Long Live the Queen
Behind these ancient walls we hide. Within these broken walls, we bathe in darkness and sunlight. We are the unknown, and these voices in our heads will not feel peace until we die.
Buried in the softly toasted sands on space-cold rocks around us, words we do not dare use await a rebel's verse.
Those who do not sleep seek their own pain, and those that know their pain keep their eyes up, from Moonbreak to Sunfall, until the bell do them toll.
So on this reef that we call home,
The kings and butterflies we wake
Are not our hope and dreams alone,
But axioms we live to break.
long live the queen
Chapter 1: A Leap in Desperations
Confidence is half the battle.
Two feet on the deck two eyes shut one-track mind
Viala stood, opened her eyes, and looked out over the ledge into the asteroid belt.
The rest will come.
Oh so lonely borne of sparks cradled by shadow desperate to feel again
She kicked the deck and sprinted for deep space.
Don't stop.
Three heartbeats to go two steps left one track fear I might just I must I shouldn't
Viala leaped through the hole in the shipwrecked spaceship and plummeted toward the curved hull below.
I will.
"What the hell are you doing, Viala?!" a surprised/panicked voice shouted through her helmet's comm. "I thought you weren't going to jump!"
"I didn't think so either!" she replied between hasty breaths. Moments later she slammed onto the side of the ship and practically bounced, spinning as she tried to orient herself. Pain forked through her arm, but it didn't feel broken. After a couple seconds Viala managed to steady herself with her feet against the ship as she slid further down the rounded hull. Fear gripped her insides as she felt herself picking up more and more speed.
Breathe.
Viala focused on a small spherical ship out in space below her. That was the target in this brash stunt her friends had devised. She had to push off of this strangely curved ship, an old Fallen ketch, and try to aim for the outer edges of the little ship. If she messed up the timing, she would be sent hurtling into outer space.
If you're this desperate to feel alive, the first step is to stay alive.
Small holes in the hull from an old space battle made her lose her balance. If she got lucky she wouldn't hit the dead center of the other ship; it would be hard to walk away from a good old splattering.
As seconds quickly slid across the soles of her boots she tried to calculate this second jump. The ship was about 300 meters away, about 45 degrees from vertical. The angle was crucial, the timing impossible. It crossed her mind that she shouldn't have jumped without a safety net or jetpack something.
Wait wait…
The slope of the hull was completely vertical. It was never or –
"Now!" she shouted with feigned confidence.
Her boots clanged against the ketch's hull like hammers, and she shot out away from its gravitational field. Her trajectory straightened and Viala, spinning slowly, looked forward and broke into a cold sweat. She had gone too late, she was going to fly right past the edge of the small ship.
"Viala, are you on target?" The same voice resounded in hear head but she hardly noticed. It was louder than the whispers in her head, but even those choruses were drowned out by her panicked thoughts as she zoomed forward.
Shoot, shoot shoot shoot me.
Then she saw her luck run out. There were thin beams sticking out of the small ship in an X shape, too small to see from far where she'd taken off. None were going to be in range of her though.
If anyone had seen her face, they'd have known she was worried and shaky. But she couldn't exactly back down now. It was impossible to slow down and she couldn't stop spinning but she tried to ignore everything and, for once, focus. Between deep breaths Viala pulled her sidearm off her belt, still feeling some pain in her arm. She aimed at the ship as it passed in front of her spinning body. If she could hit the near side of the ship…
There was one burning blue shot, then another. A hit and a miss. She had seconds to get the ship spinning so she could grab one of the beams. Viala fired off a volley of shots and the ship began to rotate a bit quicker. One of the beams was moving right into her path, but it was going far too slow. Viala fired off more shots, though some helped and others worked against her.
Viala was now even with the ship, still going fast, and the beam was moving in behind her, just out of reach.
Oh come on! How could she end up missing the jump by so little? She fired off three more desperate shots at the ship's rim, kicked out her feet and activated her boots' mag locks, but it was still out of reach. In a last ditch effort, she spun around, reached forward with her free hand and just barely managed to grab the edge as it was swinging away and pull herself in.
Only once she had a firm grip of the beam did she feel her heart racing, and the frantic whispers dying down into calm harmonies.
With her feet safely on the spinning ship, Viala stood to gaze out at the distant Sun through the purple haze that characterized the Reef, her home, and said to herself, "Well that was fun."
It was an amazing feat, if she did say so herself. And the sky before her was beautiful, yet she couldn't help but get caught up in everything that had been weighing her down before she had jumped.
If only I could just fly out of the Reef and feel what it's like on one of those planets.
Unless the Queen ordered an attack on Mars, she probably never would.