Kandesca
Hackles hated extravehicular activities with a passion. It wasn't being confined to a claustrophobic space suit with the helmet amplifying his every breath. It wasn't the overwhelming sensation of vertigo when looking down at the swirling clouds two-hundred kilometres below him. No, it was the fear of losing the connection with anything that felt remotely solid, and floating off into space with no company except one's own thoughts until the oxygen ran out.
He checked his tether again, as he did every couple of minutes, his gaze following the seemingly fragile rope—made of the strongest kevlar—back to the tanker ship that floated behind him.
"It's still attached," mocked a female voice through his earpiece. He caught a glimpse of Ylva behind the cockpit window, waving her fingers at him with a grin on her muzzle. The smug bitch knew how he felt about EVAs, of course, but it had been his turn.
Looking down instead, he stared in awe at the planet below, enshrouded in thick opaque clouds laced with vibrant hues of yellow and red. While Beta Kandesca III was beautiful to observe from a distance, there was a reason the Wolven had named it Hel; the planet's dense atmosphere was full of carbon dioxide and toxic gases, making the greenhouse effect run into overdrive, so the surface temperature was hot enough to melt lead. Terraforming the planet into a new home required time and energy levels that his people could not produce in a foreseeable future.
Still, the planet had its uses. Hackles lifted his gaze to the large metal cylinder stretching out a hundred metres in front of him, with an even larger funnel up front. The propulsive fluid accumulator skimmed the outer atmosphere, scooping up and liquefying precious gases in the process.
A beep in his earpiece returned his attention to the display under the open hatch. The graph showed symbols of three tanks: two empty and one full. He closed the hatch and shuffled sideways along the hull to three hoses just out of arm's reach: one feeding liquid deuterium to micro-fusion reactor keeping the PROFAC in orbit, and two pumping nitrogen and methane back to the tanker ship. Straining with levers and locks, he closed the valves and released the hoses.
"All done," he said after a final check of the monitor and closing the hatch.
"Roger, bringing you back in," Ylva replied.
There was a tug at his waist when the winch engaged and pulled him back towards the ship at an agonisingly slow rate, his heartbeat echoing inside the helmet all the way.
He exhaled a deep breath when the airlock's outer door closed behind him. As soon as the pressure was within limits he removed the helmet and filled his lungs with, well, the same fabricated air as in his suit of course, yet it felt much fresher. He would have given a fortune—if he'd had one—to have the procedure done by a robot or even a remote controlled boom, but parts were in short supply. The engineer assigned to the flight had come down with a stomach bug just before takeoff, and since Hackles had done EVAs as part of his training, the job had fallen onto him. That and Ylva had done it last time.
The inner doors slid open and the sight of Ylva floating in zero gravity greeted him. A stereotypical tomboy, the grey she-wolf was as tall as the average man and with a physique to match. While she usually liked to hide her femininity under traditional Wolven knight's armour, she was more relaxed around Hackles and had not put on her own space suit. The tight cooling garment showed off her curvy hips and thighs. He stole a glance off her small but shapely breasts, which were perkier than usual in the weightlessness, looking like firm apples. She caught him in the act, giving him a glare, but there was a cheeky spark rather than fire in her hazel eyes, and a little smirk on her face surrounded by cropped grey hair.
"Are you happy to see me," she teased as he helped him out of the suit, "or just to be safe inside?"
He thought for a moment, but no witty replies came to mind. "How about both?"
Following Ylva, Hackles had to squeeze his broad frame through narrow passages on the way to the cockpit, the only part of the ship fitted with artificial gravity. It was a freighter after all. She buckled herself into the captain's seat, while he took his place as co-pilot behind the flight controls.
"Valved closed, hoses retracted and hatches locked," he said after a system's check.
With practised ease, she checked the tank levels and fed the cargo weight into the navigation system. The result transferred to Hackles' screen, plotting the optimal course home. PROFAC-harvesting journeys were as far as possible planned to minimise fuel burn.
"Will you be alright to fly?" There was a hint of concern in Ylva's tone this time.
"I think so," Hackles deadpanned and pressed the button to transfer the data to the auto-pilot. The ship would practically fly itself.
"Good, I'm taking a nap." She leaned back and closed her eyes.
He opened a comms channel. "Hel-Hound ready for departure."
"Roger, Hel-Hound." The face of a coyote appeared on the comm screen. "The coast is clear. No Vixon ships within sensor range. But we'll escort you part of the way anyway."
"Much appreciated." Hackles closed the comm, cast a glance out the side window and caught a glimpse of sunlight reflecting off two six-winged craft some distance away. Wolven fighters constantly patrolled the system in the event of a Vixon intrusion.
He fired the thrusters and enjoyed the feeling of acceleration as he was pushed back in his seat. Ylva already had her eyes closed, her head nodding gently as the old ship shook a little from the force of the engines. The fiery light from Beta Kandesca filtered in through the dimmed starboard window, while a single star burned much brighter than the rest to his left: Alpha. Home. So close, yet so far away. Only a few days' flight away, but uninhabitable because of the flares. He saw Omega further afield, the white dwarf hardly standing out from the myriads of stars in the Milky Way. He wondered if the Vixon were as homesick as he was.
But there was no point looking back. Life must go on.
Several hours later, the Hel-Hound was flying backwards with its thrusters on full throttle to slow the ship down. Hackles munched on a dry and tasteless protein bar, while following their flight path on his main monitor.
"Want some?" He pulled out another ration from his chest pocket and offered it to Ylva.
"No thanks." She scrunched up her muzzle, not taking her gaze off her personal communicator, growling as she tilted the device this way and that.
She's probably playing Castle Gauntlet again, he thought, although he didn't mind. You had to keep yourself amused somehow on long missions. He turned his attention outside, where the view of Beta Kandesca V—or Jotunn as they called it—filled his side window. Bands of frozen hydrogen and helium formed swirling storms as they raced across the surface, one half of the gas giant illuminated by the central star, whose light seemed to set the planet's rings ablaze.
Hackles flicked a couple of switches, commencing the procedure to turn the ship around for landing. The grey husk of a small moon appeared up ahead. He sighed with mixed feelings of disappointment and relief. It wasn't much, but it was the Wolven people's new home: Nyheim.
"Traffic control to the approaching vessel, identify yourself." A surly timber wolf appeared on screen.
"Crap, it's Rune. I'd better take over," Ylva grumbled as she zipped up her jacket. "He's a stickler for protocol."
Hackled cocked an eyebrow. "Since when do you care about protocol?"
"I don't, but he does, and he'll report any deviation." She grasped the flight controls. "Sabre's got better things to do with his time than dealing with Rune."
"Fair point." Hackles flicked another switch to accept the call. "This is Squire Steen and Knight Norrsken of the Hel-Hound requesting permission to land."
"Your access codes have been accepted," Rune replied. "You are clear to land in sector 7."
The tanker descended towards the moon's jagged surface, pockmarked with impact craters and criss-crossed by ravines. There was an abundance of hiding places for fighter ships and point defences, which of course was one of the reasons the moon had been chosen as their new base. Seemingly out of nowhere, a deep canyon opened up beneath them, wide enough to even fit an enormous Wolven starship which was looming in the shadows. There were only a handful of these flying cities, carefully concealed and guarded throughout the Beta Kandesca System.
Ylva sat the tanker down next to another mid-class freighter, from which blocks of frozen water were being unloaded, a precious supply of both water and oxygen from an icy moon. Engineers in space suits quickly swarmed the Hel-Hound and hooked up pipes to drain the tanks. Hackles and Ylva departed the freighter, bouncing along in the moon's light gravity towards the sheer cliff face on one side of the canyon.
A carriage on rails awaited them, a no-frills contraption with bare seats and a roll cage. They buckled in and the cart started moving towards an opening in the rock. Darkness enveloped them and the cart lurched as it started a rapid descent, only the occasional light in the tunnel roof giving away the ever increasing speed.
"The bloody irony of it," said Ylva. A tunnel light briefly reflected off the glass in her helmet and the thousand-yard stare in her eyes. "Living in a cave."
Hackles shuddered and the thought of it always made his hackles stand on end. He still had nightmares about it, but that's how he'd gotten to know Ylva, stuck together on Cerinia after The Doom. Out on survival training in the mountains, having gotten there by land transport, their platoon had no way to fly out in time. Instead, they had sought refuge in a deep cave.
Food had run out and what little water that trickled through the cave had been foul, barely keeping their thirst at bay. Their lieutenant had been an old-timer and a very strong empath even by Wolven standards. Feeling the suffering from people dying from radiation exposure near and far turned him into an incoherently babbling wreck. In the darkness, with only the glowworms for light, madness had set in. Some had been on the verge of becoming cannibals, turning on their own in desperate need of sustenance.
That's when Ylva had stepped in as self-proclaimed leader, demanding a stop to the lunacy. Hackles had backed her up. Few dared pick a fight with him, since he already at eighteen years of age was stronger than most.
"You never doubted that we'd be rescued, did you?" Ylva's hazel eyes had focussed on Hackles.
"Hope was all we had." He had believed—and made it clear so—that they would be rescued. Of course he had been far from certain, but he neededto believe. It gave them a purpose to hang in there, to stay alive another minute, another hour, another day…
And they had been rescued. Others had tried to escape the radiation underground—too many bodies had been found—but for some reason, their group had been rescued. Sabre had never admitted it, and Hackles hadn't pushed the subject, but he thought that Sabre had been looking specifically for them. They had a bond.
His thoughts were interrupted by a lurch when the vehicle came to an abrupt halt in front of steel doors surrounded by bedrock. They stepped into the airlock which started filling up with stale but surprisingly warm air. The gas giant's gravitational pull constantly stretched the moon in different directions as it rotated and the friction heated up its interior; a few kilometres underground, the temperature was pleasant.
Two jackals waited for them at the other side of the airlock, ready to help them remove their space suits. Hackles and Ylva proceeded to the change rooms: a small cave carved out of the rock, a few cracks filled with concrete, and lined with numbered cubicles made of bare metal. They stepped into one each and Hackles removed his cooling garment before pressing a button. Air blasted from vents in the floor and walls, giving his fur a crude but much needed freshen-up.
He opened a locker on one side of the cubicle to retrieve the clothes he had left there before the mission. Wolven still wore their traditional attire with pride, although the garments had evolved over time, with tunic and trousers nowadays made of composite materials able to withstand handheld energy weapons. Being a black morph grey wolf, Hackles' clan colours were blue and grey, while his master Sabre wore a green tunic of the timber wolf clan.
After fitting shoulder pads, arm braces and strapping on his boots, he stepped out of the cubicle where Ylva already waited for him. She wore the same attire, plus a formed chest armour and a sheathed sword giving her away as a full-fledged Knight. While many Knights chose a light ceremonial sword, or ones that were more or less fancy-looking energy weapons, Ylva's was the real deal: handmade by a blacksmith and with razor-sharp edges, while also augmented with a laser deflector.
"Let's go to The Homestead." She made it sound more like an order than a suggestion.
"I could really do with a good brush and a nap before meeting Sabre for mission debrief," Hackles complained, longing for his den, even if it was just a small prefabricated living module, one of countless like it housed in repurposed shipping containers.
Ylva ignored him and stomped off. "I'm starving."
They boarded another carriage, this one moving slower through dimly lit tunnels. They passed a few intersections, where the noise of heavy machinery and generators drifted down from the side tunnels, their walls polished smooth where the rock had been molten by powerful lasers taken from warships. The Wolven people drilled ever deeper through the bedrock in search of precious metals and minerals, using and building on what little had been recovered from Cerinia.
Hackles had taken part in the salvage operations himself, dangerous runs in-between solar flares and altercations the Vixon. The war was still technically on, since no ceasefire had been declared, even after The Doom. In reality, both sides lacked the resources and logistics to mount an attack on enemy territory, so the conflict was limited to spying and the odd potshot when they ventured into their old home system.
Suddenly, they were hit by brightness as the cart entered a large chamber. Arrays of powerful LEDs in the cavern's roof—powered by the fusion reactor in the starship on the surface above—bathed the green plants below in a life-giving light.
"Are you admiring the future flatulence?" Ylva asked.
"As long as it's not yours." Hackles turned to Ylva and pinched his nose.
She rolled her eyes. "It's not my fault what legumes do to my digestion."
It reminded Hackles of the importance of their mission to Hel, though. The collected nitrogen and carbon dioxide gases would be processed into plant food, in turn providing just enough sustenance for the surviving Wolven population. The daily struggle helped him focus on the future instead of the painful past. Cerinia's southern hemisphere had been the home of a thriving Wolven nation of a billion people; less than two-hundred thousand had managed to cram into the starships and escape after the fall of The Shield.
The cart dove down another narrow tunnel, which eventually opened up into a circular cavern, its domed roof filled with scattered lights resembling a night sky. The vehicle stopped and after a short walk the pair found themselves on the edge of an octagonal opening, surrounded with crude houses made from cut stone and scrap metal. Town Square, they called it, and in the middle grew a sapling under a bright streetlight, planted using a seed collected from Animus—the former Wolven capital.
Life was hard in Nyheim. People worked long shifts to mine resources, grow food, and produce the power they needed to survive. Still, their leadership understood the importance of keeping their culture alive and giving people meaningful lives. In this cavern, people spent their precious spare time working on arts and crafts, doing the best they could with the limited supplies at hand. Even the King himself paid regular visits to the Town Square. Hackles glanced at the bronze band on his left arm. It was a little crude, but had been made by hand right here, and he appreciated every minute and every drop of sweat that had gone into its creation.
Ylva yanked him out of his thoughts and pulled him along to a building where the words 'The Homestead' had been painted in swirling letters on a piece of scrap metal hanging over the door. The scents of herbs and spices as well as the murmur of many voices greeted them as they entered. People huddled over plates of food and glasses of beverages—mostly plain water—around tables made from stone, metal and recycled plastics. Apart from the food and a few potted plants along the walls, there was nothing made from organic material.
A muscular grey wolf rose from a table and took a couple of steps towards them, limping slightly on his metal right foot. The broad sword hilted on his belt gave him away as another knight.
"Good to see you, Göran," said Hackles and offered a hand.
"Likewise," said Göran as they clasped each other's wrists. "Any news on your knighthood?"
"I've completed my training." Hackles shrugged. "Just waiting to see if the King will select me."
"I bet you can't wait to get the chance to slay some Vixon." Göran beamed.
"No!" The reply came out a bit harder than Hackles had intended.
"A bit touchy today, are we?" The grey wolf frowned.
In his peripheral vision, Hackles could see Ylva roll her eyes, but she came to his defence. "He had to perform an EVA."
"Ah, fair, I'm not too keen on them either." Göran seemed to relax a little and put a hand on Hackles' shoulder. "I'm sure you'll be selected soon."
They found seats at the far end of the bar. Ylva waved her hand in the air and raised her voice. "Hey, Freyja, over here!"
"Ylva, long time no see." A curvy white wolf with blue eyes approached them, a metal bowl in each hand. "May I interest you in today's special?"
Hackles smiled politely as she placed a bowl in front of him, and he glanced at an old-fashioned blackboard, presumably made from volcanic rock, where the words 'vegetable stew' had been scribbled with chalk. It was always vegetable stew, and yet, Hackles had a spoonful and it tasted so much better than the processed protein bars and shakes.
"And two drinks, please." Ylva placed two metal tokens on the countertop.
"Ooh, someone's won the draw," said Freyja with a wide smile. "Actually, would you mind helping me for a moment, Hellmar?"
Hackles' ears pricked up, surprised that Freyja had bothered finding out his given name, instead of using his nickname like everyone else. I guess I'm about to find out what that lottery was about, he thought as he followed Freyja's swaying hips out the back door. Her hobby was an old shipping container turned into a hothouse, where she grew herbs with which to season her dishes. He found himself wondering how the Vixon were fairing. Not much better, he assumed, probably with a similar number of survivors telling by what the Wolven knew of the Vixon starships. Still, the foxes had a whole planet to themselves—albeit inhospitable—instead of just a small moon.
Freyja stopped by a large canister turned into a keg. "If we take one end each—"
Hackles wouldn't have a bar of that. He just bent his knees, wrapped his arms around the steel barrel, and lifted it clean off the floor. It was heavy, but nothing he couldn't handle; ninety kilograms, a hundred tops, he guessed.
"My goodness…" Freyja blushed a little, but Hackles didn't notice, straining as he was to carry his burden back to the bar. He carefully set it down on the ground, his tail wagging slowly, since he thought he'd seen a couple of hops vines at the back of the hothouse. While he returned to his seat, Freyja fitted a tap to the keg and began pouring an amber liquid. Soon, she placed two large metal cups on the bar and flashed them a smile. "Enjoy!"
Ylva took a large gulp from her cup, leaving froth on her muzzle which she wiped off with the back of her hand before sighing with content. Hackles sniffed the contents, and then had a small sip. Ale! It was weak and without much head, but still, it was ale. He was amazed that Freyja had even managed to brew it in the first place.
"So, why did you want to become a knight?" Freyja asked and put her elbows on the countertop, resting her chin on her hand.
"My mother was a Royal Knight."
"And now you want to avenge her?"
Hackles bit his tongue this time, assuming he was the only one in the bar who held no personal grudge with the Vixon. "She wasn't lost in battle. It was meant to be a routine repair, but a fuel cell malfunctioned…"
"Just shit luck, huh?" Freyja's ears flattened.
"Yeah…" It hadn't stopped there. He had become an orphan at the age of ten when his father, with a Master of Science degree in Magic and researching dark energy, passed away from a rare and incurable disease. After living with distant relatives for a few years, he had gravitated towards serving the Royal Army like his mother, and had joined the Knight's school.
"But now you're Sabre's own squire. I'm sure he'll be King one day." Freyja turned to leave, but flashed Hackles a smile over her shoulder. "You've done well."
Hackles didn't know why Sabre—five years his senior—had taken him under his protective wing. Perhaps it was because Sabre wanted to be like his father Randorn, who had adopted a young Vixon girl a few years earlier? Hackles remembered Krystal quite well. They had trained together on occasion. She was feisty and hard to beat with her staff and those psionic powers of hers, and she could be annoying like any teenage girl when she wanted to, but apart from that, she was kindness and friendliness personified. And she was pretty of course. If the average Vixon was like her, then Hackles couldn't fathom why the Wolven and Vixon were at war.
"Freyja's got nice big tits." Ylva's whisper nearly made Hackles cough up his drink. "Is that what you're daydreaming about?"
He stared at his cup. "I remembered Krystal."
"Oh, come on! Don't become more like Sabre than you already are." Ylva rolled her eyes. "A gorgeous wolf is practically flirting with you, and you're thinking of a vixen? She's single. You've known her for years. Why haven't you asked her out yet?"
Ylva had a point, thought Hackles, his gaze admiring the barkeep's generous shapes as she walked around the bar serving customers. Sabre used to frequent the original Homestead in Animus, often inviting Ylva and Hackles to join him. Freyja had been a waitress back then, the daughter of the innkeeper, and even curvier than now, which Hackles didn't mind at all. But carnivorous species don't get fat on a vegetarian diet. He glanced at his own arms, which used to be as thick as some men's legs; he'd certainly lost muscle tone, and he longed for medium rare meat, smoked fish, flame grilled raptor…
"Guess I never thought about settling down," he answered, knowing that he'd been all focussed on his knight's training.
"Well, if you won't make a pass, maybe I will…" Ylva eyed the white wolf up and down. "…with her assets."
"Still figuring out which sex you prefer?" Hackles smirked at Ylva who winked in response.
"Why limit my options?" she said before adding in a gruff voice. "Finish up. We've still got that debrief with Sabre soon."
Hackles looked at her empty cup before bringing his own, half-full, to his muzzle. Over the rim, he could see the barkeep stealing a glance of him. The white wolf was quite pretty, he thought, and he liked her curves. She returned his smile before looking away. While draining his cup, Hackles decided that once he got his knighthood, he would ask her out. But where though? He stood up and followed Ylva out of the inn, still in deep thought. It wasn't like the moon was full of restaurants, cinemas and the like—there were none except The Homestead—but he was a pilot and once a knight he could requisition a ship. They could watch the rings as Beta set behind Jotunn. That was probably as romantic as he could make it around here. Yeah, he'd do that.
Ylva snapped her fingers in front of his face and glared at him for a moment, before the façade fell and she cracked up in a wide smile, likely knowing what he was thinking about.
"Freyja is very nice," he said. "Pretty, friendly, dependable, trustworthy—"
"And has big tits," Ylva quipped.
He snorted and gave her a push in jest. She wasn't wrong though. As they walked, his thoughts were filled by a voluptuous white she-wolf, only for a moment interrupted by a slender blue vixen. He couldn't help wondering what had happened to Krystal.
Krystal stepped off the skyrail, trying to blend in with the boarding and disembarking crowds. With sunglasses on and her 'new' appearance, she received looks from people, but few if anyone seemed to recognise her. She pulled the jacket closer around herself. The spring day's warmth dissipated quickly after sunset as she followed a group of people walking up towards the summit.
The old observatory was located on a hill on the outskirts of Corneria City, its white dome painting a pretty picture in the twilight, where the first stars appeared against the darkening sky. It had been replaced centuries ago of course, first by larger observatories up in the mountains further away from light pollution, then by telescopes in orbits around Corneria and other planets, but it was still a popular tourist destination. The complex was in part an open air museum, and replicas of antique rockets and capsules lined the path, showing off Corneria's proud spacefaring history.
She headed for a larger dome, lacking an opening for a telescope, just down the hill from the main building: the Planetarium. A large group of people spilled out from the day's last session as she approached the entrance. She caught a glance of a moulting snow fox and an older red fox as she made her way through the crowd.
Cornerian history is quite fascinating, said Kayuq in Krystal's mind.
Thanks for doing this, Krystal replied.
Not a problem, thought Kayuq. Hope and I will be in the restaurant having some refreshments. We could really have done this from the apartment, your mind is strong enough, but where's the fun in that?
Krystal entered the by now mostly empty lobby.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but we're taking a break," said a young possum behind a counter. "But you're most welcome back for the night session at eight o'clock."
"Oh, I'm just here to meet someone." Krystal looked around, feeling rather nervous, both in anticipation of what she might learn, and because she hadn't met Lucy since that fateful surprise party.
"That's okay, she's with me." The hare emerged from a side door, dressed in blouse and trousers with a tablet tucked under her arm.
"A private tour, huh?" The possum beamed at Krystal. "Well, aren't you the lucky one?"
Lucy offered a hand and Krystal shook it, an awkward greeting between old friends, especially since Lucy was the closest thing Krystal had to a sister.
"I… I heard Peppy is recovering well." Krystal absentmindedly tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "Sorry, I couldn't be of more use."
"Thank you," said Lucy, sounding sincere, but Krystal could feel the suspicion in her mind as they walked across the lobby. "He said you've had some… struggles."
"Yeah…" Krystal hated it, but she had to play on Lucy's sympathy, needing her help. "It's been a bit rough, you know, first believing I was the only one left, then meeting my kin, only for them to do what they did and being left behind, none the wiser."
The aura from Lucy's mind softened. "Well, I hope this will be of some help then." She pushed a set of doors open, leading them into a large hemispherical chamber, where reclined seats were arranged in concentric circles. She stopped to hand Krystal a small earpiece. "Please take this and go stand on that platform in the middle."
Krystal did as she was asked, her footfalls echoing off the domed ceiling from every direction, while Lucy headed for the control room. She climbed on top of the platform, normally used by the show's presenter, while Lucy dimmed the lights. For a brief moment, she was engulfed in complete darkness. She reached out, immediately finding Kayuq's mind. The old vixen's presence felt soothing. There was a faint glow as holographic projectors came to life, and soon a dim outline of Corneria City's skyline and the stars above it became visible, brightening as her eyes adjusted. It was like a VR headset, just so much more immersive thanks to the unrestricted view.
"How much do you remember of Cerinia's night sky?" Lucy asked through the earpiece.
"Mostly fragments," Krystal replied and contacted Kayuq. Can you see this?
Nice and clear, the old vixen replied, and my memory is still good.
"I can recall some constellations, and the neighbouring stars were quite distinct in the sky, even during daytime."
The hologram around Krystal changed and she felt lightheaded for a moment while it zoomed out, as if leaving Corneria, until it was the size of a ball Krystal could reach out and take in her hand. Names appeared as if floating in space—Fortuna, Fichina, Meteo and Sauria and so on—and she found that she was slightly above the system's plane, looking down upon the planets.
"Let's rewind to 8 ALW, assuming you came to Lylat just before the Plight of Sauria," said Lucy.
"Yes, I'm quite convinced my ship travelled to Sauria through a wormhole." Krystal watched the planets move backwards along their orbits as time reversed in the hologram. "It would've been quick."
"Strange, we've never found any traces of interstellar wormholes in Lylat, but who knows what's hiding in the nebulas. We still don't have sensors strong enough to penetrate the magnetic flux in Sector X." Lucy slowed down the hologram until it came to a halt. "Here we are, as the universe looked 8 ALW. Are you ready?"
"Yes, I am." Krystal echoed Kayuq's words in her mind. The view panned out, Lylat shrinking, then diving through the planets and out into interstellar space as if she was standing in an invisible spaceship.
"Let's go for some sightseeing first," said Lucy. "This might look familiar to you."
Krystal's heart sank. It certainly did. The shape and position of galaxies and constellations, especially Canis Majoris straight ahead, were a painful memory burnt into her mind from when she left Lylat. A binary system appeared in front of her, one star surrounded in a bubble of gas.
"Quango," she whispered.
"The appearance of this system has been enhanced using data received from the local authorities."
"It's very accurate." The virtual vessel took a pass by a planet with hues very familiar to Krystal: Kew. The journey continued with a loop around the central star Helios, then back out into open space again, past its white dwarf companion Anthelios.
"The map is complete with every star in our galaxy arm, down to an apparent magnitude of 30," Lucy explained while the constellations shifted around Krystal as her viewpoint moved away from Quango. "It also contains nearly a hundred thousand exoplanets that have been identified as far away as a thousand parsec, although this one is a bit closer." The hologram zoomed in on a mostly frozen planet around an ordinary main sequence star. "In Lylat's Galactic Catalogue the star has the designation GC2001, and this rocky planet is in the outer regions of the habitable zone. Our Quango counterparts have confirmed that it is largely covered in snow and ice, yet populated, mostly by bears."
Krystal smiled. She was familiar with the system. "Arctos!"
"Let's get down to business, shall we?" Lucy sounded serious, but Krystal picked up on the excitement radiating from her mind, the astrophysicist being in her element. "There aren't many multiple star systems fitting your description, especially not with confirmed exoplanets, but I've found a few."
The space around Krystal moved fast again, as her viewpoint changed. It stopped near a yellow star, which grew until it was the size of a sun in the sky, although not shown as bright by the hologram.
"This is GC6528b, which has been known to throw out strong flares, although none that have seemed to have lethal levels of radiation," said Lucy. "Your viewpoint is from the sole rocky exoplanet within the goldilocks zone, its orbit sped up to once a minute by the simulation."
A red giant passed behind it, much further away, but still appearing nearly as bright. The hologram also pointed out a white dwarf GC6528c, but it appeared no brighter than other stars. Krystal concentrated, turned and looked around, trying to remember, but it didn't seem right. She could feel the familiar sensation of Kayuq being in her mind, who repeated her psionic message. "It doesn't look familiar."
"Of course, you can only see one hemisphere. Let's change that."
Krystal yelped and nearly lost her balance when the hologram spun 180 degrees, flipping on its head. She straightened herself up and focused again, but to no avail. "Nope, this is not it."
She felt slightly disappointed when the virtual vessel left the system, but she shook it off quickly; there were more likely systems to explore.
"As we move further away, it becomes increasingly difficult to detect rocky exoplanets." Lucy focussed the image on a system where a yellow star and a white dwarf formed a binary pair, in turn circling the red giant. "We only know of gas giants around GC23165b here, so I'll simulate the most likely orbit for a habitable rocky planet, if there is one."
Kayuq spent a few minutes surveying the starry sky through Krystal's eyes, before giving her answer. "Sorry, it's not this one either."
The process repeated several times, Lucy moving to different systems and shifting the view for Krystal, and Krystal straining her eyes and mind to let Kayuq see. She felt increasingly frustrated by the letdowns, and a migraine was growing behind her eyes.
"We're nearly out of time," said Lucy, and Krystal's ears flattened. "We need to wrap up before the next planetarium session, but I have one more system to show you. It's more of a hunch really." Krystal's viewpoint passed through a translucent purple haze, revealing a triple star system. "GC9218 here is much closer, approximately 42 parsec away, but the dust cloud makes observations difficult. While the yellow star is variable, we cannot confirm whether they're flares or not. From radial velocity measurements, we think there's a possible gaseous planet around the red giant."
That's interesting, said Kayuq in Krystal's mind. We know the Wolven have prospected moons around Beta Kandesca V.
Krystal's ears pricked up and her tail began to wag behind her.
"We have no idea of the orientation of possible planet orbits, so I'm just going to put you on an imaginary sphere at an ideal distance from the star and move you around," Lucy continued.
Krystal looked around. Some constellations in the sky looked familiar, but she wasn't sure. Kayuq spoke no words over the psionic link, but Krystal could feel her anticipation. She watched the red giant and the white dwarf as their positions changed with the imaginary planet orbiting the sun, craving an answer, willing something to fall into place.
She shrieked in fright as enormous perturbations rose from the surface, the coronal mass ejection engulfing the star. The blinding light was followed by a cacophony of anguished wails.
"STOP!"
"Are you okay, Krystal?"
Krystal blinked, and the vision was gone. It had not been the hologram, but a violent memory resurfacing, whether from Kayuq or herself, she didn't know. Her heart pounded in her chest.
"I… A… Alpha Kandesca." Her fur stood on end. "That's our name for the star. This is Cerinia!"