Darklight: Precipice

Part 8: On The Horizon

Commander Raine, head of the Skry Military Division, was sat at the command position of the Skry Airship that was streaking over the central ocean between the continents heading towards Utopia City. Her keen eyes were looking over a map of the planet. The map was rectangular, depicting the four continents that made up the surface of Saxosis. To the top left was Nestro, bottom left was the Forbidden Continent where Eresmai sat in the caldera of the large volcano that made up a quarter of the smallest continent. To the top right was Utopia City, grey a dull with the artificial landmass of the drydocks spiking out of its north-eastern most province. Finally Pinnacle City made up the landmass to the bottom right, the main city covering the majority of the mainland and the green and fertile islands to the north. These islands were anchoring points for the bridges that spanned the expanse between Utopia and Pinnacle. The polar regions were mere slithers of white along the cop and bottom centre of the map.

“A sad, sad world” Raine thought to herself as she looked at the map, a red line detailing the path and location of her ship over the ocean. 

“But healing”.

She still wore her signature attire, it was like a uniform to her. The couture gress with the fur collar protruding from the left collar. She still even wore the same high heeled knee length black leather boots. But she was getting too old for all this.

As she monitored the ships course and speed she made notes.

“How’s our power output levels? She asked on of her quiet bridge crew.

“Stable at 76.5%” One of them replied. They were wearing standard command attire - simple black trousers and shirts. The military was no place for traditional Skry robes.

The ship she was on was called the Horizon, named after the new propulsion drive that Raine had taken part in designing. It was a pre-cursor to the Banshee Engines that were now in use on The Roc. But the Horizon Drive worked on a larger scale. Where the Banshee Drive generated spatial distortions within the engined modules themselves n order to create thrust, the Horizon Drive manipulated Space-Time outside of the ship on a larger scale, compressing in front of the ship and expanding behind to create a bubble around the ship itself. Everything in this bubble was separated from normal space-time and so allowed the ship to move faster than anything, even allowing it to pass through objects at it was out of phase. However this lead to some problems: Firstly the power required for this feat was off the scale - the living quarters and comforts of the vessel had been stripped out to accommodate an array of power generators. Secondly due to the phasing effect, the planet’s gravity had no influence over the ship when the bubble was active, meaning that a gravitational simulator had to run in parallel to the Horizon Drive. Additionally the structure of the ship had to be severely modified. Where once the ship had elegant  sweeping wings which held the Phase Cannons, it now had short stumpy wings on the end of which was a large and non-aerodynamic pod which contained the spatial manipulators. Two smaller versions of these were attached to a smaller set of wings on the nose of the ship. Finally the shield array had been severely compromised in order to generate the spatial distortion bubble, meaning the ship was not only lacking offensive capabilities but also effective defenses when not utilizing the Horizon Drive.

The Horizon Drive. Named after the fact that it brought the Horizon to you. It was even faster than The Roc, but due to the fact that the ship was an experimental prototype The Roc was still considered the fastest ship ever built. And The Roc really did deserve all the praise it got - it was an amazing feat of engineering and ingenuity. 

The fact that a Forefather device could disable such an advanced ship was troubling to Raine. From a tactical point of view a small automated piece of technology that could do this to the most advanced ship ever built by Humans or Skry meant that Lord Regina could end up with such a device and plunge the world into another Lordwar that could not only last for years - but kill thousands. No doubt Draz had the same thought process.

“We’re nearing Utopia Airspace” the navigator stated, bringing Raine back to reality.

“Roger that” Raine replied. “Drop us back into normal space and activate the conventional engines” She ordered. The ship lurched as the ship suddenly decelerated and the spatial distortion bubble dissipated. The antigravs activated with a quiet humm and Raine felt the change in inertia as the conventional thrusters kicked in.

“Broadcast IFF” Raine ordered. “They can see us now”.

The Horizon sailed towards the south-western coast of Utopia City for Draz’s meeting, a meeting of some of the best minds on the planet.