Aynsefian

Another glance outside and maybe I do recall this planet. The sky has a distinctive colour to it that is triggering a memory. I stop for a moment. I desperately want to recall this planet. I try to remember other things I was doing when I last saw this scene, or something like it.

The sky is a brownish colour, with patches of grey and red soil punctuated by dozens of small hills, cliffs and rocky ledges. From memory the wind blows constantly in between the hills, ledges and cliffs, and it’s bitterly cold. Somewhere around zero Celsius, give or take a few degrees. I remember the details but I’m struggling to recall where this is or what its name is.

One thing is for certain. If I’ve been here before, we’re somewhere in the Hynetherine galaxy, and therefore escape might be possible. I must go over the details again.

I try to remember what I was doing specifically when I was here. I got out of Nikse to take some soil samples and breath the atmosphere. Nikse told me that the atmosphere was a little high in oxygen, so I might get light-headed, but it was otherwise breathable. I don’t remember the exact temperature she gave me, but it was definitely below freezing. She said the gravity might be a little understrength, so I should be careful not to trip as my walking would be a little less steady than I was used to. I think this was two years or so ago. I didn’t have Arlyss and Cindlyss with me then. I picked them up only twelve months ago when I returned home to report to my superiors and visit my parents.

My parents. Oh god. They … I … might never see them… I can’t think of it now. That’s for later. I must work out where I am. My mind returns to when I first set foot on this planet.

I stepped out of Nikse, with my full suit on, plus oxygen. My first impression was that the soil was hard and compact, with a significant amount of rocks covering most of it. There was no evidence of surface water. The tell-tale signs simply weren’t there. Nikse said there was some in the atmosphere, but I couldn’t see where it would have come from. She picked this spot to touch down, saying it was no better or worse than anywhere else. The whole planet had a sameness to it, she said. The surface temperature was more or less uniform all over.

This was not going to be a planet worth living on. It was simply too hard to establish any sort of working community, even for just a few people. Terraforming would be quite difficult, given the extreme rockiness of the surface. We’d seen much better candidates than this that we’d also rejected for the same reasons. Nonetheless, I wanted to try to breathe unaided. It wasn’t too hard once I took my helmet off. It was just bitterly cold.

As far as I could tell, the wind blew constantly. There was nothing to stop it. The barrenness was obvious without doing much analysis at all. Life may have existed here once, but even that was doubtful. It looked like it had been millennia since anything would have lived here; even the tiniest amoeba, if at all.

What was this planet called again? What name did I enter into Nikse’s log screen? I paused and shut my eyes momentarily, focussing my mind on trance recall. The details of the moment where I wrote the log entry slowly come back. I was inside Nikse at the time, having come in from my sampling of the atmosphere and of the soil. My suit was off. Nikse was asking me if I wanted any food or drink while she gave me more updates on her atmospheric analysis. I had to concentrate. What name did I write at the top?

I deepened my breathing, allowing myself to relax further so that the details would clarify and I could get the information I needed. It took a few moments. The vision of her log screen – now dead and turned off – became clearer. Then I saw the lettering I’d written at the top of the screen.

Its name is AA48103.

Realising this is bittersweet.

The negative side of this realisation is the bitter cold, which I can already feel inside the powered-down Nikse. The positive aspect of this being AA48013 is that it’s definitely not in Melcheisa. I was not expecting that. My notion of banishment was that we’d be dropped somewhere inside their galaxy. I can’t explain why, but this is mightily unexpected, and therefore the smallest flash of hope enters my mind. AA48103 orbits the white dwarf star Firion, most of way from YP48197 back towards Hynetherine. It’s not actually in Hynetherine, rather it is between the two galaxies, but it’s closer to Hynetherine than Melcheisa.

I don’t get it.

From the brief understanding that I can piece together from those horrible moments listening to Captain Fen, their rules state we should be banished – or pretty much killed, really, just done slowly – yet here we are not even in their galaxy and we have a chance to be rescued. Or, if I can restart Nikse, we can simply go home, back to Inconflencia.

Why did she lie to us? What sort of game is she playing? An evil one, no doubt.

I tell the Purlinians that I must try and restart Nikse, so that we can hopefully leave this planet. They nod. Once again they are strangely calm, and it momentarily puzzles me.

I rush into her control room. I’ve barely gotten the door open when the most horrible sight assails me.

Nikse’s control room has been burnt beyond recognition. Some sort of flame device has been used and many of the consoles and boxes are melted and blackened, beyond all hope of repair. She is effectively dead.

My beloved Nikse is gone and won’t ever come back. I literally scream in agony. It brings Arlyss and Cindlyss rushing into the room, in a way I’ve not seen them do before.

They both give me a hug, in turn. Also something they’ve never done before. I need it, because I’m devastated.

My soul mate – if a ship can be such a thing – is irreparable and will never speak to me again. That is far worse to me than her inability to fly anywhere and help us escape. I’m going to die here, and I can actually accept that, but going through the stages of death without my beloved Nikse is unfathomable.

At least if I was going to die of starvation on this horrendous winter planet, I wanted to die with her voice being the last thing I hear. Now I’m being denied even that.

It doesn’t seem real. I rush and grab a small wire brush from the tools cupboard and try to scrub off the burnt plastic flame damage. I feel numb. The black stuff is not coming off. I brush harder. I rummage through some drawers looking for a stronger brush, with bigger bristles. That’s better. Now I worry that I’m hurting her.

I feel a soft hand on my shoulder. I turn, and Cindlyss is regarding me with great pity and sympathy. I realise that it’s hopeless.

I drop to my knees and begin sobbing. She’s dead. She’s not coming back. I cry for a good few minutes, until I have no more tears. The Purlinians sit on the floor next to me. It’s starting to get really cold in here and that realisation snaps me out of my grief for a moment.

Why did they do this to us? What sort of galaxy disables incoming craft, harmless explorers like us, and then destroys their ship and banishes them? Why does ignorance of this rule carry such a heavy price? I would never have guessed at this in a million years. Captain Zarasena Fen, her ship the IR84U and the organisation they represent, the Melcheisa Galactic Council, now represent the greatest evil I have ever encountered.

Couldn’t Captain Fen have done something to help, perhaps waive the regulations or something? Why did she have to be so mean to us? How about hearing us out, then letting us go home with a warning? That evil laughter and sing-song voice still haunts me. I hate her. I can’t recall hating anything or anyone before in my relatively young life but I hate her and the organisation she works for.

How dare they!

I’m going to get revenge if I ever get out of here. I’m not taking this lying down. That distress beacon might still get picked up. Maybe whoever finds it will somehow put two and two together and locate us miraculously and then we can go back and hunt down the IR84U. There has to be a way. Nikse isn’t able to emit any signals but it’s not beyond the realms that our rescuers might come here.

It’s our only hope. Then I think of Nikse’s damage, right there in front of my eyes, and realise that it’s only the faintest of hopes for myself and the Purlinians. Nikse is dead. I’ll never talk with her again.

I drop to my knees and begin sobbing once more, fully giving into it this time. As I cry, I have so many devastating thoughts, mostly about my decision to come here in the first place.

Why did we think it was a good idea to go to Melcheisa? Well, it seemed a logical thing to do. They’re a neighbouring galaxy of ours. They have shared history, as far as I understood. I reasoned that they would understand that we are a small galaxy with only a handful of stars. They almost innumerable stars. Hundreds of millions of them at least, as far as I know. We only wanted to see if it was possible to move to one spare uninhabited planet, of which they would surely have millions.

Inconflencia is slowly dying. There is nothing else in our galaxy. We are a totally peaceful race. This is my whole quest: find a new home for our people. My mission is vitally important to our race’s survival, and the MGC and Captain Fen didn’t even ask what I was doing. Their response was unthinkable and entirely unpredictable.

If only I’d sent a communication beacon through first. Then I could have acted based upon the response.

If only I’d never taken this job, this role, of exploring. But then I’d have never gotten to know and love Nikse.

Now I’d lost her. Forever. I may as well die, then.