Yuri felt the lurch first. The griffin airship—which through muddled conversation Yuri later discovered to be the Apostle—had abruptly decided to cut its engines, and begin to settle down to the still sands below. Before them, some meters away, laid the wreckage of the Ethereal. Yuri frowned at the chunks of debris scattered about the crash-site, their metallic appearances obvious blemishes on the universal uniformity of the flaxen desert landscape.
That was going to take more than a little elbow grease.
Natalya moved up to join him on his position over the railing, and motioned towards his sleeve. “Update?”
Yuri glanced down to inspect the holoscreen. Nothing but a handful of green dots and his own blue. He gave a nod. “Everything seems fine. We should still pick up the pace; the sooner I inspect the ship, the better.” Yuri’s stare hardened as his attention shifted to the burning husk of the Desert Raiders’ former flagship. “Though I’m still worried about that.”
“Do you have any idea how it was destroyed?” Natalya asked.
Yuri shook his head. “Not entirely. The Ethereal has a pair of anti-fighter turrets that can open fire automatically, but I didn’t set them to idle nor gave them any attack parameters.” He exhaled in thought, ignoring the obvious lack of understanding of the tech’s semantics on Natalya’s part. “All the other defenses are inside the ship, however. Perhaps another ship appeared, and beat them?”
The two watched as the scouting-team flitted about the hull of the Ethereal, being sure not to stand on any spot for too long, lest the scorching metal burn their talons. Natalya pursed her beak, or, to Yuri at least, it seemed like she did. “Unlikely. The only ships that fly over the desert are cargo vessels, pirates, or slavers.” She almost didn’t catch the sudden dark look that brought a downcast to Yuri’s features. Almost didn’t. “If another ship did take down the strongest of the Desert Raiders’ armada, then the Zebrican Elders have something else to worry about.”
Yuri cracked an eyebrow. “You mentioned the zebras before, if I recall. What are they, exactly?”
An amused scorn entered her voice. “Cousins to the Equestrians, technically. Though you could easily mistake them as strangers rather than family.” She waved a talon in the general direction of the downed raider ship. “The Zebras have been heckled by the Diamond Dogs as of late, losing convoys and having their own kind enslaved. But when they try to contact Equestria to go and send guards, the ponies don’t lift a single hoof to help them.” Natalya’s gaze turned fierce. “Oh, but they’ll accept the zebra’s gold and jewels just fine.” Seeing as this was an issue outside of his knowledge , Yuri went back to staring at the desert.
Finally, after several moments, the ship touched down, a bit harder than accepted. The size of the Apostle forced them to land a good distance away from the field of debris, but they were thankfully able to wedge the skyship between two dunes. With their vessel settled in, Natalya let out a shout. “Green and Blue wings; on me!” As the respective flights yelled in confirmation, she cocked her head at Yuri. “Lead on.”
With a nod, Yuri hoisted himself and dropped down from the edge of the deck. Unfortunately, he didn't factor in where precisely he was landing, and as a result collided against the slope of one of the dunes. Natalya and her company of soldiers could only look on from their aerial positions as Yuri swore under his breath as he rolled down the expanse, and eventually came to a stop with his face submerged in sand.
Yuri pulled his head out, and spat a sand-castle’s worth of sand out of his mouth. “Ugh. I thought I was over having sand in my mouth. Dammit, Slayer...” Dusting himself off and standing up, he glared intensely at the dune that aided him in his descent. “And you, Mr. Dune, can go fuck yourself.”
Natalya couldn't help herself; it started as a small chortle, barely suppressed behind a tightly-sealed beak. Eventually, she simply could not hold it in any longer, and let out a bellowing laugh. The entire situation, plus Yuri’s response, sent her into a fit of laughter that caused her wings to almost flap out of sync. The soldiers quickly followed suit.
The laughter died, however, when Yuri blew up said dune.
Yuri gave a smirk as the winding-down hum of his glove echoed in the air. An enormous billow of sand fluttered across the desert. Nearly half of the hill had been, quite utterly, annihilated and sent several meters into the air. The Apostle, now missing half of its support, proceeded to tilt several feet before resting. Sliding crates of cargo and rustled crewmembers on the ship groaned in irritation, and casted vehement looks over the railing at Yuri. He shrugged as his arm fell. “The desert is full of dunes; it won’t miss me destroying one of them.”
Natalya, meanwhile, could only hover slack-jawed at the scene. If Yuri had really been toting that much firepower under his sleeve while he was incarcerated, it was a mystery why he didn’t just break his way out all the way to the top. The tech noticed her bewildered expression, and grinned. “Are alien attacks covered by your insurance?”
The griffin could only shake her head in disbelief, before she touched down next to Yuri with her guard in tow. “Let’s just get aboard your ship.” Yuri seemed content with this directive as he lazily mosied along towards the Ethereal. Natalya grumbled under her breath. “This alien is getting stranger and stranger by the minute...”
“Being strange is my specialty.” Natalya turned a small shade of crimson, eyeing the smirk he once again seemed to constantly have on his face. “And just if you wanted to know, you and your men are fine being around and touching the hull. The radiation in the reactor room should have been dealt with by the automated systems days ago. Just watch out for any spots that may be hot.” Yuri continued walking towards the damaged Ethereal,with Natalya and her teams in foot. A thought flew through Yuri’s mind. “Speaking of which, who have you selected to come inside of the ship?”
"Only a small group. My four personal guards will be coming with me, with Germond and Starry joining in with them."
“Do you trust these six?”
“With my life.”
“Good, I’ll extend the same to them.”
Natalya looked at him, a puzzled expression on her face. “That’s a fairly serious statement to make. Putting your life in a species talons that imprisoned you a day ago is quite a change.”
Yuri simply shrugged, a dull tone in his voice. “You’re overthinking it. The members of your race that imprisoned me are not the same griffins as you. Besides, you have done nothing at all for me to distrust you. You’ve kept your word, and as a result I’ve kept mine. Besides, it's not like I'm worried about you guys trying to fight me.”
Natalya could only shake her head in befuddlement. She didn't know how someone who had been imprisoned by her griffins could forgive and trust them so easily, but perhaps that was merely how Yuri was. Natalya honestly couldn't tell.
Their approach attracted the attention of one of the griffins inspecting the hull. His landing and quick salute was returned before he spoke. "Grand Marshal. Our scouts have scoured the area, and we can confirm there are no signs of any potential ambushes or idle traps, and lastly no communication crystal-relays."
"Are you sure of this, Captain? Or do you need to double check it?" Natalya's voice retained its usual harshness that befitted her rank. Yuri found it kind of grating, and silently made a wave in asking of dismissal. Natalya granted it with a short nod, and Yuri made his way towards the sealed entrance of the Ethereal.
"Yes, Grand Marshal." The pair of griffins stood next to one another, looking out at the activity surrounding the two of them. Two hefty patrols of armoured griffins orbited like vultures around the crash, their formation and swiftness indicating their full combat-alertness. Inside of the valley, a small coagulation of tents had sprung up with eager scientists shuffling about for the command to have at it with the Ethereal. "From the tracks we've seen, the Desert Raiders were here, undoubtedly. The defensive perimeter has been set up, as ordered, and our Operator has relayed Black Rock for additional support. The Sovereign and the Solace will be in support positions within the hour."
A sigh of relief escaped her beak. One less thing to worry about now. “Have they been briefed about the situation?”
“Yes, they have.”
Natalya breathed a sigh of relief at this too. “Good, the last thing I want is to have to explain all of this again. Also, have the Zebras been notified of this? The other last thing that I need right now is to have a sudden patrol of Zebras appear.” She gestured around at the small fortress that had been constructed. “This doesn’t exactly look the easiest to explain.”
A troubled look crossed his face. “No, there’s been a… situation in the Zebrican Capital.”
Natalya's eyes narrowed, her voice turning tense. The Sergeants tone was not one of a good news. “What kind of situation are we dealing with?” She stopped for a moment and looked around her, making sure that no one else was in earshot of them. Yuri was currently hands deep inside a door panel, trying to unlock the security features. “Political coup? Natural disaster? Large scale fire?”
“None of those Sir. The Capital has been attacked by one of the five diamond dog tribes. From what we’ve gathered, the Zebras have managed to defeat the dogs, but the damage to the capital is immense.”
Natalya groaned at this breaking news, her face meeting her talon. “Of all the times for this to be happening… I thought we dealt with those things years ago. First the minotaur aggression, then Yuri, and now this?.” Gahh, what the hell am I supposed to do about this?! “Sergeant, you’re dismissed. Thank you.” The griffin saulted and took flight back to the ship.
“I have some good news!” Yuri’s happy voice suddenly filled her ears. “I’ve figured out what’s wrong with the door… Is something the matter?”
“Nothing that could concern you. Now, what about the door? Have you managed to open it?”
“I’ve figured out what’s wrong with the door, but I’ve decided not to open it yet.” He quickly leaned in, the tone and level of his voice dropping. “Also, I didn’t feel like yelling this to everyone, but there is also some… worrying news. Something managed to open the door.”
“And? Shouldn't your internal defenses that you spoke so highly off be able to deal with whomever did?” Yuri noticed the annoyance in her voice, but decided to ignore it for the moment.
“That’s not the problem. The problem is that whatever managed to get in did not manage to get out. So worst case scenario, there is a very angry creature or group of creatures behind the door. Best case scenario? There’s a couple of very fine piles of ash sitting on the floor behind the door.”
“Then what are we waiting for? I’ll grab my team and meet you at the door. I’ll also alert the combat patrols to take positions along the hull in case of an incident. ” With a surprising amount of energy, she turned around and flew to one of the bigger tents.
After a few moments of chaos, the group was ready to enter. Yuri stood at the front of the pack, his tall frame blocking the doorway. His glove hummed with life, while a gifted griffin shortsword hung on his belt. The holographic screen clung to his left arm, providing a live update of anything getting near to them.
Behind him stood Natalya and her four bodyguards. One directly behind Yuri, one in the back, and two on either side. The two scientists, both almost humming in excitement , stood contained in the middle.
Nearly all of the other griffins that had been on the ship were currently in defensive positions either on the hull, on the dunes, or flying around in the clouds. It was quite a sight to behold.
“Alright, you lot ready?” The griffins behind him nodded in agreement. Yuri turned back and activated his glove, a small stunning charge ready to be fired. With a slight tap to his holographic screen, the door slowly began to open. Yuri ducked down slightly, since the door seemed to be taking it’s sweet time. I can’t see anything that looks like feet, but I can’t be too careful.
“Everyone behind me, I would advise covering your ears.” The griffins backing up his entrance glanced at each other in concern, but obeyed and placed their talons over the sides of their head. Yuri blinked in confusion; did they really have ears? He shook it off as the rumble of the door’s progress brought him back to the task at hand.
As soon as the door reached Yuri’s hips, he stuck his hand under the door and fired the pulse he had been charging. A high pitched noise echoed around the camp and within the bowels of the Ethereal, before it quickly dissipated into static.
When Yuri glanced back to examine his charges, he didn’t expect to see Natalya glaring at him, with the other griffins still shaking off the effects of the stun-charge. “What in the hell was that?”
“A precaution,” Yuri murmured as the door finally yielded and fully presented the innards of the Ethereal. The darkness of the interior was broken up only by the occasional emergency lights basking their small crimson luminescence in the gloom. He glanced at his holo-screen once more: still as the night. The tech shook his head. “I don’t like the looks of this. Stay sharp, and don’t walk past me.”
The other griffins nodded as the group entered into the first room of the vessel. Yuri waved at them to stay still as he shuffled over to a barely-visible panel and began typing on its hovering symbols. A second passed before a distant churn of power could be heard, and several of the lights sprung to life. The sight made the two accompanying scientists gasp in awe and anticipation.
“Astounding...” The older griffin, Germon, whispered to his cohort. “All of this alien technology. It’s... amazing.” He turned to Starry. “Are you positive there is no magical signatures in any of this?”
Starry dumbly nodded. “Not a single trace of it. Whatever is powering these devices is not magic. It’s...” She trailed off as she looked towards Yuri, who was still working away at his panel. “What is—”
“Electricity, for the most part,” Yuri interrupted as he finished his business. Looking at the central projector, he frowned at its lack of display and promptly kicked it. It shuddered, before the shaky image of a blue orb representing the planet hovered above its space. “Though there is some ionic energy and a hint of nuclear power mixed in with that.”
Admittedly, those words were wasted on the two scientists as they carefully, as if walking on fine china, looked around the area they found themselves in. Natalya and her escort stayed close to Yuri, watching the engineer idly fiddle with exposed wiring of some of the consoles. “What is this room’s purpose, if I may ask?”
He glanced up at Natalya’s question. “This? It’s pretty much the hub of the ship. It goes to our quarters, the cargo bay, engineering, and the cockpit. Drake refers to this place as the ‘Tactical Intelligence Chamber’, but that sounded stupid to me, so I just think of it as “the one room in the middle of the ship.””
Natalya blinked at this response while she looked around. “I see.” Eventually, Yuri seemed to finish whatever he had to do in the room, and motioned for the group to begin moving. Circling the large sphere hovering in mid-air, Natalya was about to proceed down a vaguely-lit hallway before Yuri appeared in a flash and stopped her with an outstretched hand. Her brows furrowed. “What is it?”
A small, dark chuckle left him as he pointed with his free hand towards the floor. There, surrounded by what appeared to be small piles of dust, was a thin line running through the entry of the corridor. Natalya obviously didn’t comprehend, before Yuri grabbed up a piece of useless debris sitting upon a terminal, and casually threw it into the hall.
It shocked everyone, save the human, when it was disintegrated the instant it passed over. Yuri turned around, a smirk on his face that did not fit the current situation. “That right there is why I told you not to come inside without me. You would have ended up like those poor bastards there.” He motioned towards the small piles of dust.
Several intense shivers rocked the bodies of the griffins as Natalya motioned with her head towards the ashes. “Are those what I think they are?”
Yuri’s smile grew a fraction wider. “The Ethereal has a few of these. Galactic market tends to sell them to businesses and organizations who use them to destroy unwanted materials, but allow others to freely pass through them, like security checkpoints for contraband. I modified a set of them so those ‘unwanted materials’ destroyed were anyone unauthorized onboard the ship. Undetectable by any scanners too. Like I say, quality over quantity ” The technician glanced down, his face falling into thought. “However, there appears to be a flux in the system powering the Hostile Emancipation Grid. Which leads me to believe at least one intruder got past this defense while it was recharging between bursts.”
Starry’s eyes removed themselves from their sightseeing trip to stare nervously down the partially-lit corridor. “So something could still be alive down there?”
Natalya and the others flinched at the sinister sound of Yuri’s glove beginning to hum to life. “If that’s the case,” Yuri murmured as he punched in something on his holoscreen and shut off the impending death-field, “I suppose I’ll have to make them regret surviving past this point.”
With that uneasy statement hanging in the air, the party proceeded down the expanse of the vessel cautiously. Yuri took point, carefully checking behind every conceivable crevice and alcove that an assailant could be hiding, while the griffins stood to the sidelines watching him. Starry sidled up next to Natalya and began whispering. “Grand Marshal. It might be more beneficial if we divided our group to fully scour the shi—”
“Absolutely not,” Natalya and Yuri replied in-sync. The mare shied away in embarrassment as the engineer whirled on her. “I specifically said no one goes anywhere without me accompanying them. Understood?” Starry understood crystal clear. “Besides, why in the world would we split up?”
“I...I thought that we would be able to scour the ship faster. It would be more efficient.” Yuri raised one of his eyebrows at this, a gesture that was weird to say the least.
“Normally you would be right, but this is not the case here. Besides what I already told you, there is a probable enemy on the ship right now, and we don’t know where they are. They could be following us right now, and the only thing that splitting would do is divide our strength.”
“I understand, but it’s only one enemy. We should be able to defeat whomever it is if they attack us.” Yuri and Natalya exchanged a look with each other, before returning their attention back to Starry.
Yuri leaned in closer to her and spoke in a completely monotone tone, his face blank of any emotions. “I’m going to believe for your sake that you’ve never been in combat, so take what I’m going to say as a rule of life. Never, and I mean never, underestimate something you don’t know the full power of. Treat any enemy you meet like they can kill you in under a second, it will save your life.” Yuri turned back around and began to walk carefully down the corridor, making the same investigative movements that he was doing before. A few steps later he suddenly stopped and thrust out his arm behind him in the universal signal to stop moving.
In front of them stood a massive door, roughly the size of the entire corridor. No windows seemed to be part of it, and it seemed to be just a massive slab of metal. The same unknown alien writing that Natalya had seen throughout the ship decorated a small plaque on the right side of a door. “Why did we stop?”
“We've reached my personal quarter, AKA, my home.” Yuri reached toward the small notecard that was attached to the panel near the door and rapidly entered a long password. A small ding was heard and the doors swished open, a blast of cool air hitting them. The doors seemed to only open around three feet, and Yuri denied any view of the room that lay beyond.
Yuri turned around and looked at the group behind him. “I need all of you to stay out here while I make sure that everything in here is alright and intact.”
Natalya narrowed her eyes at him. “Why is that?”
An annoyed expression crossed his face. “I highly doubt you’ll let me enter your home, so I won’t let you enter mine. Besides, I’m simply grabbing my gear and coming back outside. Anyway, the automated defenses will kill you if you enter here and are unauthorized. Lot of stabby stabby death things here.”
Natalya sighed in annoyance. “Guess I don’t have a choice in this matter. Do what you wish, we’ll be out here making sure nothing tries to get in.” Yuri nodded and quickly walked into the room, the door swishing closed. The Grand Marshal shuffled about anxiously in her spot; this had been the first time in almost twenty-four hours that Yuri had not been in direct eye-contact. It was both relieving and worrying.
Natalya turned around and barked at the troops behind her. “Lieutenants, make sure that absolutely nothing comes at us from behind. If it does, make sure that it dies.” The troops nodded in agreement, before forming a defensive position behind them. She turned around and looked at Starry and Germon, who seemed to be slowly recovering from their shocked stupor of their surroundings.
“Are we honestly supposed to just stand here and wait for him to come back out?” the mare quipped as she leaned in to better investigate a piece of frayed wiring. “Not trying to secure the rest of the ship is a dangerous bid while we sit here unaware.”
“Yuri has asked us to stay put,” Natalya retorted. “Unless you want to wind up like those tufts of former-intruders over there on the floor, I highly suggest you stop complaining and sit tight.” Starry gave a small, apprehensive huff under her breath, but stayed where she was in irritated silence. Natalya let loose another sigh. “Germon, how do things look?”
The weathered bird laughed gently in wonder. “We are, at this very moment, standing in something that would radically redefine everything we’ve learned about the sciences. I can feel it.” Germond lowered his voice as he addressed his superior. “Grand Marshal, we must take at least something from here. Studying just the smallest thing could send us decades into the future.”
“Attempt to take anything off of this ship without my explicit permission, and you will depart from it not-so-alive,” Yuri’s voice spoke. The company flinched as the altered audio appeared to be coming from all around them. “I understand the urge to learn, but for the sake of whoever is stupid enough to try, keep your claws to yourselves. Drake and Slayer would skin me alive if I just started letting you lot take whatever you felt like.”
“Yuri? Where are you?”
“Getting my things. I couldn’t help but eavesdrop though, so I tapped into the Ethereal’s intercom system. I figured you’d all be bored without my voice to entertain you.” Natalya rolled her eyes as a moment of quiet passed. “So, Natalya and accompanying... company; how do you feel about all of this?”
“What do you mean by that?” the Grand Marshal asked as she focused her hearing and examined her surroundings. Even though Yuri’s voice initially sounded as if it came from all directions, it seemed to only be reverberating in the space provided. Which meant it had to have an origin point.
“Simple really. How do you feel about this whole thing?” The voice of the technician allowed Natalya to hone in on the small box near the door he had left from, where the volume seemed the greatest. “Running into an alien, finding out you're not alone in the cosmos, staring at technology that is leagues above your own?”
“What about it?”
Yuri’s laugh came through the speakers. “You seem to be taking this rather well, is all. I doubt this is a daily thing you have to go through, so I was curious what your response to everything happening was.” A rustling sound echoed from the speaker as Yuri undoubtedly shifted things about in his search. “I’m thinking now, however, that maybe you lot are just good at hiding what you really think.”
“Forgive me,” Natalya said as she watched Starry and Germond converse in whispers to one another out of the corner of her eye. Those two were most likely plotting something. “But I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
A frustrated sound left the device. “I am an alien that came from space in a tin-can and who beat the shit out of several of your people, and you are currently waiting for me to fix a reactor that could kill thousands if left untreated. Do you have any kind of reaction of surprise or shock about this?”
“I actually haven’t really been thinking about it.”
“Beg your pardon?”
The griffin rustled her wings as she spoke. “If I stop for one second to even begin pondering everything that has happened in the past few days, I fear my mind would shut down. At this moment I’m just bottling it up for another time.” Natalya glared at the box, as if she was staring at Yuri himself. “Simple as that.”
“I see,” Yuri said. “Then I suppose I’ll have to settle for that answer.” A small crash caused the occupants waiting in the chamber to jump as the engineer cursed. “Shit; didn’t mean to knock that over.”
“Is everything alright in there?”
“Yeah, peachy. It didn’t break, so we’re good.” Yuri began grumbling under his breath. “Durability is about the best thing about Imperial tech...”
Natalya cracked a brow at that; Yuri had never mentioned the Imperials before. Admittedly, the human had revealed very little about himself. Natalya jumped on the opportunity. “‘Imperial tech?’ Who are the Imperials?”
The doors abruptly opened themselves, unveiling Yuri’s form. A sizeable pack of equipment was slung over his shoulder, and his frame was now obscured by a rather-stylish coat. Natalya stopped her inspection, however, when she saw the dark look in his eyes. “The Imperials are Humanity’s own worst enemy. One of them, anyways.”
Yuri promptly walked out, forcing the griffons arranged there to step aside. His gait was stiff and agitated as the others fell in tow. “To put it bluntly, the Imperials are the entire cause for why my people are currently slaughtering one another. Their ‘crusade’ roused the Alliance and the Syndicate to gather their own forces, and all three of them in their fighting triggered the Galactic Civil War.”
Grand Marshal Natalya tilted her head. “I believe we need a bit of context here.”
An exasperated breath of air left Yuri as he entered another section of the Ethereal. However, unlike his previous disappearance, he did not seal the door nor did he bid them to stay outside. Natalya and the others took the chance and followed him into the new area. They were significantly confused when they realized their surroundings looked startlingly similar to a kitchen. Their attention was directed to Yuri as he moved across the room. “Very well, I’ll briefly fill you in.”
The technician stooped over a container and began sifting through it. “About seventy Galactic Standard years ago, the Imperial Planetary Coalition struck the galaxy with a fleet spanning thousands of ships and millions of men. The attack completely blindsided those unfortunate enough to be caught in the wake, and that would be quite a lot of people.” Yuri grabbed what looked like a small cartridge and examined it carefully, before tossing it back into the container. “When the attack was done, the Imperials had claimed a majority of the Core Worlds, a large portion of the galaxy trade-routes, and most of the dense population centers. Many systems calmly accepted the Imperials rule, but a significant percentage decided that they would resist.”
Starry cocked her head, a confused look on her youthful face."System? What is that?"
Yuri mentally face palmed, an snarky remark almost releasing from his lips. "Think of a system like a town." He paused, making sure that the message had been understood. This is gonna be one hell of an analogy. "Now, put that town into space, and turn the planet you live on into the area around it. "
“What happened to the systems that did that?”
Yuri turned back for a moment with a grim grin. “They suffered.” He turned back to his work. “The systems were too unorganized, and lacked the strategy and capacity to fight against the Imperials effectively. Like cannon fodder, they fell to the fleets and the orbital bombardments. All but one, anyway.”
“I’m guessing the one that did was one of the other factions you mentioned earlier?” Natalya asked as Yuri plucked a bottle of some foreign substance and took a swig. His frame shivered in apparent disgust, but he tucked it away into his backpack with a nod.
“Indeed.” The technician, apparently done with the current container, moved onto another. “That particular sector of space, a relatively isolated location that went by the name of the Auriga Cluster, refused to yield to the Imperial’s efforts to crush their rebellion. Apparently all that solitude allowed them to design some insane technology.
“When the first Imperial fleet came into orbit of their soon-to-be capital Starlight, the future Interstellar Alliance had a mass of drones waiting for them.” Natalya flinched at the word ‘drones’, but Yuri didn’t notice. It’s not as if he knew that drones were also the common name for Changelings, a race that had caused some ire to the Altai Dominion. “The fighters didn’t have a chance against those unmanned machines, and they were easily repelled. After that, the Alliance began spreading their influence to nearby space; all in the name of bringing peace to the Milky Way and ending the Imperial march.”
Yuri gave a harsh bark of a laugh. “If only the systems that willingly signed on knew. The Alliance was just as bad, if not worse, than the Imperials in terms of their aspirations for Humanity. Their numbers swelled, they took back a large amount of Imperial territory, and before you knew it: there was the Alliance and the Imperials fighting for control of the galaxy, with the tables turned on the Imperials for a time.
“My people have a saying. When you push someone into a corner, they’re not going to play by the rules to push themselves out. The Chiefs of the Imperial military realised that if they kept up their current strategy, they would lose the war in under a year. So they did what anyone feeling extinction does. They turned it up a notch.”
Yuri’s face darkened, a look of disgust and hate appearing. “They instituted a galactic military draft. Anyone who fit the terms of it were drafted into the army or navy. And thanks to a great propaganda campaign, most people were more than willing to join.” Yuri grabbed a small pill from a bottle and swallowed it, his face recoiling at the apparent taste. He set the bottle back inside his backpack. “The industry was put under military control, and pumped out every kind of military machine you could think off. Special colleges were set up to train the officers that would be commanding all of this. To sum it up, the Alliance advances were stopped in their tracks, leading to a standoff. However, this standoff was not to last.” Yuri stopped talking and walked towards what looked like a black box in the corner of the room. The only things different from the box and the wall was a different texture and color.
“What do you mean the standoff was not to last?” Yuri seemed to be ignoring her as he touched the corner of the box, and a holographic display popped out of seemingly nowhere. Yuri put his hand in the middle of the display, before speaking a series of words and numbers. A small ding was heard, and one of the craziest things Natalya had ever seen began to happen. The box began to change it’s shape.
Two small metal handles seemed to grow from the side of the box’s completely flat surface, making a door in the face of the box. Yuri grabbed them and pulled, opening up the box to reveal it’s contents. Yuri’s body shifted to block sight of what he was grabbing, and by the time he had moved away, the box had once again been shut. The handles slowly grew back into the metal, and the completely flat surface was back once again.
“Oh yeah, where did I leave off?” Yuri turned back around to Natalya, who narrowed her eyes at him in suspicion. His coat seemed to be covering something on the right side of his body, with only the faint gleam of metal being shown.
“Forget that for the moment, what did you just grab?” Yuri stared back at her, a completely expressionless face facing meeting her own. The two sides seemed to have reached a standoff, with neither side making any moves.
“Sigh. Oh well, you caught me. It’s a weapon of mine, one of many I may add.” Natalya and the rest of the guards looked at each other in both confusion and a small amount of fear. The only weapon that they had seen him use so far was the glove on his hand, and that small device was easily capable of destroying an entire sand dune with a single blast. The thought of another weapon even in the same tier was frightening to say the least.
“Since we are technically allies, can we see it?” Yuri seemed to think about this heavily, before finally shrugging his shoulders in an apparent agreement. He calmly reached to his side and pulled out the apparent weapon.
The ‘weapon’ seemed to be just a simple looking, chrome red metal rod, around two or so feet in length. However, the more and more Natalya looked and inspected it, the more it seemed to become less than just a metal rod. For starters, the metal seemed to be made of the same light material she had seen on the hull of the ship. Two small metal constructs that appeared to be handguards capped each of the ends. Small grooves that faintly reminded her of talon guards had been inscribed along the entirety of the body. Yuri spun the weapon around in his hands a fair bit, before putting it back where he had somehow attached it.
“There you go. Any more questions? Can I get back to my story?” No one seemed to respond, and Yuri took that apparent silence as a yes. Before he could explain, a small light began to blink on one of the screens next to him. Yuri turned his head and stared at it for a moment, before grabbing turning back around to face Natalya, a troubled look on his face. “Story time will have to wait for a while. We need to get moving. Quick.”
Natalya decided not to ask any more questions, as his sudden urgency. Yuri quickly left the room, and motioned for the rest of the griffins to follow him. As soon as they all had left the room, he quickly turned around and sealed the room shut.
Natalya turned her attention towards the two griffins she had left outside to guard the room. “Did you spot anything?” The both nodded their heads no, and joined the convoy following Yuri. They reached the same corridor they had come from, but turned a left instead of a right.
“We’re heading towards engineering. Tell your companions to keep their eyes peeled for anything moving.”
“Should they watch the vents?”
Yuri snorted with laughter. “If whomever is creeping in the ship decided to go inside the vents, then we don’t have to worry about anything.”
“Why would that be?” Yuri turned around and face her as he continued walking down the long hallway.
“This is a pirate ship. Do you really think that we would leave something like the vents unprotected? The only vents they could access from the hallways are the plasma vents from the reactor. Anyone who enters those dies in under a minute, no matter what. It’s a shitty way to die.” He turned back around and began to walk towards the end of the corridor with haste.
A few minutes later, they reached a massive door similar to the one they had entered the ship in. However, this one had several alien symbols plasted on it, with a large black and yellow trefoil symbol taking up most of the space. A large handle was attached to the door, and a small holoscreen hovered blankly near it.
“We’ve reached the engineering room. If you could backup for a moment, that would be great.” The group did as they were asked and backed up several feet, with the four griffin guards turning around and guarding the lone hallway coming from the corridor with a simple hand gesture from the Marshal. Yuri rapidly entered a long passcode, before placing his hand once again on the holoscreen. A small ding was heard, and what sounded like a door being unlocked echoed around the hallway.
“The automatic door opener thingy is broken, so I have to open this monster by hand.” Yuri grabbed the massive handle and slowly began to pull it back. As the door began to slowly reveal it’s contents, Natalya stood in a small amount of shock at the pure thickness of the it.
The door was a least six inches thick, and Yuri was definitely not having an easy time opening it up, his face strained in concentration.
Germond turned and whispered to the slightly less shocked looking Starry. “Fascinating isn’t it. Even in a ship with technology beyond anything we’ve ever seen, the old ways still hold true.” Starry looked at the older griffin a bit confused, before passing the odd comment as just small talk. “That it is. I honestly cannot wait to see this ‘reactor’ of his.”
“That won’t be that much longer then, Starry. He’s gotten the door open now.” Germond pointed to the slightly red Yuri, who was taking a moment to catch his breath after opening the massive door.
“Can we enter it?” Yuri raised his hand for a moment, before breathing in deeply. “Yeah, go ahead. Just don’t touch anything, for the love of god don’t.” Yuri was staring directly at Starry and Germond when he said that. “These controls are directly wired into the reactor, and it is still in a tricky mood. One wrong click and the containment fields could fail.”
Natalya slowly backed away from the entrance, now a bit more worried that a simple click of a button could cause something to fail. “What would happen if those fields fail?”
“Remember that worse case scenario I explained?” Natayla nodded her head in agreement. “Yeah, that’s what will happen if the containment fields fail. If that does occur, there is absolutely nothing I can do to stop it.” No one responded, but it was very clear that the message had come across. And with that, Yuri entered the room with a quick wave. The rest of the group seemed a bit hesitant, but soon their curiosity became too much and they carefully went through Starry and Germond’s mouths dropped in synchronization, and even Natalya couldn't help by be impressed at the sight that greeted them.
They had stepped into the biggest room they had seen so far on the ship, and it was completely filled to the brink with technology like nothing they had ever seen or could have imagined. The main room was a perfect circle twenty or so feet in diameter, with a set of holographic consoles lining the walls. Each one of them was in the same alien language she had seen earlier, and a good portion of them had charts and graphs on them too. Yuri seemed to have dropped away from the group, and was staring intently at one of the consoles, his back turned to them.
Directly to the side and behind of each of the consoles stood two massive cylinder like objects, with massive pipes and cords, as well as metal braces connecting them to each other, and the other technology in the room. Those must be the engines I saw. Those things are massive. Natalya's eyes ended their inspection of the engines, and began to focus on the direction those pipes went.
Following the direction of the pipes lead her eyes to the main centerpiece of the room; the object that Starry and Germond seemed to be gawking at the most, and that she has somehow ignored. Sitting on top of a slightly raised platform was a five foot wide cylinder that started off at the base of the floor, and continued up through the ceiling to another unknown location of the ship. It was completely encased in a unknown spotless grey metal of some kind, but still glowed with an unnatural neon green from inside. A large guardrail orbited around the base of what she guessed was the reactor, with several consoles, screens and holograms bolted directly into the flat tops of the rail.
A slight shimmer of an unknown origin completely encased the reactor. It reminded her of a magical shield that she has seen Starry cast countless times, but without any color or pattern to it. It was oddly hypnotic to look at, and she was having a great difficulty pulling her head away from it, and she seemed to have completely lost track of time.
“Grand Marshall, isn’t it ...beautiful?” Natalya slowly turned her head away from the hypnotic reactor to the source of the voice. A captivated Starry was unable to break her eyesight with the massive amounts of tech in the room, her already massive eyes trying to gather all of the information they could, with Germond seemingly having the same hypnotic experience.
“Beautiful?”
“Yes, beautiful. I can’t seem to stop staring at it.” Her and Germond’s eyes had completely glossed over. She doesn’t look good, I need to break her line of sight.
“Are you guys trying to go blind over here? Jesus, stop staring at the reactor before you can’t anymore. ” Yuri’s monotone voice suddenly appeared out of her right ear. Natalya turned her head, a slightly shocked look on her beak as the alien seemed to appear out of the blue to her right. He noticed her staring at him, and waved his hand in front of her with a creepy grin on his face. She backed up a couple of steps, causing Yuri to smirk in satisfaction.
“Anyway, since those two seem to be completely and utterly high off their asses, I have something I need to tell you about.”
“Oh? What would that be?” Yuri leaned his head over a bit and spoke in a deep, yet quiet tone.
“I checked to make sure that the reactor or the radiation is not interfering with the scanners. They’re not.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“It’s not a good thing. If those scanners were working right, I could find the creature who’s currently creepin on the ship and deal with it.” Yuri turned around and faced the two scientists.
“Any idea why these two are getting high staring at a sheet of metal?”
“You don’t see it?” A look of surprise crossed his face.
“See what? All I see is the covering for the reactor.” His voice suddenly dropped in tone. “What are you seeing?”
“It looks like a green glow is emanating from it. It’s hard to describe.” Yuri turned around and walked towards one of the console attached to the guardrail. He quickly typed something into one of them, and a slight hum filled their ears.
“Did it change?” Natalya turned her eyes back to the reactor. The green glow was gone completely. Starry and Germond seemed to be having some similar reactions, as they were now looking at the floor, with their respective hooves and talons on their heads.
“It’s gone now. What did you do?”
“Increased the power going to the containment fields. Whatever you guys saw was somehow making it through the fields, which is not good.” Yuri turned around and faced her once more. “But, that problem is solved now. Now, where is the coffee maker...”
“Speaking of problems, what about the whole ‘blowing up the desert’ deal that we came all the way out here for?”
“Oh yeah, that.” Yuri turned back around and typed in a long line of something into the console. “It’s fixed.” Natalya raised an eyebrow in both suspicion and surprise.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Could you not understand me?” Natalya's death glare seemed to have no effect on him. “It’s fixed, patched, repaired, unbroken.”
“How did you fix it so fast?” Natalya could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks in anger.
“If I told you exactly what I did, you would not understand it at all. All I needed to do was to make sure that the reactor was working right and not leaking massive amounts of radiation that would kill everyone.”
Before Natalya could respond to this, Starry decided that the cold metal floor of the room was a good place to take a nap, and promptly collapsed on to it. Germond seemed to have recovered from his ordeal, and was already making sure that Starry was still alive.
“Uh, did I miss something? Is she alright?”
Germond looked back up at the pair. “She’s fine, just knocked out. Thank you for turning off that light. It was… hypnotic, I could not look away. Do you know why this happened?” Natalya struck a glance at Yuri, whose face was one of confusion and concern.
Before Yuri could open his mouth to respond to the question, his lifeform sensor began to beep and blink at him. Yuri looked down and goofed at the response. “The fuck is this?” What the hell? This can’t be right.
“I don’t know. My lifeform scanner is acting up to say the least. I’m getting really fucked up readings that don’t make sense.”
“What’s it saying?”
“Apparently right now we’re in space, now back on land, now back in space. Oh! Apparently there are forty five Slayers right… there.” He pointed to a particular corner of the room. Thankfully, there were not forty five Slayers standing in the corner.
His joking tone did nothing to to make Natalya's fear go away. She could tell that he was trying to distract them from the topic at hand. She decided to probe further .“Do you know what’s causing it?”
“No, and that’s the problem. I’ve already compensated for anything that could be interfering with it. Radiation, Cosmic Rays. Hell, even air pressure. This makes no sense.”
“Could it be that it’s just your thing malfunctioning? “
“Hmmm. That could make sense, but it’s a longshot. I’m using the scanners that are on the ship, and those could have been damaged in the crash, but there’s an issue with that. They were working perfectly before hand, and now they’ve apparently decided to act up… ” Natalya saw Starry slowly return to her hooves, but before she could check to make sure she was alright she was torn away by Yuri’s device suddenly emitting an extremely loud siren.
“Fuck! We need to get out of here, now!” Yuri pulled back his coat and grabbed what an L shaped object apparently hidden inside his coat. Before Natyal could react, Yuri had almost reached the door, his hand reaching towards the control panel.
“What’s going in?”
“Bad things, very bad things!. All of you, get behind me and stay there.” Sensing that whatever Yuri was freaking out about seemed to be a bad thing, the three followed his orders.
As Yuri reached out of the door, the four soldier’s stationed just beyond turned around and starred in confusion at the horrified look on Yuri’s face. Yuri’s lips opened up, but before he could warn them, hell broke lose.
Four arrows flew into view, and impaled themselves into each of the soldier’s necks with deadly accuracy. Before anyone could react to the situation, each of the arrows decided to show just how deadly they were.
The lead guard’s head suddenly froze solid, before exploding and showering her comrades with deadly ice shards. The guard next to her found that she was now suddenly on fire, and dropped to the ground screaming in pain from the combination of fire and ice. The two behind them had no better luck at all.
A massive burst of light illuminated the hallway as electric bolts screamed out and though the body of the soldier closest to Yuri. The soldier shaked in agony for a moment, before collapsing on the ground like a rag doll, a small billow of smoke escaping from his beak.
And in complete contrast to all of these other ones, the soldier in the back left simply exploded as the arrow detonated in a massive shockwave, leaving a gory mess on the floor. It would take more than a janitor to clean the bloody mess in front of him.
Starry screamed, Germond backed up in terror, and Natalya’s eyes winded as the sudden violent deaths of her four best offices rushed to her mind, her heartbeat echoing in her ears.