The Gate

She laid in bed stretching out her arms with the heaviness of sleep still weighing on her.  Clutching the sheets with her fingers to get a good feel of the fabric, they were one of the few things she had brought from home – Gemin silk, the softest material from her home world.  Crafted by and introduced to them by the first Gemin settlers, one of the many treats they brought along with them.

After a moment, she sat up and shook her golden hair out from its restraining hair-tie, letting it fall to her shoulders in soft waves.  She scratched her head and hazily blinked the sleep out of her blue eyes, and then proceeded to wipe the drool from her cheek off onto her sleeve.  She crawled from her impression in the center of the bed to her perch at its edge.  She placed a foot on the floor for just a second before retracting the decision and pulling it back.  The floor was cold enough to call every hair on her body to attention as its effects rattled, almost painfully through her and up her spine.

Her gaze bounced from the floor beneath her, to the window, and back again before making her move.  She wrapped her blanket tightly around her shoulders and used the rest as a buffer for the cold floor, skating to the window on its corners and gazed out.

Space is quiet... 

There are no birds or crickets chirping.  No scents of morning dew or of the melting season's flowers.  No morning star's burning light, to blind a waking eye.  In the Vast, it's just black.  But today was going to be full of wonder and adventure, for over a year's worth of searching had finally led them here.

Back home, the radiation levels being emitted into and through the nothingness of space, were strong enough to be picked up on macro-scanners; that is where it all began.  Their people had thrived on clean energy sources... energy sources that unavoidably caught the attention of outsiders.  Eventually, curiosity turned into invasions, and soon the invasions caused war; leading to hostile living environments and dangerous surroundings everywhere.  Many took up elite training and self-modification to either help defend the homeland, or to help find a safe haven to escape to.  And now, with the help of her two closest friends all of their hard work was about to pay off.

She had overslept however... two hours by the looks of it.  She rushed to get ready and took off toward the half flight down to command.  As she did so, she connected her Stream and spoke.

"Sorry about the late raise, guys."  She chuckled.

"Thanks for not waking me up though, I really needed the extra sleep I guess."  She passed through command, which was buzzing with different alarms, projected a smile in the direction of the pilot, Afla Lyle.  He was Gemin; tall, rich grey, with shoulder length dreads in a variety of greens.  He smiled back at her.  She stopped by him at the console and looked out the windows in the front of the shuttle.  Unlike up top in her quarters the command center windows look ahead and not behind, so the view had more to offer.  They looked out together in wonder at the planet before them.

They only had a moment in 'ah' before Cryto's voice was heard from another room down the hall, and soon he followed behind its echo.  Cryto entered the room with a gleeful step talking about how he wished he had finished his latest project, a contact lens that allowed a two-way, in the moment video stream; The OculaSeam. 

Something he had been working on as part of a set of devices that all linked up to ones Stream, another one of his inventions.  An internal, hands-free, microphone-free communications radio that is inserted behind the base of ones ear and is wired through their dominant arm.  He had made these customized for all of their self-modifications so their radios would not be interfered with by outside parties.  His voice was all the signal she needed to get moving and head to the hanger.