Chapter 4
From the wilds of interspace, there came a trembling power. I remember how I felt it inside so strong. It startled me from my feverish dream, and I awoke in a blind euphoria. I felt the collective soul of half the galaxy – half the galaxy – Centarion!
My friend was still sleeping; so, I let him rest, but I made my way to that window of many wonders. Before the glass canopy, I stood, hypnotised by the dark storm beyond.
“Quite a wonder to behold!” Grassus said; I barely even noticed him sitting in his pilot’s seat.
“Quite…!” I mumbled back to him, my tongue stuck in awe.
“Here, come take a seat,” the master welcomed me. I sat down, yet I felt as if I were floating. Grassus pointed out into the distance. “You see that light. That’s what we call the eye of the storm; it’s the exit – a man-made fixture, only accessible from interspace. Yet it still lets in certain matter and energy; the storm that you see – it’s like an allergic reaction – interspace reacting with our world. It may look menacing, but I’d rather pass through one of these gates than make my own exit – any day.”
“You can do that?” I said beneath my breath.
“Yes, all you have to do is cut the interspace drive. It’s not a common practice; it’s dangerous; it’s desperate. A last resort for smugglers – they drop themselves into the heart of a system, hoping not to hit a planet and then fly straight into civilian traffic – never to be seen again. Or an outlaw being chased through interspace could fall out anywhere, right into void space – the space that is empty – truly empty – in between stars – nothing but gas and dust. To find someone like that would take days of sitting in this strange sky, listening for echoes – by which time the person would be gone”
“Echoes?”
“Now those are the reflections of our world that penetrate interspace, stripped of their form but still heard, still able to be detected – just not read. Radiowaves, for example, collide with interspace and are transferred into a different energy store – one which carries traits of the original signal. Sometimes it can be true the other way around – that energy from interspace can leak into our world. However, it has a way of maintaining its form; for years we had known it to be dark energy, dark matter…”
“But how do you know this. How is it studied?”
“The interspace engineers – they studied it, just before the Third Schism of Man – a time when interspace was on the cusp of discovery and therefore interstellar travel… which is likely what caused the schism – new territories to be won. Yet after the engineers had outlived their usefulness, they turned to more occult studies. They began to theorise and create all sorts of problems—”
“Like what?”
“They – they claimed… that the matter from interspace – was conscious. Can you believe it? It’s just incredible that they could come up with an idea so profoundly wrong – all their experience, all their contributions to our civilisation and that is how they bow out… They could not accept that they had uncovered something beautiful in all its entirety, a gift from the universe; they had to profane that divine gesture by ripping it apart for their textbooks and study. Interspace is a wonder; it is a mighty part of nature, and it should not be tampered with. The natural world is there to ground us; to humble us – to understand it in such a way would steal the wonder – the magic. We are alive, Orpheus – alive in this wonderful place. What more could we want for? What more than this?”
We began to career through the storm front, and I remember my fear as if it were only yesterday. Intermittent arcs of lightning would swoop across the sky, crackling a ghostly blue. Some would turn and stare at us, before haunting us down, and then with a gigantic crack, the ship would shudder and groan, lights flickering from life to death. Never before, had my mortality felt so close – so close that I could touch it.
As we closed in upon the gate, which was now burning like a sun, burning with all of the life and energy of Centarion, Grassus spoke into his headset, “Dante, we are almost at the gate; relax the drive.”
“Copy that.”
Suddenly, I felt the entire ship begin to ease off, and the realm around us began to calm, and then just before we met the gate, everything beyond the ship started to bleach in colour, until there was nothing left in sight but a pure white haze. Then I heard a great mechanism in the ship knock to a halt, and I could tell that the interspace drive had been shut down completely. Thus, this white barrier bled back into life and I saw wonders beyond the imagination.
A world lay proudly before me. Its surface was engraved with an endless sea of fiery runes that spoke of a metropolis eternal. I saw vast gardens and lakes, confined each to perfectly circular patches, and then there was an amber haze – a corona, which whisked far beyond the atmosphere and out into the void’s dark valley. So too, and from every direction, speared these rays of streaming fire – millions of ships all travelling to and from this planet that masqueraded as a star. We made our way to one of these roads.
Neighbouring Centarion were four great satellites – moons. They were as gods in the sky, standing sentinel, keeping watch over the cradle of humanity. One had a bright grey complexion that had been slaughtered a thousand times with impact craters – a vast pox upon such pale skin. This moon also had a thin sheen of blue – an atmosphere grown by man, and I saw that some of the craters had even been turned into seas – great blue swathes that spilt further into valleys, which had light dustings of green. I could already picture the sparse forests that grew amongst the ashy lunar soil. I wondered what life existed there; I wondered if any at all. I wanted to know if it was cold or warm and what the air tasted like. My mind was dancing brightly – brightly with nature, for it had always done so. There was a gentle peace that came with the world around me; it allowed a window so clear into myself, and whenever I felt the great constructs of society pressing at my neck, then I could always return to what I knew to be real – as real as the light of this sun, which had powered this star system far before man and would do for long after we were gone.
Yet at that moment, I simply looked from the many moons and to Centarion, upon which man had built and built, and I wondered if we would ever truly overwhelm nature – replace it entirely – whether we could overrule its laws and write our own constitution for existence.
I looked out to the smallest moon; it was quite unlike its brothers. He was born from steel and fire; his organs were constructed and installed; and upon him, life did thrive.
He hung low in orbit and even stirred Centarion’s amber corona, breathing it in and leaving behind a great chasm in his wake that would hence heal and await its next parting.
“What is that moon?” I asked Grassus, pointing out to the stranger in the sky.
He replied with an untainted optimism – a blaring pride. “That, my young Orpheus, is Centar’don! It is a true relic – risen before the Third Schism when man had all but conquered this solar system. That was their testimony, and it has remained and grown ever since. If you look to its centre, you can even see its engines.”
“It has engines!”
“Oh, indeed. To adjust and maintain its orbit. After all, it’s a lot heavier than it used to be…”
When we reached our road, Dante had returned from the engine room. He was dressed once more in his white robes and he had a relaxed, almost tired, look upon his face. He reached over me, and I watched his hand skip over buttons and lights, before finding a radio. He pulled at its coils and looked to Dante, “Fast track?” he asked.
Grassus looked back. “There’s no need – good traffic today!”
Dante let out a breathless laugh; he quickly spoke into his handset, “Highway Control, this is Cyclar, Harpy, Brondon, Farra, Deltoid – 7921 Alfalfa, requesting permission to fast track!”
A static ensued, before a frayed and frequency worn voice returned. “XA vessel authorised – you may fast track.”
The two masters glared at each other; I felt anger in the air, yet then they both broke into a jolt of stifled laughter. “Well, that answers that,” Grassus said lightly as he began to veer away from the road.
“My friend, let’s give our new initiates an entrance, the highways are hardly scenic – just a steady straight line to the nearest port. Keeps the civilians in line!”
“Well, imagine if they all flew with the privilege of the XA,” said Grassus.
“Chaos befitting a horror!” Dante replied sarcastically, yet then he continued and I knew that of what he spoke was certainly true. “The entire planet would grind to a halt… and therefore the rest of human space. We would be paralysed, I know. Thank the universe for our traffic laws.”
So, we began to make for clearer skies, and then when we were away from the road, the entire ship began to rumble and hiss, and then it slowly shuddered into a pace so frightful. I held onto my seat, writhing my legs and arms together, as the moons themselves began to shift in space. A terrible illusion that made me lose all sense of scale; it turned my stomach inside out.
Centarion grew bigger and bigger until it filled the entire view of the cockpit. We hurtled deep into its amber corona, which appeared, at such speed, to simply become another sky. Then the light from the planet began to intensify and it brought the surroundings to a warm golden glow.
Upon the planet sat a very noticeable marking, a double-edged circle of lights. I knew that circle to be the Capitol. It was the heart of everything we held dear.
Then the atmosphere was upon us; it taunted us with its ethereal stare, and we fell fast towards it. I saw the outside of the ship become blotched in rapid pulses of fire.
“Grassus… Grassus! We’re coming in too hot—” Dante seethed as he scrambled to find something to hold.
The other master just smiled and put his head down. “I thought you said you wanted an entrance. Besides, if a ship can withstand interspace, it can withstand this…”
It was mere moments before the entire cockpit was consumed in the ravenous flames of Centarion; we could barely see beyond them, but I saw that Grassus was not even looking outside; he was staring at the dials and the instruments, checking each again and then again. He read their clock-like faces with all the depth of a book. He could translate their every meaning, and I recall that his adeptness brought me a real sense of comfort – comfort to wash away the infernal dread. The master at the helm began to cackle; he looked to both of us wildly. “If you think this is bad, try falling from interspace into an atmosphere…”
Dante leered at him like a wild cat, before shaking his head, closing his eyes, and perhaps entering a silent state of prayer.
The fires went out as soon as they had started, and then before me rested Centarion. For as far as the eye could see stretched a continuous metal plane – golden under the light of the sun and the corona above the sky. I saw the many glass domes of forest and sea, but even they did little to distract from this pure expanse of fabrication – the expanse that was mankind.
Within moments, this once distant plane had risen into a million sharp spears, each surging into the sky, growing increasingly monstrous and detailed. I began to see windows and then even people – people as ants. They were but specks, but each of them were alive – holding within their minuscule brains years upon years of memories and emotions and thoughts – that each of them had a family and friends – the extensive system of their living. It pained me. A beautiful pain. It was so terrifying to truly feel how minute you were, and yet all so precious…
Then Grassus said something, but I did not hear his words. The ship then began to lurch backwards and all I could see were the tips of the skybreakers and then the vast coppery smelt that was the horizon. I felt the base of the ship impact the sky; it surged against it. We were entering vertical flight.
Grassus then pressed a switch and pointed to the wall. I looked and there was a screen, split into two. It showed live footage of the thrusters under the ship. There were two great streams of fire, a bright white in the colourless grain, and there were many smaller flames that dotted the perimeter. I watched as they sporadically burst into life before vanishing after mere moments. A delicate dance to balance the ship’s fall; it was an incredible show to watch.
Yet Dante was still sweating and he was still clutching onto the side. I know now from experience, that we were cutting it close, but my younger self was quite oblivious as we fell below the tips of the skybreakers, watching as their windows raced together to form long and slender lines. We narrowly missed a highway; the ships looked like floating boulders in this realm of metal shards. Then as we fell further, the atmosphere began to change – thicken – and the lower parts of the towers looked visibly older, and then smaller buildings came into view – blocky unappealing structures, littered with neon lights and bright billboards… And yet, I had no idea where the surface lay; I simply looked up to the sky and at the towers that rose above – so high. I could no longer see where they stopped; they truly broke through the heavens.
Eventually, the ship began to slow down; its fall had ended, and I realised just how fast we had been descending, just how hard the thrusters had been fighting to win us this standstill. By the time we had stopped, we were precariously lurking just above a gap in the smaller buildings that were as ugly blocks. Death encroached all around us – a cataclysm of brick-and-mortar walls.
Dante finally moved. He thanked the universe and its many stars, before he hissed at the man in the pilot’s seat, “Don’t worry, Grassus, I’ll just go and – debrief your apprentice, shall I… What after that madness? Law’s soul was probably left in the sky.”
Grassus looked back to his old friend, who was now stumbling about, probably sick to the bone, and he then he smiled to me and said, “Dante doesn’t always like these mortally challenging experiences – at least not like this. But if you don’t scare yourself to death here and there, then how can you be sure you’re even alive?”
Dante returned with a very morose looking Law Regent, and yet even his green misery could not withstand the incredible sight. For nestled in between the dirty rooftops and the vast tips of the skybreakers was an astounding building. It was the home of the XA – as immaculate as their white robes, it glistened in its portion of the sky. It screamed order amongst the centuries’-stained buildings, which were not yet nearly as old. For once this building would have towered above all else on this world, and the memory of that starkly remained. Therefore, in a way, it still towered above all else! A different type of stature.
“She dates back to even before the First Communion,” Grassus said. “A time when even this world was divided into smaller worlds – realms that fought for portions of the surface. Even then, this building was there in some form – trying to hold it all together! That was the age of the First Schism; it was a period that lasted from the laying of the first stones of civilisation.”
Dante finally spoke again. “Then the First Communion came – and the world became whole for the first time, and together they built and built until there were the makings of this current metropolis that covers all. In that time, they began to explore the moons and the outer worlds of this solar system; and with such an expanse…”
“Unity died!” Grassus said darkly. “New worlds. New factions. New wants and ideals. The Second Schism began – a terrible war that raged through this system like poison in the veins.”
“What happened then?” Law asked as I listened intently.
“Eventually, reconcile. The horrors became too great; they realised that humanity was more important than their worlds, and they re-joined – the Second Communion.”
Dante looked to us now. “This was a great time for mankind. The outer worlds were able to supply such incredible riches – metals and elements in their plenty. They did everything they could to honour their collective home of Centarion; they built upon the planet; they built the buildings below us; they took the monument of the XA to the heights that you currently see. They began work on the skybreakers, and so the lower you look at them, the more you can tell their age. Their construction lasted centuries – and, of course…”
“Centar’don!” Grassus breathed – an inhalation of awe. “The metal moon – it was surely their greatest achievement. A utopic realm that symbolised a place for every fold of man. Throughout its construction, it became the epitome of unity – a shared vision – a paradise for all… and it was! Yet then came the engineers, along with their dreams… They dreamt of a way to travel through the stars. Now mankind had travelled to other systems before on decade long journeys – it was no way forward. But these engineers heard the echoes of another existence; they called it interspace – a realm in between – a realm where distance was negligible. They developed the technology to open the door between the realms; a vast amount of energy was required. This work took precedence, and eventually, they managed to come out on the other side – at another star – another world – another sky. Then over the years, as the technology became common-place, people began to claim entire systems for themselves; their want for power and wealth overwhelmed their love for humanity and the Second Communion broke apart – the third and last schism of man!”
Dante’s thick and impervious voice overtook the other, “During this divide, wars were waged across the stars; Centarion stood alone in the fire, trying desperately to quell the unrest. The XA, as they had done in the past, fought to restore unity and through unity – peace. For we are, above anything, diplomats. We were the spears sent forth, to penetrate the warring worlds and bring them back to the Communion. In those heavy days, everything rested on our order, and we succeeded well. We fought for peace back then.”
“We still do, Dante!”
“We fight for stability now… Not the wellbeing of humanity’s soul!”
The conversation took on a distasteful quiet. Grassus began to push the ship towards the pristine tower, and then he spoke lowly, “Thus the Third Communion dawned upon the galaxy, and the XA have upheld it ever since. For the past ten thousand years, we have existed as a whole, with only smaller remnants of the schism or minor separatist factions causing conflict. After all, the Communion is a galactic state, but there are others that still refuse us… And with the discovery of the raptids early after the Third Communion, we have been busy, and we have clashed with them before and will do so again. For they do not seek victory over their primal death-drive as we do; they simply turned it towards us instead of themselves.”
“But if we outnumber them, how could they possibly be a threat?” I asked quickly, and Dante and Grassus smiled at each other, before looking down to the ship’s arsenal of complicated controls and instruments. I know now that they forgot the civilian in me – that for the sake of stability and social quiet, the threat of the Raptid had been gravely downplayed – especially on a world like Goldenfel.
Dante replied, “The raptids may be small in number, but they control an enormous expanse of the Galaxy, for they tapped into interspace before we did. They virtually block us from the the galactic plane east; and as of today, we have still not seen the other side… and the raptids won’t tell, you see. There could be another sentience for all we know! The raptids are highly intelligent, highly advanced; so much so that certain bodily functions have become outdated and been replaced by their technology. They have evolved evolution itself. They know far more than us, but all they want for is glory, and the glory of the Communion is vast. We are in many ways more powerful than them, but they… they simply have too many strengths and mysteries for us to tell who would win in a great war. Yet say what you will, the threat keeps the many bodies of the Communion on their toes… and united!”
We slowly edged towards the great monolith. It had no grand spaceport, but it did have a vast landing bay; hundreds of ships were sprawled across the ground. I saw them, like great fire-beasts, rolling in to land. I had never seen such huge ships land unassisted. It was just a battle – no, a war – between the weight of their hulls and their underside thrusters. That was all that kept them from falling to the metallic earth in a fiery blaze of death and mayhem.
Grassus sent in his codes; he was soon cleared; and we were about to land.
The descent began and it was slow. The cockpit leered forwards – to the ground slightly. My heart turned violent; I clawed into my chair. The weight of my body, held only by my safety harness, was directed straight towards the glass canopy beneath… and then to the ground beyond.
I watched as the dark buildings surrendered themselves to this magnificent coppery plane which belonged to the XA. All that stood in this space was their age-old tower and their fleet of star ships.
My eyes caught glimpses of white-robed men wandering the expanse; they stood out like stars; they hurt my eyes.
I saw that a landing space had been cleared for us, and as we approached it, I made out a red square. It was a projection showing the blast zone. I watched as both the XA and their bay assistants cleared the area. Then Grassus began to put us down. He hovered over the space, again looking mostly at his instruments rather than the surrounding world, and I felt an incredible energy beneath us – the ship struggling to hold itself in the air. We began to sink and sink; I heard the engines splutter aggressively. The tower beyond grew taller. The distant ground became dizzy now with detail; and I saw starkly the life I would lead and the one that I had left behind. No going back now!
A cloud of smoke, and we had landed, and the monument of the XA stood mighty and proud – a great watcher – a god amongst men. It stared at me… It stared at me!