Ohm sped in, ceasing the aqua jet before he was over the deck so he didn’t splash water everywhere. He sailed over the railing. As he hit the deck, Ohm tucked into a roll. He sprang to his feet as Kai and Oa turned around to look at him.
“She learns quickly. I never thought hunting photorbs would be so instinctive for her,” Ohm praised, as Susan sauntered onto the deck, clearly gloating. She reared up to her normal girth, placing her big paws on Kai’s shoulders, her bushy tail waving out behind her and brushing all over Ohm’s face.
“Champions clearly have the right to gloat,” Oa joked as Ohm sputtered, brushing the undulating sparky tail out of the way.
“At least we have a photorb now. Put that in the flood lamp, and we can fly into whatever storm is waiting for us at Istaar,” Ohm said, chuckling.
“Hooray! Susan, you are the best varl there ever was!” Kai said, hugging her purple friend.
“Would you like Fred and I to fly out to the flood lamp and replace the photorb?” Ohm asked.
“No thanks, Susan and I can figure it out. The access hatch to the floodlight is inside the ARI. I rebuilt it that way so I didn’t have to fix things from the outside. I don’t have a talking water jet to fly around with, and Susan gets too bored to hold me steady while I work,” Kai explained, lightly jabbing Susan with her elbow.
“I am a fusion pack. The idea that I am a mere water jet is a gross misconception,” Fred scoffed, clearly offended.
“Oops, sorry again, Fred. You just seem to be best at flying Ohm around,” Kai apologized as she turned away and hurried into the engineering room. Susan trailed behind, head held high.
“Of all the Awoken I have met, there is a high probability that she is not my favorite,” Fred pouted.
“I prefer to think of you as a complex fusion device, too,” Ohm consoled his talking backpack.
“So do you remember how to get to Istaar?” Oa asked, leaning over the railing to look down on the land far below the lightning forest.
“Yes. Fred and I have explored this world extensively. Fred keeps track of every location since he has the better memory,” Ohm said, walking over to stand next to Oa. “The peak is to our front, so Istaar is that way.” He pointed to the horizon on their right.
They heard a crash followed by Susan’s thunderous roar. Then they heard several more crashes coming from the engineering room behind them. They turned to look as the door opened up.
“This won’t take long if Susan doesn’t let the photorb go again to play with it,” Kai said, sounding flustered as she stumbled out, tools in hand.
Susan floated out, growling with the little light ball trapped in her mouth.
“Would you both mind cleaning up the mess back there while I fix the floodlight?” Kai asked, still ruffled as she stumbled into the power hub chamber. Susan followed, and the entrance closed behind them.
“Sure, no problem,” Oa called after Kai as the door was closing.
The pair walked over to the engine chamber door, not knowing what to expect. Oa hit the panel on the side, and the portal slid open. Oa had never seen the engineering room before; but as he stared into the mess, he could see why it had put Kai in a bad mood. The room was rectangular in shape and cozy in size. It was lit by more orange lighting in the roof. Soft blue beams flickered around the chamber, originating from the wall opposite the door. Oa looked at the far wall; the lower half was filled with dials, knobs, and levers. The upper half of the wall was cut open to reveal the, slowly spinning rotor of the ship’s engine. The soft blue light of the engine leaked out into the room. The walls to either side of the door were lined with hatches and shelves. Tools and other supplies from the shelves were strewn about. Several hatches had been knocked open, their contents spilling out on the floor.
Ohm waded into the mess. He began to pick up instruments and set them back into their places. Oa did not know where anything went so he just started to pick up things. “Where do these go, Ohm?” he asked, trying to make himself useful.
“Probably over there,” Ohm responded pointing to an open hatch across the room. Between the two of them, the mess was cleaned up quickly. Oa closed the last open storage hatch and turned back to look at the whole place. It was immaculate. Ohm had several objects in his arms, some bundles of fabric, and a coil of thick metal fibers.
“What’s all that for?” Oa asked.
“I’m going to make myself a sling to lay in when my infection puts me to sleep,” Ohm said, hitting the exit panel. The door opened, and he walked back out onto the deck. Oa followed and watched as Ohm began to tie the metal fibers between the two metal support struts on the deck.
“Alright, I am going to go check on Kai and Susan,” Oa said as he walked over to the front door and opened it. He walked inside the power hub chamber and the door slid shut behind him. He looked down to see Kai torso-deep in a maintenance shaft beneath the forward viewport. Susan had crammed herself in next to Kai.
“Susan shrink down!” Kai exclaimed with humored frustration. The varl seemed to disappear as she contracted down so small that Oa could not spot her. After a few moments, Kai pulled herself back out of the hatch, tools in hand. “Hey Oa! I just got finished replacing the light. Here is the old photorb.” She held up a gleaming black chunk of rock. “This must be the burned-out one. I am going to keep it cuz it looks pretty.” She put the stone in her pocket and stood up. “Wait, where did the old cloud-bomb go?” A minuscule Susan popped up next to Kai’s shoulder. The tiny varl let out what she intended to be a mighty roar, but it came out as an adorable squeal. Both Oa and Kai burst into laughter. The lightning varl ballooned out, filling the chamber and squishing the two Awoken up against the wall. Her face was pressed up against Oa and Kai. She panted happily, as if sharing in the joke. “Very funny! Let us down,” Kai complained through muffled mirth. Susan reduced to her normal size, bouncing around the room with excitement.
Kai quickly recovered from the varl’s antics. “We’re finally ready to go!” She rushed to the door, opened it, and poked her head out. “Let’s move! The ship is ready.” After a moment, Ohm walked in. “Wait, can you go put these back?” She grabbed the tools off the floor and handed them to him. The old Awoken gave an overly dramatic sigh, but nodded and left. Kai walked back over to the maintenance shaft and closed the access panel. She looked up at Oa. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to fly the ARI to Istaar.”
“Of course, Ohm and I will navigate for you,” Oa replied. He knew finding Istaar would be an important accomplishment for Kai.
Ohm walked back into the chamber. He sat down in the power hub, and Fred immediately reconnected with the ARI. Fred finished synchronizing with the vessel, and the lights in the room brightened slightly as the ARI returned to full power. Oa could hear the engine gearing up. Anticipating the coming journey, Susan floated down the corridor to her storm simulator.
“Your engine room is clean. I apologize if not everything is in the proper place,” Ohm said.
“Don’t worry about it. Thanks for helping me with that,” Kai replied. She stood up and walked with Oa to the bridge. Oa took a seat in the copilot’s chair. Kai turned Susan’s storm simulator on and eased herself into the pilot’s chair next to Oa.
“Ohm says Istaar is that way,” Oa told Kai, pointing to the spot on the horizon Ohm had showed him earlier.
“Initiating engine burn,” Kai informed the crew.
“Activating restraint harnesses,” Fred replied. The harnesses on the seats snapped into place. Kai placed her hand into the navigation dome then used her other hand to push the speed adjustor forward. The ARI glided out of the forest. Kai’s movements were a bit hesitant at first. A few of the energy branches nearly grazed the ship, but Kai quickly figured out the controls. By the time they exited the forest, she was flying the ARI with ease. Pushing the speed adjustor to three quarters power, Kai sent them zipping toward the spot Oa had pointed to. She kept them flying steady and straight, not feeling comfortable enough to attempt the aerial acrobatics Oa had experimented with earlier.
Oa looked over at Kai. Her leg was bouncing slightly as her heel nervously tapped the floor. Whatever was waiting for them at Istaar, Oa knew it would force Kai to confront the fate of her friends, ill or fair. He looked ahead toward a growing dark spot on the horizon. Istaar laid there, the focal point of the world’s current disarray. The young Awoken hoped the city held some answers for them all.
Episode 07 - Reflections of the Past
The ARI tore through the air, racing headlong into the dim shadows that surrounded Istaar. An oppressive fog swelled out to engulf them, growing heavier as the ship waded further into the frigid embrace. Oa and Kai stared out of the cockpit window to see that the golden glow of the sky had receded. The rivers of light evaded the desolate region, forsaking Istaar to its despair. A pall of gloom stretched from the barren rock below to the darkened clouds above, swallowing the city in eternal darkness and obscuring it from any passerby's.
Oa had dimmed the lighting in the cockpit to enjoy the sky; but as they entered the outskirts of the city, he reconsidered the decision. He reached up and twisted a glowing orange knob on a panel above his head. The cockpit brightened considerably. The added light was a small comfort to the crew in the growing dusk. Next to Oa, Kai steadily guided the ARI’s flight toward her lost home.
“Are you sure we are heading the right way?” Kai asked for the fourth time since they left the lightning forest.
“We are still heading in the correct direction,” Fred informed her. Oa had been watching Kai periodically throughout the flight. They had been traveling for most of a cycle. She had relaxed at first, but then her nervous leg twitch started again once they passed into the shadow of the darkened sky.
Oa sensed that her repeated question contained a hidden plea to alter their course and go somewhere else; somewhere that would not force her to accept the events long absent from her mind.
Perhaps she just refuses to remember
, Oa thought to himself. He spun his chair around to see what Susan was doing. Behind the two pilot seats, Susan napped inside her storm simulator, the soft crackles of energy providing a constant ambient noise that grew comforting in the stillness.
“Oa, activate the flood lamp,” Ohm commanded calmly, breaking through the young Awoken’s silent ruminations. Oa turned back around and began to scan over the numerous controls in front of him. Kai glanced over and pointed at a switch that sat next to a raised circular glowing panel.
“That switch there turns the lamp on. Use the sensor pad next to it to point the beam,” Kai instructed curtly. She returned her attention to piloting the ship. Oa sensed a slight strain in Kai’s voice. She wasn’t her normal cheery self.
Oa flipped the switch on and a bright yellow dot appeared on the glowing white panel next to the switch. Outside the ARI, the flood lamp activated. The iris in the lamp opened releasing the concentrated power of the photorb within. The beam cut through the fog in front of the vessel. Oa placed his finger onto the control pad, and the yellow dot tracked his movements as he traced a path across the pad. The flood lamp obeyed his guiding motions, scanning the space in front of the ARI. The beam was so powerful that the mist fled from its touch, regrouping just outside the periphery of the glow. Oa continued to pan the light back and forth, scanning the area in front of the ship.
Kai reduced the ARI’s speed as they hesitantly crept through the darkness. “It’s so thick! We are going to hit something,” she said, nervously shifting in her seat.
“We should be above any structures. Oa, focus the lamp beneath us and look for some buildings,” Ohm replied, his voice calm.
Oa moved his finger to the bottom of the control pad, adjusting the flood lamp so that it pointed down from its mount at a sharp angle. He slid his finger back and forth, cutting wide swaths through the haze as he searched for any signs of the city. For a long time, nothing happened. He considered asking Fred how many weebles had passed when suddenly, he noticed a hesitant metallic gleam through the fumes.
“There!” Oa exclaimed, pointing toward the faint sheen. Kai responded quickly. She brought the ARI around and pointed it at the spot that Oa was illuminating with the floodlight.
“It’s definitely the top of a building. Nice work, Oa. We’re in the city!” Kai said with a mixture of thrill and apprehension. She eased the ship down and sailed alongside the superstructure. As they passed by, Oa illuminated the architecture, revealing a large metal tower. Its surface glinted eerily in the light and appeared to be undamaged. There were no signs of aging. Immaculate window panes reflected the disk shaped vessel as it slowly passed by. The fog oozed back into place behind the ship, reclaiming the tower in its jealous grasp.
Kai increased the ARI’s speed slightly. Then she leaned her left hand forward in the control dome, swooping down into the city. All around them, abandoned spires of the once great metropolis seemed to rise up out of the mist, watching over their journey like silent sentinels from the past. Oa aimed the flood lamp at several of the towers they passed. Each one appeared untouched. The alloys were untarnished and not a single window was cracked or shattered. He illuminated a bridge stretching between two of the buildings. Oddly, not all of the fog dispersed. Several patches of the murky shadow remained, lingering in the light. Oa did not have time to point out the shadows, as Kai drifted under the crossway. She turned the ship to the left passing between another two towers. The pristine stillness was eerie, as Oa had expected to see desolate ruins, not a completely intact city.
“I didn’t know finding my old place would be so easy. I only see like … seven buildings, maybe? Four hundred at most,” Kai joked, attempting to lighten the foreboding mood that had settled amidst the crew of the ARI. Oa was glad her jovial side couldn’t be contained by the gloom outside for long.
“Fred has begun collecting data on the shroud surrounding the city, and he believes the ARI’s scanners can pinpoint its source. We will start our search there” Ohm said. His voice had grown colder to match the mist hovering outside the hull. “It seems the focal point spreads out in a nature very akin to that of an explosion.”
“Explosion? Everything is undamaged, Ohm. What are you talking about?” Oa asked, confused.
“I don’t understand yet either, Oa. There was only one weapon that could have done something like this. We need to find the center of the blast. The view screen in front of you will direct us to the focal point. Fred has input the parameters for the scan,” Ohm replied somberly.
Kai looked over at Oa. He shrugged, not knowing what weapon Ohm was talking about. Then he remembered Ohm’s revelation about Cale and Jess.
Could their research be involved somehow?
he thought. This was not the aftermath of catastrophe Oa had imagined when Ohm told him Istaar had been destroyed.
“Alright, but remember we are still going to find Kai’s friends, Ohm. That was part of the deal. Kai, I think we should come back around that tower and head the other way because these buildings are getting shorter. We don’t want to go too far from the center of the city,” Oa said.
After a moment, Ohm responded. “I have a hunch that both Cale and Jess will be at the source of this shroud.”
All this must be related to the research he was referring to,
Oa thought to himself. He looked over at Kai. Her heel was bouncing nervously again. He turned to the view screen on the console in front of him. The ARI was depicted as a little blue dot at the center of the screen. The cityscape was depicted by grey outlines. Around the ARI, numerous pulsing red lines permeated the city. The lines jaggedly traced the explosion’s signature that Fred had taught the ship to read. Oa realized that the lines flowed together, all heading toward a singular point of origin. He followed the trail, guiding Kai through the city toward the epicenter of the blast. Suddenly, their destination appeared on the screen, a chaotic jumble of red so thick it looked solid. From within the node, every trace of the mysterious explosion emitted out to the ends of the city.
“We are approaching the source of whatever Fred is tracking. It’s coming from within a squat, round structure just past those three towers,” Oa said, pointing ahead.
Kai banked the ARI to the left, arcing around the farthest spire Oa had pointed to. She pulled back on the speed adjustor, bringing her ship to a halt. As they hovered in midair, Oa pointed the flood lamp at three towers curved in a half circle. Each structure had a giant metal glyph on it. From left to right, the glyphs read ‘UNI’. He tilted the beam down below the superstructures to where a squat round building stood on a single metal pillar rising out of the ground. The upper architecture consisted of a broad flat disk with six pods hanging from its edges. The pods appeared to be a mishmash of cubes, collaged together. The rooftop was marked with yellow guides that Oa assumed indicated landing zones. He aimed the lamp at the center of the guides.
“We should land there, Kai. This has to be the where Fred’s scans are leading us to,” Oa said, looking over at Kai. She sat motionless, staring at the building.
“Kai,” Ohm’s voice cut through the silence.
Kai jumped slightly. “Sorry Ohm. I just remembered this place … I think.”
Oa could see that the eeriness of the city was getting to Kai so he reached over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Nothing seems to be damaged here. Maybe whatever caused this mist only concealed Istaar and did no harm. Awoken might still be here somewhere. Cale and Jess could still be alright,” he insisted reassuringly.
Ohm might be mistaken. Something is definitely wrong here, but Awoken could still be alive. I don’t see a reason for them to be dead
, he reasoned to himself.
The landing pads extended from the bottom of the ARI, and Kai set the ship down within the perimeter of the guides. It settled with a slight bump. The safety restraints retracted off of the crew, and Oa reached forward to shut off the floodlight. Immediately, darkness surged back around the hull. Oa got up out of the chair and walked back to turn off Susan’s storm simulator.
“Come on, Susan; it’s time to help Kai find her friends,” Oa said, waking up the varl. Susan uncurled out into the cockpit and filled the space as she stretched out lazily. She reared her head up and yawned. Her whole body lit up with new energy. Oa shoved the giant creature down the hallway, snickering. “There’s no time for all that. We have to be quick.” He looked back to see Kai slowly getting out of her pilot’s seat; he waited for her to catch up. “It’s going to be alright, Kai. You have Ohm and I to watch your back, no matter what we find in there.” Kai nodded silently and they followed Susan down the corridor.
They arrived in the power-hub chamber to find Susan already floating eagerly by the exit. As Ohm stood up out of his mechanical throne, Fred disconnected from the ship. The lights overhead dimmed slightly as the ARI entered into a dormant state, in order to conserve the power it had stored up during the flight.
Ohm leaned forward slightly and rolled his shoulders as if to adjust the weight of Fred on his back. “We are going to need some way of navigating through the mist outside.”
Oa called Seeker from its satchel. The little orb leaped to his hand. “That’s easy. I will just make Seeker glow really bright.”
Ohm shot a look at him. “You can try, but if Fred says it is drawing power from the Void then you must stop.”
Kai looked back and forth at both of them. “I don’t get it. What’s the worst that little ball can do?”
“Ohm and Fred believe that some of Seeker’s abilities can be traced by the Legion. But we’re in this thick haze, and we need a light. I think we will be fine,” Oa explained optimistically. He levitated the silver orb in his palm.
Seeker knows how to glow, I have seen it when I heal
. He willed the strange device to become luminous. The orb responded slowly, growing brighter as he focused. The light cast the group’s shadow up against the chamber walls. Seeker’s blaze filled the room, until even the shadows where lit.
“A happy medium between complete darkness and blinding light will suffice,” Fred remarked dryly.
“I can dim it, of course,” Oa laughed. With a thought, he diminished Seeker’s light, reducing it to a comfortable glow.
“That’s gonna work fine,” Kai said. She clapped Oa on the back then turned toward the exit. “Well, all my preparation and work rebuilding the ARI has led me here. I have two new friends supporting me and the greatest varl ever. I’m ready.” She walked over to the door, opened it, and walked out. Susan followed, floating just behind her.
Oa looked at Ohm. “Is there a chance her friends are alright?”
“With those two, anything is possible,” Ohm replied warmly.
They walked out to the open deck and joined Susan and Kai on the ARI’s exit ramp. Kai reached over and pulled a heavy lever on the hull. With a whirr of turning gears, the deck lowered them down. They stepped off the ramp, looking around in silence at the rooftop they had landed on. The access ramp folded up behind them with a heavy thump. Seeker illuminated a decent portion of the landing zone around them but not enough to see the edges of the structure. The fog isolated them in a cocoon of light.
“Well, we sure got off to a roaring start; but what now?” Ohm asked. “Fred can’t get us any closer to the source because he claims to be too accurate.” He reached back and patted the pack condescendingly.
“The source of the explosion is everywhere around us. According to my readings, once the explosion was initiated, each point of space in the vicinity of this building simultaneously became the source of the blast. It is unlikely that I would guess the exact point that started the chain of events,” Fred countered defensively.
“A lightning varl can find the source,” Kai replied quietly as she stroked Susan’s head. “Thank you for leading us here Fred. I would never have found this without place without your theory. Cale and Jess seem to be involved in this. I want to know what part they played.”
“You’re welcome,” Fred replied as warmly as his monotone voice would allow.
Kai reached down and grabbed a tiny chunk of metal from a pocket in her baggy jumpsuit. She held it up to Susan. The object was a small cube carved with intricate symbols too minuscule for Oa to read from where he stood. “This used to be Cale’s. He carved it for Jess. She gave it to me just before—before …” Kai let her words trail off as she struggled to remember.