Bonds Beyond the Stars

Chapter 1

My late grandmother was the reason my mother moved to Florida in the first place. My Nana was as much of a dreamer as my mother and I. Perhaps it's genetic. Originally from New England, my Nana was weary of the cold winters and rainy weather, seeking instead sunny skies and sand between her toes. I was a toddler when my mother relocated us to Florida. Now seventeen and having grown tired of the intense humidity, I craved mountainous landscapes, bored with Florida's flat swampy terrain.

I had never been camping before, and had begged for a trip to Montana for my seventeenth birthday. Having not flown on a plane in years, I felt like a little kid when we were taking off, glued to my window as the ground rushed away beneath us, the view soon becoming cloud and sky.

My mother eventually fell asleep in the seat beside me sometime during the first hour of our flight. Her peaceful sleeping face was one of the last memories I have of her. I had attempted and failed to read a book I had brought with me, but the fiery sunset unfolding in the limitless expanse of sky outside my tiny window drew my gaze outward. A blanket of clouds stretched out below reflected the brilliance of the orange setting sun.

It was as if someone set the sky ablaze. Not caring what happened to my eyes, I watched the sunset's vibrant yellows and reds peak in vibrancy, before ultimately fading into deep hues of violet and blue. Stars snuck into view as they dotted the night horizon, no longer obscured by the light of our own sun. The moon was a soft white crescent, as if painted into the sky by a feathery hand. The crescent moon shape mirrored the small tattoo adorning my left wrist of the heavenly body (my mother had been furious, but had gotten over it soon enough.) I have always loved anything concerning the sky, be it the weather or anything regarding the astral bodies that danced around us.

A red light came into view then, and I curiously watched it draw nearer, at first believing it to be another airplane. But then an enormous purple ship came into view. A silent beam of red light was fired from it. There was no time to think, no time to react, nothing any of the three hundred passengers or crew could have done to save ourselves. In one second, we were flying peacefully. In the next, the plane was being violently split in half, killing those unfortunate enough to be seated in the middle. Or perhaps they were the lucky ones.

Screaming, fire, wind, falling. My mother woke in time to be ripped out of my arms mid-fall, the wind too extreme for us to ever hope to keep hold onto one another. Unable to hear her as the distance between us grew, I could see my mother mouth 'I love you.' I only managed to scream and flail around for her, my cries and tears stolen by the wind.

However, a second beam of light stopped the fall of around twenty passengers, myself included. And then we were floating upwards, toward the opening of the horrifying ship. Survivors watching helplessly as the rest of the plane and our fellow passengers and loved ones plummeted into the abyss of the cloudy canopy below in a rush of metal and flailing limbs and fire.

Apart from those of us who were abducted, it is unlikely that anyone survived the fall.

What I assume to be months passed us by, the days and nights blending together with no dawn or dusk to mark the passage of time. Only the dim purple glow of the prison lights illuminated the bleakness of our new reality. The surviving passengers and myself gathered that we had been captured by the ruthless beings known to the rest of the universe as the Galra. Standing just over a pathetic five feet myself, our burly captors stood anywhere between one to two feet taller than me and those I was captured with. Ignoring the fact that they were heavily armed with what looked to be guns, it was unlikely the few of us humans able bodied enough to fight would stand much of a chance. Excluding the children and the elderly taken with us, that left us with about twelve halfway descent fighters, and only about three I actually trusted not to sacrifice me for their own benefit. No where near enough strength required to take down an entire ship of Galra soldiers.

In between being studied and unspeakably tortured, the only solace any of us found included reminiscing of home, or conversing with fellow inmates from distant planets. Some of them came from worlds of ice and fire, and hearing about their strange ways and customs helped to keep me relatively sane. Some of the were kind enough to share their knowledge of food with us, explaining what each of the alien rations were to those of us too afraid to even attempt to eat it.

And even as my fellow humans began to die due to exposure or sickness or malnutrition, I tried to hold onto some sliver of hope. There had been some inmates who had heard rumors of small resistances stepping into the light, who had allied themselves with what sounded like a mystical being. A flying robot they called Voltron. At first I thought that it was some legend or fairy tale tossed around to give us some semblance of hope, but when I heard that the Paladins of the lions of Voltron were humans, I had a reason to believe the rumors to be true. They were supposedly some sort of do-gooders, and I prayed that if they were than they would certainly rush to the rescue of their own kind once they caught wind of human prisoners aboard a Galra ship.

But as more months blended by, I stopped hoping for a rescue. Even if this Voltron thing was real, surely the Paladins would be far too busy fighting Zarkon, the leader of the Galra, to worry themselves with a handful of prisoners of war.

After what I could only assume was a year later, the surviving inmates and I were informed that we would soon be transported to an arena, though the guard conveniently didn't elaborate. From what I already knew about arenas in the history of Earth, they usually concerned putting humans or other animals up against each other for the entertainment of some higher class to bet on them.

These monsters murdered my mother and countless other beings across the galaxy, and now they were gonna watch the rest of us tear each other apart for a good laugh? Just what sort of chance would a human being have against a being several times their size, against species built to kill rather than create?

A few days after receiving the grim news, more prisoners were thrown into our cell, including a young human boy named Matt. He had an injured knee, which he blamed on the arena, though he didn't elaborate. His very presence was just the morale boost we humans needed, as if Matt himself were living proof that even a human could survive in the arena, that it was possible.

Matt told us not to lose hope, and of stories he had learned of fellow resistances rising up against the Galra.

Now feeling as if we could finally see some light at the end of a very long, dark tunnel, the hundred or so inmates who remained, human or otherwise, decided to plan a prison riot. Hopefully some of the other aliens knew how to fly Galra ships, because I doubt any human could figure out such advanced technology, especially under pressure. Hopefully at least a few of us could escape this prison. I knew better than to get my hopes up too much, as much as I deeply missed the blue oceans of Earth. But I would do anything to know some form of piece again, no matter what moon or planet the price of freedom may lead me.