Astral Realms - A New Dawn

Keelo Prime wasn’t exactly like the desert world of Sarmil in the Orion System, nor wasn’t like the forest ridden world of Enturn-XV, far into the Atra Ves star system. It was a strange mixture of the two, where the barren desolate part made up about ninety-five percent of the surface. And to think that at one time land suitable for cultivation had made up fifty-eight percent of the entire planet.

The heat during the rainy season, which fell once a year, was more unbearable than normal. What the ground trapped, holding it in its granitic embrace, was slowly released in huge blasts of heat that made the air humid and unbearably heavy. But it was a necessary evil.

The reserves of drinking water that the planet's surface had offered in the past had been squandered to the last drop by the very same people who had abandoned it. Only the very last reserves that the planet offered in the form of underground water, that were heavily guarded and regulated by the government, remained operable, so the few people that still lived on its surface were heavily dependent on the waters accumulated inside special metallic containers during the rainy season.

Too bad, though, that it hadn't rained for two years already.

Vindril stepped out the relative comfort of his home (very much relative given the sorry condition it was in), wearing a set of clothes he had washed with the very distinctive, and also very chemical, grey powder that was used worldwide as a substitute of water. At least on Keelo Prime. On other planets such a drastic measure was unnecessary. As if the whole planet had something personal against his very presence on its dusty surface, a hot gust of wind hit him right in the face, making him flinch. The fact that he was wearing a white leather jacket when the surface temperature, even at such an early hour, was near 35° Celsius was almost a torture itself.

But he had to do it. For once, it was his favourite piece of clothing; and, ff he even wanted a chance, no matter how small it was, to find out what kind of job was the Academy offering, he had to at the very least look presentable. And the Instructors were renowned to be picky, like really picky, about what fitted their criteria.

Damned bureaucrats.

When the wind finally settled down, leaving behind it a thin layer of dust that was slowly settling back to its resting place, Vindril cursed out loud. His clean clothes, that he had so painstakingly cleaned the week prior, were now covered in a thin, and barely perceptible, layer of dust. It was nothing serious. A dusting and it would be as good as new. But for him, and the efforts he had made to not get them dirty, it was an insult to his perseverance. And few things amounted to a worse insult than that to him.

“Fuck!” he thundered out loud.

Thankfully, he lived in the outskirt of town, where the poorest of people lived. Nobody even battered an eyelid when that came out of his mouth.

“Fucking hell! Why the hell did I even bother cleaning them? Shit…”

The more he cleaned the dust off, the more his mood took a turn for the worse. He took a breath to calm down. There was no way anything, or anybody, be it physical or not, was going to ruin that day. Not that day, dammit.

Finally, after he finished making himself clean, or in the better terms, cleaner, Vindril wondered out on the warm ground. The brown boots he was wearing weren’t exactly comfortable to wear; but at least they were stylish. The metallic clasps that held tight the couple of stripes that were applied over the part were the calves were, made them so.

It didn’t take long for him to reach a wealthier part of town, leaving the outskirts behind. It would have taken him even less if those damned boots had been more accommodating. The tightest part was constricting his heel into a tight grip that wasn’t exactly painful, but was certainly uncomfortable. But none of that mattered. He was standing right next to a metallic signboard, waiting for the transport vehicle that was going to take him to the market where the starships were sold. And not “cheap” ones.

No. Those weren’t good enough.

While they were a looooot cheaper than the one he was going to buy, they were pretty much useless to him. Firstly, those kind of space craft weren’t designed to operate on long travels. While they were great for combat on close and tight quarters, long voyages required so many things that were just too big to mount into a single seat craft like a fighter. So that was no good. Secondly, ultra travel was costly if he had to get transported onboard of a bigger ship every single time, so he would have spent more than thirty percent of his calculated income on that.

Ultralight, the faster then light speed travel that was widely used across the galaxy, was as complex as it sounded cool. To reach the necessary requirement for a starship to operate and, quite frankly, not implode into billions of particles, the materials and form of it had to be taken into account. If one was crazy enough to build a starship of some common steel alloy, leaving aside the sheer stupidity of such a course of action, he would quickly find out how soft that metal is at such high speeds.

The fist starships that had been tested when Ultralight was achieved, all those millennia ago, were a clear testament of that. At that time, the death toll had been…pretty heavy, to say the least.

Fortunately, the mad scientists had managed to find a solution. Unobtanium. The king of all metals. Light as a feather and stronger than anything in the galaxy. With that, Ultralight speed was made safe to practice. Now, not all that glittered was gold. Unobtanium still had a couple of flaws. It wasn’t the best at dispersing impacts, so it had to be mixed into some other alloys. But worst of all, it was stupidly rare to find a deposit, even an insignificant one.

The price for a hundred tons of it, of course, in its pure form, was something that could buy an entire planet. With the ten thousand of it? One could buy an entire star system. That’s Unobtanium.

But those complexities aside, the most important thing in Ultralight travel was, as obvious as it was, coordinates. If a starship attempted such a feat without using the S.N.A. (Star Navigation Assistant), the virtual intelligence that calculated everything to utmost perfection, it was almost guaranteed to crash into star, a planet, or any obstacles one might find. Now, to be completely honest, it was possible, even it was also utterly nuts, to travel without it. The calculations needed to be done by hand, but it was possible. The problem? The margin of error.

While Vindril had accumulated some experience assisting a navigator, the person aboard starships that was responsible for scribbling down, calculating where the hell the starships would be in any given time during travel, even his bright mind seemed troubled when faced with those problems. Maybe, and it was a gigantic maybe that was bigger than a meteor, he could try his luck and be rewarded for it. But truthfully, if he would never find himself in that kind of situation, it would only make him all the happier. To die crashing against a star at faster than light speed was something that-

A very distinctive humming interrupted him.

Looking to the left, he saw what he had been waiting for…well, he didn’t know exactly for how long, but it certainly wasn’t short if he had the time to think about all those complexities.

A taxi, a rusty one at that, not like the comfy, perfectly serviced, never left without proper storage, that used IV as a piloting system and that were used far away from that dusty rock of a planet, parked exactly beside him. The gentle hum that the small thrusters, that were placed under and behind the chassis, which allowed city vehicles to float in mid-air as they were suspended in time, was nowhere to be heard. In its place there was the smoky, beaten up, and honestly speaking, pretty maddening rattle that was coming from the carcasses of what looked like a couple of G-78-H thrusters. Those weren’t exactly the best thrusters in the galaxy, but he guessed they still served their purposes if they were still installed in there in such horrible conditions.

Vindril paid it no mind and nimbly hopped inside.

As long as that damned piece of junk (he was actually referring to the machine, but the sorry excuse of a man who was driving it strangely fitted perfectly into that criterion.) would take him safely to his destination, than he didn’t care about anything else. So he simply gave the driver the address, and tried to get as comfortable as he could. Luckily that was going to be a ride on the short side. He would have found another way otherwise. Though he had to admit things could have been much worse. He could have been forced to walk under the relentless heat.

Just the thought of it made him grimace.

//////

The moment he stepped outside, obviously after paying the man his due fee, his hazel eyes took a little bit of time to readjust to the blinding light of the sun, which wasn’t giving him even a moment of respite. Even if the ride had been a short and pretty miserable experience, with all the stuff that had been mounted by the factory on that piece of junk, and that had broken during its long service record, Vindril had suffered it way more than he had thought. The back pain he was now feeling only served as a reminder of how much he hated traveling inside those things.

But, on the plus side, if he had to look for a silver lining, he had not taken a taxi that had a cooling system, or things would have been even worser than they were now. To step into that heat after some delightful chill? Just the thought of it was enough to make him wince in agony. Now that was madness. That, and he already knew that the shop he was getting into was chilled, so he also had to come to terms with that.

Damn it.

As the taxy slowly drove away, taking the madding rattle with it, Vindril readjusted his clothes in an attempt to look presentable. Then he realized that none of that was important. Money, when it came to business, was the only thing that mattered to the person he was about to meet. It didn't even matter how one got it, as long as it didn't bring trouble into his household. Vindril knew it well. He still remembered clearly the small favour he had done him some time ago. And who knows, maybe that small favour could be worth a small discount to him, right?

Well, there was only one way to find out. Enter his kingdom, as he called it.