Vas Messenger
Chapter Four: Adrift In Space
It had been many days aboard the Messenger Mark II before any hint of their intended trajectory surfaced in the Heleus Cluster. During that seemingly endless time the young quarian found emotional solace upon observing the cosmos, its design a distant array of palladium dust across a solid veil of black galaxy, the Messenger and herself but a vessel caught in its wonder, drifting in an infinite current of Andromeda.
The name itself felt so unreal to her and yet - she had made it, despite all the odds. Finally, after a six hundred year rest she was free from responsibility, from expectation, from everything. She felt so determined, so driven, so spirited and so, so...
Alive.
Such an innocent adjective it was. Yet it held within it, literally, the stars and moons of her existence. Such subtle beauty that could change so much. And it was hers. Her little piece of serenity. Taking the risk of the Initiative even to gain all that she had achieved in the last couple of months had been worth it. Little did she know that fate had other more interesting tales for her, beginning with her arrival inside the Onaon System, several hundred-thousand miles away from Kadara.
She stared into the vast darkness of space, observing the shadowy formation of her enviro-suit reflected on the diamond-indented glass of the windscreen, a medley of silver metal and royal shawl and golden spirals, clear and unclear amongst the black.
Her sensors, despite her attempts, remained limited in information regarding their location. Any efforts from either herself or Messenger were disturbed by some sort of anomaly resonating high waves of energy. She theorised that the interference came from a mass of bronze-tinted phenomenon sighted along the system's outer borders. She had heard members of the Nexus comment on it before, naming it the Scourge. It was the thing that the Nexus first collided into, planting the first seeds for the mutiny and the limit of resources.
It sank stars, ate ships. It was a perisher upon the galaxy and one enigma she dared not go near.
During their drift, Messenger had calculated a course through the thickening nebula with surprising clarity, the shuttle managing to successfully stray away from the main parts of its dark energy field with little trouble caused. Such a sight had intrigued and startled the quarian, as had the strange image they had passed three days prior: a shuttle, not unlike their own, had been caught sparking within the anomaly's writhing grasp. On the comms there was a sign of some form of life, but on the outside, it appeared near dead.
Even if Iyali'Talaas wished to, she could not have aided in that poor soul's rescue. Her shuttle would not survive the impact and she had not fought for so long, only to allow the one beauty she witnessed to tear her dreams asunder.
Another form reflected along the pane, sharper and skinnier around the waist when standing than she was. A talon rested upon her shoulder, shaking her from her thoughts and bringing a wary smile to her face, not that he could see it.
Syrus brought his face down to hers, his breath fogging her helmet's right side. "How's the search holding up?"
Checking the sensors for anymore leads into their course, Iyali'Talaas shook the wariness from her hands and pressed her fingers into the command terminal, highlighting several planets on the map highlighted over the windscreen.
"Nedas [nowhere]. Truly, Syrus, I'm not sure where we are. We've passed the Zeng He System and should be past the Onaon System by now, but the Scourge seems to be interfering with our navigations. The best we can do is hope that we find a relatively familiar looking planet and find a way to Kadara from the charts collected at the Nexus."
"That's our only option?"
"I'm afraid so. According to this, all the star systems in Andromeda circle an impending black concentration of... something, that has a very high energy signature. From my estimates, I believe it is a black hole. If we get too close to its gravitational field we'll be sucked in. Our engines are tough but not tough enough to withstand the forces of that nature. It's better to go around carefully than to recklessly go straight through its pathway and hope for the best."
"Well, you're the pilot, kid, so I'll let you take us through."
He patted her shoulder and returned to his seat in the cockpit.
"Yes, Syrus, leave me to do the calibrations while you polish your rifle. Hardly seems fair."
"You know my mind doesn't work the way yours does," he croaked, collecting his rifle from the floor and swiping a piece of tattered cloth from his thigh-pouch. "I can hack my way into a terminal if needed be but show me any celestrial chart and my skull aches."
Scouring the barrel with the cloth, he paused, tilting it in a vertical manner to admire the gleam of shuttle-light caught in the reflection.
Clicking his mandibles in shameless pride, he returned to swabbing the grain, careful to not scrape the surface with his claws. "I'd probably have placed us in the centre of that black hole by now, you know. What was that saying? The navigational drive of a hanar, I believe it was."
"How strangely accurate."
For a while the two were content to simply enjoy the silence of each other's company, for that as what they did when finding themselves in a comfortable environment, no threats of death or assassination lingering upon them. There had been so many near-death experiences, so many losses during their adventures, and of the mutiny. But the two of them had little choice in leaving the starship.
The Nexus was dying.
They had read the reports, realised that food rations were too low to even sustain the current population onboard, that filtered water was becoming a scarce commodity, that power was depleting. Eventually, another mutiny would ensue. There was no doubt. Neither Syrus nor Iyali'Talaas wished to be apart of that when it happened: the fighting for scraps, all the good salvage gone. She did, deep down inside, feel for the people still there, but it was always her and Syrus' survival that was paramount. Everyone else came second.
Reaching for her satchel, a thought crossed her mind when feeling a subtle sting in her left side: an ache that had not fully subsided. Knowing where the soreness originated from, she gently felt along her ribs, touched the outer layer of her enviro-suit's skin and happened upon the once open tear. Iyali' prodded it to the tender flesh beneath.
Scarred.
That was one description for it. The previous months had indeed been troublesome for the quarian. Many times she had wondered if she should have repaired her suit when it was first ruptured rather than endure the illness, fatigue and utter suffering when her immune system fought for her survival.
Many times she had thought on begging for death, her pain her only relevant feeling throughout the struggle. She had the marks as evidence: jagged, uneven lines, pale indentations along her greying skin extending beyond the tear where she had clawed herself to lessen the pain. It was only in the last fortnight that she had managed to retain her health. For now.
Iyali'Talaas retracted her hands, folded them and lay back. The cockpit resonated with the gentle rhythm of the engines, acting as a mellow tune that lulled her wary body to a much needed rest.
She lay her head back against the headrest, allowing her eyes to flicker closed. "How're we doing, Messenger? Find any readings we can use?"
"Negative, Creator Talaas," the AI replied.
"That's good."
Sleep gradually descended upon the quarian, relaxing her muscles and steadying her heartbeat. She was so close, could practically feel the remnants of the shuttle leave her waking mind, replaced by cloud and pleasant memories.
Then the AI responded, his voice enough to nudge her from the recesses of slumber. Iyali'Talaas blinked beneath her visor, trying to steady her thoughts while her arms extended and clicked.
"What is it, Messenger?" she asked, rising from her rest, leaning her chest over the console. "Found anything interesting?"
"My sensors indicate a breach in the Scourge 5.7 hundred miles from our current destination," said the AI, highlighting the area on the frontal pane by a small red star. "This unit would advise setting course. Beyond lies open space."
"There's a way out of here? Finally! Messenger, you're a genius! Take us through."
"Affirmative, Creator Talaas."
On command, Messenger guided the ship through the Scourge, powering the engines at maximum velocity. The vessel curved through the nebula as if a log upon a fast flowing river, hurtling through the current, scurving the meteorites and space debris, following the star-point on the thick, diamond glass.
The rust-tainted nebula, convulsing in destructive impulses of erratically charged electrical currents that ignited the cloud has barely missed the Messenger's rear fins, though the path soon cleared, replaced by clear vacuum and shimmering twilight once more.
The console's compass ceased its endless spinning, while the magnetic needle pointed north-east instead of north. It was at this instant that the once sweet innocence in Iyali'Talaas' smile slowly soured to an uncertain frown.
The young quarian replayed the map on the console's left screen, searched the star-chart for their current destination, but the chart displayed a solar system the shuttle should have passed days ago and planets that had little similarity to Kadara. For three days they had been drifting in circles.
She leaned forward on her elbows, holding the view of the Onaon System and patches of Scourge surrounding it. Her cheeks flushed and her head sunk onto the console, a thud resonating through the vessel.
"Messenger," she began, peering up from her entanglement of folded arms. "We need to plot a new course to Kadara-"
Squinting, Iyali'Talaas drew herself closer to the shuttle's windscreen, seeing a merge of lighter shapes in the distance. As the shuttle drew closer, she began to sink back into her seat, legs curling up to her chest and feet hooking onto the chair's edge.
Ahead, many strange, unfamiliar anomalies floated amongst the Scourge. The many ships were hung like beacons against the storm, angled as skyscrapers adrift in the cosmos, mouldy in colour, goldenly lit and completely, utterly alien.
For many a-moment they stayed dormant, asleep, unknowing to the intruders in their sector of the galaxy. Though foreign in nature and sight, the eerie formations of the hive did not seem too opposing upon first glance, their forms far in the distant twinkling. But then, when the Messenger Mark II peeked from beneath the cover of chrome-cloud, daring to pass into unknown territory, the ships slowly began to turn, their golden portholes trained on the star-travellers.
Decelerating the ship's engines to a near standstill, Iyali'Talaas felt her skin prick upon the close contact, fear welling deep inside her core and stilling her body. The compass' needle wavered, the star-chart flickered, criss-crossed with grey and gold static lines.
Whatever interference played havoc with her controls worsened at the sight of them. And then one of the anomalies did something that shook the very breath from her lungs. It dared to move.
The farthest of the hive crawled through the expanse of dark space to the Messenger, its skin pulsing like a heart, maintaining the strength of the hive and its curiosity in the cluster. The nearer it drifted the larger it became, dwarfing the small Initiative ship by many metric tons.
Iyali'Talaas spied the long skeletal cracks on its wings, felt the juddering sickness of its engine in her bones as it rattled to a still, focused on the twisted notch of its nose, crooked and split like a stubbornly sealed seed pod, impacted by silvery crates and moss-ridden lesions. Its hull was missing a rigid oval hole, as if a leviathan from the deep had crunched a massive bite out of it.
Alien, maybe, but it was a wreck of a ship, damaged and tainted, yet still living, an ancient amongst its peers and a war chevalier among rival siblings.
"I am registering multiple alien ships in the vicinity, Creator Talaas, with over a hundred life-signs on-board each one. Many are scanning us."
Messenger's voice startled the young quarian, forcing her feet to the floor and her hands to the console. "Scanning us? For what?"
"Unknown."
Stepping out from the cockpit, knees grazing the floor, Syrus observed the strangers with quick eyes, taking everything in, making connections, searching for weakness.
The formation of the hive held a purpose, the brute strength at the front and the smaller, more agile cousins at the back. But before the turian could claim a relatively certain opinion on those strangers, the airship had halted just in front of them, shadowing the entirety of the small Initiative vessel.
Thinner, more maneuverable ships flashed by the windows, forcing the shuttle back until space-cloud touched its outer fins. Lights flickered across the Messenger Mark II, engines fell instantly quiet and any functionality seemed to disappear. Iyali'Talaas keyed commands into the console, but the keys remained devoid of life. The whole shuttle in a matter of blinks was dead.
"Messenger, what's happening? We've lost control of our navigations."
"Bastards have got us pinned against the Scourge," cursed Syrus, pivoting to the side-window and scowling at those smaller airships preventing their escape. "Trapped like rats."
"All power functions have been disengaged, Creator Talaas. Navigation is locked. This vessel is being prepared."
"Prepared?" she whispered, searching the airship's bright lights and lamina outer plating for some form of an answer. "They're... they're trying to capture us, aren't they? Or board our ship."
Syrus clucked his tongue, wringing his talons together. "So much for friendly introductions."
Fear inhibited the quarian's ability to properly think, her mind reeling in scenarios of old spacer tales, imagining what could happen if they were caught. From the tales of experimentation upon the living to the draining of energy from a ship, only relinquishing the vessel once it had been sucked dry and left to plunder endlessly into the abyss.
In Omega she had seen the worst of what the universe had to offer, of downtrodden scoundrels and merciless thugs. Yet even they were familiar to her. She had experience dealing with their like, knew how to play their game. But the aliens that trapped them in their force-field were unknowns, their ambitions unclear. They could do anything and that cut her the most. The endless, horrific possibilities.
Forcing her focus on the now, she threw herself under the console, checked the circuitry underneath for some sort of system reset. Seeing nothing but symmetrical wiring and missing instructions she returned to her seat, punching keys into an already dead command terminal.
"Messenger, we need to get out of here. You're patched into the heart of this vessel. Is there anything you can do? Power any of the systems or even the engines?"
No response. Syrus thrust his claws against the cockpit's wall, cursing under his breath. "No-no-no. Don't do this to us. Don't die on us now! Not when we need you to get us out of this mess."
All of a sudden the cockpit flared in crimson light, so bright that it temporarily blinded all those inside, too intense to have been properly simulated, as if there was only one spark of life left within the Messenger and the vessel took it without thought. Power reset into the engines and the vessel rocked in the void.
"Situation catastrophic. Decisive action required," said the AI before the under-thrusters propelled the Messenger Mark II several metres high over the alien airship. "You may wish to lock your seatbelts, Creator Talaas, Master Horaion. The current chance of survival is at twenty one percent."
Not needing another word the turian flew back into the cockpit, swiped the passenger seat belts across his pointed carapace and clutched his rifle to his gut.
Iyali'Talaas barely had time to fumble with her own buckles, lights and shadow coruscating, before she was thrown backward, keeling side-first into the chair, her helmet colliding into the headrest with a crack. The noise from the blast hit her sound perceptors with enough force to strangle any ability to hear for the first few heartbeats, the jolt instantly numbing her entire body and lack of sound knocking her self-awareness off course.
But then the vessel lurched in all directions, space and starlight merging in the windscreen as the Messenger Mark II swept back into the Scourge, whisking past dead space-rock and clawing cloud in an attempt to surpass the smaller alien airships gaining on the aft.
One air-ship extended a skeletal arm, hooked onto the Messenger's fin. Messenger tipped on its side, narrowing the chance to escape but catching the airship by surprise.
The Scourge grasped at the arm, tore half of the fin but engulfed the alien ship with it. The other fell back into the Scourge and the Messenger Mark II followed the navigation points on its chart, managing to pierce through a weakened part of the deadly nebula, shattering the skin into millions of tiny shards of fibreglass, before falling into further uncharted space.
"Systems critical. Engines failing," said Messenger, directing the shuttle to the closest port of rescue: an ashen planet several thousand metres away.
"That's- not comforting, Messenger!" gasped Iyali'Talaas, her fingers digging into the armrests, teeth chattering upon the vessel's inner shuddering. "Do whatever it takes to land us."
She looked into the windscreen, saw her partner's face in the reflection. His features fell grim, uncertain. "Kid, if we don't make it through this..."
Stifling a scream, she threw her focus away from him, centring it on the planet ahead. "Syrus, not now!"
The planet was not one like Kadara: neither copper-skinned nor seeming sustainable. It was a giant crescent, a red dwarf star made of clinker and fire, jagged and tainted, appearing barren and lifeless in its enraged, volcanic nature. There was no cloud cover like the pair had witnessed on other worlds, certainly not what Iyali'Talaas expected from known planetary weather formations. There was no brilliant blue atmosphere, no white polar caps, no luscious vegetation.
It was a dying world, a haven to hell.
Descending into the atmosphere, the entire cockpit shattered. Armour flew from racks, crates unhinged from their supports - smashed into walls. The interior screeched, ceaselessly enthralled in dents. The engines wauled from overheating and shreds of shrapnel peeled from the ends, flaking away into the sky.
Flares of heat lashed the windscreen, highlighted the Messenger's frame across ash-filled plumes. Small cracks had begun to splinter the corners, growing like plague-roots, tearing the glass to find a way in. A swift check from the meter readings confirmed what Iyali'Talaas had hoped would not be true: the shields were depleting and there was nothing she could do. All power was torn between the engines and what remained of that shield. She could only sit back and wait for the inevitable.
Below, the world gradually began to appear. The surface appeared to be molten, rippling lines of fire scarring each tiny plane of earth as if the planet itself was a marble rimmed in gyres of coloured glass. Messenger fell like a meteorite through the crippled sky, gaining momentum in its arcing plunge towards the world's barren surface, disintegrating upon reaching the mountain peaks.
Then, something truly miraculous happened. The shuttle rose. The AI cut the remaining systems, rendering all energy to the shields and thrusters, flying the shuttle as its own gliding body through the storm, following the light of a distant horizon where the sun began to shine in a new dawn.
Before Iyali'Talaas, the hellish landscape of her living nightmare dissipated: the molten rock faded from the world, replaced by an ocean of watery milky-blue and glistening emerald forest. Mountains passed the small shuttle by, spear-like mammals fluttered along a northern wind, skimming their feathers along the skin of a river before diving down into the glittering mist of a waterfall. The sky gradually whitened, turning the ship into a coral-rimmed silhouette, dancing in the river's calmer waters.
There was hope and there was life. They had happened upon a miracle, upon a paradise.
Upon Aya.
Iyali'Talaas leaned forward in her seat, staring at the canopy that slipped by beneath the vessel, the tips of the highest trees just ghosting their keel. She could imagine the sweet smells of lavender and soaked soil, the calls of the local wildlife chirping, squawking, growling, of the cold press of rainwater sliding down a warm, ungloved hand. All new, all mysterious, all invigorating and a little frightening.
The Messenger Mark II's troubles seemed a distant past, a barely real reality. That was until it shuddered once more, finally descending for the last time from the sky and into the forested haven below.