Salvation

by voroshilov

Beyond light

The world below her looked hellish, little better than an ever-churning cauldron of molten rock. The Luminary promised her there was life, a temperate biome just beyond what she could see, though she would hardly have believed it had she not fully trusted what it told her.

The Retaliator made good progress, a verdant green strip along the planet’s centre coming into view. In contrast to the fire she had come from, and the ice that lay just beyond it, the little strip of green was a paradise. It looked so strange to her, the planet segmented into three as it was, to know that life inhabited such a place was incredible.

“Life finds a way,” she mumbled, as her vessel slowly descended, the Luminary moving closer to allow her to pick a landing point.

“I am detecting a navigation beacon on the surface,” it said, “marking on the map now.”

A point on the viewscreen, beyond the horizon, flashed red. According to what the Luminary could garner, it was an old Imperial beacon, deployed from the “IESS Valiance of the Meek”. It displayed no message, nor a time of deployment, as was usually customary for navigational markers. No doubt it was deployed by Ablazed Glory, they must have been on the right lines.

“Take us to it,” she ordered, “land us as close as you can and keep the ship ready.”

“Affirmative.”

The ship banked in, entering the atmosphere steadily but rapidly speeding up as it descended through the stratosphere. The air made rougher and rougher noises as they went, though these were almost wholly dampened by the ship’s hull. Within only a few minutes of entering the atmosphere, the Retaliator came to a sudden halt, steadily hovering down to land barely metres from the beacon.

The beacon was obvious, a gunmetal grey cylinder of half a metre diameter and about six metres long, embedded into the ground like a spike. It appeared automatically on her helmet’s display as she approached it, telling her the same information she already knew. There didn’t seem to be anything else besides, but Penumbra knew better than to take such things at face value.

Sure enough, upon closer inspection, there was a capsule within the beacon, no doubt containing a message from Ablazed Glory. She likely hadn’t known how to program a message into the navigational beacon itself, so had substituted her lack of knowledge with a note. The capsule was easy to break open, one of Penumbra’s claws proving more than capable of prying it open.

With the capsule opened, Penumbra could access the note within. As she had expected, it was another handwritten note from Ablazed Glory, written on a magically saturated page probably torn from a notebook.

“Penumbra,” it read, “given the fluid natures of extragalactic objects, I couldn’t give you direct coordinates to me.”

Extragalactic? Just where was she being led? What had Ablazed Glory gotten herself into?

“Instead, I have provided a connection to my ship’s transponder, that should get you to me. However, because transponders are fairly short range - this one’s shot to pieces regardless - I’m going to have to give you a method of getting close enough to access it. I’ve provided another set of coordinates, that should be good for the next ten thousand years or so, they’re in a large range but if you get to their centre you should be able to pick up the transponder easily. Let us both hope I’ve done this right. And it doesn’t take you ten thousand years to find me, because I’m certain once I land this thing, it’s not flying again.”

It didn’t come as much of a surprise that her improvised repair job was having issues. What was surprising was that she’d left the galaxy - not in the least considering she was flying a crashed Imperial cruiser she had bodged a repair job on. At first, she had thought Ablazed Glory must have been going on some little adventure on her own or something, perhaps she’d found something and was going to check it out. Evidently, unless her idea of a little adventure was going beyond into intergalactic space - a region that, as far as she knew, was mostly empty - she had gotten into something far bigger than Penumbra had anticipated.

The coordinates she had provided were, this time, easily understandable, written in careful strokes at the bottom of the note. They were also considerably longer than the previous set, being nearly a hundred characters long. Regardless, she assumed the Luminary would be fine with working with them. If it wasn’t, then she would have to improvise.

She took the note in a telekinetic field and boarded the Retaliator, wasting no time in returning to the bridge. She threw herself into her captain’s chair and set about dictating the coordinates to the Luminary. It took her a good minute to get them all across.

Worryingly, it took the Luminary well over a minute to respond. “These coordinates are in extragalactic space, are you certain of this course?”

“Yes,” Penumbra said, trying to keep her concern as to the Luminary’s speed to a minimum.

“Affirmative,” it said almost immediately afterwards, calming her down immensely.

The ship lifted off, angling practically straight up. It entered space facing into total darkness. Beyond the system there were no stars visible to her eye, just the inky black void of space, expanding outwards forever. Somewhere, in that darkness, was Ablazed Glory.

“Engage Rift,” she ordered, breathing in deeply as the realm below appeared before her.