TCS: Fate Of The Cosmos

Chapter 12: A day in low gravity

Grabbing the joystick with both his hands, the pilot jolted it to the right, keeping a sturdy grip on it as he embraced for what would come next. The flaps on the wings reacted to this, and in a swift and uncontrolled motion, the tek jet spun violently to the right, nearly avoiding a large asteroid mass, but in the heat of the moment, almost smashing into another tek jet that was flying side by side with the former.

The little radio positioned at the top right of the control panels within the cockpit scraped and crackled, emitting a static noise before a voice came through. "Watch it, you moron!"

"Sorry man! Shit! That was close,"

The clumsy pilot pardoned himself while stabilizing his aircraft's flight.

The second pilot sighed in frustration. "Do we still have their attention?"

"You tell me!" The first one said as he stood up in his cockpit, and twisted himself around to get a better look at his rear.

The two jet fighters raced between asteroids and various multi-colored space debris, en route to meet up with the next team, who would be taking control of the situation. Flying in the intermediate between the two habitat rings of the genesis colony ship truly makes one realize how absurdly large this vessel is, as simply one round along the rings could take up to five hours or more, depending on the number of obstacles you were to meet during the trip. Surrounded by massive walls that separate safe lands from open space, the only path you've got is straight ahead, or up toward the artificial sun, something that is advised against for extremely obvious reasons.

Turning to look behind him, the pilot laid eyes on what was following not far behind the two. "Uh-huh." He nodded slowly and said, "They're still onto us," which was the best way he could think of to confirm the situation.

"Good. Only a couple minutes more until we're supposed to drop them off."

Being in a zone without any gravity was strangely amusing to Locke, as he jumped around on the asteroid just like he had seen astronauts do on TV, back in his past life, and fortunately for the survivor, the Terran federation tek suits naturally came with gravity amplifiers installed in the boots, simulating gravity comparable to that of earth's moon, for the wearer when out in zero-gravity. Admittedly though, there was truly no reason to fear floating off into space as all the tek suits came with a highly powerful jetpack, to maneuver both sky and space.

It took a surprising amount of work and effort, but through continuous jumping and a few small bursts from the jetpack, Locke was miraculously able to make his way over to Cole, where he stood all alone on a single asteroid, looking out at the horizon- or rather the massive colony ship rings and their walls that made up the horizon.

Cole had his back turned away from Locke, and he either ignored the sound of Locke landing behind him, or simply didn't realize. 

"Did you visit the space region of the genesis simulation while you were there?" Cole asked, turning to face Locke as the larger man positioned himself next to him.

"Yeah, we did."

"So you've seen the Astrocetus, the space whales?"

"Yeah, I saw quite a few of them actually. One was used as a battleship by some colonists who had outfitted it with a tek saddle-" Locke explained, chuckling a bit at how absurd it sounded now. "Three mounted anti-aircraft turrets on the saddle, If I remember correctly."

Cole stared blankly at Locke, his confusion visible through the visor.
"That's terrifying, and it's exactly why I fear you survivors and the colonists. Cavemen who are given guns and tek machinery. Anyways-!"
Clearing his throat, Cole raised a hand toward something far off into the distance that Locke couldn't quite make out what was. Squinting his eyes at it didn't make it any better, just made it harder to see.
"If you've seen the space whales, then I'm sure it won't surprise you that we have space dolphins as well."