Day: 2

Year of event: 22+ 10^(10.1395)

Notes: n/a

Although the past few cycles had been far from pleasant, Re'A took comfort in the fact that they were almost over.

She had decided that it was high time for her to set sail, or to get her ass out of dodge as some of the people on Cosmos 6 would put it. She had only been presented with such a golden opportunity once before, back then she was young, and she let it slide out of a misplaced sense of loyalty. Back then she didn't fully understand why it was that nobody saw her as their equal. She thought it was because of something she had done or said. She had grown wiser since.

Re'A had heard rumours of a group of Faklara, her people, forming a militia to liberate their kind and retake control of their homeworld. This rumour had been confirmed during her confinement to the commissioner's quarters when she overheard a conversation between Tully and Illia. The latter, being in charge of illim traffic to and from the station, informed the former that Blue Spire (the literal translation to common English of the name of the Faklar militia), had offered on several thousand credits to buy Re'A from him. But, considering the fact that she was still here, Re'A assumed that Illia refused that deal and asked for more money.

This wasn't the end of the world, as, once again, she had a plan. Now that the commissioner had started to leave her unsupervised for long periods of time, she had managed to hack into his computer. That task proved to be surprisingly easy, since his password was "Password456". Which she discovered through trial and error. His computer kept records of all shuttle traffic that came and went through the station.

On this particular day, two ships arrived at Cosmos 6.

The first docked in the morning. It was a multi-family vacation cruiser, which according to its license was due to be decommissioned soon. Its passengers probably wanted to take their ship for one last ride before selling it for parts. Chances were, they were even planning on selling it here and leaving on a fresh, newly bought, model.

The other ship arrived later in the day. It was one of them fancy rich-Human cruisers. Chances were, it also had very high security. Re'A had only seen that kind of ship from afar, but she remembered very clearly the metal-incrusted faces of the cyborgs guarding it. They seemed ready to attack anyone who did so little as look in their direction.

With a few more clicks on the flat keyboard attached to Tully's computer, Re'A accessed the live feed from the docking bay.

She couldn't help but feel impressed at the sight of the Human ship. It took heavy inspiration from the classic falcon models, but its main body was more angular and its wings were currently partially retracted to occupy less space. It didn't have a single scratch or trace of fuel burns on it. And if the absence of discoloration around the airlock hatch was anything to go by, this was one of its first flights.

Re'A spent a few minutes going through the different security feeds. Although a few of them did show people approaching the ship, none of the clips showed any trace of security guards. This of course did not mean that the ship wasn't guarded on the inside. But if its owner was only rich enough to afford internal security, it also meant that Re'A could probably take them on.

A set of footsteps passed by the door of the commissioner's office. Re'A quickly turned off the computer, and ducked under the desk. The footsteps stopped in front of the door. Then a knock was heard. It was quickly followed by another.

"Fucking hell." A male voice muttered. "The one time I need him he ain't here."

After another endless second of waiting, the visitor left. This time, the footsteps were much harsher than when he'd arrived.

Re'A got from under the desk, just in time to watch a non-defined figure walk down the corridor through the murky window next to the door.

It was important to note that the window was murky on purpose, as a style choice of sorts. Tully had never been a fan of curtains, but he also disliked people observing his every movement whenever they passed by his office. When he first arrived at the station, he thought that the off-grey semi-transparent plexiglass would be a good middle ground. Back then he’d severely underestimated the time he’d be spending patrolling all the bars on Cosmos 6, and especially those that featured exotic dancers.

Re'A quickly logged back into the computer. There was a third option available to her, and that was to storm away on the freight ship due to depart in a few hours. That ship had been stationed on Cosmos 6 for almost a full 24 hours, and was now likely done with unloading its merchandise.

This third option was her least favourite of the three because she was certain she would very quickly be discovered and forced to work, probably until death. Of course, that was still a risk on either of the small ships, but both of them held hope for possible negotiations whereas freight ships were notorious for always prioritising internal efficiency.

Her tails began swirling around her legs nervously. She considered all three of her options, and came to the conclusion that she would survive the longest on the human ship. One of the most important factors in this decision was also the fact that she did not have any kind of translator implant, be it internal or external, and Common English was one of the only languages she fluently spoke.

She let her tails rest against her body once she’d made that decision. The next part of her plan was much harder. The vents in the office section of the station were too small for her to crawl through, meaning that she would have to traverse almost half of the station in the open. She knew she could hide in the vents in the industrial area without any trouble, she had done it before while moving merchandise for Lozzo. The other tricky part was getting from the vents in the docking bay onto the ship itself. Unlike its second sister, the 1st docking bay still had all of its vent covers intact. Furthermore, it was regularly patrolled by guards. Re’A’s only option was to blend in the masses long enough to get aboard. This all relied on her not getting caught by her ex-supervisor, the commissioner, Illia, or Lozzo himself.

Overall, her odds were pretty good, considering how big the station was.

Re’A took extra care when “lock-picking” the magnetic lock that held her prisoner in the commissioner’s office. She also took extra care to sneak through the old maintenance tunnels, which now served as backstreets, to avoid the other residents as much as possible. At this hour, most of the station’s occupants were at work, but someone must have noticed her, despite her best efforts, and reported the sighting to the guards.

Before Re’A knew it, shots were being fired, and she was forced to flee deeper into the station’s guts.

With uncharacteristic expertise, she stomped on one of the floor panels, right in the spot where the artificial gravity it was producing was the weakest, to dislodge it. She propped the panel up, and slid under it. The panel was too thick and too heavy to slide back in place from underneath, and Re’A had counted on the superstition of the local guards to keep them away from the active maintenance tunnels which ran everywhere under the station. However, luck was not on her side.

The neon lights lining the maintenance tunnels automatically turned on as they detected movement. These tunnels were never used for anything other than their intended purpose, and even then, the technicians working on this station never ventured down there without an escort or armed guards. There were many rumours about what exactly lived in these dusty corridors, distinguishable from one another only by their patterns of oil stains and coloured cables.

“Stop right there!” A female voice yelled. Her voice bounced off the dirty walls, and carried far ahead.

Re’A did not look back as she turned a corner. She carried on running until she arrived at a three-way junction. There, she shortly paused to try and see if there were any indicators of which way would lead her to the industrial area. Unfortunately, she saw nothing but cable-covered walls. She quickly glanced behind and saw three Gromlinds in red uniforms, blasters in hand, and seemingly ready to fire. In a split-second decision, Re’A took the right-hand turn.

The woman who’d yelled just seconds ago dashed through the corridor to catch up with her target. But the distance was too great, so she took aim with her blaster. The silent shot of energy went wide, and hit a bundle of cables suspended at the ceiling. They detached and fell like a curtain of tentacles over the corridor. The female guard managed to dodge them, however, the guard following her wasn’t as lucky. He swore to by all the stars as he tried to free himself from the synthetic net. His third companion gave him a mocking laugh as he passed by.

Re'A glanced around once more to see how close her pursuers had gotten, and by doing so failed to avoid a puddle of fluid on the floor. She slipped and fell into a greasy mess. Next thing she knew, the Gromlind guard was over her. She tried to kick into the guard’s legs, but the other woman expertly dodged.

“He, not that tough, are we?” The guard grinned as she changed the setting of her gun to the maximum non-lethal level.

She fired her gun, and Re’A rolled to the side, easily dodging the shot. The guard swore and shot again, but she must have lost her focus, as the shot went wide again, and hit the ceiling once again. With a hiss proper to plastic tubes carrying oxygen through the station, another bundle of cables and tubing detached from the ceiling.

Re’A promptly jumped up, and aimed an uppercut and punch at the guard. The Gromlind blocked both just in time, but stumbled backward, dropping her weapon.

Suddenly a second guard appeared from behind the corner, and quickly aimed his gun at the Faklar. Evidentially he was a better shot than his colleague, since he did not even have to be in melee range for the shots to hit. Re’A gasped in pain, as she raised an arm to her left shoulder. There, at the point of impact, blueish liquid was bubbling up through her damaged dermal scales.

The Faklar shoved aside the blaster that lay on the floor, held in her breath, and dashed through the still-hissing semi-suspended tubing. Oxygen in large amounts was toxic to her species. She felt her tails tangle up with the cables, but she yanked free and dashed further through the corridor. She passed two intersections before stopping in front of a large side corridor. She could feel a cold breeze coming from it, which could have been a sign of it leading to the industrial area.

The female Gromlind tried to follow suit, but she slipped over the oil spill, and landed into the dangling cables. She heard her partner reminding her how this would not have been an issue had she not been such a terrible shot. But as the latter tried to squeeze past her, whatever metal structure that was holding the cables attached to the ceiling gave in, and he found himself slipping into an impassable wall of synthetic tubing.

“Well, there goes that.” He said, as he laid half-buried on the floor.

“Whatever. I hope they won’t ask us to pay for damages.” The other guard answered.

Re’A heard both of her pursuers tumbling into something. Not wanting to give them the chance to catch up to her again, she entered the large side corridor.

She ventured deeper and deeper into the station’s heart, unsure if this was the direction she should be taking. Being somewhat adept to dim lighting, it took her some time to notice that the neon lights along the walls did not light up as intensely as they should. Her mandibles twitched as she tried to pick up any traces of pheromones. The temperature had gotten lower the deeper Re’A ventured into this passageway, and the absence of any ‘smell’ indicated that no one had set foot here in years.

Raising her two non-wounded arms in a guard, Re’A continued walking forwards.

The strangest thing was that at no point did the light get dim enough for her to open her secondary pair of eyes, the one that was designed, so to speak, to see in the dark. So, when Re’A saw a non-distinct shape move somewhere ahead, she assumed it was a trick of the light.

But when the figure slowly started gliding towards the Falkar, Re’A couldn’t help but call out:

“Who’s there?”

In a situation where there was nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide, facing this opponent head-on was the best Re’A could come up with. To her greatest surprise, the figure even answered. It whispered a string of syllables that sounded like words, but not quite.

It stopped in front of Re’A, stretching out and almost filling the whole hallway. Its head, or rather the bulb from which several tentacle-like appendages stretched in various directions, did not have any distinct features. No, that wasn’t quite right. Its face was covered in dozens of smaller tentacles swirling over it, as if not attached to anything.

Re’A slowly dropped her arms to her side. That hadn’t been a conscious decision, but she just couldn’t take her attention away from the faceless shadow for long enough to regain her composure.

The figure repeated the same incomprehensible string of syllables. Re’A could almost understand it. She had heard something similar somewhere, at some point, but whenever she tried to remember, it seemed to be just out of reach, as if her memory was getting clouded by those same dark worms which crawled over this creature’s face.

“Child of Sivera, you do not speak your mother’s tongue.” The creature suddenly said in Common English.

Sivera, that was a place, Re’A was almost sure of it.

“How did you end up in the lands of men who play gods?” The creature asked.

It was safe to assume that he had asked that same question twice before, only in a different tongue.

“There was a war, and I was taken.” Re’A answered, once again by no will of her own. “Who are you?” She then asked, briefly regaining control of her tongue.

“I am a watcher, and a seer. I will not harm you.” It answered. “Since you did not choose to enter this realm, I will help you leave it.”

That Re’A was having none of. She pushed through the ethereal wall of swimming strings in her mind, and mastering the last few inches of her free will, threw a punch towards the creature.

Warm tentacles wrapped around her hand. They held her arm tight, and no matter how hard Re’A pulled away, her wrist wouldn’t budge. She felt her will to fight slowly wither, as dark snakes slithered around it.

“You misunderstand.” The creature spoke. “I do not wish to kill you. I wish to help you leave the land which I cannot leave. I too hold no sympathy for those who have no control over their fate, yet play with that of others as if it were clay.”

Re’A felt something cold in her palm. The tentacles forced her hand closed around the small object.

“This will grant you passage aboard the sentient ship. I will guide you there.”

Re’A, who no longer had control over her body, tried to at least maintain control of her mind. But the creature pulled her in closer, until their faces were separated by mere millimetres. The tentacles swirling over its face, slowly, and deliberately, unravelled.

There was something where its face should have been. A star. An eye. A galaxy being born. An explosion of purple and black. The beginning of the universe. A planet being swallowed by a bright white pulsar going supernova.

“Your memories will do as payment.”

Those were the last words Re’A heard before suddenly waking up inside an air vent that opened up on the second docking bay.

Notes:

Due to a technical issue caused by one of our colleagues spilling tea over a computer, the first part of this report was translated into Arabic. It has since been translated back into English, but I would like to apologise on behalf of the ETHC for any awkward “tournures de phrases”.

My colleague Dr. Mathew also wrote an extensive footnote about the Lzrausei (singular form of Lzrausums) the protagonist of this entry encountered. Unfortunately, over 80% of that information would have needed to be partially or fully redacted, so to avoid presenting you with an uncomfortable to read wall of text, I have decided to remove it. If you have any questions regarding the Lzrausums folk, feel free to address them to Dr. Mathew directly.

Current year: 22+e^(23.347)

Redactor signature: E.E. Shwartz