“Firi, please listen…” Ifelse said again, desperately trying to get through to the yellow and white Avali, “The storm over Seinu’s location is currently making surface tracking extremely difficult, you will not be able to fly a shuttle through the cloud-cover and I cannot get a lock on the surface beacon for the teleporter either.”
“I am aware,” Firi snapped as the avali marched through the ship, “This is why I am taking another route.”
The yellow avali was wearing her power armour. She had started putting it on the moment the emergency call had gone out. It was quite impressive, white and pink armoured plates inscribed with avali symbology, hearts and unicorns. It was the girliest, prettiest looking combat rated exosuit Ifelse had ever seen but it really wasn’t a solution to their current problem. The whole thing made her two feet taller, and was incredibly over-designed for external EVA work but it was also one of Firi's pride and joys.
She stopped in front of the vehicle bay airlock used by the exo-pods and deployed the helmet, white metal casing engulfed her head, a pink tinted aerogel visor sealing over her eyes. Several ancillary components drifted across the room, long slender white and pink armoured cases that hooked themselves onto her back; as the last component settled into place she stabbed at the airlock controls which bleeped a negative at her.
“Open the flaming hatch.”
“No,” Ifelse said, “Miss Firi I have explicit orders from the Captain you are not to leave the ship. She is forty minutes away, if anyone can fly through that storm it is Selenu in the Momentum so you have to wait.”
Firi turned and kicked the hatch, “I will cut this thing open if I have to,” a rifle deployed from her a hatch on her left arm, “Open the damn airlock.”
“Firi I am sorry but…”
Ifelse was interrupted as Taran rounded a corner, the teal and orange Avali was in a flap, literally, flapping his arms, wing feathers fluffing up everywhere as he ran up to his sister. Ki rounded the corner after him, the black and white Avali was missing his bionic hand and back-pack computer. He’d clearly leapt straight out of bed and ran down here after Taran and Firi.
“Ifelse,” Taran shouted, “Open the pod bay doors,” he slid to a stop and turned to face the AI’s little avatar, “Let her out… we cannot wait for Selenu.”
“I can't do that Taran,” Ifelse looked between the three agitated Avali and ran through their core knowledge on the Avali species. The AI checked that info against the orders from Selenu and let out a digital sigh, “Very well… pod-bay doors opening.”
Firi hurried into the chamber then paused as Ki grabbed her arm, “No wait, let me suit up and come with you, I can make the drop too!”
“No,” Firi said firmly, removing Ki’s arm and pushing him gently back out of the airlock, “We need you here bro, I will need your mechanical skills helping Taran and Ifelse who are going to assist me from here. Right?”
Ki started to move back toward the armoured Avali but Taran caught Ki’s arm and pulled him away from the airlock hatch, “Yes sis we’ll be here and do what we can to guide you down safely.”
“They will need you more than me Ki,” Firi said firmly, “I believe in you, you’ll make sure I get down from here.”
“I… but…” Ki started to say but Ifelse ordered the door shut and started cycling the lock. Ki started hopping from foot to foot anxiously as Taran peered through the hatch after his sister, one hand resting on the glass. He then asked "Why did you give in?"
“Selenu's orders were to stop her if I could," the jakub said, "I couldn't stop all three of you if you tried to circumvent me. If Firi didn’t blow the door open, Ki here would just re-wire it to ignore my orders or you Taran would issue an override.”
“Well… he’s not wrong”, Ki said with a bit of embarrassment in his tone.
"Smart AI,” Taran said, “Is Selenu coming back here or going straight in for a landing?”
“Selenu is on course to head straight for the surface,” Ifelse said, “The Momentum should be able to cope with this storm.”
Taran nodded as he watched Firi walk out onto the hull and the pod bay doors started to close behind her, "Any idea how long the storm will last?"
Ifelse turned to face their creator as they followed Firi's progress over the hull, firing thrusters to roll the ship and reduce the time it’d take her to line up with the planet below, “The worst of the storm is passing from above Seinu's last known location, but the winds are still treacherous. I predict ninety minutes before it is calm enough to get a shuttle through, Selenu should be able to make it in the Momentum.”
"And the transporter?"
"I'm not receiving the ground beacon signal, it may have been damaged by the storm, I will not make an untethered teleport through that weather. However there is a more immediate concern."
"What is it?" Ki asked, the nervous Avali was twitching, their ears shifting up and down rapidly.
“Once Firi enters the storm clouds I will not be able to communicate with her, the communication laser I would use is the same that should be able to talk to the beacon. I am not getting any return when I point the laser at the planet, the storm is too powerful.”
"Fuck,” Taran sprinted down the corridor, “She is never going to make a exo-suit landing without a beacon or comms. Ifelse unlock the central communications bay I will do what I can.”
“What… what should I do, Taran… Taran!” Ki shouted after him but the teal and orange Avali was in too much of a flap to stop and calm his anxious new brother. Ifelse tried re-assuring him but the AI wasn’t sure the nervous Avali was listening to him, he was staring at the screen showing Firi’s progress across the hull and starting to tremble uncontrollably from the stress. He then bolted after Taran but took the corridor on the right instead that led back toward the elevator instead of following his brother to the communication hub.
Firi was adjusting the settings of her suit, mentally preparing for what she was about to do as the timer in her vision counted down. Normally she enjoyed a good space walk, a chance to try out her suit systems but now was not the time to be frivolous. Her onboard computer informed her that Ifelse had just tried to establish a connection with her command system but it had rebuffed him. A moment later a call came in from the AI and she accepted it.
“Hello Ifelse,” She said, “Did you want to help or just give me more reasons why I can’t do this?”
“One of my directives is to keep you all safe, this is a crazy dangerous manoeuvre you are planning.”
“Yup,” She flicked her eyes over the HUD, then tilted her head back to look up at the planet above them, “But Seinu needs me so either teleport me down or I am off.”
“I cannot teleport you, I do not have a live connection to the beacon… if you are going to do this at least let me access your navigation system and help you do this properly.”
“Fine,” Firi gave the AI access to the Navigation controls, “Check my maths or unlock the teleporter.”
“I told you Firi the weather means I cannot communicate with the beacon, I am hard-coded to not use the teleporter if it is unsafe, currently there is only a 16% chance you’d re-materialise on the surface.”
“Well then,” Firi said, “We are doing this my way, ten seconds until I am aligned for optimum launch, how is my maths?”
“I’ve adjusted the trajectory a bit,” Ifelse said, “but you are good to go if you really won’t stop and wait, Selenu is thirty five minutes away.”
“And then what? She isn’t going to stop to pick me up, even if she hits the atmosphere in thirty minutes it’ll take another twenty to thirty for her to land in this weather. Nope… we launch!”
Firi clicked her heels, releasing the magnetic locks on her armoured boot extensions and they flared to life! Twin jets of plasma launched the yellow avali away from the ship and up or more technically down toward Babupekakkerok. The jets built into the boot extensions on her armour had a kick, two foot tall magnetic bottles filled with inert liquid argon, piped through three rotating magnetic lenses, each one compressing the liquid further and further until it passed the motile point where the atoms in the liquid ignited into energetic plasma.
Selenu had called them bombs, Seinu had smiled indulgently and Chantelle had asked to try them out herself. Right now they were Firi's ticket for getting to the surface in less than thirty minutes. The biggest issue she'd had to overcome was how much force they applied to her body. Even with augments she'd have shattered every bone in her body if she tried to use these unassisted. Even the padding and high end kinetic dispersion grid in standard Avali mil-spec gear wouldn’t have helped. Which was why this exo-suit was a lot bulkier than normal, the inch thick cavity between her body and the armour’s interior padding had been pumped full of a thick semi-liquid gel based ironically on the slime that made up Seinu’s body. It added additional cushioning and supported Firi in its embrace, keeping her from being squished or her organs from popping like balloons from the force.
It took less than five minutes to use up all their fuel and then her rocket boot extensions detached from the base of her actual armoured suit and Firi continued on her trajectory toward the planet at speed.
“How do we look?” She asked the Odyssey’s AI as she ran her eyes over the graphs rolling past her eyes, “It looks ok to me.”
“Confirmed,” Ifelse said, “Atmospheric injection in five minutes… at this speed we will be going fast enough for you to burn into a crisp when we hit the lithosphere.”
Firi adjusted her pitch and pointed her head toward the planet, “Then I suggest we start formatting the shield geometry, I built this programme based off Avali drop-troop specs but you’re smart check the maths.”
“Those shield lattices are designed for drop shuttles… oh very well,” Ifelse sighed, “You could stop you know? Turn back and we go down in a shuttle?”
Firi laughed wildly and loaded up the atmospheric entry protocol for the armour and ordered it to start deploying the shields, “Relax this will work perfectly, you are too coddled in your ship bodies.”
“I like being a ship,” Ifelse grumbled petulantly, “Jumping off the hull and skydiving through the atmosphere is a very silly thing to do! But shield geometry agreed … here we go.”
There wasn’t much to do for the next five to six minutes, Firi fell and entered the upper atmosphere of the planet. The shields deployed from her suit formed a series of complex cones creating a bubble around her that deflected the increasing air-pressure and helped reduce the amount of friction and the heat generated by her speedy plunge into the thickening atmosphere. Sound returned as the avali fell, a constant roar transmitted through her shield bubble as the air outside flared orange, yellow and red before it was whipped aside.
The world below her was gorgeous, in a less serious situation she would have laughed and revelled in this experience. But her baby brother needed her, her silly little slime bro had got himself in trouble and his big sister was coming to rescue him! Below her the cloud layer grew larger, a whorled mass of grey and white that hid the actual land from view. Bathed in the silver-white light of Babupekkakerok's dual moons it looked alarmingly solid but Firi knew it was just water vapour. Soon she would be passing through it and that’s when the real challenge would begin, up here everything was tranquil and still, inside those clouds would be wet and then under them the wind was howling.
“Firi we have a problem,” Ifelse said, “Taran has been working on the laser designator for the ship to surface communicator, but the storm is too violent, as soon as you hit those clouds I will not be able to remain in contact.”
“That’s fine,” Firi said confidently, “I can do the rest of this myself.”
“Your on-board radar won’t be able to penetrate the cloud layer and you will have to constantly update the shield geometry to land safely,” Ifelse said, “You cannot do this blind Firi, the storm is too powerful.”
“I will be fine,” she yelled as the yellow Avali dropped, growing ever closer to the grey surface of beautiful moonlit clouds. She let out a yell of delight as she slammed through the upper layer of the storm. The roar of the wind against her shields seemed to cut off and there was for a minute just soft silence, the earlier heat was gone there was just cold air and streams of water pouring around her shields. She marvelled at the moisture content of the atmosphere, it was practically liquid in here, a good mile or thick clouds; no wonder the storm was so awful.
As Ifelse had predicted all her communication links to the Odyssey had been cut off but she was confident she could do this on her own! Then she was through and the wind returned with a vengeful howl as she dropped out from beneath the bottom of the clouds into a hellish landscape. Snow whirled around her, hail-rattled over the shields and the occasional flicker of lightning could be seen in the distance but the space directly below her was just snow and wind!
Oh how the wind roared around her, the shield bubble was actually becoming a problem. The larger surface area was throwing her trajectory and starting a spin so she dropped the shields and snow whirled directly against her suit. She loaded up the control configuration of the long slender devices attached to the back of her suit but a warning program popped up.
“Altitude too high and wind speed too strong, you need to be closer to the ground, wind must be below 70 kph or else spin speeds will result in terminal velocity.”
“Well fuck,” Firi said as she stared at the weather data… the wind was currently 147 kph and showing no sign of slowing. This was going to make landing a real challenge but she refused to give in, she just had to find a way to make this work and land safely… in the next six minutes.
“Damn it,” Taran shouted, “I have lost her, none of the communication lasers we have are powerful enough to break through this storm. Ifelse can you do anything?”
“I am afraid not,” the AI said, “I have reformatted the system using all the protocols available to me but I cannot get a carrier signal through the storm-cloud.”
Taran cursed and started typing, muttering to himself as he tried to find some way to push a signal through the clouds. Ki watched it all from the doorway, he’d run back up to his room and put on his computer and bionic arm, ready to help if he could but there didn’t seem to be anything he could do. Staggering back out into the hall the black and white Avali stared at the bottle in his hand, he’d picked that up too whilst he was in his room.
“Gonna lose them both,” he muttered, feeling the trembling starting in his limbs again, “Lose them both…” he started to unscrew the cap on the bottle, it was all happening again… he should have killed himself when the others died, now he was going to lose more family members.
“I need more power,” Taran was shouting back in the communication room, “Ifelse there has to be something you can do.”
“Sorry,” Ifelse said, “The communication system just doesn’t have the power to penetrate the storm front…”
“More power…” Ki froze, the bottle raised halfway to his mouth, “More power,” he stared at the bottle, “What the fuck am I doing,” he hurled the bottle down the corridor, the glass shattering against a bulkhead as the bionic Avali ran the opposite way, “They need my help… I am not losing anyone else.”
“Ki, what are you doing?” it was Taran’s voice, he’d come out of the communication room to see what the noise was but the cybernetic Avali ignored his brother, slid to a stop outside another door and brought his bionic arm around. It whirred with power as he punched the locked door, his metallic fingers gripped the gap he’d made between both halves of the door and wrenched it open with a scream of metal and a cascade of sparks.
“KI!” Taran grabbed his other arm, “What are you doing!”
“Getting Firi help,” he laughed maniacally and shook off his brother, hurrying into the room beyond.
“But what… Ki this is weapon control!”
“Exactly,” Ki dropped to his knees in front of a panel and ripped it off the console, “You are using the wrong kind of lasers, get back to the communication control and patch defence laser 17f-q into the com board.”
“I… what…” Taran froze, “You can’t use a defence laser, it'll vaporise her!”
Ki pulled out a bundle of cables and started unplugging and rewiring the control board, fingers clicking rapidly as his bionic fingers deployed a variety of tools, “GO!” he shouted, “I know what I am doing.”
Taran hesitated, chirped and bolted back out of the room, “IFELSE!” Ki screamed and jumped as the AI manifested above the weapon console.
“You don’t have to shout Ki…” the AI sighed, “Also you could have asked; the door to this room is only locked to keep Firi out.
“No time,” he wrenched another panel off the wall and pulled an aerogel circuit board out of the wall and started to plug cables into it, “Get whatever you need loaded up and ready, Firi is going to need help to land safely, this will be ready to go in about thirty seconds, GO!”
“Yes sir,” Ifelse flicked off his avatar and Ki continued rewiring the control board. He had to act fast, there was no way he was losing any other family members.
Things were not going well, try as she might Firi couldn’t find a safe way to deploy the shield wings and slow her descent. Every format she proposed gave her the same error, she was falling too fast, the wind was blowing too strongly. At best she had a ten percent chance of landing safely if she deployed the gravity wings at the lowest altitude but she would probably still go spinning off course and ram a tree. Firi cursed and reset the programming, beginning to try another idea when suddenly the storm rolled backwards.
The air around Firi turned blue for a second and all the snow around her puffed into water and fell away. A circle of clear air a kilometre wide suddenly opened around the yellow Avali as the clouds above seemed to explode into steam. A circular torrent of lightning then slammed out of the sky to batter the ground, a continuous discharge of electricity that flowed like a curtain down the ionised path linking the edge of the opening in the storm and the planet below.
The wind suddenly dropped off as pale moonlight shone down on her and a communication icon flipped up in the middle of her hud. She accepted and laughed in delight as Ifelse’s voice chirped excitedly out of the speakers in her helmet.
“Hello Firi I am downloading a new program into your gravity wings please stand-by, I have to reformat the deployment gradient to a broader range, they’ll slow you faster and closer to the ground safely.”
“Hello to you too,” she laughed, twisting around to stare back up at the circle of clear air and the wall of lightning slamming out of the sky around the edges of the storm, “HOW are you doing this?”
“We are using a communication laser to create a shaft of clear air around you,” Ifelse explained, “This creates some interesting challenges, as you can see the edge of the laser is creating an ionised discharge path so I am having to reformat your landing approach to make sure you avoid crashing through the wall of lightning, please hold on.”
“HOW!” Firi exclaimed, “We don’t have a communication laser that can do this!”
“It’s not a communication laser,” Ifelse said, "Ki re-wired the control system for one of the point defence lasers for taking out incoming missiles. I am not entirely sure what he did, but he reconfigured the power management routines, he changed the physical wiring and now I can use it to punch a hole through the clouds without vaporising you.”
“Oh…” Firi laughed, “That is amazing, tell Ki I love him and he’s amazing!”
“He’s listening in,” Ifelse said, “Are you ready we need to start now or else it’ll be too late.”
“Light me up Ifelse, we’re coming in for a landing,” she glanced at the data in her hud, "Wait does this mean you could have punched a hole through the atmosphere at any time to clear a path for the teleporter?"
"No… this is extremely illegal, stupid, ill advised and I can only do it without boiling you alive because of the changes Ki made."
Firi was quiet for a moment as she processed that then grinned, "Cool… ok now I'm down here can you pin-point the teleporter beacon for me?”
“That I can do,” Ifelse said, “It is here,” a new image appeared on her HUD as it switched to map mode, “Tri’s village is here,” another image appeared, “And there are two more villages within a ten mile radius here and here.”
“Ok… and the coordinates from Seinu’s visor?”
Ifelse was quiet for a moment then a new point appeared, “Here… but this isn’t perfectly accurate Firi, it looks like a point on the path between the village and base camp. The final image of the bug attacking him looks like it was underground.”
“Ok but we will start there… deploying gravity wings!”
The spars on the back of her suit detached and raced away from her then seemed to jerk to a halt pulling her backwards. Each of the spars generated a forcefield that was tethered to a matching anchor that was still attached to her suit. With the fields established they started to spread wide and began to fluoresce with brilliant purple and violet light as the laser beam from the Odyssey refracted through the molecules of air caught within the solid matrix generated by the forcefields. The shields themselves were wrapped around four long blades of artificially manipulated gravity, the pinnacle of avali forcefield tech wrapped about a core of dense gravity that was spinning up to incredible speeds to pump more power into the fields. It was an incredibly sophisticated skydiving technique used to slow down Avali cargo or marine combat drop-pods, the core of manipulated gravity fed more power into the force fields allowing them to spread wider and create wings of force capable of aerobraking something from orbital velocity to something capable of landing safely.
It was also used to bring in ice or rock or metal ore mined from comets and asteroids; launching them at the surface of a new colony world. The blades increased drag, slowing the payloads to safe velocities and bringing the raw material to a safe stop to then be collected for processing.
She'd applied the same principles to her exosuit, but instead of being economically prudent it was all designed to get the yellow Avali to the surface as quickly as possible. Sure it hadn't gone flawlessly and Ifelse was improvising to fix her small miscalculation about the wind that was picking back up as the lightning continued to slam down the ionised edges of the laser clear patch of air but it was working.
The gravity blades were already slowing her down, her velocity was plummeting and her shields flickered back on in a new configuration to deal with the sudden spike in air friction. Slowing down was as energetic as ramming through the atmosphere from space, so the whole wing array and her suit was engulfed in rapidly heating air that exploded into incandescent flame. The deceleration increased even further, Firi was squished into the slime filling her suit, the gooey layer once again protecting her from bone shattering forces as the huge gravity wings spread even wider and slowed the armoured Avali. Internal inertia programmes and gravity pushed Firi into a feet down position as she slowed and descended along the corridor of wind free, clear air like an avenging angel.
It was a magnificent way to land on a planet! As she descended closer to the ground the wings twisted and adjusted their width and size to increase the drag and slow her down even further the flames faded and she could see the breathtaking view of the planet's surface. Just metres away the storm raged but directly below her the moons illuminated a patch of ground and their light refracted through the laser beam making her gravity wings now shine with pearlescent sparkles of silver, it was the most spectacular view she'd ever experienced.
“I really hope no bunnies are watching,” Ifelse lamented, “Or poor Seinu is going to get so shouted at by Director Ck’akk.”
“What are you going on about?” Firi asked as she swept ever closer to the ground.
“You are literally descending from heaven on wings of fire! Do you remember the whole bit about not starting religions?”
“Oh…” Firi laughed, “Serves him right for whatever trouble he is in though… Aren’t we approaching the ground a bit fast?”
“Hmm, yes,” Ifelse said, “Nothing we can do about it now, at this point it's all maths and gravity, this may be a bit of a bumpy landing.”
Firi braced herself inside her armour as her suit came in at speed and rammed into the ground. Snow flashed into steam as her wings cut off and her armour redirected power to the shields as she cartwheeled through the air. She bounced twice more and crashed through the trunk of a Cinati tree before she landed and skidded along the ground, gouging a divot, eight feet deep into the earth as she finally came to a halt. Behind her devastation reigned over the forest as the tree fell, smashing through at least two more before they came to a crashing halt in a pile of shredded bark and trunk; leaves and Cinati fruit raining out of the sky to explode against the super-heated ground.
Firi lay still for a moment and stared at the ground, then slowly she rolled over and looked up at the sky. The ring of lightning had stopped, the overlapping, endless growls of thunder starting to fade away as Ifelse cut the laser. Snow began drifting slowly into the clear column of air as the storm reclaimed the hole Ifelse had punched through the clouds. It was a glorious sight, even to her Avali vision the view was amazing though her armour was making unsettling ping sounds as it cooled.
“Well… it worked!” She tried to sit up but couldn’t move, alerts and warnings flashed across her screen and then her armour ejected. Plates of scorched and carbon scored white and pink armour spiralled off in all directions, hitting snow banks which hissed as the snow boiled. Slowly the unharmed Avali sat up and checked herself over as the layers or slime poured off her body now it was no longer constrained by the armour. Laughing happily she reached up to remove the helmet and tossed it aside. This left her in just the smooth, form fitting black under suit as she stretched before retrieving the emergency pod that had been stored inside the inner cavity with her. It had been protected like her by the slime so was perfectly intact as she opened the case and extracted several tools, weapons and a visor from their foam inserts.
Turning the visor on and slipping it over her eyes she connected to the base camp beacon and from there the Odyssey, “How did we do Ifelse?” she asked as she admired the crumple zone of annihilated trees she’d created.
“You are approximately half a mile from the coordinate zone, you have knocked over five trees but started no fires thanks to the snow. Oh also you are alive, the laser didn't kill anyone and Selenu is doing that thing she does where she groans your name in admiring despair, so welcome back to Babupekkakerok.”
“Anything else I should know?” she asked, “Also tell Ki thanks again, his laser idea saved my bacon.”
“The storm is reclaiming the hole we made, but I am now using Ki’s modified laser in tight beam mode to keep in touch with the surface beacon and through that an open relay to your visor.”
Firi smiled and admired her handiwork one final time as she climbed out of the hole her controlled landing had made, “Groovy.”
Thiln was sneaking through the under-brush not far from the village; snow whirled around the vampire bunny, settling in his fur and weighing down his red and black tartan patterned hat. It was perfect foraging weather just after a screaming snow when the Land was quiet. But the place he was scampering towards was terrifying. He was shit scared, he shouldn’t have been outside like this, the screaming snow had only just passed, bunnies would usually wait longer before going out, heck he shouldn't even have been up in the entrance cave to begin with, now he was actually outside.
But something Seinu had said after Gra’s story the other night had stuck with Thiln. So, like an idiot he had crept up to the entrance of the village and cowered just inside the cave that acted as the main entrance to the village to watch the screaming snow. Seinu said it was just weather, not really the spirits of those murdered by the Extremely horrible, not friends from space. So curious Thiln had crouched inside the cave entrance and watched the storm in horror and awe. It was so loud and he was still convinced he could hear the screams of bunnies, it had been horrible to be on the surface, the lighting and hail and the relentless screaming were all just terrible. But then as it was finally moving away and the screams died down something wondrous happened!
The clouds opened up, they boiled back from the edges of a massive beam of purple light that stabbed out of the skies. The circle was then surrounded by a wondrous waterfall of bright white lightning that slammed out of the sky accompanied by the rumbling screams of the departed! It was glorious and also terrifying and Thiln was sure it was no light storm, those only happened on clear nights and didn’t make the clouds move! Then a minute or two after the beam appeared a creature with wings of fire fell out of the sky!
The flaming wings trailed from a central core that glowed bright white and flickered with bands of orange and yellow flames! Four massive spars of golden flame that roared through the air leaving behind trails of golden motes. It seemed to slow down as it approached the ground, the flame shifting and spreading wider and wider, literally reshaping itself as it fell. Then the fire went, blown up into the sky to fade away and Thiln just saw four wings of radiant silver light filling the sky, carrying a white figure out of the heavens.
It was truly majestic then it had dropped behind a row of Cinati trees between the village and Seinu’s igloo camp. There had been a rush of steam into the air, an almighty crack and a Cinati tree had fallen over which was a terrible thing in and of itself! Thiln had never seen a Cinati tree fall and it had knocked over several others, creating a cacophony of crashing, smashing, splintering sounds.
Eventually silence returned and steam drifted up into the sky under the light of the moon shining through the hole in the clouds. Then against his better judgement Thiln had slunk out of the cave on all fours and scampered towards the disaster!
Now he was here, he could feel the steam in the air, the snow was thinner and the wind had died down. Crawling under a bush Thiln peered out, their tail swaying from side to side as it erased his tracks, keeping his path hidden.
Peeking out he pushed back the rim of his hat and stared at the scene of devastation in awe and fear. A long narrow hole had been carved out of the ground and lying in it was a monster! A huge white, black and pink creature that loomed so very large out of the night! It was so very alien and then began shedding its skin! He jumped and cowered as chunks of its chitinous outer shell whirled off into the night revealing a purple slimy alien with a weird bug-like head.
It had sat up and Thiln watched in horror as the bug pulled off its head revealing four ears and yellow and white feathers. It was an Avali and it was one he knew!
“Firi!” he gasped in surprise as Seinu’s not a bunny sister Avali opened a box and placed an eye covering like Seinu wore over her head. A moment or two later she turned her head to look straight at Thiln and raised a hand in greeting. She said something in their strange language but it was too fast for Thiln to understand more than a few words. She walked over and Thiln carefully, reluctantly crept up to the edge of the bush though he remained firmly under cover, there was no telling which predators were on the prowl after all this destruction.
She crouched down and spoke again and then a second, weird sounding voice spoke in his words, “It is Thiln no? What are you doing here?”
He stared at her for a long moment, this was… this was so surreal, after all the fire and beams of light shining out of the sky here he was talking to an alien as if nothing was going weird.
“I… I was watching the Screaming Snow,” Thiln said nervously and he saw scratchy lines appearing on the inside of Firi’s eye cover as he spoke. She held out a paw toward him and spoke again, he understood the word “safe” and “Seinu” and “me” but the rest of it was garbage until again that strange, emotionless voice spoke after she finished talking.
“You are safe with me, I am here looking for Seinu.”
“Oh…” Thiln shuffled out from under the bush and moved closer to the avali, still warily looking around and inhaling deeply through his nose, placing all the scents, “Seinu is in the village, uhm… why did you fly out of the sky on fire? Did something go wrong?”
The Avali blinked behind her visor as she read the scratchy lines that he thought were his words being shown to her. She then stared down at Thiln for a long moment before speaking and again.
“He is not in the village, he is outside, we got a call he met a…”
She was interrupted as a small sparkling figure appeared out of thin air! Thiln squeaked and hopped back a step to stare at the glowing feathered critter, they said something to Firi then turned to speak to Thiln in a flawless harmony.
“Sorry to startle you, I thought it would be faster if you spoke to me, I am Ifelse and something has gone very wrong.”
“Hi,” Thiln chirped, peering at the little fuzzy glowing critter as they walked on empty air to stand before him before settling on the bunnies outstretched paw. Thiln could actually feel their feet on his paw-pad and yet they could also see through them, “What are you?”
“I am Ifelse,” they sung, “I am the mind of Seinu’s space vessel, that carries him between different Lands.”
“Nice to meet you er… does Firi not know how to sing?”
“She can read it and her visor, the eye covering, can translate your words but she doesn’t speak your song herself. I do, however, so we can talk, though not for long. Something went very wrong, Seinu was walking between the village and their surface igloo when he ran into trouble during the storm.”
“He… he went outside during the Screaming Snow?” Thiln gaped at the little glowing figure, “I... oh no, that is very bad, it is not a safe time.”
“I suspect he didn’t know,” Ifelse said patiently, “We got a picture of the thing that attacked him, can we show you?”
“Ok,” Thiln watched as an image appeared in the air above the weird magenta coloured critter, it was dark, a cave… and there were the green and brown chitinous mandibles of an Arbolin. Thiln shuddered at the sight and looked away, huddling down to the ground and shivering, “I am sorry he is dead… we… he… no one escapes the Arbolin if they get that close.”
“He is not dead,” Ifelse said firmly, “A bug like that couldn’t kill him,”
Thiln glanced up at the Ship-Mind and wiped their eyes with his free paw, “But… but they catch you in a web and bite your head off it is a horrible way to be eaten…”
“Yes it is,” Ifelse said sympathetically, “But Seinu is special, remember how he can change shape, how he became a bunny? That special power will protect him.”
Thiln nodded, not trusting himself to speak as he listened to the little creature, “Do you know where their nearest nest is? Between here and our camp?”
“Yes,” Thiln stood up and dusted snow off his fur before pulling their hat straight. Ifelse was chattering at Firi who retrieved several items from the crater she had made, clipping them around her waist, arms and ears then Thiln led the way nervously toward the outcropping of rocks that the Arbolin lived in. He stopped a good distance back and nervously shuffled from side to side before he decided he should try and be helpful.
“In here,” Thiln pointed, sniffing the air, dropping to all fours and inhaling deeply, “There is a faint scent of Seinu, but the storm has washed out lots of traces.”
Firi said something and marched into the cave, Thiln followed and gasped as she lit up the dark interior! A device attached to her ears filled the cavern with warm white light and Thiln squeaked in horror and clung to her legs as the three Arbolin eating a dead one of their kind scuttled around and screeched at her. They started to move forwards but a device on Firi’s belt moved, there was a sudden pulse of violet light from the machine to the head of each Arbolin and they collapsed to the floor, limbs thrashing around as they died.
“What… what did you do?”
“Nothing to worry about,” Ifelse said reassuringly, “It is safe, now can you smell Seinu we need to find him?”
Thiln was unnerved, he knew that the beings from space had power but to kill three Arbolin as if it was nothing, Firi was powerful. Heck, she had flown out of the sky on wings of fire to find her lost brother! Starting to relax at being in the presence of such a powerful creature Thiln crept into the cave; feeling strangely safe with Firi here. He scampered about and started to sniff, letting his nose separate the different scents to find Seinu.
“If I hadn’t nibbled him this wouldn’t be possible but I can smell him,” Thiln said after a couple of minutes. He turned to see Firi was gathering fragments off the ground, chunks of crystal and white metal, “Oh no… is that.. Is that Seinu’s vi… visor?”
“Yes,” Ifelse said, “But they are not here, Firi has confirmed it, no half eaten Seinu, no goo, so please Thiln, find his trail.”
Thiln nodded and scouted left and right, following the scent, it was stronger near the entrance and yes it went back outside, the stench of bunny fear and adrenaline was very strong but after about a meter he lost it.
“It goes this way,” he pointed, shuffling nervously from foot to foot, “He did leave the cave again, but... but the storm has washed everything out.”
Firi walked over, her avali gadgets scanning, turning from side to side. He could tell how agitated and upset she was. Her scent was spiky… a dangerous and upset scent overlaying the usual stinky reek that Thiln had come to associate with space birds. But Ifelse, the little flickering feathered creature remained calm and at Thiln’s eye level. Oddly the little magic creature smelt calm and quiet, in fact, he smelt fuzzy and tangy, like the scent you got just after it rained and that was a nice scent.
“Ok, we will go in that direction, can you think of anything nearby that would cause him trouble?”
Thiln walked ahead and peered down the hill, there were Cinati trees, ferns and… “Snapping death,” he said, “He ran straight toward a patch of snapping death.”
“Show us,” Ifelse said and with a chirp Thiln scampered forwards, leading the scary, powerful Avali and her magic sky friend toward, well toward death.