Chapter 5
The moment the ship crossed the dust threshold, I pulled up and right. I knew the Karaak would follow me into the cloud, so if I changed my direction the moment I was off their radar, it was unlikely that they would be able to follow me at all. The dust cloud was dense and spanned thousands of miles in each direction, so the likelihood of coming back into contact with them once we were well and truly deep into the belly of this beast was incredibly slim. However, it was the first few minutes that would be the most intense, because I needed to lose them as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, as well as the Karaak hot on my heels, I also had to deal with the fact that I was flying blind. The short-distance sensors were operating, but they only showed me about a fifteen-foot radius around the ship, which at our current speed, only gave me a split-second reaction time. Objects suddenly appeared in front of me out of nowhere, and I had to swerve like a maniac to avoid crashing nose-first into space debris, such as abandoned ships and huge asteroids.
We saw pilots’ chairs, broken weaponry, and chunks of various destroyed spaceships, and I started to get the impression that we weren’t the first lunatics to fly into the dust cloud. It was also clear that a lot of the people that had taken the plunge had met a very painful and unfortunate end.
I just had to make sure that we didn’t join them.
I flew wildly through the dusty graveyard and made sure to change direction every so often, to make it even harder for the Karaak to follow us. I couldn’t see them on any of my close-range sensors, so I was pretty sure we were in the clear. But, one could never be too careful.
We didn’t know anything for certain about the Karaak and the kind of technology that they had at their disposal, so, even though common sense told me that it was unlikely they could see us in the dust, it was possible that they still knew exactly where we were and were preparing to ambush us when we least expected it.
It was for that reason, and the fact that asteroids kept appearing out of nowhere wherever I flew, that my entire body was on high alert. My senses were heightened, my mind felt sharp, and my reflexes were faster than they ever had been. Under my control, the ship dodged and weaved around obstructions and raced through the swirling abyss we had found ourselves in.
A part of me had begun to think that flying into the dust cloud was a bad idea. Of course, we had had no other option at the time and, as far as we were aware, it had helped us to lose the Karaak ship that was after us. However, I had the creeping realization that I had lost my bearings. My sense of direction was great normally, but that was when I had markers or landmarks to go off of.
In the cloud, where all the eye could see in front of it was dust, dust, and more dust, I had no idea how the hell I was going to find our way out of it. We couldn’t risk going back toward Lilacron in case there was another Karaak ship waiting for us, although there was no fear of that since I had no idea which direction Lilacron was from where we were now. All I knew was that we had to go through the cloud, but I had no idea what lay inside it or how to leave.
Still, I didn’t have time to think about all of that right now. I just had to focus on not killing us all before we even needed to consider how to escape the dust.
After about another ten minutes of flying, paired with some nail-bitingly close calls, I started to ease back on the throttle. It made it easier to avoid the objects in the way of my flight path now that I had more time to react to them, and I allowed myself to relax a tad.
I rolled my shoulders, and though the muscles ached from tension, the movement felt good. I kept glancing between the radar screens on the control panel to check for obstructions and debris, and the front window, through which I could see the dust dancing in front of us. In the light from my ship, the dust looked like glittering sand particles floating on some invisible wave, and I imagined that we were flying inside one massive hourglass.
In fact, it felt like we were frozen in time and the cloud was its own universe where nothing ever changed. We could have been the only living beings for hundreds of miles, and though the Karaak were somewhere inside the cloud as well, I was able to forget about them for a moment and just focus on the orange and purple flecks that swarmed around my ship like harmless, beautiful insects.
As I pulled to the right slightly to avoid a particularly jagged asteroid in front of us, I got the feeling that I was being watched. I glanced over at Rayne and saw that she was watching me intently. At first, I tried to ignore the feeling of her eyes burning holes into my hands and to focus on flying, but eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Why are you watching me?” I asked with an awkward laugh. “You’re making me nervous.”
“Sorry,” she giggled. “I’ll stop.”
“You don’t have to stop,” I said. “But why are you watching me so closely?”
“I’m learning,” she replied.
“Learning?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“You mean, to fly my ship?” I asked.
“Yep,” she replied.
“Why?” I asked with an amused smirk on my face.
“Well, there’s no harm in me knowing how to fly it, is there?” she said.
“True,” I said. “But you have me and Francine to fly it.”
“Well, I may as well learn,” she said. “Who knows, I could turn out to be a better pilot than you. And what would we do if both you and Francine got knocked out or something?”
“In your dreams,” I chuckled, though I was fairly certain that she actually might match me as a pilot if she had the chance. “You’re never getting your hands on these joysticks.”
“Why?” she asked with a smirk. “Are you afraid that I’ll be better than you if you let me have a go?”
“Yes,” I replied, and we both laughed.
“You still need to explain what fingers crossed means,” she said as she turned to look out of the front window instead of my hands.
“Oh, yeah,” I chuckled. “It’s just a phrase from my planet. It means that you really hope something will happen.”
“Is that it?” she asked. “That’s kind of underwhelming.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” I laughed.
“You have some very strange customs,” she said. “With your ‘fingers crossed’s and your ‘thumbs up’s. It’s odd.”
“I guess,” I said. “But I’m sure you have things on Wildern that I’d consider pretty weird. For example, mutant people that live in the dark and eat you if you come too close.”
“Alright, good point,” she giggled. “We do have our own customs, though.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“When you kill someone, you take one of their fingers and keep it on you at all times,” she said.
“No way,” I said. “Really?”
“No, that’s gross,” she laughed. “I can’t believe you fell for that, Will.”
“Hey, I’m a trusting guy,” I said. “Plus, I’ve been to Wildern, and, no offense intended, but it wouldn’t have surprised me that much if it was true.”
“I’m not sure whether or not to be offended,” she chortled.
“I said no offense,” I said.
“Very true,” she laughed. “None taken, then, I suppose.”
“What other customs do you have?” I asked.
“It doesn’t really matter now, does it?” she replied. “I’m never going back there again.”
I expected to hear a hint of sadness in her voice about the fact that she probably wouldn’t go back to her homeworld again, but to my surprise, there wasn’t one.
“I guess not,” I said.
There was a comfortable silence for a while, while I concentrated on navigating through a particularly rock-filled section of the dust cloud. The asteroids in the section were smaller than some of the others we had come across so far, but they were very jagged, and I was sure that if some unlucky ship happened to get hit by one of them, that they would end up floating around in ruins like so many of the ships I had seen.
I was just relieved that we hadn’t found any free-floating dead bodies yet, though we still had quite a bit of time for that to happen. I shuddered at the thought and decided to think about other things instead.
The dust cloud we were in was a huge expanse, and I wondered what could possibly be hidden within its tumultuous walls, other than asteroids and broken ships. I wondered if it was well-known by frequent space travelers and if it was one of those places that they were told never to go. I wondered if adrenaline junkies and risk addicts would fly into it and try to find their way out of it for sport, and I also considered that a lot of the abandoned, smashed ships floating around us could be the remnants of a stupid dare gone awry.
I couldn’t imagine being foolish enough to drive into the cloud unless it was absolutely necessary, like we had been forced to do. And yet, there were always people that chased danger, and I was sure that was the same for most of the species I had met along the way, as well as the ones I had yet to meet.
I also thought about all of the different species I had met so far and how totally mind-blowing it had been. The question of whether or not there was alien life had been a question that thousands of humans had tried to answer over all of our years of existence, and yet I was the first man, as far as I knew, that had confirmed that we weren’t alone in the universe after all.
I thought about the Snoolis I had met in the Aghoa Intergalactic Space Station, as well as all the other weird and wonderful creatures that had stopped at the station while I was there. And then there were the people on Rayne’s home planet, Wildern, who were eerily similar to humans, aside from their bright, glowing green eyes. Sadly, there was also Lilacron, where we had discovered the deceased remnants of Francine’s creators, as well as the horrifying corpse of one of the Karaak, with its fiery orange eyes and disgusting, murderous mouth hidden behind the flaps of skin at the bottom of its face.
The Karaak truly were gruesome creatures, and I couldn’t get the image of its face to disappear from my mind’s eye for long. I had known about the evil race that was coming for Earth, as well as hundreds of other planets, for months now, but for once, putting a face to a name was not such a pleasant experience. I was just relieved that the Lilacrons had been in stasis when the attack had occurred, so they never would have seen it coming, and they wouldn’t have had to watch those creatures destroy everything that they had worked so hard to build.
“How are you, Francine?” I asked as I realized we hadn’t had the opportunity to discuss the deaths of the AI’s creators since the Karaak ship had attacked us.
“I am operating at full capacity,” the AI replied.
“I’m not talking about how you’re operating or the ship,” I said. “I know you’re avoiding the topic. I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“I am an AI,” Francine said. “Therefore, I cannot be emotionally impacted by the deaths of my creators. However, I can have what you would call hope that not all of them have perished in the attack.”
“You really think some may have survived?” I asked.
“I do,” she replied. “And until that prediction is proven to be incorrect, I have decided to believe it to be true.”
“Well, if you’ve decided that, then I agree,” I said. “If your Lilacrons are as smart as you told me they were, then I’m sure there would have been plans in place to make sure someone survived.”
“There were,” Francine said. “I just hope that they had the time to carry them out before the Karaak started to turn their weapons on my creators.”
“That’s a good point as well,” I said. “Can we talk about those huge rocks for a moment? The ones they used to shoot at us. Those were insane.”
“Yes, they were,” Francine said. “I have a hypothesis that they are made out of both chunks of asteroids, but also fused together with the waste from the ship, which would explain the organic matter within them.”
“Gross,” I said as I caught wind of what that could possibly mean the rocks were partly made out of. “But that does make a lot of sense.”
“It does pose the question as to what other kinds of weapons they have at their disposal,” Francine said. “We have also just discovered the yellow, acidic substance they fired from their ship. I will remind you to inspect the damage when we get the opportunity.”
“I thought you said it didn’t get through the shield,” I said.
“It may have weakened it,” Francine said in a firm tone. “There is no harm in looking it over, Will.”
“Sure thing, mom,” I chuckled.
Rayne gave me a puzzled look, and I shook my head to insinuate that she shouldn’t bother asking.
“So, any ideas where we are inside this cloud?” I asked.
“At this moment, your guess is as good as mine,” Francine replied.
“That’s worrying,” I sighed. “Because I’m too lost to even try to guess. Still, no harm in an adventure.”
Francine huffed at my positivity, and even I cringed slightly at what I had just said. I chalked it up to the feeling of claustrophobia that had started to settle in my brain as the dust pressed in around us, and a tiny voice inside my head started to whisper in my ear that we might never find our way out of here. I shook my head to rid myself of such dire thoughts and focused on the expanse of dust.
I told myself that if I kept going straight, I’d eventually hit the edge of the cloud, though I couldn’t be sure how straight we were really flying. The endless bits of rock and dirt were starting to make me cross-eyed, so when the first gap appeared, I wasn’t sure if I really saw it.
“Look there,” I said as I pointed to the opening. “I think it’s a way out of the thick part of this cloud.”
“It looks promising to me,” Rayne said. “I was starting to get worried we’d never find a way out of here.”
“Francine?” I asked.
“I agree,” the AI replied. “Go for it.”
“Alright then,” I said. “Here we go.”
I steered the ship toward the opening, and a moment later, we emerged into a cavernous break in the cloud. There was far less dust around us here, so much so that we were able to see what lay inside the enormous pocket.
There were two planets nestled inside the pocket that were situated right next to each other, so close in fact that I was pretty sure, if they hadn’t been rotating, that a long bridge could have been built between them. I was able to make out water and possibly some sort of plant life on the surfaces of both planets even though there was no nearby star to provide sunlight. I was reminded of some of the other planets in Rayne’s home system, and I wondered if they had once been inhabited, maybe before the dust cloud had formed. Had the arrival of the cloud forced the inhabitants to leave their worlds in search of another planet with more light?
Even though we were still walled in by the cloud, it was nice to have a moment where we felt as though we could breathe, without the dust pushing in on every side of the ship like water around a submarine. We were very clearly the only ship in the vicinity, so I was able to put the ship in autopilot for the moment while I got up and stretched my legs and arms. I did some very unflattering stretches, and once the feeling had returned to all of my muscles, I went over to the living compartment at the back of the ship and poured myself a glass of water. I chugged it down and then poured myself another one. It was gorgeously refreshing, and I could feel the cool liquid as it snaked its way down my throat and into the rest of my body.
“Do you want anything, Rayne?” I asked between mouthfuls of water.
“Water, thank you,” she said and then took a big gulp of the bottle I handed her. “It’s not like I’ve been doing much other than watching you fly.”
I chuckled at that, and then I grabbed a couple of biscuits before returning to the cockpit. I munched on them as I meandered back to my seat and then finished the last of my water.
“That’s better,” I said as I patted my stomach happily.
“Where do we go from here?” Rayne asked.
I sighed and looked around the pocket within the cloud. I also glanced at the radar, which had a wider radius now that the dust wasn’t blocking the sensors as much as before.
On one of the screens, I was able to see another opening at the other end of the pocket, where the cloud wasn’t as dense as the rest of the walls around us. There didn’t seem to be another way out of this part of the cloud, and although I didn’t know if that opening would just take us even deeper into the maze, we didn’t really have much choice. Besides, if it turned out to be even worse on the other side, we could always come back to this rest stop and then head back toward Lilacron.
I buckled myself back in, took control of the ship again, and pointed the ship toward the next opening. The opening turned out to be more than just another doorway, though. It felt like I was entering a tunnel between two caves as we crossed the threshold, only the walls were rippling specks of dust rather than cool, hard stone.
The tunnel was only about the size of my ship and seemed to stretch out quite a distance, but I stayed calm and curious as we pressed on through the passage. The lights from my ship illuminated the dust around us, and the colors in this section of the cloud contained a lot more blue and green hues that resembled the clear water around some tropical island. It was really quite beautiful.
“Francine, this cloud is pretty much in Lilacron’s backyard,” I said. “You can’t tell me that you don’t know anything about it.”
“It has not been explored at great length,” the AI replied. “The missions we did send to investigate only skirted around the edges.”
“But clearly some people have been a lot further in, judging by all the parts of ships we’ve seen,” I said. “Some of them must have made it out and lived to tell the tale, right?”
“Mostly, we just heard the occasional rumor,” Francine said. “But I tend to ignore rumors. They are not based on verifiable facts.”
“Forget facts,” I chuckled. “What have you heard?”
“Well, it is rumored that there is a planet in here somewhere that is called The Crossed Swords,” the AI replied a moment later.
“Awesome name,” I said.
“Indeed,” Francine said. “It will be interesting to see if it still exists.”
“Oh, it exists,” I replied.
“How can you be so sure?” the AI asked.
“Because I think I just found it,” I replied.
We popped out of the end of the tunnel at that exact moment and found ourselves hovering high above a planet that sat alone in its own pocket within the dust cloud. It was a small planet, and most of it was completely dark with no sign of life whatsoever.
However, there was one section of it that glowed so brightly that I could make out the exact shape and size of the city below us. As we got closer, I was able to make out all of the tiny dots that were actually buildings, which were piled on top of one another and covered almost every inch of the glowing city. A few ships emerged from other entrances into the pocket and drifted down toward the city, ships that I hadn’t come across the entire time that we had been inside the cloud. I wondered if these people had also made it here by accident, or if they knew what they were doing.
I glanced at my sensors and tried to check if there was any sign of the Karaak ship being in the area, but as far as my scanners could detect, we were in the clear, for now.
“Whoa,” Rayne said, and the light from the city lit up her bright green eyes so that they shone brightly like light sources of their own.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” I said. “I’m guessing we made it to The Crossed Swords, then.”
“I believe we have,” Francine said.
“What else can you tell us about it?” I asked.
“Well, if it is The Crossed Swords, then it is infamous for being a trading post for what you would call the black market,” the AI replied. “It apparently has very skilled craftsmen when it comes to ships, weapons, and other items, and is a haven for known criminals within the galaxy. Local law enforcement does not enter the cloud, so it is a place where people can disappear.”
“I see,” I said, and then I relayed everything that Francine had told me to Rayne, whose eyes widened.
“Criminals?” Rayne said.
“Yeah,” I replied. “I mean, it’s not like I was expecting it to be some kind of respectable establishment.”
“I guess,” Rayne replied.
“I had only heard rumors of its existence, and I have never come across anyone that has been there,” Francine said. “It appears that anyone who visits The Crossed Swords are either the special few that know exactly how to get here through the cloud, or they arrive by accident, just like we have.”
“Well, you said that it’s a place where people go to disappear,” I said. “And that’s exactly what we need to do for a while. We wanna lay low until the Karaak are far away from us, and then we can get to work trying to find any Lilacron survivors.”
“Agreed,” Francine said.
“Do you think we would be unwelcome down there?” I asked as I brought us closer to the planet.
“Our ship is unmarked and does not have the appearance that it belongs to any hostile planets or law enforcement,” Francine said. “We should be fine to land there.”
“‘Should’ being the key word there,” I sighed. “Still, I really want to have a look and see what this place is like. If only a few people ever get to see this place, then I wanna be one of them.”
“Same,” Rayne said eagerly. “Let’s go down there.”
I was about to take us down when Francine interjected.
“One more thing about The Crossed Swords, Will,” the AI said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“This city is renowned for the number of people that get there and never come back,” she replied.
“Naturally,” I sighed, took a deep breath, and then pointed us toward the planet.