073: Drifted Dimension – Four
Engines idling. Ships passing. People shouting. A tinny radio playing in the distance. Nevara knew these sounds well.
She was mid stride when she came to the realization she was walking through the hangar where she first learned how to fly, and as she came to a stop, so did the noise around her.
A pair of the stocky training craft - surplus shuttles that were well past their prime, but kept functional by the dedication of the hobbyist mechanics that shared the workshop space next door - were hanging in the air as if suspended by wires, the flare of their thrusters frozen in place. Frowning, Nevara took another step forward, but the scenery remained immobile.
"It spoils the illusion when you catch on to it."
Nevara turned to the woman who spoke, her mandibles twitching as she said, "You died."
Captain Keleria Faitesa dor'Landan ael-Jedath barked out a laugh at that, her own mandibles flared in a wide grin, posted up against one of the other shuttles not currently frozen in flight. The black of her carapace was a stark contrast to the crisp white uniform she was wearing, the dress uniform of the Apiarius' navy.
The uniform she'd been killed in when the military outpost she'd been stationed at had been destroyed by a Thalatte raiding force.
If Keleria had been in a ship when they'd struck, Nevara knew that the Thalatte wouldn't have been able to kill her.
"That's something I always liked about you," Keleria said as she pushed off from the ship, strolling over to her, "To the point, no faffing about with useless drivel. We're going to need that for what's ahead."
The nostalgia of seeing her like this was bittersweet, but Nevara wouldn't let herself be distracted, not when there were more important matters at hand.
"I'm waking up now. I don't have time for daydreams."
"You don't have a choice." Keleria Said as she came to a stop before her, "Your friends are dying, but you can't get to them-"
"What?!"
"Still a temper on you! Good, glad the Thalatte didn't bludgeon that out of you, but you need to let me finish first," Keleria reprimanded, "You can't get to them via a direct route. You're gonna have to go around, and that's why I got pulled out of my well deserved slumber."
"By what?"
"By that." Keleria told her, pointing at the open hangar door.
Beyond the shuttles, it wasn't the yellow light of Kypellon's sun that was kept at bay by the awning above the door, but the burning light of two white stars.
Nevara felt the unmistakable sensation of being watched. It was strikingly similar to how she felt the first time she laid eyes on Malra, not that long ago.
"What is it?" Her voice came out quieter than she intended, awed.
Keleria could only shrug, staring at those twin suns as if they were a math problem she didn't have the answer for, not some mystery vaster than she could comprehend. "It brought me here to show you the ropes, that's all I know."
Nevara turned to her sharply. "It speaks to you? Can you speak to it? Question it?"
"Not really. I've just got a vague idea of what it wants."
"And that doesn't fill you with curiosity at all?"
Another shrug as Keleria said, "When I'm done here, I'm going back to wherever it was it pulled me out of, so questions would be a waste of time. Speaking of, you're on borrowed time, none of which you can afford to waste. Come along."
Keleria struck off toward one of the grounded shuttles, and Nevara fell into step behind her without a second thought. She'd spent the majority of her childhood doing so, the instinct still strong after all this time.
Her group home had been just over the hill from where this hangar actually lay beyond whatever this dream world was. Her earliest memory was of peering over the ledge of her bedroom window to watch the shuttles pass by overhead. The moment she'd been old enough to leave the home without adult supervision, she'd come straight to this place, the allure of flight something she couldn't resist. She was too young to get behind the controls of a shuttle herself, but some of the hobbyist pilots who boarded their shuttles here had been kind enough to take her out on joyrides. She couldn't get enough, even going so far as to get a part time job at the hangar, doing odd jobs for either the mechanics or pilots there for a couple hours after school each day, just for the chance to fly.
Keleria had been a handful of years older than her, taking flying lessons at the time, and she had been quick to take Nevara under her wing. Completely against the safety regulations of the school, she had allowed Nevara to fly her ship a handful of times, something that could have gotten her own learners licence revoked, and prevented Nevara from ever getting hers. When Nevara asked her why, once she learned the severity of what would happen if any of the flight instructors found out, Keleria had shrugged and told her, "You've got a gift got flying, I knew you wouldn't get caught."
Once Nevara had been old enough to test for her own learner's license, Keleria had been the one to grade her, and she'd worn the shit eatingist grin the entire time.
She joined up with the Apiarius navy as a pilot a few years later, while Nevara herself sought a career in the civilian sector. Despite that, the Thalatte ruined both their lives. After Keleria went off to the navy, Nevara never saw her again.
Until now.
Stopping beside one of the custom kit fighters that had been the envy of half the pilots Nevara knew here, Keleria patted its hull. "You'll have a proper craft for it when the time comes, but this'll do for a test run."
"A test run for what?" Nevara asked, even as she followed Keleria into the cockpit.
Keleria took the copilot's seat, motioning for Nevara to take the main chair as she said, "The edge of death."
Nevara turned to shoot a look at her, but Keleria only returned a bemused smile. "Come on now, just like when we were young. Take us out."
Keleria had always been the opposite of forthcoming. Turning to the controls, Nevara got the ship ready to fly.
In seconds she had it powered on, the thrusters lifting it from the ground, and as it did, the hangar burned away, scorched by the unrelenting glare of the twin white suns. Nevara snapped the solar shielding on a moment later, and the view outside changed along with it.
No longer trapped in a blinding white glare, they were instead hovering in a realm that reminded her of subspace, only inverted. An oil slick black instead of pastel iridescence.
"So, full disclosure, I don't entirely understand what's going on with all this," Keleria said, idly swivelling her chair back in forth as she looked over at Nevara, "Like I said, I don't understand the thing that summoned me, I just have an impression of what it wants. And that's for me to show you how to get from here to there, and back again. Only everything isn't what it seems, because whatever this place is, it doesn't follow the rules of the world we come from, so it doesn't actually look like this, you know? This is just a representation that your mind is conjuring to make sense of what it's seeing. Truth told, I don't know if I'm actually me, or your memory of me."
Nevara gave her a searching look. "You don't seem particularly perturbed by that."
Another shrug from Keleria as she said, "I'm still going to be dead once this is done either way, so there's no reason to chafe my plates about it. That thing, on the other hand, is having a conniption."
Beyond the screen, like viewing a figure through a translucent sheet, Nevara could make out the twin suns, set in the outline of a massive body like two eyes. Its gaze was locked onto the pair of them.
"You remember Derntangan? The retired mechanic who would throw tantrums when the others treated this place like the hobby shop it was instead of the well oiled machine that it wasn't? It's kinda like that." Keleria told her, levelling a critical glare at the thing that was observing them, "I've no idea what it actually is, but it's as dead as I am, just as unable to affect the living world, but it thinks that its the only thing that can. Which is humorous, considering the fact it had to make a mouthpiece out of me in order to speak to you, and even then, the message is not crystal clear."
Nevara wasn't sure what emotion the giant before them was feeling, but she knew it wasn't a positive one. Something Keleria found funny, because she let out another bark of laughter before saying, "But enough about that. More important things to worry about than the feelings of the dead when you've got people still clinging to life and all. The ones you're here to find, edge of death, like I said, and you'll need to get to them in order to pull them out."
"And you are to be my guide?" Nevara asked.
Keleria hummed in disagreement, saying, "I'm here to teach you how to read the map, as it were. You've been temporarily pulled off somewhere to the side, close enough to give you a feel for it, but not so real as to put you in danger, because flying this close to death? Riskier than that jaunt you and yours took through Bernetigan space. Nervy. I never saw you going Kith. It suits you. Now, the tricky part - you're going to have to feel where you're going more than rely on your sensors. Take us out and I'll show you how."
Flight had always come naturally to Nevara. Even as a child, the yoke in her hands when it really shouldn't have been, not yet familiar with what any of the information on the instruments meant, she had been guided by some innate sense as she'd puttered through the skies of her homeworld.
Soaring through the void of whatever this place was supposed to be, she found herself falling back on these old instincts, Keleria calling out minor corrections as they went.
"This sensation? You're going to want to open the throttle up when you actually experience it. If you slow down in this type of space, it'll cost you time you don't have."
"Don't get caught in this type of slipstream. It's fast, sure, but it'll pull you too far off course to make it worth it."
Whatever this place was made of, it did not appreciate the invasion of the fighter craft within it. Not the frictionless glide of hard vacuum, but something more akin to the pressure of water. The controls of the craft fought her every step of the way, but the situation was too critical for Nevara to permit this type of misbehaviour.
She could feel them nearing something, an oppressive sense that had her on edge, forcing the question out of her.
"What's death like?"
That shocked a laugh out of Keleria. "As casual as if you were asking about my opinion on a sweet!"
Nevara shot her a glare, which sent Keleria into another bout of laugher. It was a few moments before she reigned in control of herself enough to say, "The dying part was quick, at least. They'd managed to set off a chain reaction in the outpost's reactor, so I was vaporized before I realized it. After that? It's not too dissimilar to dreaming. Well, the part I was in, at least."
At Nevara's confused look, Keleria clarified, "You know how there were all those different religions all throughout history back home? All those myths about the afterlife? And how every other race out there has just as many? I think, in some way, they're all right. Or maybe it's more like we made them right? We made them real with the strength of our belief in them? Every type of heaven and hell, every limbo, every space in between, every oblivion and reincarnation cycle, it's all out there, happening at the same time, because we want it to be happening. I don't know if it's the dead who made it, or the living who keep it, but there's a lot left out there, and like it life, you can make the experience what you want it to be."
"Please don't tell me the rich brought their wealth with them to the afterlife." Nevara grumbled, which got another laugh out of Keleria.
"I mean, I'm sure some technically did? Finances are all fake anyway, so I bet there are still some playing pretend in whatever their version of death looks like. But actual, physical things don't make the journey, so all those tombs that archaeologists throughout our history raided were just the rich hoarding what they don't want others to have, even though it's of no use to them anymore. Speaking of, nice move stealing those Hyttan mechs out from under the noses of the Enlightened. It's always good to see those sorts thwarted once in a while."
"We've been driven." Nevara told her, and Keleria hummed at that.
"And that's what's led you to this place, those machines." She mused, twisting her seat back and forth again, "Something about them didn't react to the thing your pale friend did to your captain. Rough stuff, that bond business, I'm not surprised the Usgaisjan buried it."
"How much do you know about what we've been up to?" Nevara asked, stealing a look Keleria's way.
"Not everything, just a highlight reel's worth of information." Keleria told her, "That thing out there? It's connected to your mechs somehow, I'm really sure in what way. But it gave some context for the sake of this training mission it pulled me out of death for. Or rather, I think it tried to give me everything, but even though I'm a spirit or whatever I am, my mind still seems to work the same as it did when it was just meat, so it was like trying to watch a dozen videos at ten times speed while also being asked questions the entire time, so the fact I was able to glean as much as I did out of all that mess is a miracle. So I know those machines have been compelling you to find the entire set of them, which you did, only someone got to your friend first, and really did a number on her. No idea where those responsible ended up, but I hope it's nowhere nice."
"Of that we are of one mind." Nevara replied grimly.
The fighter craft rocked then, like it was being buffeted by a strong crosswind, and Keleria sat up stiffly in her seat, her nonchalant manner melting away as she said, "We're getting close to the facsimile of your destination. It's vitally important that you pay attention to everything you feel here."
Much how like this inky subspace was an inversion of what it was back outside of this realm, the space that they emerged out into was a white void littered with black stars. The key difference being that they were not pinpricks of light eons away from them, but hovering as close as asteroids in a debris field, and it was all Nevara could do to wrench the fighter craft out of the way as they nearly careened into it.
"You'll have to be just as sharp when it comes to the real thing," Keleria said, her eyes intent on the view before them, "A few bumps in here won't matter, but if you brush into one of these things when the actual time comes, I don't know what kind of death will be in store for you."
"So no pressure." Nevara quipped, just as intent on what she was doing. Keleria's mandibles twitched in the barest hint of a grin, but she kept quiet, letting Nevara do what she did best.
Proximity was not the only different between the normal stars of the waking world, and the black stars of whatever this dreaming realm was. They moved through the space, some drifting, some hurtling, and so unlike actual asteroids, some of them even attempted to give chase. A deep, echoing emptiness filled the space whenever any of them got too close for comfort, an unnerving absence of sound that was somehow deafening in how eradicating it felt. In how hungry they felt.
"I'm sure you can guess what your destination is going to be." Keleria said quietly, and Nevara darted her gaze over to where she had gestured.
'Void' was the only term her mind could come up with for what she was seeing, a black wall set against the white of this realm, an endless expanse that crouched there like a persistence hunter waiting for her to tire. Unlike the black not-stars of this place, things hungry enough to try chasing down their prey, this void could afford to wait. Whatever prey it was after, it would outlast it, of that Nevara was certain.
She turned towards it with no hesitation.
As she grew closer, the black stars, mercifully, began to thin out, but an overwhelming pressure took their place. All of the base, animal instincts within Nevara screamed at her to turn back, to fly as far away from this place as fast as she could, but she'd caught sight of something that overrode that fear.
Two specks of light teetering precariously close to the void - one of gold flecked blue, and the other of ash streaked white.
"You've got it, exactly like this." Keleria breathed next to, the cheer returning to her voice, "Remember what you've done here, for you'll have to follow it in reverse to get back. I won't be around to sit copilot when you do."
"Thank you for this," Nevara said, taking her eyes off those two points of light in order to look at Keleria one last time, "I'm sorry I won't ever be able to repay you for all that you've done for me."
"Hey, none of that. You can repay me by living long enough to get out of here, so I don't have to listen to the deluge of its thoughts anymore." Keleria grinned at her, nodding to the void they were approaching. Deep in the depths of it, like looking at a submerged object on the sea floor from above the surface of the ocean, Nevara could make out the outline and glowing eyes of whatever it was those twin suns were supposed to represent in this altered state.
"Now get out of here and get to your people. Time's wasting." Keleria said, and with that she grabbed the copilot's yoke and activated the pilot's emergency escape.
A protective shell wrapped around her seat in an instant, and Nevara was launched out and away from the fighter craft a moment later. As she rocketed away, she watched for as long as she could as Keleria flew the fighter into the very heart of the void, but she passed out before she could watch her pass the threshold, whatever the g-forces in this realm were dragging her under.
The current taking her to who knew where.