Chapter 1: The Sparrow and The Dragon

“Final Kind cruiser inbound!” The ensign shouted, several blaring red monitors under-lighting her face as she scrambled toward the intercom “Dragon class cruiser inbound! Prepare for combat!”

Captain Henry Stol maintained his air of calm command despite this harrowing news. He needed his crew members to see that he wasn’t buckling under this pressure or they would soon follow suit. Internally though, Henry saw little hope of survival. A dragon-class cruiser was the largest and most deadly of all the Final Kind’s spacecraft… Henry had been through some close calls with the Final Kind’s fleet, but he and his crew had never faced a dragon-class all by himself…

His ship, the Sparrow, had beaten the odds for the past six months, avoiding Final Kind ships and destroying the ones that got too close. They shouldn’t have even made it this long… he knew that. He rubbed a hand through his short black hair, white-winged at the temples. His crows feet felt like they were deepening with every passing moment, another sign of his growing stress and age. With the Dragon appearing now, he was precisely aware of every wrinkle on his face furrowing as he thought on what he would have to do to save his ship.

This little sparrow-class frigate would be turned into a floating hunk of charred gray metal unless they got out of here, fast… but those talon beams would easily stop their escape… That left only one option. He turned to address the amphitheater, where several crewmen fiddled with terminals and spoke in nervous whispers. The amphitheater was large enough for his voice to echo, and the little speaker implanted in his throat ensured that his orders wouldn’t go unheard.

“You hear that?” Henry asked his crew, his voice deep and clear “They had to send a Dragon after a Sparrow, what does that tell you?” He paused for a moment, the eyes of his crew glued to him as he stepped over to the glowing holo-deck “It means they’re scared of us, and they should be. We’ve been on the run for six months since they took earth, and every ship they sent after us never returned.” Henry clasped his hands behind his back then, taking a deep breath to steady himself “We aren’t going to escape, you all need to know that right now. The Dragon can pull us right out of light-speed with it’s talon beam… Knowing that, I want to take the beast down with us. Are you all with me?”

Nervous silence came over the amphitheater, interrupted only by the sounds of the terminals. The silence made Henry wonder if his men were all about to break out into panic. Thankfully, the crew all shouted their agreement, all rather wanting to go down fighting then submit to the rule of the Final Kind. Henry smiled at the enthusiasm of his crew, a single tear threatening to slide down his cheek.

He wiped it away, turning to the holo-deck next to him and pressing his thumb down on the glowing button. It was designed to pick up on any spacecraft nearby and display them for his crew to see. That way, they could all come up with a plan of action on how to engage the enemy, for they could all see what they were dealing with.

A crimson glow illuminated the amphitheater, drowning out the bright overhead lights and showing a horrifying monstrosity to his men. Henry knew now why the brass referred to this as ‘Dragon’. It wasn’t merely in reference to it’s massive size, there was something draconic about the craft. The head of the ship almost looked like a horned skull, the ‘snout’ stretching far from the thick scaly body. They weren’t really scales of course, but the hull’s design gave it that impression, looking nigh invulnerable. The gaping maw of the Dragon housed the ship's most dangerous weapon, a planet-scorching plasma cannon.

Thankfully, The Final Kind wouldn’t use such a weapon on this little frigate. They only ever used it on worlds that refused to… comply with their laws. What Henry was worried about were the thousands of other weapons dotting the craft, all capable of ripping through the Sparrows shields with ease. The Sparrow did have one advantage here however, and that was the sheer size difference.

Henry knew that the dragon-class ships were meant for engaging multiple large opponents, not little birdies like this one. If they could just get close enough… they could detonate that weapon point-blank, and Dragon or not, the ship would be destroyed. The Sparrow would have to do a short jump and hope the talons didn’t grab them. Henry doubted that they would expect such a maneuver, and that was what he was banking on.

He was about to start shouting orders when suddenly, several small red blips emerged from the dragon's afts.

“Boarding craft!” One of the crew shouted “Hundreds of them!”

Henry went wide-eyed and said aloud “So they don’t want to outright destroy the ship…”

Did that mean they knew about that weapon? Were they going to try and take it so they could reverse-engineer it? He couldn’t allow that to happen.

“Get ready for a short jump, I want to be right next to the Dragon.” Henry ordered, clasping his hands behind his back and straightening his posture.

“Aye sir, but the boarding craft will reach us before we jump!” The ensign yelled, still standing next to the intercom.

“Then wake him up.” Henry ordered.

“...Aye sir.” The ensign replied, thumbing the intercom “Ground troops, boarding craft imminent! Arm yourselves and get ready for close-combat! Cryo station, unfreeze Hoplite thirty-seven!”

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“You heard her, get him goin’!” Hoplite heard a man say outside his cryopod.

“I pressed the button as soon as I heard her sir, he should be unfreezing now, probably conscious.” Another voice, a woman replied.

The woman was correct, he indeed was conscious. He could feel the nano freeze melting right now, seeping out from his pores like sweat. The experience was mildly painful, as it was every time he was awoken, but he had learned long ago to ignore the pain. Terna would not tolerate weakness from him. It would be best to remain still until his casket was opened, moving around before the nano-freeze was completely leaked out could cause significant damage to his flesh.

“Tubes are draining, nano-freeze capsules are almost full.” That same voice said.

That was good, soon Hoplite would be out and in the fight again. He was only ever awoken when it was time to fight. As is a Hoplite’s purpose. It wasn’t long before he heard the familiar hiss of his cryo-casket opening. His eyes were still frozen shut, but the lids would thaw soon and he would be able to see.

Hoplite then felt the casket rising from the ground, and he knew that once it finished its motion that his feet would be pointing toward the ground, ready for him to step out. And he did. Hoplite felt the smooth cold metal beneath his feet, a wonderful feeling. He didn’t like being in the cryopod of course, but he did what he was ordered to do, without question.

He felt an exceptionally warm towel get draped over his head, of which he was grateful for. He pressed the warmth to his eyes, breathing in the heat and letting it soak into his emptied pores. He opened his eyes then, seeing the white fabric of the towel and the white overhead lights seeping through it.

Hoplite then removed the towel from his head, wrapping it around his pillar-like waist and staring down at the two cryo-officers standing in front of him. They stared, awed by his presence as all humans were when they saw him. He was a human too, of course, but Hoplite knew why they were awed. Hoplites stood head and shoulders above the tallest of unmodified humans, and had the enhanced musculature to match their great height.

“Uh… welcome back sir.” The first officer, a large man with short graying dark hair said.

A man of this size likely wasn’t used to being dwarfed in this way, hence his reaction, Hoplite figured. The woman next to him was far shorter, barely coming up to Hoplites waist. He figured she was smaller than the average woman at least. They both wore the same light blue one-piece jumpsuit, indicating their role as cryo officers. Despite the size of the cryo station, it only needed around four people to operate it, two per shift.

Hoplite furrowed his brow as he noticed that all of the other cryo-caskets were empty. Rows upon rows of rectangular glass containers with metal-backing sat completely vacant. Sparrow clearly wasn’t running with a skeleton crew then. With the exception of Hoplite’s casket, the rest were all uniform, capable of fitting humans of any normal size. Hoplite caskets, of course, had to be made larger.

“Hoplite, we got Final Kind boarding craft incoming.” The man said “We might not even got time to get ya suited up.”

An unfortunate thing, but he could still crush skulls with ease, even without his armor. Despite that, he would prefer to have it on. Hoplite didn’t know how many craft were coming, but he would be twice as effective with it on. Without a word, he made his way toward the armory, knowing by heart where it was located. He walked quickly, letting the towel fall from his waist without a care. He was not bothered by nudity, but he had noticed that normal humans were made uncomfortable by it.

Hoplite had not felt the need to hold up the towel however, he would need both hands free to don his armor and he would need to discard it anyway. He heard the two cryo-officers struggle to keep pace with him… Just why were they following after him? They quickly passed through several mechanized sliding doors and gray metal hallways filled with humans buzzing about, all only stopping to stare at Hoplite as he passed.

At some point, the cryo-officers had decided to stop following after him, knowing that their jobs were done. All they had to do was wake him up and tell him the situation, it had been unnecessary to follow him past that point. Soon, he entered the armory, stark naked before a scene of chaos. Marines, divers, and exo-troops all quickly began donning their equipment, pulling rifles out of lockers and stepping into auto assemblers to get heavy armor donned. Rows upon rows of lockers and auto assemblers stretched out before him, the hinges opening and closing over the hissing mechanical limbs working to armor up the troops nearby.

Soon, a marine caught sight of him, staring dumbstruck. Others soon noticed him passing through, heading toward the very end of this wide chamber. They continued to stare, dumbstruck as he scanned his retinas at the keypad at the end of the room. The heavy metal doors next to the pad hissed open immediately afterward, immediately sliding shut as soon as he was passed.

“Welcome Hoplite thirty-seven.” A robotic voice said from the intercom.

Hoplite ignored the automated greeting, approaching the auto-assembler at the center of the small chamber. A single light illuminated the round assembler, reflecting off the sleek white metal. The machine looked like nothing more than a big metal ring, and essentially that was what it was. It would mostly be the dozens of articulated mechanical limbs surrounding the ring that would be attaching his armor. He slipped his feet into the boots already attached to the assembly ring, and slid his hands into the matching gloves.

They immediately locked his hands and feet in place as soon as they slid in, then the assembler went to work. The ring spun around as mechanical arms attached every individual piece of armor to his body, finally sliding the helmet on at the end of the process. He stepped out of the auto-assembler, sparing a quick glance at the mirror to make sure there weren’t any errors with it’s assembly.

The black adium armor he wore was trimmed with blood red lines, indicating his rank within the Hoplites. A somewhat high rank, perhaps the equivalent of a lieutenant, though most Hoplites were gone now, his paint was rendered near-meaningless now. The knee plates were solid red, his wide shoulder plates encircled by a red trim. That would be the indicator for other Hoplites and command, though to the eyes of a common soldier it was simple paint. He turned his head, making sure that the powerful mechanical limbs didn’t dent any portion of the advanced combat helmet.

Unlike other Hoplites, his helmet didn’t have a visor. For all intents and purposes, his helmet was a rounded hunk of metal, the only opening being for donning and removal. He could only see by function of several self-repairing micro-cameras implanted in his suit. They were everywhere, on the front and back of the helmet, to behind his knees and in front of his shoulders. Normally, he only had two sections of cameras active at a time, one front and back. Whenever he tried to have all the cameras active it just gave him a headache.

He could control what cameras were active with a bump of his chin, allowing him to cycle through the functions. Hoplite had set this as a default long ago, leaving one eye to see his front and the other to see his back. It had taken some getting used to, but once he had mastered it, nothing could sneak up on him. Three-hundred and sixty degrees of vision proved immeasurably useful when it was him alone against an army.

The rest of the suit seemed to be in good order, no dents along the sleek frame of the suit. Well, to him it was sleek anyhow, compared to the older models. Regular humans had taken to calling it the ‘fridge-suit’ a name which had stuck among the crew of the Sparrow. Perhaps it was just an alternative name to the phalanx armor command never told him about? He could certainly see why the comparison was made between his suit and a fridge. His arms and legs, particularly the large torso plate, were broad and blocky, with the corners only slightly rounded off. This Hoplite armor was built to take as much damage as possible, so it had been given the sturdiest construction possible. This durability was greatly amplified with a kinetic shield that would deflect projectiles and absorb explosions. Even without the shield, the thick adium plates would deflect all but the most powerful of blows... fridge-suit indeed. Hoplite then re-emerged, donned in his mighty fridge-suit and standing half-a-foot taller for it.

The armory had emptied out considerably by then, with only a few soldiers left struggling to don their gear. Hoplite quickly walked over to an untouched weapons locker, taking a small ballistic pistol with extra mags and magnetizing it to his thigh. He then grabbed a ballistic rifle, sleek, black and semi-automatic with a simple holo-dot sight.

He attached that one to his back plate, and grabbed the final item from the locker, keeping it clutched in his grip. A long barreled black shotgun, one powerful enough to blast a hole through through the doors of this ship. It was a heavy tool and could double as a sturdy bludgeon, a perfect tool for close combat. There were no sights attached, it was unnecessary, whatever you aimed at would turn to mist even with a glancing hit.

It was right after he shut the locker that the Sparrow shook, likely it was the-

“Boarding craft hit! They're drilling in, wherever you are, get ready!” The ensign shouted “Keep them busy for as long as you can until we can jump!”

Jump? So they were running again… Earth may have been lost but surely there were other colonies out there still that they could go defend? Has humanity really lost? He began jogging toward the hallway, a group of marines trying to follow behind him. Through his back cameras he could see them huffing and puffing as his light jog left them in the dust. It wasn’t that he didn’t like having help, it was just that normal humans couldn’t keep pace with him.

It was after he passed into another hallway that he encountered them. Little armored creatures with elephant-like gray skin and huge bug-like eyes that stared at him with terror. They didn’t even come up to his knees but he knew that those little green-glowing plasma rifles they held could melt through a man at minimum charge. There were around twenty of them, groups moving apart from one another to comb the halls for victims. Hoplite had become familiar with every combat race that was a part of the Final Kind’s military, and he had killed more of these things than any other. They were called pugs by the troops, due to their pug-like faces, but the name of their race was Lomi.

The go-to cannon fodder of the Final Kind, they bred like rabbits and were too dumb to question their law but smart enough to fire a gun. Their armor was uniform, the same shade of red splashed haphazardly against hard plastic armor. Pugs were always meant to die absorbing shots meant for the more elite members of the Final Kind’s military, so they gave them completely ineffective armor. It may have almost been better to let pugs just go naked, for the hard plastic armor they wore was bulky and hard for them to move in.

He theorized that pugs were only equipped with the ineffective armor so that they would feel safer than they were. After all, its better to have your cannon fodder feel like they’ll be safe when doing a suicide charge. The pugs trained their guns on him, the coiled rifles charging up to max power. The plasma rifles; like all Final Kind weapons, were sleek as they were deadly, the barrel looking like a steel honeycomb. Hoplite could see down the barrels to the tiny plasma reactor within. He had once put a bullet right down the center of the barrel, and hit that reactor with devastating results. The resulting explosion usually matched that of a standard issue frag grenade, but Hoplite wouldn’t be doing any trick shots unless he had ample opportunity.

Hoplite fired his shotgun then, the powerful rounds splattering gray blood and entrails all across the hall. The slugs that didn’t directly hit ricochet down the hall, denting the metal and flying into pugs left and right. A few bounced off his energy shield, draining it only by a fraction before they recharged. After the damage was done, only three pugs remained, all screaming down the hallway away from him.

They were immediately gunned down before they could turn the corner, automatic rifles turning them to gray chunks of fleshy goo and sending sharp chunks of plastic flying. He darted down to the center of the hallway, hopping over bodies and pointing his gun down the boarding craft's mouth. The black interior of the pod was only lit by a series of dark red lightstrips, and Hoplite could see that it had been emptied of all occupants.

He immediately turned, running down the hall and rounding the corner where the pugs had been shot apart. The marine squad at the opposite end of the hall nearly opened fire on him as he sprinted toward them, but they held their fire once they realized what he was. They moved to greet him, but he rushed passed the squad, intent on finding more aliens to butcher before command put him back in cryo.

And oh he did find them. More pugs than he could count got blasted away by his shotgun or had their skulls caved in with a firm kick. Eventually he found the other aliens he knew would be on the ship, the larger, more deadly variants. He engaged in a gunfight with a tentacled swaglay, the eldritch creature blasting him with rays of super-heated plasma from the many tendril mounted guns it held. It had a broad torso hidden beneath the many moving tendrils, it’s four insect-like legs skittering around to avoid gunfire. The armor it wore could stop small calibur rounds easily, but larger guns could punch through the scaled alloy. He ended it quickly enough with a well placed shot from his rifle, punching through its octopi-like skull and sending the pugs around it running in terror.

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He shot them all dead and continued down to the vehicle bay, where hundreds of marines and aliens battled. He sniped more swaglay and pugs before turning his attention to the fliers. The large vehicle bay proved to be an ample combat theater for what the marines merely called wasps. They were man-sized insectoid creatures with strong exoskeletons and two pairs of arms and legs… their racial name was Jaro, but Hoplite preferred to call them ‘wasps’ as well. The buzzing of their massive translucent wings terrified the troops, but to Hoplite it was merely a nuisance.

At some point, he found himself next to a mounted turret, freshly set up. Hoplite took to the turret and gunned down the wasps, punching through their exoskeletons and sending them crashing to the ground dead, bright green blood mixing in with the variety of colors now staining the floor. After the turret ran out, he ripped it free of its mount and threw it at a group of pugs that had pinned a marine down with gunfire. The man had been trying to make himself as small as possible behind a little metal crate, one that was half his size.

The detached turret crushed one of the pugs, and seeing that their comrade had been turned to mush, they scattered. The marine saw Hoplite standing far above him on the platform overlooking the vehicle bay, flashing him a thumbs up. Hoplite leapt from the platform, landing on top of a tank and drawing his shotgun.

There were still more aliens to kill-

“Jump is a go!” The ensign shouted.

That didn’t matter, the aliens were on the ship and they would still be here after the jump. He and the marines continued fighting, hoping to reclaim the vehicle bay from the invaders. Hoplite never noticed when the ship finished the light jump, nor even when it started… but it seemed that right as they were mopping up the last aliens the captain came on the intercom.

“It’s been an honor serving with you all. We’re taking out this dragon-class here and now with the anti-matter bomb we’ve been carrying. Hopefully that’ll put a big enough dent in the Final Kind that they leave our colonies alone. Good work everyone, see you on the other side.”

Hoplite froze in place then. Dragon-class? Anti-matter bomb…? Was he going to… he was going to die? An unfamiliar feeling welled up within him, something he hadn’t felt since his first days as a Hoplite recruit… all the way back when he was just a child.

Fear.

That fear left him paralyzed for long enough that he didn’t react to the armored jeep being chucked at his head by an ape-like Yugoro. The corded strength of its four arms sending the vehicle speeding towards his head like a freight train. If Hoplite had braced for the attack, it certainly would have hurt, but he would still be in the fight.

He was not braced.

It collided with his helmet and snapped his head back, sending him crashing into unconsciousness.

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It was dark, that was the first thing that came to mind. Were his cameras disabled? He bumped with his chin, seeing the display come up. Just darkness, the cameras themselves were functional. He felt up and down his body, and came to realize that he was floating. Zero g’s, but he wasn’t out in space, there would be stars if he was. This pure blackness meant two things; he was still in the vehicle bay, and the power had gone out. That would mean that life support and the gravity had gone out…

It was likely that all the crew were dead by now, including the Final Kind invaders. His suit could keep him alive for up to twelve hours without oxygen… so how much time had passed? He bumped his chin again, seeing the time display on his hud. He had gotten out of cryo… roughly eleven and a half hours ago. He had around thirty minutes to get to an oxygen rich environment or he’d suffocate.

He activated the built-in flashlight on the side of his helmet, revealing that yes, he was still on board the Sparrow in the vehicle bay. Bodies of both man and alien bumped into each other on occasion, sometimes passing through floating liquid clouds of differently colored blood. He activated the thrusters in his boots and back-plate, and floated up to the exit, moving around floating corpses and vehicles. Hoplite drifted through the empty and dark halls of the Sparrow, passing over the bodies left behind. He didn’t stop to try and identify any of them, there was no point and he needed to get to an escape pod.

Those would have their own power and life support system. He could use that to renew his oxygen supply and get off this ship if need be. Hoplite knew where the pods were… but he grew anxious as he found several of them missing. Likely either Final Kind or fellow humans got to them and escaped after the bomb… speaking of which… Did it work?

Captain Stol had come on the intercom to say that he was going to suicide bomb a dragon-class cruiser with an anti-matter bomb. Hoplite didn’t know too much about them, but he did know that they were extremely experimental, and that the Sparrow had been outfitted with one to test it out. A test that had never come to be after the Final Kind took earth. Likely they were finished subjugating humanity to follow their draconian laws.

It seemed as if its effect was more like that of an emp than an anti-matter bomb. After all, the ship was still here and the power was out, what else could that mean? His thoughts were cut off after he finally found a pod. The very last one at the end of the hall, pill shaped and empty of any passengers.

He floated inside and activated the life support system, shutting the sliding doors behind him. He waited there for an hour, just floating as his oxygen tank refilled itself. The phalanx suit could detect when he was in a zero-oxygen environment and sealed itself off accordingly, but when his environment had air, it opened its filters and sucked it into a hyper-compressed oxygen tank.

After that tank was refilled, he shut off the life support and reopened the doors, his filters immediately sealing. He floated through the corridors until he finally came upon the bridge. The amphitheater was completely empty of bodies. They might have made it to the escape shuttles along with captain Stol, but where would they escape to? There had to be somewhere they intended to land the pods. Either that, or they had found another human ship and chose to escape to it, though that was unlikely.

Ship was blacked out, no hope of using the holodeck for anything. He could always just use the engineer ladders to take a peek outside. There should be one around the shuttle bay he just left, engineers constantly had to use those ladders to keep from floating off the ship. It wasn’t like they would float off if they let go, they always carried cables with them to stay safe when outside the ship.

Hoplite wouldn’t bother with safety cables, his boosters would let him get back to the ship even if he somehow lost his grip. He didn’t have to search long for the access hatch that would lead him outside. It was encircled by a bright yellow line and read ‘engineer access’. He keyed the button next to the hatch, but got no response. Right, power was out across the Sparrow, he’d need to be more physical here.

He slipped his fingers in the groove between the sliding doors, and magnetized his boots to the ground. Hoplite strained, gritting his teeth as he forced the thick doors apart with his and the suits enhanced strength. He only got it as far open as his arm span before he stepped through, the doors slamming shut behind him. They made no noise as they did so.

The airlock was small, with only a single closed manhole in the center of the room. Considering the fact that the power was out, he would have to pry this one open as well. That proved to be no large feat, the previous door had been a challenge, but this was as easy as peeling an orange to him. Soon he was scrambling down the ladder, kicking open the second hatch at the bottom and climbing the ladder out into space.

He quickly climbed the ladder, only briefly observing the surrounding stars before ascending. He could see half of a green moon far off to his left… that must have meant that there was a planet nearby right? Soon, he had his answer after he reached the top of the Sparrow. He peered over the top of the ladder to see a gigantic eyeball stared back at him. The iris matched the many bloodshot veins stretching toward the center, all a deep shade of oceanic blue. Hoplite saw that parts of this entity's eyeball were a deep infected green, with patches of red and yellow on the upper half of the thing. The lower half seemed to be rotting the worst it seemed, with a blighted deep purple shade on the left and dead reddish-brown on the right.

The eyelids were both different shades as well, the top being a fiery red and the bottom an icy white, the lashes matching both. The sclera was the same shade of blue as the veins and iris, with the pupil being yet an even deeper shade of cobalt. Hoplite stared at the monstrosity, which stared back at him, not blinking. His hands dented the gray metal ladder as they tightened their grip. He waited for it to blink, waited for it to do something but nothing ever came. After his fearful awe subsided, Hoplite realized that this eyeball… was a planet.

How could that be? How could the geology of this world have come to be shaped in such a way? What were the odds of this being pure chance? Was this some kind of Final Kind art world? He had never known them to be artistic in anything but genocide. Hoplite shook his head, there was no way that this was a Final Kind world, if it was he would have seen countless cruisers and defense platforms in the atmosphere, but aside from that… there was nothing.

Nothing except the dark husk of the dragon-class cruiser. It drifted lifelessly, no lights shining from its sleek scaled bulk. It dwarfed the Sparrow a thousand-fold, being nearly the size of the green moon nearby. So the bomb had worked… it had to have had the effect of an emp then… but… if it had just been an emp, then why was the Dragon missing its front and back ends? From the way the ship was angled, he could see that the mouth of the Dragon had been sheared clean off, same with the back. This revealed the honeycomb structure within the dragon, matching the interior of the other Final Kind space-craft.

There were questions he had; very many questions that he needed answers to. Hoplite had a feeling that those answers would be down there on that cosmic eyeball. Light illuminated the left half of the planet, though with the tilt, it would be getting dark soon on that side. If he were to launch as soon as possible, then he would likely land on that left half. Did the surviving crew jettison down there after all? Before all the air evacuated from the life support system?

They must have.

But if they evacuated to that world…

That meant that the Final Kind likely evacuated what personnel they could as well. Somewhere down on that world, his fellow men fought against the forces of the Final Kind… without him. He would be joining them soon though, they just had to hold out a little longer.

For the next three hours, he gathered up weapons, rations, and other equipment into the shuttle, as much as it would be able to carry. Hoplite had no idea what the situation would be like down there, but he wouldn’t be caught unprepared. He packed all the scavenged gear he found into the eight seats on either side of the pod, making sure to pack as much extra ammo as he possibly could. Hoplite then climbed into the pilot's seat then, and started the pod once more. The door slid shut behind him and he punched it, pushing the lever forward and feeling the shuttle push out of the dead Sparrow. Hoplite had to angle the shuttle down toward the planet just right, he didn’t want to crash in the middle of the ocean after all.

He aimed for the greenest part of the planet, and activated the thrusters. It would be a while before the pod actually reached the planet’s atmosphere, considering that he was launching from right next to the moon. These shuttles were fast, but they couldn’t go light speed. He guessed it would be an hour or two before it actually reached the eye. Light barely touched that portion in the western hemisphere, so by time he landed, Hoplite estimated that it would indeed be nighttime as he had predicted earlier. That wouldn't matter much to him, the only thing that made him uncomfortable was the time it would take to make it planet-side. Hoplite knew that worrying about the time of his landing wouldn't get him there any faster...

So he waited, seeing the massive world-eye drawing closer… and closer until…

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“Ess?” She heard her sister, Lya say.

“Hmm?” Essa replied, opening her eyes to see the starry sky above her.

“What do you think the elders are going to do… about the monster next to the moon?” Lya asked her.

Essa sighed, sitting up from the grass to look at her younger sister. She was in her fifth year now, and was loaded with questions that Essa didn’t have the answers to.

“Probably ignore it. Look at how high up the moon is Lya… they can’t reach it with their magic.” She pushed her long black hair behind one of her pointed ears as she spoke “It hasn’t even done anything, if it was going to, it would have eaten the moon by now. Best not to worry about it too much.”

Lya scrunched her brow in thought, turning her little head back up to the sky. Like Essa, she had their mothers hair, pure black like the sea at night. Essa almost couldn’t see her sister’s hair for how dark it was tonight. Essa enjoyed little moments like this, just out in the wilderness with her sister on a summer night… crickets chirping, frogs croaking, and the occasional firefly flitting about.

This clearing was Essa’s favorite to lay down in, the grass was high enough that it felt like laying down on the softest mattress, and the trees were so perfectly spaced that the broad green leaves served to frame the night sky for viewing. It was like a perfect painting, with the green moon shining down on everything while it’s ever present companions, the stars, twinkled like glass in the sun. The new addition of the 'moon monster' definitely was something that drew a lot of her attention but it's imposing presence did not detract from the natural beauty of the night sky. The elders and everyone else in the Bastion were horrified, and Essa didn't blame them for that. The thing was nearly the size of Rehtyna; the moon itself, but Essa still didn't think it was going to do anything. It had been up there all day and was just sitting there. Likely just enjoying the view as she was... or maybe it was a new moon? With that blocky shape she doubted it but it could also be one of the stars, come to pay Rehtyna a visit.

Being an elf, she’d be able to enjoy this view for eternity… unless she died of unnatural means. An uncomfortable thought, best to turn her attention to something less anxiety inducing. Like her adorable little sister. Those big glassy gray eyes were those of their father, and Essa also shared that trait. If they had been around the same age, they likely could have passed as twins, but Essa was in her twenty-ninth year.

She was an adult, but twenty-nine was still considered by nearly everyone in the Bastion to be a mere child. It was really irritating, after all-

“But the moon monster sent some of the stars falling.” Lya said, interrupting her thoughts.

Essa shrugged, laying back down on the grass to stare at the sky “Just a meteor shower. They happen sometimes…”

As she finished saying that, she caught sight of a new star in the sky… one that was growing, and fast. Essa sat up again, staring as the star shone brighter and brighter, grabbing Lya and holding her tight. Lya herself was just as mystified by the growing star, and she did nothing else but point at it. Then, much to Essa's horror, the star screamed, the horrifying shriek growing louder and louder as it continued to grow.

Then it suddenly streaked across the sky, screeching as it went, wrapped in a ball of molten fire. She grabbed Lya tighter, turning her away from the horrid thing as she realized that it was falling right towards them. It was as if it became aware of their position, turning to land upon them and scorch their skin from their bones.

That’s when she began running, turning away from the screaming star while clutching her little sister as hard as she could. Lya began weeping as they passed into the forest, weaving between trees as she went. Then, the star collided with the forest, shaking her to her core and sending her ears ringing. Chunks of moist dirt and burning hunks of wood flew, some barely missing Essa as she ran screaming in terror.

She did not look back, she did not stop, she kept running until she was back in the Bastion, safe with her sister and away from the screaming star.

She knew that she would have to tell the elders about this… they had to know what to do about this, and if they didn't, the Harkhall surely would.

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