In Pursuit of Knowledge~ An Answer

[voidtreckermods]

On day twenty seven, five days after the Voidtreckers arrived on the Void base they receive a message on their SCA.

Voidtreckers. I have managed to piece together the memories you found for me. The ministry have agreed for me to link to one of their viewing rooms so that I can share my findings with you. This will begin in one hour for any who wish to be present.

A room number is included and when they get there they find it a large auditorium with a sphere in the centre. Ministry workers will help them find the right room though they will respectfully step out before the showing begins.

When the hour is up the doors are closed and the sphere begins to glow. Around them a scene begins to play out.

A group of people stand gathered, around eighty in all. Mostly wearing red and blue, a handful in orange, two in purple. No one looks happy.

“We just lost everything.” A man in red is talking to a girl in orange, a girl with silvery spiderweb designs across her arms. All eyes are on her. Her and a girl in blue. “Can you do it?”

A group of orange wearing people gather, faces grim. “It is r’ith.” Xela, the girl with the spiderweb marks is the first to speak, eyes hard. The others all look a little uncomfortable.

“Xe...”

“I know… I noticed. I’m the only one left.” A young man put an arm on her shoulder. She shook her head. “Even if it wasn’t. It’s against the rules.”

“Yes but surely...”

“We can’t go back.” Xela’s voice was firm. “We can’t retreat where we have already been. Not even for a catastrophe.”

“We can’t?” A woman asked, glancing at the group of red team who seemed to be doing their best not to punch anything. “Or we shouldn’t?”

Xela looked sick.

“Xe?”

“Shouldn’t.” She sighed. “I can probably...”

“So it’s possible?”

There is a terrible silence. Xela nodded. “I think so…” Everyone looked at her and she sighed, looking over at everyone else. She spoke louder, to the whole group. “It is possible if you give the order Vian. You hold the highest rank now.”

She gives Vian, the woman in blue, a hard long look, eyes folled with pain. “On your head be it.”

Vian is now the centre of attention. She closes her eyes, a beat. “Do it.”

There is a silence. No one seems to know where to look. Vian glares as if daring them to speak against her. Xela looks sick. Vian turns and walks off.

After a beat one of the orange team steps forwards.

“What do you need Xe?”

“I...” She shakes her head. “I need to do some maths.”

***

“Vian?” A man in red enters a sleeper cabin. Vian is sat on the end of a bunk at the table, growing at where she was writing in a notebook. She writes, crosses something out, writes again.

“Kiel.” She nods at him. He sits opposite, not saying anything, the silence between them grows before Vian pushes the book towards him. “It’s not enough to go back. We need to save them. All of them, not just our crew.”

“Of course.” Kiel nods. “This your plan?”

“No. This is me figuring out that we can’t. We don’t know the threat. We can’t fight it. It was so fast...” She looks at Kiel.

“We evacuate.” his face is hard. “I don’t think we can save the world, not this time. But we can save the people.”

“Not...” Vian sighed. “Not enough. There’s not enough tethering stations. And there’s not enough time.”

“I heard the ministry are developing portable tethering stations.”

“And how many of those do we have Kiel? None. Ours are too slow and even… Just getting people from Thistea to Enrara, we don’t have enough time.”

“Then we focus on Enrara.” Kiel looks at her. “We… I know you want to save them all Vian. But we can only do what is practical.”

Vian looks at him sharply. “We are asking Xe to compromise all her morals. Are we really not even going to try to save her people.”

Kiel is silent, staring at the page. “Could we skip the tethering stations? Tether them directly to us?”

“That’s...”

“I know. But we are already doing something dangerous and illegal. What’s one more thing?”

“We have no idea if that will even form a complete tether...”

“Vian. They are dead anyways. All of them. Anything we try is to reverse that fate. We literally can’t make it worse.”

Vian looks at him hard. She looks exhausted, as if she has aged considerably in the last few hours. Then she closes her eyes again, turns the page, starts writing.

“Can we override this? Do I have enough rank?”

“I think so. We would be hacking the system anyways, rank won’t come into it.”

“Right.. so...” They put their heads together, voices fading to whispers as they continue working.

In a lab those of orange team and many of red and blue scrabble around, tapping away and SCAs, at ICPs and at personal tablets. It is silent and tense and at the centre of everything is Xela. She is sat with headphones on, almost in a daze as she works on a tablet. There is a mug next to her, cold undrunk liquid, forgotten. She looks almost like those who were working on communicating with the train did, distant, as if her mind is not focusing on the room itself but something else.

She starts, looks up around at those working with her, looks back down at her table with a dreadful finality in her eyes.

“I think I have it.” Her voice is tense, tight.

***

Xela sits bathed in void light, leaning back on glass in what seems to be a garden. Vian walks towards her.

“Commander Vian.” Xela nods, formally.

“Xe… Xela. You don’t have to.”

“Yes I do.” She shakes her head. “They told you then. I am sure of the equations. We can go when we are ready. We should not tarry though, the window is not large.”

“I know. We need to meet to discuss the plan, what we will do once there.”

Xela nods. “We can do so. Do you want that now?”

“Xela...” Vian meets Xela’s eyes and sighs. “Yes. If you could gather everyone.”

Xela nods, stands and leaves Vian in silence in the carriage.

***

Everyone is gathered. The atmosphere is slightly different now. Perhaps not calmer, but their pain and rage have purpose now. Focus. No one looks like they might punch a table. Vian and Xela stand at the front, looking grim but determined.

Xela is speaking. “Using the catastrophe system we will travel back to before the destruction of our world. We can’t get past the five hour limit. That’s not a safeguard but a craft issue. However we have managed to force the system to recognise the point of destruction as a catastrophe that we can avert. I have also found a way past the limit that prevents us retredding time we have already trodden.” She looks pale at that, Vian reaches out to touch her arm but she shakes it off.

“Obviously we don’t have time to figure out what those shapes were and stop them.” Vian takes over. “And so our focus is to evacuate everyone. That will mean getting to Enrara and tethering as many people as we can to as many craft as are in dock.” She looks across the room, meeting Kiel’s eyes, who nods reassuringly.

“We’ve also worked to take off the safeguards for tethering. It will allow us to tether without using a tethering station at all. Perhaps even remotely.”

An explosion of noise comes from the orange section of the room.

“Vian that is madness.”

“How could you...”

“Do you know how dangerous that is?”

“Listen to her!” Kiel growls.

Xela’s face is furious. “Vian, you...”
“There’s no tethering stations on Thistea.” Vian says softly and Xela stops in her tracks. The others fall quiet as well.

Vian continues. “I know it is dangerous. That is why some people will remain on board and others will go to Thistea and remote areas of Enrara to attempt to form focus points. The tethers won’t be stable but… It’s better than right now. Everything else we can figure out.”

Some of the crew begin to nod. Vian continues. “Convincing people won’t be easy. But hopefully the fact that we are there with… It’s got to count for something.” She looks around. “Five hours. We have to work fast. Save as many people as we can. Everything else we work out later.” She swallowed.

“We have a few hours before we are there. Mission briefs are being sent to your SCAs. Prepare and then get some rest.”

***

Xe sits with her back against the engine wall, a small metal flute to her lips as she plays a mournful tune.

Vian approaches, saying nothing as she sits down next to Xela, head pressed against the wall. The music continues, notes wrapping around both of them.

Eventually the song comes to an end. A beat of silence, two. “I’m not angry at you.” Xela speaks quietly.

“I know.”

“It is r’ith. It is r’ith for a reason but I am not an elder. I do not know the reason of why it is r’ith.”

“We don’t know why it’s not allowed.” Vian agrees. “We don’t know what we are doing, we don’t know what will happen. But we know what has already happened. We know what we have lost. As Kiel said, they are all dead. We can’t make anything worse.”

Xela lets out a sharp laugh. “Kiel is an idiot, reds think only with their fists.”

“Xe.”

“We don’t know what will happen but we are messing with things none of us understand. Believe me, we may have made everything worse.”

“What could be worse than our whole system being destroyed and most of our crew dead?”

Xela doesn’t answer, after a moment she simply raises her flute back to her lips and begins to play once more.

***

“Shortly arriving in system #1015. Orange team to doors.” Everyone seems ready, uniforms on. The train lurches and shakes as it leaves the void, onto a world. A world and large campus of buildings.

“Voidtreckers, come in?” A voice through their SCAs.

“Yes, it is us.” Vian’s voice. “We’ll explain everything.” She nods at those nearby. “Good luck.” The doors open and most of the orange team, as well as some of the blues jump out.

Lightning cracks through the air. They look up, frowning. The sky is rapidly darkening. Not from the shapes, but actual clouds, thunder rumbling. A flash, the lightning is not bright light but instead colourful, the colours of the void.

“Did you see that?”

“Keep going. We know what we are here to do.”

Another rumble of thunder.

The train rises up into the air, shooting up like a bullet. On board people rapidly tap on their SCA’s. “I think it worked Vi.” Kiel speaks.

“Don’t bring anyone yet. Let’s get to Thistea first.”

The train rocks, as colourful light flashes outside. “Did you see that?”

“That’s new...”

“Red team to doors.”

“Ready?” A small group nodded.

“Not sure they are going to believe us… But we can only do our best.”

The train turns. Out of the window there is a battle in space. Small craft fight large robots around a space station.

The small group of red stand by the door as the train moves towards the space station. Another flash of colourful light. Then, around the station comes a very familiar sight.

The Voidtrecker Express.

“We weren’t here, we were over in...”

“They must be investigating the lightning...”

For a moment there is a terrible silence. Then the train lurches. There is a scream, there are a thousand screams. An utter sense of horror as it feels as if the universe itself is screaming, twisting, trying to escape.

Reality shatters. It’s the only way to explain what happens, the world cracks into a million pieces and the force of it sends those fragments flying.

It might end there, for some voidtreckers. The images fading to darkness. But for others it continues. Almost feeling real, they seem to space out, go into a trance as they feel the next part. There is no rhyme or reason to who experiences this and who does not.

There is darkness. You are falling, falling everywhere and nowhere all at once. Senses are ripped from you, sight, feeling, hearing. Your tongue is ripped out, your ears are filled with lead. You are unmade and made again. Pain, pain seers through you and then all at once it stops.

It is dark. Of course it is dark. You don't have eyes anymore. You don't have ears either. Gone. Taken from you. Lost.

Everything is gone. It is not despair you feel, not really. Some rage, some grief lingers but it is fading fast. That has been taken too. It is not even numbness, that would suggest feelings to numb. You have nothing.

But you do have a purpose. Find Heroes. Save Worlds.

You are the Voidtrecker Express. You reach out and you see them. Those first pinpricks of light. Ten lights in an absolute darkness.

Voidtreckers. Yours. You reach out and pull.

Those who entered the trance come back to themselves, only half a minute has passed. The light of the sphere fades and there is silence.