Mindshard (ON HOLD)

One Journey Begins

     The 30 second ride via tube down the boom to the docking port seemed to last forever, the two humans filled with anxiety and anticipation in equal amounts, a nonchalant Deks doing nothing to assuage their unspoken fears.  How could he?  They were about to go where no human had gone before, at the risk of sounding clichÈ, discovering a universe beyond the tiny corner they had managed to explore to this point.

     Then they were stepping out of the open roofed car that carried passengers to and fro down the boom to the docking port into the tidy area where the retractable airlock that connected directly to any ship in the dock, terminated.  It was a fairly basic chamber, a panel on the left holding the monitors and controls for the airlock arm, which operated via AI automation for the most part.  The rest was a carpeted rectangle spreading out from the airlock arm’s mouth, a lit rectangle sitting on edge that stretched away from them, the arm visible through the observation ports set into the heavy bulkhead on either side of the entrance.

     It was through these ports the two humans caught their first sight of the Sidhe craft, a featureless lozenge of silver that sat in dock on spindly legs that seemed too slender to hold the craft’s weight up against gravity, artificial or otherwise.  Possessing neither control surfaces nor thruster ports, it glimmered in the bright halogen spotlights illuminating the hollow box that was the docking port’s internal bay.

     Catching Vaughn and Finn’s eyes examining his craft, Deks smiled.

  “I know she doesn’t look like much but she’ll get us where we need to go.”  He assured them with a nod when they turned to look at him.

     Vaughn could only shake her head in amazement as she turned to look at the shuttle once again.  It was like no craft she had seen before and, having served extensively in various Naval Arm vessels, she had seen a good number of human craft.  Beside the sleek Sidhe vessel, they were ungainly monsters, thruster ports, maneuvering nozzles and control vanes sprouting amidst superstructure and support girders, practical and unremarkable.

     This craft was streamlined beauty itself, more art than function.  If she went half as fast as her appearance promised, they wouldn’t take long to leave the inner system and reach the massive vessels waiting on the outer rim.

     A slap on the airlock activation panel just to the side of the arm’s entrance cycled open the heavy doors that protected the arrival chamber from the interior of the arm, in case the arm was breeched by something happening in the bay.  Well lit, the arm stretched to where a soft dock was made with the side of the Sidhe craft, its open portal a warm, welcoming light that beckoned to them from about twenty metres away.

     As soon as the heavy airlock door was completely out of the way, pulled into the bulkhead on either side of the entrance, Deks was moving confidently down the arm, his stride easy and relaxed.  Faced with following the Sidhe or being left behind, Vaughn and Finn quickly stepped after him, pausing only at the end of the arm.

     Halfway into the Sidhe craft, Deks turned to beckon them in, his smile never wavering.

  “You have my word, remember?”  He said.  Spurred on by his smile and a wave of new courage, the two humans finished the journey, stepping from the arm and the world they knew into the world of the Pax and the shuttle.

     Stepping across the portal’s threshold, the two humans quickly discovered the shuttle was as remarkable on the inside as it was on the out.  The portal opened into a small antechamber that, while resembling an airlock, didn’t have the heavy doors both associated with such a protected entrance.  Instead the inner entrance was a smooth oval, the door’s thick, inner edge heavily inscribed with intricate and sinuous symbols, similar to the ones on the silver cylinder.  The antechamber too seemed to lack corners and edges, an organic space in bluish silver that was both inviting and comforting.  Yet, other than the symbols on the doorframe and several larger ones on the chamber’s ceiling, it was entirely featureless, lacking even control pads to open and close the ship’s outer door.