Chapter 2: Blind Spot.
Orders given by Freeza are given Once. You fail, you're punished.
It's rare to have not just the order, but follow-ups reaffirming it.
"All Saiyans are to remain on planet until further notice," Rhuba muttered to herself, reading a redirected message from Cressin for the fourth time.
According to her mother, the last Saiyan pod returned three days ago and people are starting to get rowdy waiting for an explanation for the recall. But what was eating Rhuba and Garagus, was the fact that this means they're late.
Another message popped up from her mother for her to read.
{Rumour is that King Vegeta is going to have a talk with Freeza about calling everyone back}
Rhuba replied, asking if Freeza was there on the planet. Last time Freeza was on their world, it was during Cold's abdication. Freeza killed several Saiyans just to make a point of dominance that day.
So naturally, Rhuba was worried for her mother.
{No, the King has just boarded his ship with his top men. They're leaving the world. How far away are you?} Cressin replied.
"Garagus, how long before we arrive?" Rhuba called over her shoulder while typing her message.
"We're in the binary system now," Granate answered so Garagus could concentrate on his work. "we'll have to slow down for approach though."
"Okay." Rhuba sighed as she looked over the keys to finish her message one letter at a time.
She'd only typed out seven more characters by the time a new and sudden notification appeared on screen, along with a loud alarming tone.
"Unknown vessel, state your identification now!"
"Switch," Granate ordered, stepping up from his seat to swap with the crew.
Now in the copilot seat, Rhuba was able to see the rose-coloured clouds that encased her planet. With it seemingly so close, she had a distant feeling of familiarity. Although she wasn't looking forward to the landing.
The increased Gravity meant Garagus would need to do some serious calibrating on his end, unless Granate took over.
"Understood," Granate said at the end of his chat with the caller. As he approached the pilot seat again, Rhuba and Garagus switched back to their stations.
When Rhuba sat down, she was confused as to why her chair was spinning slightly.
The artificial gravity aboard the ship orientates to the floor while in space, so usually there's no problem, but it's far from perfect and so sudden or sharp turns or bursts of acceleration still get felt by the crew.
"Where are we going?" Garagus asked.
"We've been ordered to flee. This system is closing off."
"Why?" Garagus looked at his screen after hearing a noise. "… wait, I'm detecting two ships…"
"The order came from Lord Freeza's ship..." Granate angled off towards another planet in the system before doing a full orbit. "I don't know what makes Freeza's ship give orders like that, but I'm curious now."
He positioned the ship so it was 'hugging' the thermosphere above the planet's Northernmost point.
"wait, the ships just vanished?" Garagus announced with some confusion.
"yep," Granate said, crossing his arms as he watched ahead. "Radar has trouble figuring things out around this altitude over a planet."
The blind spot also affected communications, so Rhuba approached the two pilots.
"So we're not fleeing?" She asked as she looked out to see if home was still visible.
It looked smaller than a quarter of its size from the last sighting, but she could still see her world.
"Did you hear the warning?" Granate asked. "The man on the other side warned us about an astroid shower approaching."
"So, why aren't we fleeing?" Rhuba asked. She's not been in an astroid shower before, but she's seen the craters caused by them on moons and the like.
Granate scoffed as he leaned forward. "Because I've been living with two monkeys for the better part of three years... But only now do I smell shite."
A loud hiss came from Garagus's nostrils as he failed to contain his chuckles.
"Are you saying we smell bad?" Rhuba demanded.
"I'm saying, that the warning was a lie," Granate told her. "I just… if there were an asteroid shower incoming, we could avoid it easily. The manoeuvre I just pulled to put us in orbit was tricker than simple evasive action. So I see no need to retreat from an entire star system just because of a few falling rocks, especially when the Flagship of Freeza's forces is stationed right... there!" He pushed a button.
On the screen ahead, the three of them could see Freeza's ship hovering just over planet Vegeta. "I wish the image was clearer," Granate muttered.
"Could we get closer?" Garagus suggested.
"Not without their radars picking us up again."
"What if they're staying for weeks?" Rhuba groaned.
"Then you better get comfy."
"dammit," She muttered. "Could we light speed away?"
"You tell me," Granate asked, spinning his chair to her. "Could we?"
Rhuba knew he wouldn't ask if the answer wasn't known to her already. Probably not giving the context, but he wants her to explain why that's the case.
"Without the scanners, we can't search for collisions ahead. Collisions at light speed would tear the ship apart…" She then looked back at Freeza's ship. "if we move to a position where the scanners will work, they'll detect us."
"Well said," Granate told her. "remember that okay. A tiny oversight, and boom." He saw her nod in acceptance. But then her face turned white, he felt Garagus nudge his arm.
"Granate…" Garagus said in an astonished voice.
Granate turned to see the monitor. Freeza's ship looked like it was blowing up.
At first at least.
There was a glowing orange orb, but it was hovering above the ship and expanding at an alarming rate.
It looked like a small sun.
Garagus's scouter started beeping. Since it runs off of different signals, the blind spot wasn't affecting it.
He was torn between wanting to check the scouter and keeping his eyes on the screen. In the end, he gave in and attached it to his head.
"power level…" He was at a loss. What scared him most, was that the scouter was able to identify the source. When he looked up again, he could see the biologically-generated sun slowly fall on the planet directly below Freeza's ship.
The rosy clouds Rhuba hoped to see up close, turned a burnt yellow before shining into a painfully bright shade of white.
To see an explosion happen right in front of them but neither hear the bang nor feel the tremble. It felt unreal in so many ways.
What was once a world was now a blinding white inferno, scattering huge chunks of molten rock, flying off into space forever.
Granate was only just getting his bearings. Only now coming out of the same hypnotic trance of terror bestowed upon the three of them, but even then he couldn't think how to operate the ship. The controls may as well not exist for all he understood them at that moment.
Garagus's scouter was still beeping, giving all the readings it was detecting. But Garages just pulled it from his face. His tears were starting to fog the screen anyway. Everyone he knew or cared about had just been evaporated.
Although his voice fell on deaf ears, Rhuba's sudden sharp cries did not.
Garagus turned away from the screen hold Rhuba. Nothing she said was coherent, she could only let out unintelligible wails as her mind began to fathom what she'd seen.
Granate could hear Rhuba crying and Garagus's futile attempts at comforting her, but he knew he'd nothing to offer himself.
What could he possibly say or do to make anything easier? All he could too was look ahead and wait for Freeza's ship to disappear.
Freeza's ship waited in position four around forty-five minutes before leaving the System, the debris from Planet Vegeta were becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
They were warned about meteors, and there are many.
With a heavy heart, Granate steered the ship out into deep space.
In their room, Garagus hadn't left Rhuba's side. She's cried herself asleep holding onto him, but even then he couldn't leave. He wanted to be strong for her, but they both lost everything.
He lost his brother, his parents, friends. They both loved Rhuba's mother. Their home, their race, the entire world. It was like a blur in his mind that he couldn't process.
The forests he used to play in, the canyons where he learned to fly. The old den he lived in with Rhuba and Cressin. None of it existed anymore. It's all been reduced to space dust.
He pulled Rhuba in closer. She was lucky to be asleep, but he had a single minute playing over and over before his eyes that he couldn't get rid of.
When he remembered it happening, he could hear a bang in his mind. But, of course, that was just his imagination filling a space with an expected outcome.
It was silent as the grave aboard the ship from that moment until the following morning, where Rhuba woke before anyone else and for a small blissful moment, she'd forgotten what happened.
But finding some of her black hair stuck to her face by dry tears reminded her of the horrific event she witnessed.
The room was dark. She and Garagus were still in their armour form yesterday, him still asleep. She didn't say a word as she left the room to enter the bridge.
The ship was on autopilot. No particular course was set, just a safe direction in which to flee.
Rhuba walked to her station and brought up all the messages from home. She planned to read every single one of them in order. The voice and text messages were the only things she had of her mother.
But there were some new messages. Two of them were just demands for a reply that she ignored at the time because of the retreat orders from Freeza's ship, but a new voice message was also there.
What's more, it arrived nearly an hour After the destruction of their planet.
"mum…?" She gasped excitedly as she hit play.
Sometime later, Garagus woke up in an empty bed. He felt for Rhuba only to find her missing, then he rose up to look for her.
She was easy to find. He just had to follow Cressin's voice.
"Rhuba?" He asked as he walked in on her sitting by her station with her face in her hands, silently sobbing to herself.
He had no idea how long she's been sitting there, but he rushed over.
"-I don't know what's going on, I can hear people screaming outside… call me the moment you get a chanc—…" The following noise sounded like a flash fire igniting, followed by the message cutting off.
"Rhuba…" Garagus softly put a hand on her shoulder, but she shook it off and hit the play button again, resetting the message from the start.
"Please tell me you're not too far away now? There's talk that all the docks are closed off now, so maybe you'll have to land out in the canyons. I'm starting to get the idea that if you can't get here soon, you maybe should just stay away. Things are really getting tense, and there's mention that Freeza…" There was distant shrieks of terror in the background for a minute. "what the hell was that? Rhuba, something's happening… I don't know what's going on, I can hear screaming outside… call me the moment you get a chanc—…"
Garagus caught her wrist before she could hit play again. While keeping a firm hold of her hand, he pleaded with her to stop.
Rhuba's burning wet eyes were lost in the floor. She couldn't look at him, nor could she feel anything when he began to hold like he had all night.
"I thought she got away somehow…"
"I'm sorry," Garagus kissed her hair. "I am." He was sorry. But more than that he was scared and angry.
The scouter identified the origins of the blast that took away their home. It was obviously a deliberate act to exterminate the Saiyans.
But the scary part was that it wasn't a super-weapon mounted aboard Freeza's ship that caused it.
The blast was produced and launched from Lord Freeza himself.