Aphelion

1 - Ctesiphon

aphelion - the point in the orbit of a planet, asteroid, or comet at which it is farthest from the Sun.

The warm yellow hue of the afternoon light hit the marble arches, a golden glow reflecting onto the windows of the droid as it sped between the two empty temples - the only sound was the hum of the engine, the echo of it off the domes of the cathedrals and the empty chasm below. A single trickle of mud washed water lay below the small 92-Speeder as it moved its way between the sides of the stone buildings that stretched from the bottom of the gorge below to another 200 feet above the current path the droid followed. Klyma Estra peered up through the glass case overhead, to see the piers that spiralled upwards toward a blinding white sky. 

Arches crossed over her, however most had broken off at their connection to the columns either side of her. Similar to a maze, this city was made up of tunnels and dead ends, the buildings so high she could only go forwards. Klyma constantly double checked her bearings using the holopad on the controls system in front of her. It was quiet, so quiet. She was acutely aware that she was the only one here, and her speeder was making the only sound. She slowed so she could get a better view into the crumbling buildings, curling down and around one column was a hint of a green vine. Klyma smiled, she hadn't expected to find anything here but a flattened city. 

In the shadows of the marble structures the darkness was so strong – the inside of the arches and windows seeped back so far, even turning on the droids lights did nothing to illuminate what was inside. She was doing an introductory fly over, before her crew would move in in the following weeks with more advanced technology to explore the city with greater accuracy.

"Speeder One? Are you still with us?"

"Affirmative, the signal is weakened between the stone walls. Heading to a clearing now."

The communication light blinked off, as her connection to the shuttle base was lost again. Klyma continued to look out around her, at the dismantled and collapsed rooms she passed, the disintegration of the beams and bridges that had been weather damaged throughout the cold winter century. 

The city had most likely been covered in a blanket of snow and ice for the past fifty years as this side of the planet orbited in the dark side of the sun. Due to the size of Nebhala, and with only one sun, the planet experienced extended periods of cold darkness. The only inhabited city on the planet, Messene, now slipped into the night. Klyma had lived her entire life in the light of their sun; she is yet to know of the night, the cold, and the winter storms. 

Voyager 1 was the first explorer craft able to enter the upper atmosphere of the planet, and therefore make its way past the desert land where Messene was situated. Voyager had been designed by her great uncle, one of the oldest still to remain from the period when Nebhala had come under attack from StarForce fleets. He had survived by escaping to a bunker on the most desolate part of the planet. Messene had been rebuilt. Now a silver city inside a glass globe casing to expel the poisonous air of the planet from the bombing radiation. Klyma was the youngest member of the Voyager crew, at twenty-two, she had helped to build the craft for the past decade of her life. A circular propellant load as the base, with a recycled impulse engine drive at the rear connected to the wings which were attached to the long hollow of the main control and storage part of the ship. The design had been adjusted from what information the Messene libraries still had of old spacecraft technology, and what building resources had been salvaged from the blistered, and war-torn wreckage of old-Nebhala. 

It had taken almost 30 hours of travel to reach around the planet to where they were now, the crew of eight, were the first to travel out of the dome and range of Messene to reach the abandon ruins of the old Ctesiphon City. This city, before the collapse of the planet's atmosphere, was the hub of space travel technology. With a population of 50 million people in the main districts of the city, it housed members from every system in the galaxy.