Children Of Gaia

Chapter 15

Felix stirred in his sleeping bag, he was roused suddenly by a powerful and strange sensation he could not immediately identify. He sensed a ranging mixture of emotions he found quite odd grouped all together. In part there was sheer terror accompanied by amazement and other feelings of overall excitement and relief. Making it outside of his tent he found everything shrouded in darkness despite the morning temperature already rising, everyone he could see around him was staring upward. He averted his gaze skyward to find what was casting the tremendous shadow on the village in addition to much of the surrounding terrain. The Tarraxen ship, their only means back home to Gaia, had arrived. No one uttered a word as it slowly positioned itself away from the village and began to land. Easily five times the length of a Titan, the survivors were blown away by the sheer size of the alien craft. It came to rest on the surface and a small hatch near the ground opened upwards allowing a second to drop down forming a ramp. The entire camp rushed over excitedly to greet the occupants of the visiting ship.

Felix squeezed Maddison's hand eagerly awaiting their next adventure, as a figure stepped out onto the ramp. In the daylight they could see it was an artificial humanoid. Ronai, Argai and Emelia stepped toward the bottom of the ramp to greet the visitor first. From where they stood Felix and Maddison were unable to hear what was being said.

Felix spoke in a forced whisper to Lloyd standing to the other side of Eva, "can you hear what they're saying? I wonder if that's some kind of attendant, like a robot butler," he chuckled quietly.

"I can sort of hear them but I have no idea what they're saying, I think it's another language," answered Lloyd as Eva rolled her eyes. Then Emelia walked over to her pod with the visitor and the visitor stepped inside alone. Having remained inside for a grand total of two minutes the visitor then stepped back outside, much to the gratification of Felix and Lloyd who were almost contemplating sitting down for the rest of their wait. Now appearing to have a sense of purpose the visitor approached Felix and Lloyd with powerful strides. It had a masculine form and its armour was both sleek and contoured in a uniform translucent metallic colour appearing to both reflect and capture light in a rather mesmerising fashion. The face was plain, its only features were a triangular cluster of three small black lenses that sat centred in the upper half. The raw beauty of its form was captured only in its innate simplicity.

It looked them up and down briefly before addressing them. "Greetings. I am Erranos. I have been informed you wish to travel off this world," the voice was mono-toned and lacking inflection but for the most part still sounded rather human.

"Uh-yes," mumbled Felix, "we come from a space station," he continued but he was cut off.

"Gaia. Yes, I know this," interjected Erranos.

"But how?" questioned Lloyd with excitement in his voice.

"Like the Emissary, I too possess the memories of Maddison," responded Erranos causing Maddison's ears to prick and she stormed over.

"She has a name now, you may call her Emelia," Maddison informed Erranos politely trying not to be too brash as she then realised she may have finally bitten off more than she could chew.

"Understood. You may now load your people," instructed Erranos as the ship began to open from the side producing an ingress roughly half of its total length.

"Whoa, hang on a minute there," said Lloyd, "we still have many questions, are you the only one on that whole ship? Are you another Emissary?" Lloyd prattled on struggling to grasp their situation.

Erranos faced Lloyd quickly as if offended, "I am no Emissary. I am Tarrax. And yes, there are no others on board this ship," responded Erranos presumably insulted though his tone remained consistent.