Digital Galaxies

I strapped myself into my seat as I battled the multitude of different emotions that warred within me. On the one hand, we were about to go and explore freakin’ alien spaceships! It was so damned cool. On the other hand… what had been about to happen between Cerri and I? Now she was avoiding looking in my direction, expression pensive and brows furrowed.

Are you okay? I asked her via a private message, one routed to her outside of the game.

I watched as her eyes flicked up to look at her HUD as it blinked a notification, then for a split second in my direction. Her response was quick. Yes. I’m okay.

Didn’t sound like it. Anxiety curled in my gut like a festering worm, taking root now that I had been told such an obvious lie. I must have crossed some boundary, making her uncomfortable in the process. I don’t know what it could have been though, there was so much about that moment that had my head spinning.

“Alia?” I gave a squeak and twitched in my chair, looking up to see everyone staring at me. Roger had just spoken, I think?

Yes? Sorry. Lost in thought, I told the group while I slowly hid myself behind my tail. I left my eyes free to look back, but nothing more.

“Is the ship ready to fly?” he repeated, seemingly unconcerned with my lapse in attention.

I raised a hand and waggled it in a so-so motion. She’s pretty munted, but I think she’d fly so long as Gloria doesn’t put too much strain on her. Be gentle, I guess?

“I’m always gentle with little Turshie,” Gloria purred, stroking the flight stick erotically.

“That was a very sexual statement!” our ship’s AI exclaimed with a gasp.

Gosh, Gloria actually got a response out of the Turshen. That was pretty hard to do.

“It was,” Roger agreed dryly. “Regardless, if Alia thinks she’ll make it, then let’s get going.”

Gloria took that as her cue, easing our battered ship into flight. My attention snapped to my screens, internal sensors showing readings across a multitude of systems. Something to focus on, other than Cerri’s strange behaviour and my aching heart.

Our ship was flexing in some pretty strange ways, but it looked like she was holding steady as we began to gently pour on the gas. The sub-light engines had actually fared pretty well, being powered down at the time of the aethercrash, so those were fine. Honestly, it was the ship’s superstructure that was the biggest problem, apart from the aetherdrive itself.

Captain, permission to go and start fixing things? I asked, glancing up from my consoles to look at Roger. It looks like we’re going to take almost a day to get there.

“Ah, yes… good idea,” he replied, not bothering to look back at me. His eyes were glued to the screen that showed our tiny view of the ship graveyard.

That was all the permission I needed. Bolting out the door, I made straight for my room and began to gather all my things. Cerri was going to need a room, and I had a place I could go to sleep instead, somewhere I would honestly feel more comfortable anyway.

My meager belongings gathered, I snuck into the vents and found the little burrow I’d made before… I had killed my physical body. It wasn’t a large space, but by the time I was done with it, I actually felt somewhat happy there. It was cozy and absolutely safe from everyone else. No one could find me here, not Cerri with her awkward not-stares or Ed with his foul mood.

I sent Cerri a message telling her I’d vacated the room and then went in search of things to fix. It’s not like I was lacking for distractions. I just wish those distractions would wipe away the knot that had formed in my gut.

The next eighteen hours were a blur of replacing wires, pipes, sockets and whatever else could get broken when you shook a ship around like a shitty toddler with a fish in a bag. I got some sleep in my new little cubby and bar sleeping in a certain girl’s arms, it was the best sleep I’d had. I really liked small spaces, along with being small enough to fit into them.

Sadly, the aetherdrive looked to be in worse repair than I had initially realised, with several important components completely melted. When I searched the ship’s manifest for replacements, I found nothing. The cost of those replacements appeared to be far above what we could afford, so I guess that was why we didn’t have any.

I did get a large portion of the smaller jobs done though, which had me feeling pretty satisfied with myself. I was a proper mechanic now! Wonder what my parents would think of that. Probably not a lot that was nice, that’s for sure. Fixing things was for people who couldn’t afford to replace the whole item, or so they said.

“Alia, time to come back to the bridge, we’re almost there,” Roger told me as I finished tightening a bolt that had come loose.

Omw, I sent back, placing my tools back into my tool harness. My hips might be wide in the context of my body, but in raw width, there wasn’t enough to fit a toolbelt. So, I had a tool harness instead!

Walking back up through the ship, I felt my hyperfocus begin to slip away, replaced by anxiety once more. I needed Cerri… she was already one of the best friends I’d ever had. I couldn’t lose her.

Thankfully, I had something else to focus on when I stepped back onto the bridge. Holy. Shit.

Space drifted by on all sides out the massive windows of the bridge, stars shining bright against the black. Before us was a planet, growing larger by the second, along with its three rings. The world was grey, lifeless even when compared to a world like mars. There were no oceans, no clouds of dust drifting across the surface far below. Nothing but a mottled grey sphere.

It was fascinating though, as we got closer, you could see the marks of advanced civilisation on the planet, great furrows dug into the surface there, or a curve of mountain that was far too geometrically perfect.

“The planet… it’s devoid of… well, literally anything,” Cerri murmured into the quiet bridge. “It’s wiped clean.”

“Jesus, what kind of weapon does that?” Warren asked, staring with wide eyes at the main display where our science officer had just brought up an image of the surface.

Gesturing to it, she explained, “I’m pretty sure that was a city.”

My eyes widened as I realised she was right. There were no buildings or anything, but the shape of the terrain, it had clearly been carved and worked. I could see where the foundations of great spires used to be, and long stretches of flat, snaking earth that appeared to have once been roads.

“Bloody hell,” David said with a shake of his head. “Here I was thinking what we have now out in the real Earth was bad.”

That was when we got close enough for the rings to come into proper view. I let out a gasp, eyes boggling at the sheer scale of what I was seeing.

One ring was lopsided, a massive chunk of rock at the thick side’s center, a curve on one side betraying what it used to be, a piece of the world’s ancient moon. The whole fucking moon had been shattered in the conflict.

The other two rings were sort of one, merging in places but distinct in others. Battle lines. A vast graveyard of ships and orbital stations, congregated into a ring around the dead world. Sheared metal glittered in the dark of space, aged paint displaying alien symbols on armoured plates. All of it spun lazily around the planet, like some sort of strange ritualistic dance.

It was also evident that most  of the debris hadn’t made it into the ring either, their death throes not conducive to a stable orbit, instead plunging them down to impact the surface or off into the vastness of space. The hulks of those ships were gone, same as the city had been, but the marks of their impact were not.

Great furrows and craters littered the surface in a buckshot pattern over one half. Apparently the majority of the battle had happened in orbit above that area.

“You’re saying there’s more like this across the system?” Roger asked, awed into relative quiet.

“Two other worlds have graveyards like this, plus a few clusters out in the void,” Cerri said reverentially. “This is the largest though.”

“Jesus,” he replied, leaning back heavily in his chair.

“Ain’t no god nor prophet here boss,” Gloria chuckled darkly. “Their type tend to look the other way when folks get to genociding each other.”

“Alright, well…” our captain began, before trailing off again. He took a long breath, eyes searching the circular cloud of twisted metal. “Find me one that looks intact, not too big though.”

“What’s the plan, once we find one?” Cerri asked, already plugging in a set of parameters for her scanners to search with.

“Fix it, hopefully,” Roger replied, a spark of excitement reigniting within his eyes as he turned to make eye contact with everyone. “Providing we’re all up to the challenge.”

I think my brain exploded in that instant, goosebumps rippling across my skin. I had no fucking idea if I could do that, but I sure as hell wanted to try.

Automatically, I turned to Cerri, awkwardness forgotten in the moment of pure adventure. We were going to try and commandeer an alien spaceship! She was staring back at me, a wide grin shining back like a ray of sunshine straight into my soul.

A surge of confidence from no-where hit me, and I said, “I can fix anything that you figure out. Think you can do that?”

Her eyes narrowed, smile turning to smirk. “I think I’ll be fine.”

“Good, just making sure you don’t lose your nerve,” I shot back. Both our eyes widened at the double meaning that my dumbass brain had just infused into my words.

“Just make sure you don’t rush anything,” she replied, slightly more sombrely. “I’d rather not blow up.”