by Shay Zana
Deo shifts from the couch and warily approaches her. “Then break the rules.”
With chin lowering in a swarm of sorrow and inner conflict, Kitera makes no reply. She can hear his careful approach, giving her the chance to deflect him, but she does not take it. She feels his vast hands cup around her narrow waist, their power so gentle as he smoothes them across the soft material of her garment and her lean stomach, giving her tender encouragement. The very hands that have torn, ripped, smashed, and wielded weapons of death are the most welcome touch she has ever felt. The hands that have killed violently are now written with notes of soft care. With a defeated sigh of comfort and relief at his touch, she sinks back into his warmth and closes her eyes again, tears burning the backs of them as she allows her body to fill with fluttering tingles.
Deo dwells on the feel of her within his arms, a protective instinct waving across him. The moment is surreal to him, and a rush of answers streams to his questions. He now knows the scale of her importance to him. So long has he been pushing the thought of her away, concealing his feelings for her with an ugly mask of anger and defiance. Now, his mind is crystal clear. She is so fair, so feminine and elegant, but with a veiled strength beyond that of any Paragon. A shrouded mist of inner stamina lurks within her. A mental stamina, one that exceeds physical bounds. And she proves this right by her next reaction, breaking away from him again. He frees her with admiration.
Grappling to thread her thoughts back together, Kitera turns on him bravely. “This is forbidden,” she repeats. “We cannot. I am your Cipher, you are my Paragon. I will be exiled and you will be stripped of your honour.”
But the Paragon steps into her, forcing her to step back. “Every time I touch you, you move closer.” As she continues to back away from him, he meets her every step, breaking down her barrier, backing her up against the transparent wall until her body thumps into it and creates a dull echo. Not wanting to force her into anything, Deo restrains his reach, keeping his motive to encouragement, coercing her to give in to her feelings, the feelings he knows she feels. But it is a struggle. They are so close, their bodies mere centimetres from touching, breathing intermingling and body warmth merging. He wants nothing more than to take her fiercely, to grasp her supple body and smother himself in her femininity, to show her his passion, to give her ecstasy, make her feel like the only woman in all dimensions. But he knows he must be gentle with this fair creature, and he stills the rising strength of his manhood. Instead, Deo smoothes his hand up her arm, her velvet skin sending affectionate pulses through his fingertips.
Feeling his confident touch and his warm breath on her, Kitera can feel her will disintegrating, can feel her blood flow with adrenaline and her pulse quickening to a point where her own breathing becomes rushed, heat rising in her chest. This is not a broken soldier fumbling with clouded judgement, this is a virile man who knows what he wants, older than his years and fearless to follow his bold instinct. His closeness and masculinity has her need aching to a point where she feels she will lose control of her restraint, body quivering and eyes hazing under his seductive nearness. His eyes are locked to hers, his brown irises naturally flecked with a warm, almost golden hue. Absorbed by his overwhelming endearment and musky natural scent, her hands move slowly from her sides and dance up his ripped, sturdy abdomen, careful to dodge his wounds as her fingers feel the rise and fall of his muscles. Beneath the fabric, he feels as perfectly muscled as a statue, with broad shoulders that taper down to narrowed hips. Studying his athletically robust body as she feels it, her hands come to rest on his chest, his heartbeat strong, and her eyes lock onto his again.
She can feel the life within him. So much man.
With deliberate slowness, Deo moves closer to her lips, having to bend down just to reach her, his height casting a shadow onto her. Placing his hand beneath her chin, he subtly lifts her head up in guidance, able to feel her hammering pulse point on her neck as the power of her blood sends vibrations across her skin.
At last, their lips meet.
The kiss is soft, tender, but bursting. They feel as though their bodies are elevating, wrapped in blankets of each other’s warmth as they close the distance between their bodies, heartbeats meeting as they press into each other with gathering lust. Their kiss deepens as they explore each other, lost in delirium.
As their lips part, Deo presses his forehead to hers for a moment, gathering his emotions. He feels the subtle pressure as she rests her forehead to his also, gathering her breath and probably her emotions, too. He withdraws to cup her beautiful face in his hands, viewing her as if for the first time, and her stare is full of both lust and anguish.
She places her hands over his. Will her people know of her disobedience and her selfish way? This Paragon will soon be gone from this world, and she is falling in love with him.
Suddenly, Deo’s eyes become fierce and shoot past her to train on something outside the observatory, and Kitera witnesses a horrific reflection in his pupils until all light from the stars is blocked. Gasping in fright, she turns to peer out the window for herself, jaw slack at the sight of a giant greyish planet approaching them from behind Altair. Its dense cloudy atmosphere is wreathed in spouts of gas like geysers, its surface grim in wild volcanic activity. As it tumbles through space, a trailing entourage of planetoids and asteroid clusters are caught in its gravitational field, creating a plethora of debris and dust particles. The sub-zero temperatures have these asteroids encased in ice, their building friction leaving icy vapour behind.
The Cipher and Paragon stand in awe as they watch this massive shadowy form enlarge and pass them by. They are currently in the dark between stars, amongst no star system, so this distorted planet is also a rogue planet, belonging to no parent star, its orbit loose and free to roam widely. No life will exist on the surface, with both the freezing temperatures of space and the choking raw heat of angry boiling magma of a young planet.
“Everyone report to navigation,” they hear Mazayus order through their earchips. “You might want to see this.”
Exchanging glances, Deo and Kitera rush down the hall together, coming to a halt in navigation to find the others transfixed on the stellarium. Ahead is the threshold to the Anaconda System, and within this system lies an inhabited UEU planet, New Reason.
New Reason is a garden planet recently colonised by the UEU. It is under heavy environmental terraforming and construction, the pace increasing the more the population rises. Population estimations by Serenity hit that of 800,000 to 900,000, and thus far the planet is being used as more of a military factory site rather than a residential planet. Still in its early stages of colonisation, like many other colonies out there, New Reason still has a lush supply of native plant life and indigenous wildlife.
The planet owns a system of three dense rings around its mass. The density of the rings extends a few thousand kilometres from New Reason’s equator, and is split by two dark divisions, similar to the dark Cassini Division of Saturn’s rings. The rings are composed of mostly water ice with trace amounts of various other impurities.
“Or you might not want to see this,” Boone adds as the two enter the room.
“See what?” Deo asks, very conscious of Kitera’s tension as she stands beside him.
“The rogue planet that just eclipsed us is on a collision course with New Reason,” Mazayus informs bitterly, padding his fingers at his datakey to adjust the stellarium and follow their course’s trajectory alignment.
Deo glances at Kitera as she appears to be consumed by a wave of nervous nausea.
“Is there anything we can do?” Natheus asks.
And to this, Mazayus only lifts his head to shake it sombrely.
They travel for some time alongside the rogue planet, Altair careful not to get caught in its distorting gravity field. All the team can do is watch helplessly as doom approaches the people of New Reason, and be prepared to assist in any rescue attempt from surviving vessels in orbit. From stellarium visual
s, they can see UEU starships gathering to whisk up as many civilians as possible, loading up with cargo vessels rated for atmosphere.
Their evacuation attempts are desperate and heart wrenching, having the Paragons in sorrowful silence and the Cipher biting back her tears. Kitera can feel the fury of the rogue planet as it hurtles forward at an unstoppable and impossible speed, can feel the oblivious peace of thriving nature upon New Reason as it is blind to its fate, and she can feel the frantic distress of the people, knowing that not everyone will be saved and hundreds of thousands of people are about to die. Her connection with the natural world has her heart in utter agony, covering her mouth with her hands to stop herself from whimpering.
“Diim...We must do something,” she pleads in a crack, looking from the screen to Mazayus, her muscles trembling in spouts of wrenching panic.
“Kitera,” Mazayus issues softly, his face painted by his hopelessness.
She breathes out, hands gripping either arms in a self consoling embrace. “Please, please.” Each Paragon meets her eyes, though containing the same painting.
“There’s nothing we can do, Kiya,” Boone tells her, his own voice on the verge of cracking, the strain in his face showing the breaking wall to a flood. “Don’t watch. Just look away.”
“I know. I just...”
As hesitant attention is drawn back to the screens, Deo’s hand takes hers, holding her steady. Despite the horror, she cannot help but watch in a state of shock.
Now, as the rogue planet is mere minutes away from making impact with New Reason, the UEU starships begin to break away from the colony and clear the impact zone, engaging their main thrusters in a hurry. Many stragglers are left behind, small crafts loaded with civilians. Many starships shift to SSV, warping out of view in a blueshift, but just as many do not in fears that they will be caught in the undetectable field of the approaching distortion.
Finally, the rogue planet’s thick and boiling atmosphere merges with New Reason’s rings, shattering through the fields of debris like they never existed. Swirls of the rings become confused and pulled in separate directions by the new gravitational force applied, some debris igniting in flames upon entry to the atmosphere of the rogue planet, and some simply skipping off the atmosphere and circling. The crew cannot even imagine how this looming menace will appear from ground zero, and they try not to think of all the people left behind on New Reason as they watch the skies helplessly, waiting for death. But imagination travels on cruel paths.
Impact occurs. A blast of heat at the cracking collision bursts over each planet, and massive chunks of planetary debris are ejected outward. The skies and lands of these two feuding spheres are consumed by fire and ash at an alarming rate. Surface mantles are ripped up to shreds, plates crumble, cores crack and present spitting magma, and soon, all life ceases to exist.
Kitera sinks to her knees and sobs quietly, Mazayus closes the stellarium and leans absently on the railing, Boone paces over to a nearby couch and slumps down in it, face crumpled and soaked by grief, Natheus stands perfectly rigid in shock, and Deo moves closer to the tormented Cipher, just standing silently by her side. As she begins to keen loudly, he allows her to sidle up to his shin and bury her face in his stoic strength. But despite his exterior, he is in shock as the images replay in his head over and over again. They have just witnessed a mass extinction event, and many more like it are occurring throughout the galaxy this very moment.
STARS WITHIN STARS
“In breaking news, the UEU colony, New Reason, has just been devastated by one of the most major grade distortion events ever recorded on the scale in recent history. A rogue planet, reportedly unknown and its origins a mystery, has collided at high orbital cycle speeds with New Reason, the impact resulting in catastrophic damage and losses. Our deep space drones captured footage of a UEU evacuation attempt prior to the impact, and analysts estimate that the fleet managed to evacuate at least ten percent of the population. Most of the colonists could not be saved.
“As King Anzac orders galactic evacuation for Serenity citizens, we begin to wonder if the UEU leaders will follow in his footsteps, or if their casualties will continue to mount...”
Mazayus switches off the cluster-wide news station report.
“Look, I can’t just sit on my ass while people die out there,” Boone paces restlessly around the kitchen while Deo, Natheus, and Mazayus all sit at the dining table, either staring blankly down at the plastic tabletop or watching Boone. Empty coffee cups and alcoholic bottles litter the table.
With reports of the horrific events occurring throughout the galaxy, the crew had known the state of many clusters and star systems, but without actually witnessing so many people being killed at once, the realism of the situation had been held at a distance from their minds, and they were able to focus and cloud it all away, but now? To see an entire planet’s human population just vanish so violently. Even the fact that it was a UEU world no longer means anything to them. Those people were all human, regardless of their affiliation.
“In two more days, millions are gonna die,” Boone continues. “We can’t just sit here and wait it out while the king and the admirals take their sweet time co-ordinating an evacuation.” He splatters both palms on the tabletop. “Ladies, find your balls.”
Mazayus sighs and shifts in his seat to resume a more comfortable position. “If the resulting chain reaction has an aftermath of galactic supernovae, we will be killing more people than we would be saving. We must give the king the time he needs to evacuate the galaxy.”
“And what if there is no resulting aftermath? Huh? What if it does shit all?” Boone stops pacing.
Mazayus falls silent and looks to the others. For once, he is lost.
“I’m with Boone on this one,” Deo announces after a considerable silence.
“We may be doing more harm than good by waiting,” Natheus agrees.
At their unified opinions, Mazayus gives them all a steady nod, and at their leader’s agreement, the Paragons’ faces tauten as they realise their time has finally come.
Final preparations begin. The Paragons load up shards, tend to equipment, and warm up their entities in the cybergrid. Boone will be the first to depart from the crew, and he takes what time he has left to study the known facts of the Zion Cluster, the Brutus System, Brutus Superior and the star Brutus itself, wanting the information to be fresh in his mind before departing in a few hours. But still, the matter of all the Paragons initiating their Sacrifices simultaneously is still a mystery to them. So to compensate for this mystery, they have decided to each drop in designated systems and go by ear as Kitera attempts to decode. One step at a time is their strategy, their only strategy. If Kitera cannot discover the key that will enable the chain reaction, then their last resort, plan B, will initiate. To summon each an ikamanu and do it their way, giving up on the cryptic guidelines of the Zodiacs.
To the Paragons, it all seems far fetched, but overlapping transcendent realities, quantum physics and parallel existences are not their strong points. Their Cipher explains it to be like a stellar quantum entanglement event, shaking things up until physics distort and overload. Essentially, they will be creating their own distortion event. Igniting stars within stars.
“In other news, word has spread throughout the war-torn Kronos that a spec ops unit of Paragons... rumoured to be accompanied by their Cipher... were responsible for the extraction of King Anzac, and the destruction of the UEU’s flagship, Oceanus. We have yet to confirm the exact details, but the opinions of some witnesses are very convincing, and some, not so much. Here is what they had to say after seeing the events with their own eyes.”
Boone leans forward inquisitively as the news report plays through the screen in his quarters. He made sure to shut the door and turn the volume low.
“Oh man, I was aboard the station when I saw it all go down outside. They was being chased by them Gladiators, going full throttle with lasers flyin’ out and everything. All of a sud
den, this tagged object comes bursting out the hatch and crashed into the ship behind, took control and blew them motherfuckers to the Underworld! I didn’t know what it was at the time, I ain’t never seen a Paragon tag before to know what it was I was looking at, but later I knew. Oh I knew. Was one of ‘em. Saw it first hand. Kamikaze bitches!”
Boone grins in remembrance of Deo’s stunt and leans in even further, anxious to hear more.
“I... I didn’t see much,” a woman admits timidly, shaking, eyes puffy and riddled with tears. “I was one of the lucky ones who escaped the city.”
“You said you witnessed a Paragon in the streets,” a desperate reporter prompts. “Was it male or female? Were there any others with it? Did you see it’s Cipher?”
“No, no, no others, just him. He was so big. I still can’t believe he was human. I only saw a glimpse, he was moving too fast. Are they human? I mean, I heard they were robots.”
“What was he doing? Where was he going?”
The woman hesitates a moment, staring forward to access her memories. “He... he was running. Just running. I don’t know where.”
The report transitions to the rounded face of a young boy, perhaps five years old. “I met the Mrs. Cipher.”
“Oh really?” the reporter encourages, waving the camera man in closer as she kneels to the child’s level. “What was she like?”
“She had big wings, and she told me I was going to grow up to be a big, strong Paragon, and marry her.”
Boone chuckles fondly.
“Now we go to the wounded Lieutenant Tomek, who fought alongside one of these Paragons aboard the guardian station before evacuating to the planet’s surface.”
“Look, I already told you, ma’am, the one I was fighting with was alone, she had no team, wasn’t a part of any spec ops unit. I respect her too much to reveal her identity, so you can save yourself the bother.”