in this story, i will portray a war fought between 2 fictional sides. the story will focus on a group of soldiers from Boxxy nation, who have been separated from their platoon and are now hopelessly lost. They're trying to find their platoon without attracting the attention of soldiers from the Zonday nation. For more information on the memes, you may visit my other blog, lessonsofchange.blogspot.com, or you can go check encyclopedia dramatica. I also included spoofs of the final fantasy series.
"Yo Zonk," said Aldri89z. "Have you managed to find the travelling sales guy yet?"
"No Al," said Zonkyboy87. " I was sure he'll appear somewhere around here, the walkthrough said this road was one of the locations he'll appear."
"I hope you got your walkthrough from a proper guidebook."
"No, i downloaded it from some unknown chinese website."
"WTF!!1!"
"Hey, the guidebook costs more than what avid gamers would buy, anyway, what do we do now?"
Al looked at gayshit200 who was still weak from fighting.
"I dunno man, but we better find that salesman soon, we need to fill our inventory with sufficient potions and phoenix downs, and considering the foes we're about to encounter, some remedy as well. Not to forget, we still have to level up Sass, her MP isn't sufficient to sustain us in combat."
Sassy888, the team's medic, looked at them briefly, then returned her gaze to the fire place.
"One curaga already takes up 10 MP, come to think of it, how come she already has curaga when her level's so low?"
"Blame it on the smart ass who keyed in the cheat code, o well...Ah! what luck! here he comes now!"
The team turned around to see a man dressed in ridiculously looking persian attire, walking towards them with a basket. He was fat, like how they remembered him, and he hadn't bothered to shave that moustache of his, but they figured it was because he wanted to look persian.
"Hey, Olan Blaise at your service (he was the only one around here who had somewhat of a resemblance to a human name). Would ya like to see my wares?"
"Blaise!" exclaimed Zonk. "What great timing, I was searching for ya! What are your wares in this area?"
"Glad you asked sonny," he said. "The usual, potions going at 50 gold, phoenix downs at 70, antidotes at 50, remedies at 80..."
"Yea, I'll take 50 potions, 10 phoenix downs, 20 antidotes and 20 remedies, o, you have elixirs too, I'll take 50 of those."
"Ah really good sonny, you are my best customer. I still haven't forgotten the time we first met, you gave me 250 000 gold to start my business even though you only had that much on you."
"That was because I read the walkthrough, 250 000 is the max amount i give you, so you would give me better discounts as the story progresses. Besides, we can always pick up gold when we defeat enemies."
"LOL!" laughed Blaise. "Speaking of enemies, the road ahead is full of Zonday troops and their non-human minions. And you must be careful sonny, these Zonday troops are the elite of the elite, they have mastered 'chocolate rain'! "
"OMGWTF!" exclaimed Al from afar. "Did you say 'chocolate rain' ? "
"In the low voice too I'm afraid," Blaise shook his head. "I'm afraid remedies won't do the job, only the medic can cast spells to relieve it."
"Shit! With our medic at such low levels, there's no way we can make it through the road alive. What should we do?"
"No worries," said Blaise. "Before you encounter danger, you would find sufficient stalls and people you can seek help from along the way. There's a weapons salesman not too far from here, about 20 paces down in fact, and another salesman selling rare items, but you need quite a lot of gold for that. And you can try playing a minigame at the lake over there, it's a good deal, you get a powerful weapon and at least 200 000 gold."
"Well, that settles it then, " said Al. "Zonk, you go find the weapon salesman, gay, you go find the rare items salesman, Sass, you go play the minigame."
"And what would you do Al?" asked Zonk.
"There's a cave not too far from here, I heard people are trapped inside, held hostage by a vile beast. I shall go rescue them."
"Ah yes," said Blaise. "That's a miniquest I forgot to mention, rescue those people and you can summon the beast in battle, it is a very high level beast, so be careful."
5 hours later
"O good, I see you guys are all back, status report," said Al.
Zonk was the first to speak.
"I went to talk to the weapons salesman, his prices are extravagant to say the least, however, if we can show him a Treb-Sonic Annihilator, we can get them at 80% discounts."
"Would it be this?" asked Sass, who was holding a queer looking contraption. "I won this from the minigame."
"O, this could be it," said Zonk. "The salesman said it has the power to boost strength, HP and MP by 20% to the person wearing it, and when life is critical, it boosts agility by 200%! The downside is when that happens, the person is automatically put in berserker mode."
"Erm...ya, that was what I was told too," said Sass. "By the lake fairy."
"What was the minigame by the way?"
"Riding an ostrich to burst balloons."
"Ah, the minigames get lamer by the day..."
"Hey, it wasn't easy ya know, I had to replay it at least 20 times, the ostrich was so f---ing hard to control."
Al nodded in approval.
"Ok, gayshit, what about the rare items dealer?"
"He had rather interesting items for sale, such as LOLcats and dramatic prairie dogs, but really, none of them are of much use to us. We are supposed to buy them, they then get sent back to our homeland and then we can watch them when we get back, it's really lame. However, he did give us a rather good gift."
gayshit stood aside to reveal an extremely beautiful girl, dressed in white garb with long flowing black hair.
"Her name's Veia," he said. "She's the salesman's daughter. He asked me to marry her in exchange for her summoning prowess."
"O wow!" exclaimed Al. "That's great, now we have a summoner in our party! I was worried whom I would give this summon to."
Al opened up his hand, to show a shining orb.
"This is Ceiling cat," he said. "One of the LOLcats, but in real form."
"Woah! That was the beast that was holding the people hostage?" asked Zonk.
"No, it turned out the problem wasn't Ceiling cat. Basement cat was the one holding the people hostage. Ceiling cat went to save them. When I got there, Ceiling cat was already starting to fight Basement cat, so I teamed up with him. He's really good, his HP and MP are already at the 9999 limit, as well as his attacks."
"Ah, I see," said Veia all of a sudden. "So this Ceiling cat, he volunteered to join us on our quest."
"Why yes," said Al. "Can you handle him?"
"Of course," said Veia. "I'm a LOLcat summoner, I already have Longcat and Limecat on my summon list."
"Ok, that's great guys. Tomorrow, we get weapons from the weapon salesman, then we move out to Angredes peak to battle Lorengium, the dark beast. It seems after we defeat him, we would finally have a clue as to where our friendly forces may be."
They all went to sleep, and the next morning...
"Ok, I just got back from the weapons guy, I bought each of us something. Zonk, your speciality is melee combat, so i got you this hefty sword, 'Arecius'. It boosts your HP and MP by 10% , it also comes with the 'counter-attack' feature as well as poison touch. Sass, I got you 'Hope Bracelet', it boosts your MP and HP by 20% and doubles your exp after each battle, so you can level up faster. gay, you specialise in black magic, so I got you 'Arcane bracelet', it boosts MP by 30%, magic by 20% and also has the nullflame property. For myself, I specialise in range attacks, so I got 'Virtue rifle', boosts HP and MP by 10%, strength by 20% and accuracy by 20% as well."
"Anything for me?" asked Veia.
"O, ya, I got you this rare item, used only for summoners, the 'Vrex'. In case your LOLcats get defeated, you would only have to wait 1 battle instead of 3 before you can use him again. Also, this enables your summons to break the 9999 limit."
"O, that's great!"
with that, our heroes set off along the treacherous trail, battling Zonday troops and other strange minions. Finally, they reached Angredes peak.
"O my!" exclaimed Zonk as he stared at the huge number of Zonday troops guarding the gates to the fortress. "Good thing I bought a hefty number of items from Blaise back then. Can't imagine charging into this place with less than 40% HP."
"There's a save sphere over there, go save the game first."
After that was done, the party gathered to discuss the strategy. But Zonk left the team for a while to take a leak. When he returned, he had not bothered to ask anyone what they had discussed, really quite dense.
"Ok, let's do it!" he yelled.
"Hey wait!"
"LEEROY JENKINS!"
His team watched in horror as he ran towards the enemies, raising Arecius in the air.
"O crap, who needs a strategy anyway?"
It was a particularly easy fight, and at the end of the road, there was another save sphere and another shop selling items. No problem, time to face the boss.
"Lorengium is a very vile creature," said Al. "He is known to use the most vicious attacks on his enemies, such as 'Ms Teen South Carolina', which renders the person unable to control his actions and articulation, as well as wanting to educate people in South Africa and Iraq. Not to forget, Rickroll, which would force you to watch the music vid of Rick Astley the next time you choose any action. And there's also Angry German Kid, which would cause you to yell profanities in German like a 10 year old, very vile indeed."
"O my, perhaps, I should just summon Ceiling Cat on him?" asked Veia.
"Hey, that's a good idea. But Lorengium's HP is very high, Ceiling Cat may not last."
And indeed, Ceiling Cat didn't last. Lorengium was a green scaly dragon with about 999 999 HP, despite Ceiling cat's powers, it only managed to knock off 200 000 HP before dying. It also wasn't very pretty when Veia tried to summon the other LOLcats. Lorengium had decided to use 'voodoo', which killed off the LOLcats in an instant.
"Shit! We would have to fight him ourselves then!"
"Damn! If only we had played more minigames back then, we would have better weapons!"
Lorengium really wasn't easy, he was immune to confusion, poison and berserk. The party's HP was getting lower, and they were constantly getting inflicted with all sorts of statuses.
"Shit, I guess I'll have to try this!" said Al. "Cat nip!"
"Cat nip?"
"I have the trigger happy option, which allows me to constantly fire at the enemy for about 10 seconds or so. Cat nip enables me to deal 9999 damage with each of my attacks when my HP is critical. So you can imagine how much I can slice off him each time. But guys, prepare pheonix downs, Sass, prepare your revive spell, I will be dying a lot. Whatever you do, don't use Max revive, otherwise it would negate the effects of catnip."
The plan worked, Lorengium was soon down, however, not before inflicting 'Ms Teen South Carolina' on Veia and 'Angry German Kid' on gayshit. But it was fine, there was a save sphere nearby, and all HP, MP were restored and all statuses gone.
"We can finally rejoin our troops," said Zonk. "There's a map just over there, telling us where our guys are."
"Great job guys!" said Al.
A long cutscene followed, in which a lot of romantic and touching things happened. And then, finally, they returned to the rest of the Boxxy troops.
"Hey, I'm so glad we found you guys. But why do I get this feeling that we're in for some trouble?" asked Al.
"Well," said one of the other soldiers. "It seemed you did a fine job, but you only completed 70% of the story. You didn't play all the minigames, helped only 30% of the villagers, and constantly interrupted an old man as he was telling his story. I'm afraid this isn't going to be a very happy ending."
"Wha...?"
"Oh SHHH.... I DIVIDED BY ZERO!!!!"
a large explosion tore the base apart, sending the heroes's souls back in time and to the beginning of the story.
"Dude, that was lame," Al said to me.
"I'm sorry," I replied. "It's my lunch time and I'm very hungry, I was in a hurry to finish my story."
"O crap," said Zonk. "Now we'll have to play the story all over again..."
"No worries," I said. "Just remember to play all the minigames and help everyone you meet along the way. Then, watch out for this kid sitting on the roof of the first house you see. It's annoying, but you must speak to him if you want to achieve 100% completion."
"But what would we get if we acheive 100% completion?"
"You get to see an underwater make-out scene, alright, off you go, and off i go to eat my lunch."
And with that, the heroes started the whole story gain, from level one.
This is perhaps the lamest piece of crap ive ever written. I'm so proud of myself :)
Friday, May 29, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Chronicles of Illumix, The Impure One (Story Background)
Hey guys, I'm starting a series of short stories entitled Chronicles of Illumix, The Impure One. In these series of stories, the idea of power through imperfection, as well as realms of science, psionic powers and the supernatural will be explored. You will see some of my personal beliefs expressed in this story, especially the concept of how a person who really makes a difference to the world is one who is neither good nor bad, but a healthy mix of both. Also, if you find the mindset and thoughts of Illumix familiar, that's because I based him after my own life experiences. This is just the background of the story, there'll be more to come, have fun guys:)
Among the many stories told in the planet of Avantasia, none has ever been repeated as often as the story of Illumix. Named after light, yet constantly plagued with darkness, he is known to have been the first guardian of light to ever possess powers of darkness. While this made many question his position as the guardian of light, he has no doubt arisen during the period of Yamirix, a time when darkness and fear plagued the universe, and brought salvation to all beings in the Elagon Universe. The following series of short stories describes his ascension to power, as well as how his perspectives of the world changes as he matures, and finally, how his new and unconventional beliefs brought calm to the ongoing battles between light and darkness.
Before it all began
In a universe unknown to us, in a time beyond our imaginations, there exists a massive universal empire that spans 5000 planets, across 600 star systems and 18 galaxies. The empire had been established for a total of 17 million years, starting from the star system of Laglasia, which housed the planet Avantasia. It had had a long history of war, especially during the previous 1 million years, when many systems near the border struggled for their independence. Often, the strategy adopted by the empire was always through force, but due to that, it has lost much of its popularity among the more loyal systems.
During the period of Nexodis, which was about 1000 years prior to the start of this story, Emperor Nexodis established the ‘Guardian System’. The objective was to set up an elite band of humans armed with the strongest psionic capabilities, to establish ‘truth, order and justice’ in the empire. There were a total of 7 guardians, namely, Light, Sync, Order, Creativity, Knowledge, Love and Darkness. In name, they were to promote peace and intellectual thought throughout the universe, but really, it was Emperor Nexodis’ elegant scheme to control the outer rim systems.
Centuries have passed, and while the guardian system had continued, the original hidden agenda had long been forgotten. For 500 years, it had become a truly noble system which had promoted the progress of scientific and psionic research throughout the empire, as well as maintaining peace and harmony among the many star systems.
But peace and harmony never lasts long.
500 years prior to the story, the guardian of darkness then, Yamirix, was very dissatisfied with his position. The guardian of darkness had a responsibility to maintain the balance of light and dark. In other words, if the guardian of light was doing too much of a good job, he was to introduce some darkness to the empire, for instance, spreading diseases or creating calamities. The rationale was that if the universe was too peaceful, no one would bother to progress, and the inertia of knowledge and creativity would lead to the eventual end of the empire. However, during his time, the guardians of light, knowledge and creativity were too good! In peace time, Luminos, the guardian of light, would take the initiative to ensure people are using the times of peace to advance their knowledge about the inner workings of the universe. Generis, the guardian of creativity, went about with Luminos to educate people on the wonders of thinking out of the box. Limix, the guardian of knowledge, shared his wealth of learning with the universe. There was virtually no opportunity for Yamirix to express his sadistic desire for destruction. Many a times he had approached the emperor, and many a times he had been told to wait.
But guardians of darkness were chosen because they were bad, they were chosen because they had no qualms about killing defenceless beings and bringing sadness to worlds. Among the 7 guardians, he was the most supervised, and often, he was shunned by the others. However, he usually had one close friend among the 7, and it was the guardian of light. The guardian of light was chosen for his pure heart, a heart which respects all lives and beliefs. Quite often, the two guardians would discuss about how they could work together to maintain the balance of good and evil in the universe. But unfortunately, in that particular generation, the balance had not been checked. Luminos was too pure, too good that he could not stand talking to Yamirix. Yamirix was too evil, too sadistic and cynical, to converse with Luminos in a friendly manner. Instead of working with the guardian of darkness like he should, Luminos chose to work with his pals Generis and Limix instead.
There finally came a day when tensions between the two guardians reached a breaking point. Luminos reprimanded Yamirox in front of the other 5 guardians about his disrespect for life and progress and even said ‘If people are already happy and leading fruitful lives, why should you even bother?’
On the same day, Yamirox broke into the imperial palace, and using his secretly researched dark psionic powers, killed the emperor and took control of the entire imperial army. The other 6 guardians were forced to flee from Avantasia, and escaped to the star system of Nobeno, which was lying on the outermost rims of the empire and barely touched even during the periods of civil war. Over there, they encountered a practice never heard of in the empire, namely, astrology, prophecy and clairvoyance. Though scientifically and psionically backwards, the inhabitants of Nobeno were very established in occult practices, and claimed they had forseen the rise of Yamirox and the arrival of the 6 refugee guardians to their system. They had even forseen, that 500 years in the future, the most powerful guardian of light in history would arise and restore the order of light and darkness to the universe. For the next 500 years however, the guardians were to continue their legacy on Nobeno only.
So for 500 years, the 6 generations of guardians taught the Nobenians science and psionics. In exchange, the Nobenians taught them occlumancy, numerology, astrology and even necromancy. It was 500 years of peace on Nobeno, but in the main body of the empire, Yamirox had brought death and destruction to any world who had dared to challenge his reign. Due to his research on dark psionics, he was able to find a way to extend his lifespan to 2000 years and due to the great distance of Nobeno from the main governing body of the empire, he had assumed the other 6 guardians had escaped to a distant part of the universe and had not bothered with finding them. He would rather bring terror and fear to trillions of inhabitants in the empire than 6 losers who ran away from him.
But 500 years had passed, and one night, he had a strong feeling of unease, which seemed to come from a star billions of lightyears away.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
A Tale of the Dark Ocean
Claire was the only woman onboard the ship. It so happened that she also had the very unique job of monitoring the radar. It was a thankless job, where she sat all day in front of the holograph and watched for any suspicious objects approaching the ship. It had been 3 days, and nothing had shown up on screen. However, she preferred this job to the alternative, staring into the blackness of the galaxy’s deepest ocean, which was the job of the pilot.
It had been the defining moment of her career, after years of being the radar operator on spacecrafts, she felt relieved and excited when she was chosen to man the radar on the first extra-terrestrial submarine, the Corinthian. There had been much talk about it, after the planet Laguna had been discovered. The planet was pure ocean, an atmosphere and mass similar to that of Earth, but no land, just pure ocean. Estimates and calculations had been done, and scientists have believed for long that the planet-wide ocean was at least 100km deep, and at the bottom of it all, a thick layer of ice probably another 50km deep. This was already much deeper than the deepest part of the Mariana’s Trench on Earth, a mere 10km deep. Many teams have been considering voyages to the planet, some wanted to try touching the bottom. So far, only Claire’s team, Neptunian, had touched the bottom of the ocean.
However, Claire was bored. Ever since they descended into the ocean 3 days ago from their floating base Erodes, the Corinthian had done nothing but sinking. It was an uneventful 2km/h downward sink, and even after reaching the ice layer 2 hours ago, they had encountered nothing. There were sayings and beliefs of gigantic monsters inhabiting the monstrous ocean, but nothing at all. It was a very wet, dull planet.
Claire closed her eyes and recalled the events before the Corinthian had begun its descent. She and the rest of the crew had been living on the Erodes for nearly half a year while the Corinthian was being constructed and tested. Erodes consisted of one large building on a buoyant structure, which itself was huge. It had to be huge, for the waves on Laguna were terrific. They raced at nearly 100km/h and some were nearly 400ft high. The structure had to counter this by being 20km long and wide and the building had to be placed nearly 1000ft above sea level. The structure had 4 legs partially submerged in the water, like an oil rig, and each leg was about 1km long and wide at its base. There were powerful black-hole motors in the legs which helped the Erodes stay put. Sometimes, it even moved the base out of the way of 2 huge colliding waves. The building consisted of an endless array of corridors, labs, offices and living quarters. There was no need of going outdoors, unless to take the shuttle into the orbiting space station. No one wanted to go outdoors anyway, it always rained. There was just so much water on the planet that it kept evaporating and pouring back down again. It was impossible to see the star the planet was orbiting, for it was always covered by dark clouds. Erodes wasn’t the only floating base, there were 3 others for teams that had actually managed to get the financial backing and resources to do research work on this planet, but they were all spaced at least 100km apart. If one team needed help, it had to rely on members of the space station. It was impossible to travel through the insane ocean on its surface.
Claire was the radio operator, so she was largely excluded from the mission planning and technical discussions involving the operations of the ship. However, she had at least the basic knowledge of what the Corinthian would be like. A very simple design, one pointed cylinder, 500m long, 100m wide, built with Acrinix, the strongest alloy ever made by mankind. The hull had to be strong, it was dealing with pressures of 1 MPa. A person ejected at that depth would be crushed to smithereens, if he wasn’t killed by the force required to eject him first. The interior was complete with radio operating rooms, labs and living quarters, not to forget the onboard kitchen, which mainly produced dried processesed foods similar to those used in space travel. The engine room housed the black-hole engine, which provided the power necessary to propel the ship through incredibly dense waters. There was also an electrolysis chamber, which took in the water from the ocean and converted it to hydrogen and oxygen. This initiated addition had saved much preparation time since there wasn’t any need to fill the ship with oxygen before the dive. Other compartments included a weapons chamber and control room.
Claire had remembered the day the Corinthian began its mission. She was seated in the centre of the control room, behind the pilot and co-pilot, observing the 3D holograph for any signs of obstructions within a 10km spherical radius. As the green light was given and the ship began sinking, Claire had turned her head to watch the last of the light disappear. She was one of the four fortunate people to see the last of the light while in the ship, the other being the weapons manager. The other 6 members said goodbye to the light the instant they stepped into the hatch. From then on it was darkness all the way, save for the mini-headlights that shone for a metre in front of the cockpit.
Earlier that day, Claire had cheered with the rest as the ship encountered the ice floor. After it had anchored itself in the ice with its mechanical claws, a few members of the team had deployed their personal robots out of the ship to survey the seabed. This of course wasn’t the actual seabed, it was due to the high pressure that the rest of the water 50km down had turned into ice. The real seabed most probably consisted of rocks, just like the Earth’s oceans. Some of the robots had found interesting things, like queer fish-like creatures swimming around aimlessly. In the depths of the ocean, they had no visual organs, much like those deep-sea fish on Earth, and their body had somehow adapted to the almost unbearable pressure. Scientific studies down here were unusually comfortable, since the team members could lie on their beds while playing with their robots via dataports.
Claire was now drifting off to sleep while the holograph remained as silent as ever. Then, out of the blue, a crew member let out a shrill cry of joy.
“I’ve found something! Something big!”
That was enough to make everyone else abandon their posts and come rushing to his quarters. Claire did a final check on the holograph before doing so. Nothing, nothing at all. What did he mean by ‘something big’?
By now, everyone had crowded over his dataport, which showed the vision of his robot in 3D holo-space. Through the strong head light, it appeared to be looking at some form of wrecked vehicle. To be more precise, it was a severly damaged submersible. The hull had been shattered open, and it seemed completely crushed by some unknown force. So this was the ‘something big’, it wasn’t ‘big’ as Claire had imagined, but it was definitely ‘big’.
“Could it belong to one of the other teams?” asked one of the team members, Marty.
“I doubt it,” said the person in charge of that particular robot, Chris. “The other three knew how stupid it would be to send in a machine not made of Acrinix.”
Nothing else was said as Chris maneuvered his robot to get closer to the wrecked craft. It became apparent that there was no room for anyone inside the interior full of wires and machanical junk. The craft had been unmanned. It could have been one of the other team’s after all, to test the limits of certain materials under pressure.
“Most probably it belongs to the Athenians, they came to this planet only to plan on staying on the surface and doing their experiments from there. I can imagine them throwing away their money to do this kind of stuff, they should have a lot of it without a big ship to build.”
It was Laika, another team member. That was his nickname actually, after the first dog to go in space. His real name was Lawrence and was the only member of the Neptunians not to have any prior space experience before coming to Laguna.
“Hold on,” said Captian Falkes. “The Athenians are located on the opposite side of the planet, are you sure the undersea currents could carry it this far?”
Chris moved the robot even closer to find more clues as to who the craft could have belonged to. It didn’t carry any of the other team’s symbols, nor any form of writing on the hull. It was then mutually decided to take the craft aboard the ship, part by part, using the 6 robots . The robots were not designed for complicated mechanical handling, it was a job best done by human hands.
After 5 hours, the robots had recovered most of the machinary and a fraction of the hull of the submersible. After doing post-mission checks on their own robots, the team members proceeded to investigate the wreckage. Claire had set the radar to auto-alert mode, so she would receive notification should any thing appear nearby. She too wanted to join the team as they searched for clues to the submersible’s origins.
The crew had carried the parts their robots brought back to the lab and were now taking good looks at it. The first discovery was already enough to shock everyone. Apparently, the metal used to make the submersible was a metal even stronger than Acrinix. No lab on Earth could have ever produced the pressure and temperature required to make it. Chris shook his head as he looked at the scraps through his microscope monacle. Meanwhile, Marty and the rest were analysing the machines that had been onboard the submersible. Not only were they made of the same type of metal used to make the hull, but their design was so complicated and full of unknown parts that no normal engineer could have possibly created the circuits involved.
“I don’t understand any of this!” exclaimed Marty in frustration. “Have the other teams done some secret projects of their own and built this?”
“What puzzles me is that despite the toughness of the metal, it still got crushed under the pressure of the ocean. Furthermore, no sign of propulsion could be found,” said Chris.
None of the team members knew what to make of it. It was clearly a mysterious discovery, but that was it, nothing else could be said.
“It must be of extra-terrestrial origin.”
Everyone immediately stopped what they were doing and stared at the wisecrack who said that. It was Laika, the only man who had never been on other planets other than Earth and Laguna.
“Impossible!” said Captain Falkes, a little disgusted. “Our computers have done intensive calculations on the development of this planet, and the chances of it having intelligent life are virtually a million to one. The conditions are just ridiculous.”
“No sir, I meant this is a craft from another planet, not Laguna.”
Everyone kept silent at that moment. Despite FTL travel being in the craze these days, only about half of the galaxy had been thoroughly explored. It wouldn’t be a surprise if another intelligent race had found Laguna first and had already deployed personel to study it. If that was the case, where were they? Why had every team from Earth not reported seeing any signs of these alien beings? Did they grow tired of Laguna and leave?
There was a loud beeping sound from Claire’s auto-alert device, which broke the silence and made everyone jump. Now the attention was on her, as they all followed her as she raced to the control room. The sight that greeted them was an even bigger shock than Laika’s relevation. On the holograph, there was a virtual image of a ship twice as large as the Corinthian. It too was cylindrical in shape, and in every aspect, looked like a bigger version of the ship. It maintained a vigilante on the edge of the radar, in other words, 10km away from the Corinthian.
An alarm sounded in Captain Falkes’ head. He instantly gave the command to shut off all lights and machines. The panicked crew members raced wildly through the ship, throwing switches and smashing buttons. Soon, the entire ship was pitch black and quiet. Even the radar had to be turned off lest the other ship became attracted to the EM waves being emitted. Everyone was now huddled in the control room, waiting for the 2 minutes to pass after which the radar would be turned on briefly, to see if the other ship was still there. None of them had felt so much fear in their lives.
“Why are we panicking?” whispered Marty on instinct. “The ship looked much like ours, it could have been another team’s.”
“If that’s the case, why didn’t the space station pass us any of this data? With a ship that big, it can’t be kept a secret from the organisation,” said Laika in a jitter.
It was true. Big operations that each team were planning had to be made known to the space station, it was a law made to keep track of all the money flow. The space station would then inform the other teams what that team was doing, mainly to promote competition but also to allow for possible agglomeration. The gigantic ship that was a mere 10km away from them now hadn’t been reported. Either someone had broken the law or it was piloted by intelligent beings looking for the submersible they had lost. If so, it was best not to be found.
“What if they had installed a tracking device in the submersible?” Chris said in fear. “They would know where to find us…”
Nobody dared to give an answer. They all began to miss the surface of the ocean, Erodes, Earth and their families. Being captured by aliens at the bottom of a 100km deep ocean hadn’t been on their minds.
“I should turn on the radar now…” said Claire, and she pushed the button to switch on the holograph. To everyone’s horror, the alien ship was now right next to the Corinthian! There was no scream, just shudders of horror as Claire quickly turned off the radar again.
“Are they going to kill us?” another member of the crew chipped in his own nonsensical question.
Once again, no one dared breath a word. If they were to die, it would happen in the next few seconds. The alternative in their minds would be to get captured by the aliens and be subjected to cruel experiments.
3 minutes had passed, and Claire had already missed the interval by a minute. No one complained her, for they were all afraid as to what would happen next. In the end, she turned on the radar anyway, to reveal the truth which everyone was afraid to witness. It was hence a relief to find that the ship had vanished off the radar. It had probably been passing them, and probably didn’t notice them, which was unlikely. To play safe, Claire turned off the radar again and waited another minute. True enough, the ship was no longer there. The rest of the crew started to feel more relaxed.
The danger was far from over however. Falkes ordered a minimal startup of the ship, with only the engine and radar running. The weapons system was also activated, in case the first interstellar war should find its origins here. Slowly but surely, the Corinthian began making a slow climb to the surface. An hour passed, then two, then three, the alien ship never appeared again. Falkes then decided it was more or less safe and ordered the ship to resume full operations, but he kept Claire and the weapons managed on standby.
A day had passed since then, and the Corinthian was now nearly halfway to the surface. Claire hadn’t slept, and neither had the weapons manager nor Falkes. Marty had the good mind to make all three of them a cup of coffee each.
“You guys have it tough,” he said as he passed Claire her cup.
“Thanks,” she said, trying to give a smile despite her weariness.
“Say, why do you think they didn’t take any action?” he asked suddenly.
Claire was a little surprised by the question, but nevertheless tried her best to answer.
“Maybe they weren’t interested in us?”
It was a rather lame answer, but not a bad one considering the situation.
“They must have set up some sort of underwater base somewhere,” said Falkes, hoping to strike a conversation to keep himself awake. “Might not be too far away from where we landed. They should have been looking for their lost submersible, that was their main objective. They were not interested in us, that’s why they decided to ignore us.”
“But it does puzzle me,” said the weapons manager. “They knew where they lost their submersible, then they arrive and find us instead, they should have known we had it in our posession.”
“No, we didn’t have the entire submersible,” said Falkes. “We left quite a number of parts on the ice. They might have found the parts and probably assumed that was all that was left of it.”
“Yes, then there’s the mystery on how the submersible got damaged in the first place,” chimed Marty. “Something must have attacked it, but what?”
A brief silence followed. All the theories had been put forward, but unfortunately, no one was brave enough to go back down there to prove them right. It had been a harrowing experience, and once this encounter was made known, no one would be in a rush to send more ships to the bottom.
“Ah, enough of this. Claire, have you sent the report back to Erodes?”
“Yes sir.”
The rest of the journey back to the surface went on without any incident. The alien ship never returned. Everyone was happy they had made it back in one piece, and they had started a much heated discussion on the frightening encounter. The space station had already received the report, and had dispatched personel to interview Falkes and other members of the crew. However, that was all they could do. The station couldn’t produce EM waves powerful enough to penetrate the 100km of water, not to forget the atmosphere. There was no way anyone would know what was happening down there without actually going down there. The ice and all that had been theories which had been proven correct, but some theories would remain theories. After the descent of the Corinthians, other teams had sent down their own ships to investigate the bottom, even the money throwing Athenians. The ships of 2 teams returned with nothing to report, but the ship of the Alkeies never returned. The crew aboard the team’s floating base Nomadais had reported that before all communications were lost, the captain had let out a blood-curling scream. The ship had been missing for 3 months. As such, research on Laguna still carried on, but was confined to the depth limit of 20km. No one will ever know what was really down there, for now.
Down there
Commander Loita gave off the vibes of salutation as 2 corporals drifted pass him onboard his undersea ship, Elfis. He was tired, and his frequencies have been getting cranky. He floated to his own living quarters and lay on his bed, and groaned as his transparent body hit the dark mattress. It wasn’t even a body, it was pure energy, the energy which would be required to make up the mass of an average human being. It was a lot. Despite this, he couldn’t tap the reserves from his body, but was confined to the energy derived from the metabolism of heat. There was no light down here, not in the ship either, for they didn’t need light. They could feel where everything was.
The war with the Heisians, another race of matter manipulators, had started almost a year ago. They and the Rintians, which was Loita’s race, were the only 2 matter manipulating race of energy beings living on the planet with the endless ocean. The fighting on the seabed wasn’t much, for now, just a few minor skirmishes here and there, but things got complicated when that mysterious ship arrived half a year back. It had been the same shape as the Elfis, just half the size. It had been encountered near the site where a Helsian unmanned reconnaissance vehicle had been destroyed, and Loita was assigned to retrieve it. When the ship arrived, most of the vehicle had been removed, and Loita had assumed the Heisians were lurking around somewhere. When he encountered the ship on the radar, his intuition had told him not to fire. Cautiously, he had ordered for an approach, and had determined the ship wasn’t of Heisian origin. It was another intelligent race. Contact couldn’t be established because all communications and electronics were turned off for some reason, but Loita managed to get a microspy to latch itself on the windows of that ship to take a look.
The image that returned was shocking. From the ship, it was clearly a race of matter manipulators, but the beings inside the ship were also made of matter! It looked as if they were afraid, and Loita realised they were afraid of his ship. He then concluded that this race were aliens from another planet coming to study his, and they must have obtained the wreckage of the Heisian vehicle for research purposes. Not wanting to harm those creatures who had nothing to do with the war, Loita ordered the Elfis to turn back, but he kept the microspy on the windows, for evidence and to keep track.
Loita smiled to himself as he lay on the bed, thinking what that race must have thought of the planet. It wasn’t a place where intelligent matter beings could live, yet he doubted they knew anything about energy beings. They must have thought Loita and the others were residents of another planet that had also come to study the ocean planet. They must have thought there were matter structures nearby for Rintians to stay. But the Rintians didn’t need matter residences,other than the bases where they kept the ships, they stayed on the ice itself. The ships merely served as armour from the Heisian’s energy weapons. Before seeing the creatures, he too didn’t know that matter beings could actually exist. The many images in the microspy had been transmitted to the council of Rintia, who were really fascinated by the find. Following the first ship, 3 more had arrived afterwards and Loita and other commanders were sent to keep an eye on those ships, while keeping themselves hidden. It was thus tragic when a Heisian ship was encountered while an alien ship was under observation. The alien ship was destroyed, and all the matter beings on board were killed.
By now, Loita had got up to his ethereal feet and was staring outside the windows of his living quarters. Through the dark abyss of the ocean, he wondered what wonders were up there, above the surface of the black waters, above the mythical entity of legend which a Rintian had yet to see, the sky.
It had been the defining moment of her career, after years of being the radar operator on spacecrafts, she felt relieved and excited when she was chosen to man the radar on the first extra-terrestrial submarine, the Corinthian. There had been much talk about it, after the planet Laguna had been discovered. The planet was pure ocean, an atmosphere and mass similar to that of Earth, but no land, just pure ocean. Estimates and calculations had been done, and scientists have believed for long that the planet-wide ocean was at least 100km deep, and at the bottom of it all, a thick layer of ice probably another 50km deep. This was already much deeper than the deepest part of the Mariana’s Trench on Earth, a mere 10km deep. Many teams have been considering voyages to the planet, some wanted to try touching the bottom. So far, only Claire’s team, Neptunian, had touched the bottom of the ocean.
However, Claire was bored. Ever since they descended into the ocean 3 days ago from their floating base Erodes, the Corinthian had done nothing but sinking. It was an uneventful 2km/h downward sink, and even after reaching the ice layer 2 hours ago, they had encountered nothing. There were sayings and beliefs of gigantic monsters inhabiting the monstrous ocean, but nothing at all. It was a very wet, dull planet.
Claire closed her eyes and recalled the events before the Corinthian had begun its descent. She and the rest of the crew had been living on the Erodes for nearly half a year while the Corinthian was being constructed and tested. Erodes consisted of one large building on a buoyant structure, which itself was huge. It had to be huge, for the waves on Laguna were terrific. They raced at nearly 100km/h and some were nearly 400ft high. The structure had to counter this by being 20km long and wide and the building had to be placed nearly 1000ft above sea level. The structure had 4 legs partially submerged in the water, like an oil rig, and each leg was about 1km long and wide at its base. There were powerful black-hole motors in the legs which helped the Erodes stay put. Sometimes, it even moved the base out of the way of 2 huge colliding waves. The building consisted of an endless array of corridors, labs, offices and living quarters. There was no need of going outdoors, unless to take the shuttle into the orbiting space station. No one wanted to go outdoors anyway, it always rained. There was just so much water on the planet that it kept evaporating and pouring back down again. It was impossible to see the star the planet was orbiting, for it was always covered by dark clouds. Erodes wasn’t the only floating base, there were 3 others for teams that had actually managed to get the financial backing and resources to do research work on this planet, but they were all spaced at least 100km apart. If one team needed help, it had to rely on members of the space station. It was impossible to travel through the insane ocean on its surface.
Claire was the radio operator, so she was largely excluded from the mission planning and technical discussions involving the operations of the ship. However, she had at least the basic knowledge of what the Corinthian would be like. A very simple design, one pointed cylinder, 500m long, 100m wide, built with Acrinix, the strongest alloy ever made by mankind. The hull had to be strong, it was dealing with pressures of 1 MPa. A person ejected at that depth would be crushed to smithereens, if he wasn’t killed by the force required to eject him first. The interior was complete with radio operating rooms, labs and living quarters, not to forget the onboard kitchen, which mainly produced dried processesed foods similar to those used in space travel. The engine room housed the black-hole engine, which provided the power necessary to propel the ship through incredibly dense waters. There was also an electrolysis chamber, which took in the water from the ocean and converted it to hydrogen and oxygen. This initiated addition had saved much preparation time since there wasn’t any need to fill the ship with oxygen before the dive. Other compartments included a weapons chamber and control room.
Claire had remembered the day the Corinthian began its mission. She was seated in the centre of the control room, behind the pilot and co-pilot, observing the 3D holograph for any signs of obstructions within a 10km spherical radius. As the green light was given and the ship began sinking, Claire had turned her head to watch the last of the light disappear. She was one of the four fortunate people to see the last of the light while in the ship, the other being the weapons manager. The other 6 members said goodbye to the light the instant they stepped into the hatch. From then on it was darkness all the way, save for the mini-headlights that shone for a metre in front of the cockpit.
Earlier that day, Claire had cheered with the rest as the ship encountered the ice floor. After it had anchored itself in the ice with its mechanical claws, a few members of the team had deployed their personal robots out of the ship to survey the seabed. This of course wasn’t the actual seabed, it was due to the high pressure that the rest of the water 50km down had turned into ice. The real seabed most probably consisted of rocks, just like the Earth’s oceans. Some of the robots had found interesting things, like queer fish-like creatures swimming around aimlessly. In the depths of the ocean, they had no visual organs, much like those deep-sea fish on Earth, and their body had somehow adapted to the almost unbearable pressure. Scientific studies down here were unusually comfortable, since the team members could lie on their beds while playing with their robots via dataports.
Claire was now drifting off to sleep while the holograph remained as silent as ever. Then, out of the blue, a crew member let out a shrill cry of joy.
“I’ve found something! Something big!”
That was enough to make everyone else abandon their posts and come rushing to his quarters. Claire did a final check on the holograph before doing so. Nothing, nothing at all. What did he mean by ‘something big’?
By now, everyone had crowded over his dataport, which showed the vision of his robot in 3D holo-space. Through the strong head light, it appeared to be looking at some form of wrecked vehicle. To be more precise, it was a severly damaged submersible. The hull had been shattered open, and it seemed completely crushed by some unknown force. So this was the ‘something big’, it wasn’t ‘big’ as Claire had imagined, but it was definitely ‘big’.
“Could it belong to one of the other teams?” asked one of the team members, Marty.
“I doubt it,” said the person in charge of that particular robot, Chris. “The other three knew how stupid it would be to send in a machine not made of Acrinix.”
Nothing else was said as Chris maneuvered his robot to get closer to the wrecked craft. It became apparent that there was no room for anyone inside the interior full of wires and machanical junk. The craft had been unmanned. It could have been one of the other team’s after all, to test the limits of certain materials under pressure.
“Most probably it belongs to the Athenians, they came to this planet only to plan on staying on the surface and doing their experiments from there. I can imagine them throwing away their money to do this kind of stuff, they should have a lot of it without a big ship to build.”
It was Laika, another team member. That was his nickname actually, after the first dog to go in space. His real name was Lawrence and was the only member of the Neptunians not to have any prior space experience before coming to Laguna.
“Hold on,” said Captian Falkes. “The Athenians are located on the opposite side of the planet, are you sure the undersea currents could carry it this far?”
Chris moved the robot even closer to find more clues as to who the craft could have belonged to. It didn’t carry any of the other team’s symbols, nor any form of writing on the hull. It was then mutually decided to take the craft aboard the ship, part by part, using the 6 robots . The robots were not designed for complicated mechanical handling, it was a job best done by human hands.
After 5 hours, the robots had recovered most of the machinary and a fraction of the hull of the submersible. After doing post-mission checks on their own robots, the team members proceeded to investigate the wreckage. Claire had set the radar to auto-alert mode, so she would receive notification should any thing appear nearby. She too wanted to join the team as they searched for clues to the submersible’s origins.
The crew had carried the parts their robots brought back to the lab and were now taking good looks at it. The first discovery was already enough to shock everyone. Apparently, the metal used to make the submersible was a metal even stronger than Acrinix. No lab on Earth could have ever produced the pressure and temperature required to make it. Chris shook his head as he looked at the scraps through his microscope monacle. Meanwhile, Marty and the rest were analysing the machines that had been onboard the submersible. Not only were they made of the same type of metal used to make the hull, but their design was so complicated and full of unknown parts that no normal engineer could have possibly created the circuits involved.
“I don’t understand any of this!” exclaimed Marty in frustration. “Have the other teams done some secret projects of their own and built this?”
“What puzzles me is that despite the toughness of the metal, it still got crushed under the pressure of the ocean. Furthermore, no sign of propulsion could be found,” said Chris.
None of the team members knew what to make of it. It was clearly a mysterious discovery, but that was it, nothing else could be said.
“It must be of extra-terrestrial origin.”
Everyone immediately stopped what they were doing and stared at the wisecrack who said that. It was Laika, the only man who had never been on other planets other than Earth and Laguna.
“Impossible!” said Captain Falkes, a little disgusted. “Our computers have done intensive calculations on the development of this planet, and the chances of it having intelligent life are virtually a million to one. The conditions are just ridiculous.”
“No sir, I meant this is a craft from another planet, not Laguna.”
Everyone kept silent at that moment. Despite FTL travel being in the craze these days, only about half of the galaxy had been thoroughly explored. It wouldn’t be a surprise if another intelligent race had found Laguna first and had already deployed personel to study it. If that was the case, where were they? Why had every team from Earth not reported seeing any signs of these alien beings? Did they grow tired of Laguna and leave?
There was a loud beeping sound from Claire’s auto-alert device, which broke the silence and made everyone jump. Now the attention was on her, as they all followed her as she raced to the control room. The sight that greeted them was an even bigger shock than Laika’s relevation. On the holograph, there was a virtual image of a ship twice as large as the Corinthian. It too was cylindrical in shape, and in every aspect, looked like a bigger version of the ship. It maintained a vigilante on the edge of the radar, in other words, 10km away from the Corinthian.
An alarm sounded in Captain Falkes’ head. He instantly gave the command to shut off all lights and machines. The panicked crew members raced wildly through the ship, throwing switches and smashing buttons. Soon, the entire ship was pitch black and quiet. Even the radar had to be turned off lest the other ship became attracted to the EM waves being emitted. Everyone was now huddled in the control room, waiting for the 2 minutes to pass after which the radar would be turned on briefly, to see if the other ship was still there. None of them had felt so much fear in their lives.
“Why are we panicking?” whispered Marty on instinct. “The ship looked much like ours, it could have been another team’s.”
“If that’s the case, why didn’t the space station pass us any of this data? With a ship that big, it can’t be kept a secret from the organisation,” said Laika in a jitter.
It was true. Big operations that each team were planning had to be made known to the space station, it was a law made to keep track of all the money flow. The space station would then inform the other teams what that team was doing, mainly to promote competition but also to allow for possible agglomeration. The gigantic ship that was a mere 10km away from them now hadn’t been reported. Either someone had broken the law or it was piloted by intelligent beings looking for the submersible they had lost. If so, it was best not to be found.
“What if they had installed a tracking device in the submersible?” Chris said in fear. “They would know where to find us…”
Nobody dared to give an answer. They all began to miss the surface of the ocean, Erodes, Earth and their families. Being captured by aliens at the bottom of a 100km deep ocean hadn’t been on their minds.
“I should turn on the radar now…” said Claire, and she pushed the button to switch on the holograph. To everyone’s horror, the alien ship was now right next to the Corinthian! There was no scream, just shudders of horror as Claire quickly turned off the radar again.
“Are they going to kill us?” another member of the crew chipped in his own nonsensical question.
Once again, no one dared breath a word. If they were to die, it would happen in the next few seconds. The alternative in their minds would be to get captured by the aliens and be subjected to cruel experiments.
3 minutes had passed, and Claire had already missed the interval by a minute. No one complained her, for they were all afraid as to what would happen next. In the end, she turned on the radar anyway, to reveal the truth which everyone was afraid to witness. It was hence a relief to find that the ship had vanished off the radar. It had probably been passing them, and probably didn’t notice them, which was unlikely. To play safe, Claire turned off the radar again and waited another minute. True enough, the ship was no longer there. The rest of the crew started to feel more relaxed.
The danger was far from over however. Falkes ordered a minimal startup of the ship, with only the engine and radar running. The weapons system was also activated, in case the first interstellar war should find its origins here. Slowly but surely, the Corinthian began making a slow climb to the surface. An hour passed, then two, then three, the alien ship never appeared again. Falkes then decided it was more or less safe and ordered the ship to resume full operations, but he kept Claire and the weapons managed on standby.
A day had passed since then, and the Corinthian was now nearly halfway to the surface. Claire hadn’t slept, and neither had the weapons manager nor Falkes. Marty had the good mind to make all three of them a cup of coffee each.
“You guys have it tough,” he said as he passed Claire her cup.
“Thanks,” she said, trying to give a smile despite her weariness.
“Say, why do you think they didn’t take any action?” he asked suddenly.
Claire was a little surprised by the question, but nevertheless tried her best to answer.
“Maybe they weren’t interested in us?”
It was a rather lame answer, but not a bad one considering the situation.
“They must have set up some sort of underwater base somewhere,” said Falkes, hoping to strike a conversation to keep himself awake. “Might not be too far away from where we landed. They should have been looking for their lost submersible, that was their main objective. They were not interested in us, that’s why they decided to ignore us.”
“But it does puzzle me,” said the weapons manager. “They knew where they lost their submersible, then they arrive and find us instead, they should have known we had it in our posession.”
“No, we didn’t have the entire submersible,” said Falkes. “We left quite a number of parts on the ice. They might have found the parts and probably assumed that was all that was left of it.”
“Yes, then there’s the mystery on how the submersible got damaged in the first place,” chimed Marty. “Something must have attacked it, but what?”
A brief silence followed. All the theories had been put forward, but unfortunately, no one was brave enough to go back down there to prove them right. It had been a harrowing experience, and once this encounter was made known, no one would be in a rush to send more ships to the bottom.
“Ah, enough of this. Claire, have you sent the report back to Erodes?”
“Yes sir.”
The rest of the journey back to the surface went on without any incident. The alien ship never returned. Everyone was happy they had made it back in one piece, and they had started a much heated discussion on the frightening encounter. The space station had already received the report, and had dispatched personel to interview Falkes and other members of the crew. However, that was all they could do. The station couldn’t produce EM waves powerful enough to penetrate the 100km of water, not to forget the atmosphere. There was no way anyone would know what was happening down there without actually going down there. The ice and all that had been theories which had been proven correct, but some theories would remain theories. After the descent of the Corinthians, other teams had sent down their own ships to investigate the bottom, even the money throwing Athenians. The ships of 2 teams returned with nothing to report, but the ship of the Alkeies never returned. The crew aboard the team’s floating base Nomadais had reported that before all communications were lost, the captain had let out a blood-curling scream. The ship had been missing for 3 months. As such, research on Laguna still carried on, but was confined to the depth limit of 20km. No one will ever know what was really down there, for now.
Down there
Commander Loita gave off the vibes of salutation as 2 corporals drifted pass him onboard his undersea ship, Elfis. He was tired, and his frequencies have been getting cranky. He floated to his own living quarters and lay on his bed, and groaned as his transparent body hit the dark mattress. It wasn’t even a body, it was pure energy, the energy which would be required to make up the mass of an average human being. It was a lot. Despite this, he couldn’t tap the reserves from his body, but was confined to the energy derived from the metabolism of heat. There was no light down here, not in the ship either, for they didn’t need light. They could feel where everything was.
The war with the Heisians, another race of matter manipulators, had started almost a year ago. They and the Rintians, which was Loita’s race, were the only 2 matter manipulating race of energy beings living on the planet with the endless ocean. The fighting on the seabed wasn’t much, for now, just a few minor skirmishes here and there, but things got complicated when that mysterious ship arrived half a year back. It had been the same shape as the Elfis, just half the size. It had been encountered near the site where a Helsian unmanned reconnaissance vehicle had been destroyed, and Loita was assigned to retrieve it. When the ship arrived, most of the vehicle had been removed, and Loita had assumed the Heisians were lurking around somewhere. When he encountered the ship on the radar, his intuition had told him not to fire. Cautiously, he had ordered for an approach, and had determined the ship wasn’t of Heisian origin. It was another intelligent race. Contact couldn’t be established because all communications and electronics were turned off for some reason, but Loita managed to get a microspy to latch itself on the windows of that ship to take a look.
The image that returned was shocking. From the ship, it was clearly a race of matter manipulators, but the beings inside the ship were also made of matter! It looked as if they were afraid, and Loita realised they were afraid of his ship. He then concluded that this race were aliens from another planet coming to study his, and they must have obtained the wreckage of the Heisian vehicle for research purposes. Not wanting to harm those creatures who had nothing to do with the war, Loita ordered the Elfis to turn back, but he kept the microspy on the windows, for evidence and to keep track.
Loita smiled to himself as he lay on the bed, thinking what that race must have thought of the planet. It wasn’t a place where intelligent matter beings could live, yet he doubted they knew anything about energy beings. They must have thought Loita and the others were residents of another planet that had also come to study the ocean planet. They must have thought there were matter structures nearby for Rintians to stay. But the Rintians didn’t need matter residences,other than the bases where they kept the ships, they stayed on the ice itself. The ships merely served as armour from the Heisian’s energy weapons. Before seeing the creatures, he too didn’t know that matter beings could actually exist. The many images in the microspy had been transmitted to the council of Rintia, who were really fascinated by the find. Following the first ship, 3 more had arrived afterwards and Loita and other commanders were sent to keep an eye on those ships, while keeping themselves hidden. It was thus tragic when a Heisian ship was encountered while an alien ship was under observation. The alien ship was destroyed, and all the matter beings on board were killed.
By now, Loita had got up to his ethereal feet and was staring outside the windows of his living quarters. Through the dark abyss of the ocean, he wondered what wonders were up there, above the surface of the black waters, above the mythical entity of legend which a Rintian had yet to see, the sky.
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