Chasing the Cure and Other Stories

Flight of the Hiryu

It has been five years since my father said those fateful words to me.

"Take the Hiryu and go!"

I have not heard from him since. For the past five years, I have been piloting the Battlestar Hiryu, running away from a planet on the verge of self-destruction. My father had disabled communications and tracking, so the Space Force wouldn't be able to find me. I was on a solo cruise to the oblivion of unknown space, and hopefully, a world of peace.

The first world I came to was inhabited by the Chromos, a species of hairless humanoid beings with green skin. The planet they lived on was one bathed in eternal twilight, covered by obsidian clouds of unknown composition. To compensate for the lack of light, they had eyes twice the size of a human's, two in front and one at the back of their heads. They had mouths, but it was mostly used for eating, as they had no spoken language of their own. They communicated with an array of bioluminescent cells on their chest and back, with a sequence and timing of colored lights for each character in their language. They were very friendly when I first arrived, even helping me stop the Hiryu with a tractor beam when I floundered the deceleration process. It soon became clear there was a language barrier when I tried to say 'hi', but only gasps and wheezes escaped their mouths. Thankfully, I was able to configure my Universal Translator for visual languages, and I was soon wearing an outer shirt fitted with LED arrays.

All was well at first. I settled down in a more illuminated part of a village named Muzu, eager to start a new life. After a month the Chromos requested my help. There was a cave system nearby filled with a fungus that emitted a strange red light. Red was considered offensive to the Chromos, reserved for the foulest of their language. Children could be suspended from schools just for showing a red shade on their chest! No Chromos of sound mind would enter the cave, but they told me it contained artifacts from a lost time and culture. They wanted me to enter the cave and do a little treasure hunting for them. Eager to repay them for their hospitality, I obliged.

They weren't kidding. The fungus grew in every crack and corner of the cave, drowning the whole scene in vivid crimson. Imagine having people surround and yell profanities at you as you try to live your life; that is how the Chromos would feel especially with those big eyes. They had given me a list of items they believe were down there, drawn and described in luminous paints. It was a good thing I had read it before coming down here. I had lost my flashlight and the Translator didn't come with the appropriate filters. I knew that they were trying to find parts for an old machine, one that was supposed to provide a large amount of energy. It surprised me that they would want something like that, given that they seemed pretty self-sufficient. Perhaps they were just trying to recover a piece of culture, much like how humans would try to recover famous shipwrecks.

The cave itself was not particularly treacherous. I stumbled a few times but there was always enough room for me to regain my footing. I was able to grab a few of the items on their list; many were placed in small dents along the cave floor or balanced within a cluster of stalagmites. The first hour was pretty uneventful, and my eyes had grown accustomed to the unnatural colors and a general feeling of isolation. That was why when I saw a group of Chromos lurking around some rock formations, I let out a loud yelp.

They seemed to be more shocked than I was. The three of them jumped as shrill cries exploded from their mouths, made chilling by the acoustics of the cave. One of them backed into a corner, body trembling with heavy breaths. The other two seemed to be frozen in place, their massive eyes trained on me, trying to understand this creature which they have never seen before. I soon realized that these three were not from Muzu. In fact, they were not like the other Chromos I had interacted with. Their skin appeared dark in the red light, so I figured they must be green as well. However, their bioluminescent array was about an inch higher on the chest, and in their frantic discussions, I noticed a lot of bright red. They were speaking a dialect, one that the Chromos I had known would find distasteful. This was a different race from the one that had first greeted me, and this cave was within their domain.