Fracture - Book One of the Glass Galaxy Trilogy

Chapter 12: Kaeya Part 2

Galactic Year 10,702

42 Years Earlier

The engineers hurried away from the Prodigy, signaling to me to tell me that it was ready to go. I stepped up into the cockpit, settling into the pilot's seat, and Stell climbed in behind me. She stood behind my seat, hooking her suit to several tethers that would keep her from flying around like the contents of a rattle, and I closed the cockpit door, submerging us in that absolute darkness I was so familiar with.

My hands flew over the controls, pressing buttons and turning dials, and I pushed out a wave of psychic energy as I hit the final switch. The Prodigy hummed to life, the Polaris Core beneath us firing up, and the cockpit's many lights and screens burst into life. The screens were covered in various readings, -atmospheric pressure, gravitational strength, a damage monitor, etc- and they were all reading nominal. I closed my eyes and let my senses drift through the Prodigy, feeling the flow of my energy through its skeleton and into its systems. I felt a heavy weight on my mind, like my brain was filled with a hundred litres of water, and I knew that I was finished linking into the Prodigy.

I donned my helmet, as Stell had already done, and I was treated to a view of the hanger through the Prodigy's eyes. Everything always seemed so small when I was looking through its eyes, almost like the people moving around the hanger were just little ants labouring away beneath me. It made me feel like I was something inhuman, something that was different than all of them, and I did not like it.

I shook my head, focusing my thoughts on the task at hand as I gripped the piloting controls. The catwalk had already folded back, and with a thought and a motion of the joysticks I walked out of the recess I stood in and into the hanger at large. I turned towards the end of the hanger and reached up to activate my comms, connecting to the bridge of the Liberation.

"Captain Kaeya sortieing in the Prodigy," I said to them, " designation Y-7-49. Open hanger doors."

The launch-officer responded as the hanger doors began slowly peeling away, revealing the empty void of space beyond, "Hanger doors are open and the runway is clear; you are free to launch, Captain. Good luck."

I flicked the comms off again. "Hold on tight, Stell," I shouted over the noise of the fired-up flight-system, "this is going to be unpleasant for you."

I heard her screaming as we fired forwards like a bullet from a ballistic rifle, the Prodigy's prototype thruster systems accelerating us at just over 30 metres per second, and a moment later we shot into space. The Liberation closed its hanger doors behind us, rapidly shrinking in the distance, and I plotted a course planet-side.

"I thought that you'd rode passenger before?" I asked Stell, smirking beneath my helmet.

She took several deep breaths before responding, "In a Maestro! This is a lot faster, dammit!"

I smiled, "I did warn you, you know."

"I did warn you," she mimicked my voice mockingly. "How're your ribs? Any pain? Even with the inertia dampening this is a lot of g's to be enduring with a freshly healed rib."

"Just the discomfort of my suit trying to squeeze me to death. You know, the normal." I reversed my thrust, pushing against the gravitational pull of the planet below. The planet wasn't anything particularly special, really. It was small, covered in lush rainforests with only a few major settlements dotting its surface. It had avoided the attention of The Alliance because of its unimpressive nature, but that had been to the detriment of its citizens. A dictator had seized control of the nation that ruled its cities, and he had pressed millions of citizens into slavery in order to amass personal wealth. The people had rebelled, fighting against him for their freedom, but that dictator had come up with a ruthless ploy to exterminate them.