit of a cave-in in the process.”
“How do you have just a bit of a cave-in?” Rupert asked out loud, regretting it immediately.
“By not collapsing completely.” Regina replied.
Rupert only shrugged, realizing he walked right into that one.
“You guys though…” Regina said addressing the second part of the question “Honestly not much. The whole Section 22 doesn’t really have big carnivores, the fauna is mainly things like rodents and felines rushing through the bushes…”
When she said this, all the noises in nature in the forest became clearer for the expedition.
“But trust me, better safe than sorry.” She ended in a tone with none of her usual whimsy and all of the weight of experience behind it.
A few minutes later, they finally saw the formation that was “like a cave”, and the descriptor fit perfectly.
Though vegetation was growing again all over it, it was clear something had crashed, and the rocks blocking most of the entrance were removed recently.
As they all got near the cave, Regina started barking orders again.
“Okay, all of you stay out here and keep watch on the entrance, if anything weird happens that’s why we had you guys set a comms relay.” She then snapped her gloved fingers near Rupert “Mister Ma’am, you’re coming with me.”
“Why did we come here if we’re staying outside?” One of the Blazer with concussive rifles moaned.
“Oh, you guys didn’t come to defend me” She said with a cocky grin drawing on her face like a predator ready to pounce “You’re just making things more comfortable.”
With this declaration and one last glance at Rupert to catch up, they both disappeared into the cave.
The inside was completely unassuming, nothing that the average folk hadn’t seen in their own town’s outskirts. But a few paces in, the real attraction became clear.
Rupert’s eyes, barely getting used to the darkness, caught another source of light and it came from a massive bay door. The rest of the ship it was part of was surrounded by rocks, but it was clear by the size of the door alone that it was big.
Regina examined the devices near the door, clicked her tongue a couple of times and turned to Rupert.
“You wouldn’t happen to have SOME royal blood in you by any chance?” She looked him up and down “Maybe a great great grandma twice removed that caught the fancy of some horny noble?”
“Not that I know, no.” Rupert said, confused.
“Oh well, we continue as intended then…”
Regina produced some kind of squishy rubber ball connected to an expensive-looking device. She pressed the rubber ball onto the biometric scanner while pushing a couple of buttons and all the lights in the ship flared up.
CLANK!
Rupert was pulled to the side by Regina just before the bay door opened.
“If that had you like a frolicker in the headlights…” Regina told him “Wait until you see the inside…”
“So clean…”
Rupert couldn’t help but utter this, as if the emotion was overloading his head so hard that it needed to get out.
The ship wasn’t actually “clean” in the conventional way one might understand it, in fact nature had started to claim it, with all manner of life creeping in, out, and around.
But there was something about its design, its construction, it’s materials that just evoked the image of “clean” regardless of hygiene.
“People think we can’t make these kinds of ships anymore…” Regina said, shocking Rupert on how she was entertaining the line of thought instead of teasing his perception of cleanliness “Truth is that we can, but it’s very time and resource consuming.”
“Then where did this ship come from?”
“Ain’t that the twentieth question here…”
As they walked by quiet halls and cabins, clearing their way towards the cockpit, another thought escaped Rupert’s mouth.
“It’s so… empty…”
“Hm? Empty how?” Regina asked him absentmindedly, almost like she was prodding him to think harder.
“There’s no cargo, no cutlery, no trash, no bedsheets, no… no nothing…”
Rupert thought he heard Regina let out a small chuckle before she stopped suddenly.
“Alright Mister Ma’am, stay back and cover your eyes.”
Regina took a bullet out of her belt, and loaded it into the chamber of one of her guns.
“Loaded!” She announced before shooting at the door.
A blinding flash later, the door to the cockpit looked as if someone went through it with really strong blowtorch.
Rupert looked dumbfounded back and forth, from the door to Regina then to the door again.
“It only works with magnetizable metals, sadly…” She commented as if Rupert was aware of the full implication of that somehow.
After announcing “Safe on!” she holstered the gun again and entered the cockpit.
Once inside, she signaled Rupert to open the briefcase. He did so only to find the reason it was so heavy was because it seemed to carry some sort of portable computer inside. Regina unfolded some sort of instrument in it and connected it to the main console.
After that, it all went quiet.
Regina focused on looking at screens and pushing buttons, while Rupert held the briefcase.
It was so… weird.
The silence, the announcing that the gun was loaded or locked, why this Regina almost looked thoroughly professional…
Getting bored and needing to entertain himself with his hands occupied on the briefcase, Rupert idly asked a question.
“So you’re a doctor because you’re a scientist, right?”
“Yes.” Regina replied dryly.
“Scientists are all different types right? Like how being a health doctor doesn’t tell if you treat skin gashes or skin rashes.”
“That’s how that works, yeah…”
“Is this the type of scientist you are then? The computer kind?”
“No… My doctorate is in nuclear chemistry with a minor in biochemistry” Then before Rupert could say anything she continued “The reason I’m doing this is more because I’m the only scientist crazy enough to go on expeditions.”
“I can see that.” Rupert then winced at realizing what he said, before noticing Regina just let out a small chuckle.
The silence continued, the briefcase was starting to get warm, and Rupert was getting tired.
As one does when stuck in situations like these, Rupert started recounting mentally everything that had happened up to now.
Regina’s “advice” back in the Meteorotive, her briefing, now everything he had seen a few moments ago…
Then something nagged at him, something was off, wrong.
“There’s something you haven’t told us, right?”
Regina’s typing stopped cold and she half turned her head towards him.
“What makes you think that?” There was zero grandiosity or even defensiveness in her voice, there was just the sort of cutting factuality of a judge questioning a lawyer.
“You were telling us this was an ancient ship, some…” Rupert looked for the right word and failed “Anthropological find.”
“Archeological.”
“Whatever!” Rupert had found his train of through during that interruption and was going to follow it to the edge of the world “This doesn’t look like some relic, this looks like an auto fresh off the dealer!”
Regina just gave him a stare so cold it could freeze the sun itself, but Rupert stood his ground.
“So much staff for this simple sort of thing and then you brag saying you could do it yourself anyways, if so, then why…?”
“Go on…” Regina insisted.
“If you can handle yourself like you brag, you insist so much on not killing thing when we came here, and the only fauna in here is rodents and felines, then…” Rupert’s eyes filled with realization “…then there was a possibility of people instead of animals…”
“AHAHAHAHAHA!” Regina let out a laugh that was probably not meant to sound evil but most definitely did “Congratulations Rupert Ma’am, you’ve just stepped into the sort of knowledge that could get you killed!”
Rupert turned pale and trembling but that’s when Regina turned around fully.
“Don’t worry, you’re safe with me” She told him, and to Rupert’s surprise, he believed her “In fact, I’m gonna reward your smarts with the answers… at least as many answers as I can provide.”
She took the briefcase off his arms, pushed some buttons, and then finally addressed him after resting the briefcase on a nearby console.
“I didn’t lie to you all, but you’re right in that I didn’t disclose everything.” Little by little, grandiosity was filling her voice again “Let me ask you something: Don’t you think that if everyone has an incentive to expand west, there would be powerful groups outside of the Valvion governments interested in that?”
Rupert’s eyes opened wide as he realized such an obvious thing.
He never bothered with politics, but yes, if there’s so much money in expanding west, it would make perfect sense for something other than random fortune seekers and the Valvion governments to plant their flag.
“The precedent for offshoot ships from Mothership Valvion isn’t unheard of, in fact, this might be exactly that… the real question is when it was launched…”
“Wait wait…” Rupert was starting to lose track of things when Regina raised three fingers in front of her.
“Currently, there’s three main possibilities with what we’ve seen: First, this is one of the scout ships from the mothership; Second, there’s some freaky reason why this ship was preserved here, like the mountain housing a hangar; Or third…” Regina paused for suspense “There’s some third party manufacturing ships now…”
Rupert’s throat dried up. None of the possibilities sounded encouraging.
If it came from the mothership, that means someone in the higher echelons of royalty launched it. But why? How many of these ships were there if so?
The second possibility seems unlikely, but the idea of secret military bases is chilling.
And if it was the last one…
That last one actually seemed to trigger a chain reaction of thoughts in Rupert, because not only was the thought of someone else amassing the power to rival the main military of the belt kicking into place… but what if it didn’t come from Valvion?
Nobody knows what’s on the other end of the belt after all…
And that’s not even counting how empty everything was! Was the ship being transported somewhere maybe? Did it intend to arrive somewhere where it could resupply? Maybe it was stolen so there was no time to load it?
Click!
Regina glanced at the briefcase and a grin creeped into her face.
“Results are in, wanna know what this is?”
“No, but I’d feel worse not knowing…”
Regina paused, for once reading the results instead of for intentional dramatic suspense.
“It’s a scout ship from Valvion.”
“Oh…” Rupert paused “That’s not reassuring…”
Regina let out a small chuckle, but when she glimpsed at the briefcase, any semblance of a smile drained away immediately.
“Alright Mister Ma’am, here’s what’s going to happen, and this is the only thing I have time to explain…” Regina adopted the sort of low tone one uses to try and be comforting that’s only discomforting as a result “I’m going to count down, from five to one, then on one you’re going to grab the briefcase and run as hard as you can to the entrance. Some cables will flap about, doesn’t matter. Keep running, don’t look back, don’t stop.”
“What?”
“Five”
Rupert wanted to ask more questions, What was this sudden shift in mood?
“Four”
He fumbled for the briefcase, towards its handle…
“Three”
He tried really clumsily to close it but was shaking too much for it.
“Two”
What’s going?
“One”
What’s going to happen?
“RUN YOU IDIOT!!!”
Regina’s command when Rupert didn’t start running at one did the trick and he took off, briefcase in hand, cables flapping everywhere.
As soon as he made it a few meters past the cockpit, a voice came from behind him.
“If you look back I’ll shoot you! Just keep running!”
“If you look back I’ll kill you! Just keep running!”
Regina’s voice sounded different, like a second voice was superimposed over hers.
But before Rupert could process that thought a different sound started rumbling.
The sound of engines starting…
But if the ship tries to fly inside the cave…
This realization made Rupert accelerate even faster through a hallway that seemed to have no end in that eternal instant.
Another realization creeped in as he neared the cargo bay door, if the ship was preparing for takeoff, that meant that the door would…
CLANK!
His fears got confirmed as the door started slowly closing with the siren to clear off blaring, Rupert gave out one last burst of speed to make it out and clear the door that had just turned into an upwards climb.
Rupert fell to the ground outside with a thud so loud that the guys outside came in to check.
“RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!!!!”
None of them had time to even get near him, when Rupert stumbled his way into standing up and running some more. And thankfully, the very human instinct of running when others run kicked into action for the others before any questions were raised.
Like a pack of scared animals, the 12 Blazers made distance away from the cave and in that moment the loud thud of something hitting the mountain from the inside was heard and rocks fell onto the entrance of the cave.
Then, the rumbling stopped.
Before anyone could ask what was going on, Rupert, bruised and wounded as he was, started trying to move rocks away on his own.
“DON’T STAND THERE COME HELP ME!!!” Rupert shouted to his peers with an edge of hysteria
“Why are we moving so many rocks?”
“DOCTOR TEMPEST IS STILL INSIDE!! WE NEED TO RESCUE HER!”
“Oh? Who is this Doctor Tempest? Your girlfriend?”
“What in the blasted void are you saying?! This isn’t time to-”
Then, in that moment, the voice saying all this, a distinctly deep but un-manly voice finally registered with Rupert.
He turned around to find the rest of the Blazers frozen in shock as Regina gingerly grabbed rocks before throwing them to the side.
“EEK!!!” Rupert exclaimed, somehow reaching four octaves up.
“Have you thought about singing Mister Ma’am?” Regina asked wiping her forehead “You have quite the range that should be trained I think.”
“Wh-wh-wh…”
“First things first…” Regina said, reaching for the briefcase “This is for me… and this is… for you!”
She leaned towards Rupert and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“So the first explanation in the queue…” Regina said while putting the briefcase on the ground and sorting all the dangling wires “This thing here is the same that the staff uses on Meteorotives and other ships for maintenance.”
Enough of the information overload had passed by Rupert where the kiss on the cheek started registering…
“The ship’s…” Regina tried to look for a word that simplified in layman terms what she wanted to convey and finally landed on “…its brain, all ship brains have been roughly the same for like 700 years. The main difference has been the removal of options because Meteorotives don’t need to keep track of the upkeep of cryogenics for example. But when that happens it’s more like the gap in the brain remains.”
Regina looked around to see if anyone was following her, but they were all shocked about what happened still. Nonetheless, she continued.
“So the idea was to use this baby to check the brains of the ship as if we were running normal maintenance…” Regina’s face then turned sour and annoyed “But as it turns out, the chunk of the ship’s brain that we use nowadays to check the launch log was used in the past to trigger the launch sequence!”
Having finished sorting the briefcase, Regina stood up.
“So not only do we not have the launch date in any way, but now I have one more cave-in to add to my illustrious legacy, which would be fine if I was on my own but there were innocents with me!” Regina was talking in a really fast manner, as if complaining to an imaginary bartender “I guess that means we can date the ship by tracing back when that programming inconsistency happened, but this is the sort of thing that a certain esteemed colleague of mine with the table manners of an excited parakeet gets paid a small fortune every month to know, so this oversight in the whole planning stage of the expedition is not only unacceptable but an utter disgrace!!!”
As her mouth stopped rambling, Regina looked around to her shocked crowd.
“Any questions?”
“HOW?!!!!” Rupert shouted, voicing what everyone was thinking.
“Well, you do remember my nom de guerre, don’t you?”
“The ma-LADY! LADY!!!” Rupert squealed as Regina pointed her gun at him “THE LADY THAT DEATH FORGOT!!!!”
“And you all better not forget that, or I’ll kick the door of the toilet when you’re in it.”
Everything that transpired was still being digested by those present when Regina picked the briefcase and started heading back.
“Sadly, this is where my time with the expedition ends because someone needs to deliver this briefcase safely…” Regina turned around, bowed as if at the end of a play, blew a kiss and said “Bye friends, may your ancestors smile upon what you all did today.”
Though her presence was no longer in the camp, she remained the talk of it through the expedition, especially once the cave was opened and a hole seemingly torn by claws was found in the hull of the scout ship, with its core torn to shreds too.
Many questions remained, especially on the mind of Rupert, the only one privy to the depths of the expeditions.
But regardless, the legend of The Lady That Death Forgot continued to spread, as did the clarified moniker.
Because she already threatened that if any of them misspoke she would kick the door when they were relieving themselves.
And they already saw her defy death first hand, none were really keen on calling her bluff on that one.
Forsaken Gaia – Chapter 2: What does her blind side see?.
Written by: Fernando Damas (@ironiclark)