Chapter 1: The last days of night
Lileeta Troja lay comfortably on on the lush blue grass with her arms behind her head, relaxing under the stars glistening against the inky blue sky. Her battered leather satchel lay on the ground next to her, her instrument resting on top of it, humming contently in the Indigo-green glow of the three moons and two other planets. Various charts were scattered round her, indicating the paths of the stars, planets and meteorites in this system. She'd made them herself, it had taken a good fifteen years of her life, and she was only twenty-one. Because here on the planet Necropolis there was no time for a chlidhood, not for humans anyway, not if you wanted to survive past the age of seven. A child is nothing but extra weight if it can't look after its self. So she'd made her self useful very early on by mapping out the movement of the planets and stars, which seemed to have an effect on the life cycle of the animals on this planet, which proved useful when it came to the predators.
Finally, she'd finished them, for this night at least, for one night on Necropolis was the equivalent to 1591.4 earth nights, and she'd have to map the solar patterns of the suns during the day (1591.4 earth days) and that wouldn't be easy, especially when the fifth sun rose and the heat would be just about unbearable. So right now she was enjoying the remaining sixty-six-and-a-half hours left of the cool night time.
"Lil!" shouted a voice from the far side of the hill
"Who's shouting this close to day time?" wondered Lileeta quietly, opening her deep blue eyes.
"Lil!" shouted the voice again, it was high pitched and child like, moments later Angeli came running up to her "Hey Lil, over here!" she shouted even louder
Now alarmed at the noise this little girl was making, Lileeta jumped to her feet and clamped her hand tightly over the shorter girl's mouth and wrapped an arm tightly round her shoulders. "You trying to get us killed Venure?" she snapped in a low voice, using the girls second name out of anger, Angeli shook her head, terrified Lileeta would tell on her for yelling so close to day time "You go round here shouting like that and you'll wake the badger-fox, and they're known to be very hungry when they wake up."
"Mi'llft mop mounting mow" came Angeli's muffled voice from under Lileeta's hand. Lileeta let go of the girl, but span her round to face her, still keeping a tight grip on the girls shoulder.
"What have I told you about shunting your duties?" Lileeta scolded
"I've finished them!" she said brightly
"You're only five, you don't remember the day time, it's dangerous, we can't settle anywhere, not for more than one-hundred-and-twenty earth hours, and definitely not until we get to the Falcon. You're lucky you survived so young, but right now, in the last days of night, there is no time to play, no time to visit me, because you need to gather and carry food, if the captain sees that you are not useful he will leave you behind with the weak and sick as food for the badger-fox."
Terrified, her green eyes wide in shock, Angeli didn't move for a moment, but then she ran back down the hill, twice as fast as she had come.
Lileeta flopped back to the ground and started rolling up her maps and folding her notes back inside their binding, stowing them back inside her satchel, followed carefully by her instrument, which curled up in one of the front pockets, humming itself to sleep. With her things packed, Lileeta took one last look at the sky, observing each star individually, calculating a route inside her head, if they left in the next three-hundred-and-seventy-eight earth minuets, their path through the mountain passage would be safe.
Just as she was about the make her way back to camp and help carry as she usually would, she saw something bright and burning out of the corner of her eye, catching her attention. Lileeta's head snapped round, and her eyes followed the burning object across the sky. She knew better than to think it was a meteorite, as the rest of the people down in camp would think. It had the same shine as the Falcon, but it was allot smaller, not even a tenth of the size. The burning object crashed in the forest, sending a tremor through the ground and a strong gust of wind through the deep orange leaves of the trees. Without even thinking, Lileeta ran for the crash-site, her bare feet making little noise against the thick grass. If her theory was right, and the myths were true, there were life forms on that object.
