Zephyr's Odyssey - The Rescue
Part II | Read time: 8 mins
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Zephyr’s Odyssey continues in part two below…
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The Rescue
Commander Astrid Starling was a second-generation Navy commander from Aelorian. Her father had migrated to Aelorian from the internal planets and enlisted into the Aelorian Naval Fleet. He then worked his way up the ranks and retired as a Vice Admiral a few revolutions ago. Astrid was fascinated by spaceships ever since she was a kid. She followed in her dad’s footsteps and enlisted in the Aelorian Naval Fleet as soon as she completed her formal education. Her ability to learn new things quickly helped her become the second youngest commander and the youngest female commander in the history of the Naval Fleet.
“Let’s go see this poor man, only the stars know how long he has been stranded in the middle of nowhere.”, Astrid turned towards her Lieutenant as soon as she finished sending the message to the Echolight II ship.
“Lieutenant, pull his ship into the hangar of the AstroLeap, I will personally go and attend to this man, Zephyr.” She walked out of the command center of the AstroLeap. Two security guards joined her as she was about to enter the elevator that would take her to the ship’s hangar.
As the elevator dinged and the doors slid open, she saw the EchoLight II ship dock at one of the space bridges. She turned in that direction and kept walking at a brisk pace. The two guards could barely keep up with her. Zephyr walked out into the hangar, he looked scruffy and rugged. He saw this woman walking towards him and he thought, “Great! They’ve sent me a hostess!”
“Commander Astrid Starling, Squadron XVI, Aelorian Naval Fleet. How long were you stranded here? Zephyr? That is you? Right?”
Astrid’s question took a few seconds to register in Zephyr’s head. “Woah! She is the Commander! Woah.. She’s stunning!”
“Excuse me… Zephyr? Are you concussed by any chance? Guards, take him to the medical bay. I will speak with him later.” She was about to turn when Zephyr regained control over his speech.
“Hey! Astrid! Sorry… Commander Starling! Sorry… I did not expect you… I mean I was stranded here for quite some time, if we count the cryo-sleep then about 90… plus 2.. plus 4 more.. 96.. yes! 96 rotations. I’ve been awake for the past 6.”
“Good, continue to the medical bay. Our team of doctors will take care of you.”
“That’s all good, but I still don’t understand.. what happened? My ship does not even have a jump-drive, How did I land in this sector? That too.. 2 parsecs away!”
“2.3 parsecs to be precise..”, Astrid corrected him, “It’s a long story. We first need to assess you mentally and physically. I will explain things in detail at 1900 hours…” She pointed to 2 of the many digital clocks all over the ship. “…dinner will be served then, we are 5 to 6 rotations away from Aelorian. I need to report back and continue the search for survivors in the other sectors.” She walked away after finishing her sentence before Zephyr could say another word. The two guards stood waiting.
“After you..”, Zephyr smiled at them.
The officer’s mess was 5 floors above the quarters assigned to Zephyr. After the doctor and his team cleared him, he was taken to his room by the same two guards who were accompanying the Commander. It wasn’t huge, just a single bed and a wash area. His luggage bag meant for Aelorian was already lying on the bed. As he exited the shower, his vision went to the clock in his room. It was already 1900 hours. “There are too many clocks on this ship!”, Zephyr thought to himself.
The AstroLeaps were an engineering marvel in itself. Powered by Chronomium fuel and a small nuclear fission reactor, this ship could carry up to two hundred thousand soldiers and could complete the journey between Aelorian and Veridian in half a rotation if powered at max speed. The ship was preparing for a jump as Zephyr walked around to find his way to the officer’s mess. He asked a few soldiers walking by who directed him in the right direction. When he entered the officer’s mess, he saw Commander Starling with her team seated at the far end of the room. They looked like they were having an intense conversation. The guy sitting next to her seemed to disagree with her. As he edged closer to the table, Commander Starling was the first to notice him. “Ah! Zephyr! Come join us. Hope you’re feeling better now. What did the doctors say?”
Zephyr left two seats and sat on the third so that he could see everyone clearly. “The doctors said I’m fine. Thank the stars for the cryo-sleep. They were quite surprised though that I didn’t show any symptoms. They said something about cryo-gel acting as a repellant. Something like that…”, Zephyr noticed the table pushed out a plate full of food as he finished his sentence.
“That’s good news! So you’ll be happy to know, that I have spoken with the Naval base on Aelorian. It seems you were going to join them to begin your training as an exploratory pilot, and they look forward to having you there so that you can start your training in no time!”, Astrid smiled at him. Zephyr lost his speech again for a few seconds. Astrid noticed that and kept smiling. Zephyr’s mind got back control over his emotions.
“Hang on a minute, all that is fine! I’m looking forward to my training too. But with all due respect, Commander, can anyone tell me why the FUCK am I here? How did I reach these coordinates when my Echolight II cannot even jump through space? My space logs mention some Stellar wave but how is that possible? Those just happened in ancient stories or myths. I need to know, please!”
Astrid looked at the guy sitting next to her, who rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Sorry Lieutenant, but I think he deserves to know!”
“What do I deserve to know? You’re making this sound too ominous.”
“Well, it is..”, she said and kept her spoons back on the plate. “Approximately 97 rotations ago, Crimsonite spit out a Stellar Wave. Usually, the inner planets can predict this, but there was no indication this time. This was one totally out of the blue.”
“You are kidding me!” Zephyr said with his mouth full, he had not eaten real food in several rotations.
“I’m not!”, she got up and pulled out a touchscreen device from her back pocket. She then walked over to Zephyr and sat down next to him. “Here! Look at this… This Stellar Wave has been the biggest ever recorded in the Astrylis System. Call it dumb luck but no planet was impacted but any ship for the first 20 planets, that came in contact with the wave, vaporized on the spot. We fear at least a million people have perished and the authorities are still counting as we speak.” Zephyr stopped chewing and looked at Astrid with a sense of disbelief.
“The last 8 planets felt the impact of residual atomic and magnetic waves that were emitted from the stellar wave. These waves were not lethal but did something even more tricky. When the atomic & magnetic wave particles collided with any jump-drive-enabled ship, the Chronomium was activated by these wave particles resulting in a jump through space and time to an unknown location. The entire Naval Fleet has been canvassing vast stretches of the Astrylis System in search of survivors.”
“Random jump through space and time?” Zephyr asked again
“Yes… It has baffled a lot of people.”
“That still doesn’t explain how my ship jumped through space and time when it is so very clearly not made for it.”
“Let me explain… Our tech team went through your ship’s logs and other system logs. Your ship saved you in a way. The ship sensed the incoming Stellar Wave quite accurately and the Collision Avoidance Protocol did the necessary maneuvers to avoid the incoming atomic & magnetic waves. But while doing that it got too close to a CargoLeap ship. Since the CargoLeaps are at least twice the size of an AstroLeap ship, I’m sure it could not have gotten out of the way of the atomic & magnetic waves. The waves activated the Chronomium and your ship got pulled into the jump due to the gravity generated when a space-time jump is initiated. We haven’t found the CargoLeap so far, so our guess is that since your ship wasn’t jump-drive-enabled, it fell out of the space-time jump quite earlier than the CargoLeap ship. Hence, we found you only 2.3 parsecs away.”
“Wait, hold on…”, Zephyr finished chewing his mouth full of food and gulped it down. “You’re saying a once-in-a-millennium event happens and the rays emitted by this event cause random jumps in the AstroLeaps and CargoLeaps designed by the Naval Fleet? I don’t believe this… Nah.. I don’t! I need proof.”, he sound really pissed off now.
“Calm down Zephyr, I know this is a lot to take in!”, she put her hand on his arm, and Zephyr and Astrid looked into each other’s eyes for a moment. “I can prove it to you… The last Stellar Wave recorded by our people was five hundred thousand years ago.”, She pulled out the data on her screen. “Back then the Stellar Wave consumed one of the internal planets and the death toll was in the billions. Stellar Wave detection became a field of study ever since that unfortunate event but another Stellar Wave of that magnitude never happened till now. The systems got delayed in warning the ships. Certain ships like the EchoLight II had built-in Stellar Wave detection programming and Collision Avoidance Protocols. But there were many ships that didn’t get any warning. It’s been almost 100 rotations since the event and the death toll is in the millions and there are close to a thousand ships missing. We are trying to track the CargoLeaps first, there were 200 of them. Each CargoLeap ship was able to pull around 10 to 20 ships along with it. Here is the video of the stellar wave caught by the satellite in orbit around Veridian.”, She handed over the screen to Zephyr and went back to her seat. Zephyr kept watching the video and stuffing his face with food but a minute later, he just stopped eating, his face twisted into disgust and he just slid the screen back to Astrid and moved the plate of food away from himself.
“I will need some time to process this…” Zephyr looked at everyone at the table, stood up, and proceeded to walk back toward his quarters. Everyone else having finished their dinner did the same. Commander Astrid followed him and found him waiting for the elevator. “I know this is a lot to process but feel free to ask me anything. We will be initiating the jump in a few hours. Once we do that, we should be reaching Aelorian in 4-5 rotations time.”
“Thanks, Commander”, Zephyr replied, he was confused. He felt attracted to the Commander but still didn’t fully trust her. He decided to test her. “Commander, I need to tell you something…”
“Yes, Zephyr?”
“When you mentioned that a lot of ships were either destroyed or have gone missing, I couldn’t help but think of my sister. She owns an upgraded version of my ship, an EchoLight III series. Can you help me find her whereabouts?”
“Oh! Umm, yes sure I think I can try! I’ll send a message back to HQ to start canvassing for an EchoLight III ship. Where do you think she could have been when the Stellar Wave hit?”
“She is a cargo runner from Veridian to the inner planets. She was supposed to leave from Veridian 45 rotations after I did”
Astrid started doing the math in her head regarding Zephyr’s sister’s probable location when she realized she didn’t even know her name. “What is her name?”
“Zara! Zara Nova”
“Zara! Wow, right! I’ll send out a message to HQ right away”, Astrid turned and started walking to the command center. A few steps away, she stopped and turned back, Zephyr was about to enter the elevator. She called out, “Zephyr!”, he turned. “Don’t worry, we’ll find her!”
Zephyr smiled as the elevator doors shut in front of him.
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See you next week with Part 3 of Zephyr’s Odyssey.
— Darshan Pania