Ch 2: The Monster Past End

“OOOOOHHHH we should have never escaped. We should have stayed in our cages and been slaves. I would much rather be a slave than a terrorist. At least slaves stay alive”, Starboi bemoans and he wasn't the only one.

A ship full of shocked aliens had ruminated in the giant string of traffic and turned into a cesspool of doom thoughts and moaning. The fluffballs had started a cult in the dining area and one stands on top of a table and prays to an entire book full of deities.The snake lady had gone into hiding somewhere. The slime brothers deliberate over the percentege of doomedness they were in. The valans mourn their lives.

“Can everyone just shut up for one minute”, Farzak roars and silences the ship.

Tierney didn’t know how much she needed the silence until it fell on her. Without all their voices complaining, she could imagine them arguing with her instead about her idea. Her brain crew adamantly hated the idea she came up with.

In the silence, the rolat opens its mouth. Rather than the usual baby wail Tierney had come to hate after years of taking the bus with her sister, absolute silence falls over everyone.

“What is going on with it”? Tierney asks the slime brothers.

“Well it is trying to call its mother”, Rooby explains.

“Each rolat child calls its mother at a very specific frequency in order not to be hunted by the rolat’s natural enemy, the solar flare”, Foo finishes.

“Wait, solar flares are alive”? Teirney asks and gazes at the child as it sputters in its cart.

“Everything is exclusively alive on that star”, Rooby snorts.

“You must truely know nothing if you don’t know that. What planet are you from anyway”, Foo demands.

Starboi nearly spoke, but Tierney nudges him in the side. He reads her eyes which are furrowed and serious.

“One from the boonies. We don’t get out much”, she answers.

“Must not have a decent education either. Perhaps you should invite someone like me and my brother to build it up for you”, Rooby offers.

She tries to picture these two attempting to teach her planet something. She imagined military personel switching their lecture sheets with more appropriate ones. Morons thinking they could take Farzak in a fight. The news fretting over an invasion from the fluffballs. The karens shaming the valans for being born with crotch arms.

“Not if we all get blown to smithereens by Infoil attack ships”, the fluffy alien huffs and sets her long, possumlike chin down on her caterpillar nub feet.

“Can the mother hear it now”? Starboi asks and gazes at the tiny fireball.

“No, of course not. Rolats do not use telepathy”, Foo sniffs hautily.

Tierney feels sorry for the little creature. All alone amongst miserable strangers. It is no wonder it’s upset.

She reaches into the cart and wraps her hands around it.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING”? Rooby and Foo screech in unison. The other aliens whip their heads around. Some gasp. Some cringe back.

“What”? Tierney asks. It is too late for any intervention. The baby rolat is pressed against her jacket and screams soundlessly into her brest pocket. It is hot, like a scalding plate, but Tierney had handled plenty of hot plates in her time. She turns her sleeves down over her hands so the hotness wouldn’t burn her skin. The jacket protects the rest of her and absorbs the heat into warmth.

“Rolats are hot. Not to mention they release uv radiation from their bodies. Even looking at one too long will burn your eyes out”, Rooby whimpers.

“It's illegal to hold a baby rolat. What if your acid juices hurt it”, Foo moans.

He reaches for the rolat himself, but pulls away with a fearful whine.

“We are already terrorists. I really don’t think it matters if she carries it or not”, the snake woman snarks from her hiding place among the ceiling beams.

“Here’s an idea”, Tierney says and takes off her jacket. With her jacket still on one part of her body she rolled it around the rolat until it sat in a nest made of her jacket. Then she set her hood over it. Dimness returns to the room at large and all that remains is the hole in the hood where the rolat could breathe… if it does breathe.

“Are we cool now”, Tierney shrugs, “No radiation burns now. And it can breathe so there”.

“That… works. Wonder why no one has thought of that”, Rooby ponders.

“Because it's illegal to think of that”, his brother hisses.

“So if we are all done bickering over light bulb baby care. We need to figure out a way out of this mess. No one here is actually a terrorist. Is there a way to prove that to the government”?

Teirney addresses the room at large and bounces the rolat in her arm.

“Perhaps”, Foo ponders.

“Not just perhaps. There are a collection of us here that can pass as enslaved. The valans can go free since valans tend not to become slave holders due to their gentle nature”.

“And the Bourals would pass as harmless too since they are commonly captured as housepets and bedside servants”, Foo continues

“We are more than that. I can probably build a house if I was given charge”, one of the fluffy white creatures protestes, “I-I-I can lift a brick… and a mallet… and a box of nails… ”.

“Oh of course of course”, Foo backpedals politely.

“Also the young ones could pass as enslaved and maybe their families, but the Yoruks, the caaans and the illis…” Rooby muses.

“I have a name you, slugbrains”, the snakelike alien yells in outrage. A small dismembered arm flies down from above at hits Rooby on the right side of the head.

“So only a portion of the people here will be cleared automatically”, Tierney raises a brow. That means her, Farzak, his friends, snake lady and many others will be deemed as true terrorists.

“Yes, if we aren’t killed on sight first”, Foo finishes.

Tierney ponders the idea while the rolat bounces in her arms. The bouncing helped her exhausted brain run a little better.

“I have one idea”, Tierney announces, “What if we drop you all off on other planets”.

The crowd perks up and listens intensely. Tierney expected the brothers to argue with her, but they wait and she continues.

“Infoil is only after the ship. They might not take a surrender, so even turning ourselves in is risky. Our best bet is to fly away as fast as we can”.

“And the ship can do it”, Starboi adds, “It did when it kidnapped all of us. Even now, you drove us to safety against their fastest ship”.

“But we will eventually be caught if we keep running forever. But Infoil have never seen any of you. If we drop a portion of you off on different planets let you hide, then you all won’t be considered terrorists”.

“And theres a problem”, the snake lady interrupts.

“What is the matter”? She asks.

“Getting off planet is expensive”, a boural interjects.

“First you need a ship and they cost a cornel’s fortune”, Farzak snorts and leans back on his victory pile.

“And then you need a travel pass to go into the atmosphere”, Rooby adds, “Not only are they expensive too, but you need official paperwork which none of us have since slavers burn our IDs”.

“Not to mention you can only make one from your home planet. Its the law”, Foo continues.

“We don’t have any money”, the scared boural with the hologram pipes, “We don’t have the ID to access the money we have. All of us would have to work as immigrants until we can earn enough to go home”.

“Its better than dying”, the valan from the cock pit speaks up. Farzak and several others nod in agreement.

“And we could also be enslaved again”, the snake lady snarls, “They always go after vulnerable people on different planets. We would be sitting ducks for the next bastard who wants an easy buck”.

Chatter breaks out among the crowd, some turn to arguments rather fast. However Tierney agrees with both of them. Abandoning these poor souls on some rock is not ideal at all. What if she leaves them on a planet with living solar flares or giant purple tentacle tigers or something. Then if Infoil figured out the plot, all they needed to do was pick the odd ones out. The full idea came back to her. It was unrealistic, but it seemed a better outcome for everyone than what they had now.

“Ok… how about we keep to that plan, but instead of random planets, we deliver all of you home to your home planets”.

The crew perks up again.

“Really? Can we do that”? A young Boural asks and bounces in delight.

“It might be possible”, Foo muses.

“That way you won’t have to pay to go somewhere else. You all can get your ID’s back. You can find your families and they can help you. And Infoil couldn’t spot you so easily from your home planet”. Now that she said it out loud Tierney feels better about the plan.

“Its too risky”, the snake lady argues and slithers out of her hiding place, “I’m sorry, but we would need a ton of luck to pull that off. I mean, we would need to get past miles of Infoil security, break into several atmospheres, then escape those atmospheres alive. One planet is tricky to get into, several is unheard of”.

“The slavers broke into our atmospheres to capture us”, Starboi points out.

“And did those planets have good security? Hm? A populus of their own that they have to protect? Were we all at home when we were kidnapped”?

Several individuals in the room seem uncomfortable. Starboi flares his neck holes and glares at her.

“Right? I was kidnapped while vacationing on an water planet”, the snake lady explains, “Several others were kidnapped with me. And you, valan, aren’t you off of that farm planet. And you. I don’t know what you are, but how is your planet’s security”?

Tierney does not know how to answer that. She does not know what good security looks like. The military monitored air space and Nasa monitored space. However this ship was able to get past both.

“See. We are screwed”, the snake lady huffs and flops mournfully on the railing.

The crew is more depressed than ever. The translators pick up sounds like “mournful whispering” and “sigh of defeat”.

Tierney watches and sets her focus in stone.

“And what about that makes us screwed”? She demands, “Because its hard? It needs lots of skill? Look this ship has gotten into those planets and gotten out alright".

Eyes turn to her. Attention turns to her.

“I escaped those damn Infoilers today, in a damaged ship, I remind you. This thing surprised me on what it can do, maybe it has more tricks up its sleeve. It can drive through a debris field. It can outrun an Infoil ship, it can go past planet’s security. It may not be the safest bet, but it is the best one. I say we should risk it. We should prove ourselves wrong. I'd rather fight and fail than give up and fail”.

Silence meets her, along with the pressure of everyone in the room staring at her. Under the hood of her jacet, the rolat stares at her with awestruck eyes and cooing under its breath.

“How about we put it to a vote. Who wants to give up and turn ourselves in”.

Several individuals hold their signs up in agreement. Starboi is one of them, along with one of the enslaved valans. One of the brothers. The snake lady is not one of them.

“And who wants to try being free”?

The room is filled with arms, tentacles, tails. Anything someone could raise, they did. Several bourals. All of Farzak’s kind. The snake lady. The other brother. Rooby nudges his brother and Foo changes his mind.

“Lets do this. Ok who know’s how to fly a ship”, Tierney offers. She does not raise her hand since she has only driven one once. She does not count as someone who can fly a space ship.

Nearly the whole crew raise their signals.

“This ship is a manual. Who knows how to fly manual”, Starboi interjects.

All the hands disappear.

Tierney raises hers with a roll of her eyes.

“Its official. We have a captain. Three cheers for… who are you”?

“Tierney, Tierney Zakayo”, she introduces.

“Captain Tierney Zakayo”.

Tierney sits down in the pilot’s seat, the new captain of the ship… the ship which is a piece of garbage, painted in the worst color in the universe and is the target of a terrorist case. Not to mention it only has a quarter battery from sitting in traffic.

Ahead the blue ship jots by at a snails run and the family in the front has fallen asleep.

Speaking of kids, the rolat had fallen asleep during the planning session. Tierney hears it snore against her chest in her hoodie. Though the plan is in motion, at the moment the motion consists of changing lanes in the traffic.

Ahead, miles and probably a day’s travel ahead is the first exit on their trip. Before it is the flash of lights and the hovering forms of Infoil ships. Tierney glares at the blockade. No doubt that life endangering Infoil nightmare is among those ships and alerted them of their whereabouts.

Tierney reaches over, still glaring and unlocks the auto follow brakes. The ship jolts and the gear sticks in between reverse and neutral. She is reminded again of the piece of crap ship she is stuck with.

She slowly swerves out of her lane and puts the tip of the ship’s nose in between the ships next to her. The pilot of the fancy ship is still asleep. His ship halts in the air and the pink ship in front of him crawls along without him. Tierney moves into the empty space and looks around her again for another sleeping driver to cut in front of.

The rolat rolls over and slips the hood off her front. Teirney glances down at it. She smiles at the fluttering flames that line its closed eyes. The others told her that the rolat is female. Rolats can have names and this one is about a year old, or else it would have died in the not blazing contitions she is in.

“Hey, how’s driving coming along”, Starboi greets and sits down in the copilot chair.

“This is tricky”, Tierney breathes, “I have never had to change lanes in an aircraft before. We usually have a lot of space in the air”.

“Wait until you get to parallel parking”, Starboi snorts and adjusts the seatbelt, “You know you are still in speed mode right. Here you adjust this lever right here and it will stop jittering when you slow down”.

“Ah, thanks”, she says as he shows her.

The jittering stops and the ship is silent. She releases some of the pressure she holds to keep it at a steady pace. He is right, this is easier.

“Hey, what’s your gender by the way”, she asks.

“Valans don’t have gender”, they explain, “We don’t have male and female, neither do most species like the bourals down there. If it helps, you can call me ‘it’ or ‘they/them”.

“Ah. Thanks”, she humms. There is no way in the deepest parts of space is she going to call Starboi and it.

“No name and no gender. You guys sure are… different”. She wants to say ‘weird’, but is that really accurate? Maybe humanity is the weird one. Names, genders, gender inequality, violence against each gender. Perhaps to integrate with space society, humanity needs to drop all preconcieved garbage to fit in.

“Yes, that will happen when you go to other planets. You will find that stuff is really different on each one. You said your species has never interacted with other lifeforms from other planets, right? For a thing who has never seen aliens, you seem pretty chill about the whole thing”.

“Well on our planet, we are having trouble getting over our own differences. I happen to be in the half who wants to be considerate towards difference. But don’t take me as the norm. There are a lot of weirdos on my planet”, Tierney explains.

Teirney moves down in front of a brown craft with an entire family of sleeping people. Below her the stars blink in between the ships in the stream. She is almost at the very bottom.

“You know, I’ve been thinking”, Starboi ponders, “I know there are plenty of undiscovered planets out there and some that no one is allowed to visit”.

Tierney perks up. Starboi’s brow lines are furrowed and their eyes swirl in that worried way.

“....And”, Tierney urges.

“But we took over the ship near Retoil one. I was taken from Retoil one. If we were in that part of the universe, all of the planets there have already been discovered and explored. There isn’t any more stars beyond that part of space because of the E.N.D”.

“The end. Like the end of space”? She asks.

“Probably not. Space keeps expanding so we might never find that. No its just a whole lot of blackness that leads to some kind of mysterious nebula. Have your telescopes found something like that”.

“Nope”, she pops the word. She has seen the stars before. She went out stargazing at night on a camping trip and it is all covered in stars. She knows nebulas exist and black holes and supergiants and other planets, but no spot of nothing leading to a big nebula. Surely Nasa would have caught that and let airforce students learn about it. Perhaps it is a government secret since there are aliens near that big spot of nothing.

“Huh. Ok so you don’t live near the END… I mean I was in that cage for a really long time so maybe they did a round trip to a new area. I don’t know, this kinda puzzles me”.

“No kidding. I don’t know how to get home. Until I can figure that out, I am stuck out in the middle of space”, Tierney shruggs. Inside she feels like a pool of black sludge is filling her organs. After she drops everyone off at their planet, she will be alone. Either she hides on a strange place where she will know no one and nothing… or she could face the Infoil ships and die in a last stand.

She shakes the dark thoughts off. None of this will come to that. She can find some way out of it when the time comes. Maybe when she learns more and can navigate space better. For now, she needs to stick to ensuring everyone gets to their homes safely.

She slips through the final lane to the very bottom of the pass. Below her, a large gas planet spins at a visibly rapid pace, its storm clouds swirl in yellow and orange. Its gravity pulls them along and as she stares down at it, she realizes this bumper to bumper traffic is moving faster than she expected. Far ahead, the Infoil ships gather and monitor every single part of the highway, including the bottom where they are at. Only their blockade is weaker at the bottom.

“Obviously they will guard the sides and the center. The lane is wide so if you want to slip away unseen you would go to the center and be around as many vehicles as possible”, Rooby shared earlier.

“Not to mention its hard to push through eight lines of traffic to get there”, Foo added.

“The highway is so full because it uses a convenient section of planets trapped still in the orbit of two large stars. It is full because one does not need any energy to transverse it, only to sit by and wait to get to the other end…

This is where the plan will start. That means its time to put the rolat in the hold.

“Hey, can someone bring the baby cart please”, Tierney calls into the mic on the console.

She looks down at the rolat. Her eyes are open. She wiggles in the sweater and makes small grunt sounds at Tierney.

“Hello there”, Tierney cooes, “Look at you”,

She smiles wide and wiggles in its nest.

“Yes, hello. How are you”? Tierney asks the creature, “Are you a smiley ball of sunshine? Are you a smiley ball of sunshine”?

The rolat seems thrilled to be talked to. It cries out joyfully and its smile nearly takes up all of its face.

“Why are you talking to it like that”? Starboi asks with incredulity.

“Because shes adorable. Yes she is. Yes she is”, Tierney cooes.

“Doesn’t mean you need to heighten your sounds”.

“Oh yes it does. Yes it does”, she cooes and boops her in the center of her face. She seems delighted by that.

The cart rolls in, pushed by the snake lady. She looks wary. She glares at the blockade ahead of them.

“And we are going beddie bye. Beddie bye, yay”! Tierney says to the squealing creature as she lifts it out of her jacket and sets it down in its insulated bedding. The hatch closes over its laughter and the room is left into dim silence.

“Keep her safe”, Tierney reminds the snake lady, “What’s your name by the way”.

“Kiron”, she shares.

“Thank you, Kiron”, Tierney nods.

“Ugh, whatever”, Kiron snorts and patters on her way. Her limbs are small pink skink arms and they push her along down the hall.

Tierney sits back in her chair and eyes the ships up ahead. Her stomach twists in a knot and her mind slowly comes up with ways in which this is a bad idea. She could die. They could all die in this trip. Maybe if they had tried to escape miles before no one would have caught her. Then she would either be dead or free and this would all be over already.

“You going to be ok”? Starboi asks. Their voice comes out in between her fingers and she realizes in that moment that she is fiddling with the delicate translator.

“I’m fine”, she lies and clips it to the front of her shirt.

The silence sits like cold clam chowder in between them. The traffic is so SLOW that the minutes tick by into a full hour of sitting in traffic. Nope nevermind, it is only minutes. Meanwhile they inch closer and closer to their enemy. The lights come into more detail. Is it too late to turn around? Tierney is reminded that they can’t, its impossible. Only forward, but forward is torturously slow.

“What do you think. Should we do it now”?Tierney asks and grips the wheel in front of her with anxious fervor.

“Not yet. Just a little closer. We don’t want to be too far away or they will notice us”, Starboi says. He is at the edge of his seat and the stars in his eyes have gone dim. If he could blink he wouldn’t even dare in that moment.

Tierney could not take any more anticipation. She wants to run. She wants to do something. She wants to relieve the twisting in her gut, the lack of blood in her cheeks, the racing in her heart. She will do anything, anything to make it all stop.

“Ok… Now. NOW. GO NOW”, Starboi’s neck holes honk in the effort he puts into his words.

Tierney turns the ship down and bonks the hyperspeed button on the dash. The ship rocks forward and lands with a horrible, jarring crash into the translucent white barrier. The barrier flashes orangeish red with outrage and attacks.

Tierney’s eyes are assulted with orange and sparks. The steering wheel writhes with the ship which rocks as though it is driving through choppy water. It shudders and jerks in the stream of sparks where Tierney has no idea where she is going.

With all her strength she forces the wheel to be still in her arms. The shaking fights against her bones as she locks them to keep them in place. The ship jerks and for an instance she sees ships graced in orange. Another jerk the other way and she sees the moon pale flash of Infoil ships, their lights burn a purple hole in her vision that she can’t blink away. She steadies the ship in the stream with all her might, gritting her teeth so hard they might crack.

It feels like the ship is falling apart. She is falling apart. Her tendons hurt from the intense pressure she forces on them. Starboi screams beside her and is tossed against his seatbelt. He grips it for extra stability, but dares not to tear his eyes away.

Several screens flash purple and scream in alarm at her. She glares at them. They indicate a single digit as it highlights the upper element of the ship, a large flat thruster firmly built in. She knows what it means already. The hyperspeed battery is at zero.

The intensity of the speed dips, sending her lugs crashing into her ribcage. The orange and the sparks disappear and ahead of her is space and the curve of a massive black planet.

Over her head the highway is still orange. At least one part. The section in front of her is still milky white and filled with vehicles zipping along at a slightly faster speed than they are. Behind them the entire section of the highway is orange.

“Wow, look at how far we went. It must be miles”, Starboi cries out at he sees the rearview camera’s view of the path they went. Small blinking purple lights alight from the blockade, several miles away and swirl around the highway.

“Quick while they are looking for where we popped out”, Starboi insists and unlocks the fast speed gears, “Look at them. It’s a good thing we didn’t switch back into traffic.

Tierney puts on a burst of speed and runs underneath the highway. She feels the pull of the highway trying to bring her back in. Meanwhile all the ships come to a dead stop and the whole highway ignites orange. No doubt if they had dived back into the highway and hid amongst the ships there, they would have no way to escape. They would be trapped.

Well, not all of them. A glittering shape separates off from the ships who slowly search the traffic. This one glimmers in the starlight and spins out into space. Tierney would recognize it anywhere. It is the ramming ship from before.

“You think it sees us”, Tierney asks from the corner of her mouth.

“Maybe not”, Starboi whimpers and hugs himself.

Tierney pulls up and around the orange tube, hugging it until the ship is out of sight. She powers forward past another planet when she sees the ship again. It blasts its fire on full and tears towards her at full speed.

“So much for that”, Tierney yells and flies up and around the path.

The ship follows her movements and ends up behind her, slowly gaining on her tail. It will surely catch her, they are a heavier ship.

“We are far enough away from the other ships. None of the equipped ships will catch up in time. If we can get away from this one, we are set”, Starboi yells hopefully over the engine to Tierney. She only needs to outrun this one ship and hopefully not let it hit her or overtake her. But she has the disadvantage now…. Or does she.

“Do we know how much battery does that thing have”? She shouts to Starboi.

The ship puts on a burst of speed straight at them. Tierney dodges into the orange highway. The belly of her ship scrapes the surface, the sound is horrible and sends sparks into her rearview cameras. It further slows down the ship. The other ship tries turning into their nose, nearly forcing them into the highway.

“At max it holds about 24 megavits”.

“How much do we have”? Tierney roars and stares at the flat, blackened windshield of her enemy’s ship. She imagines some scum stares back at her with a smug look.

“We can charge up to 64 megavits on this ship… but we only have 15”.

“Just enough”, Tierney smirks.

The ship comes for them, aiming its sharp side for the cockpit, but Tierney dives down. The top of their window gets clipped and a massive crack splinters over the top of their window. Thankfully the engineer thought that something of the sort might happen and had another pane beneath that. Tierney falls away from the orange highway and fills her front with the swirling grey of a planet.

“W-What are you doing. EEEEE”, Starboi cries and hangs onto his seat as his keister rises off of the seat and the seatbelt strains to keep him in.

“Going dark”, Tierney smiles and shuts off the ship.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”.

Highway. Sun. Planet. Space. Highway, sun, planet, space. Highwaysunplanetspace. Highwaysunplanetspace-highwaysunplanetspacehighwaysunplanetspace. They spin faster and faster as they are pulled into the planet’s orbit, up and down become ridiculous, otherworldly ideas in those seconds. Rocks hit them, ding on the metal, splatch against the glass.

Tierney pulls up on the steering and forces down on the pedals with all her might. With the powered control’s out, it is all up to the mechanisms and her strength to stabilize them. It proves a tricky task when she is already exhausted and sore from the highway. She pulls them straight and swerves out of the debris field.

Steady on the orbit, behind her the Infoil ship is steady on her tail. Its fire pulls sideways towards the planet and over the rocks in its orbit.

“You are a NUTCASE. Let me drive. This is ridiculous”, Starboi sobs and reaches for the start panel which is black as the night sky.

“NO, just trust me”, Tierney shouts and snaps at his crotch trunk. He pulls it back fearfully, she sets her whole body on the steering wheel and puts all her energy in keeping them straight. In her rearview camera, the Infoil ship is struggling. It puts all of its power in the rear where the flames spill out like a galaxy, but their ship moves away inch by inch. Starboi sees the display with awestruck eyes.

Tierney swerves out of the field and soars toward a smaller planet which slowly moves in orbit with one of the stars. She enters its field and is flung through its orbit. The sputtering infoil ship follows.

“You are using the orbits”, Starboi realizes, “That ship is lighter and faster than us, but since this ship is heavier, the gravity will pull it along faster”!

Tierney can do nothing, but smile weakly at him. She forces the ship steady in the orbit. The Infoil ship is far behind her. It attempts to move faster, flaring its engines, lowering to the orbit which rejects it with its fiery rock shards, pulling out of orbit which sends it even further behind. Tierney could feel the rage radiating off the tiny ship even from that distance away.

Then the ship pulls a sudden menuver. It spurts a blast of flame which takes it out of orbit into the darkness of space. Then it shuts off its lights, turns off its engines and sits, floating still like an asteroid.

Starboi cries out with glee.

“It ran out of battery. IT RAN OUT OF BATTERY. And the safety features took it out of orbit so it's stuck in the shadow of this planet. HAPPY SOUNDS. Someone will have to pick it up and take it into direct starlight to recharge. It's an auto so they have to turn the screen back on to use it”, He sings with joy, “Oh THANK YOU ancient manual ship. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Tierney you are a genius”.

She has a slight smile on her face as he grabs her shoulder with a rock climber’s grip strength. She still needs her full focus to keep them steady in orbit and for the next step in their journey.

The highway is gone behind them and ahead is almost open space. The light of a star scorches their face as they turn around the bend. Tierney takes the starting fob out of its place and pushes the weight of the ship away from the planet.

Starboi makes a sound that the translator didn’t need to turn into a scream, it already sounds like one. His neck holes whistle with intense, long, squealing breaths and he clambors with his seat in absolute terror.

The star, one of the two stars that kept the planets in place and the highway moving, sat fat and bright in front of them. Tierney turns towards it.

“STOOOOOOP”, his voice crackles through the translator as it is overwhelmed with the ultimate scared sound.

They spin down and down towards the star and its bright flames. Solar flares leap in the air and lick the atmosphere hungrily. It reaches for them, pulls for them.

“YOU ARE INSANE! YOU ARE INSANE”! Starboi roars and claws at the start place. Tierney took the starting fob earlier. Instead he grabs her body and her wheel and attempts to pull it out of her hands. The smile doesn’t leave her face. It is almost over. All of this will be over soon.

His eyes are white with terror, his neck holes bleed snot and what might be saliva. The star heats her face, and then the cockpit and then then her organs and her bones. It is too hot. If she is in it long she will boil for sure.

The star yanks them away from its surface and they are suddenly moving faster than the ship had ever moved. Starboi was sent into the back of his seat and his body dangles from where he leaned to fight her. She is crushed into her seat as though a hot pan is set on top of her. Her face pulls back as the pressurized cabin would never be able to hold back that force. Her vision is half white and half black. The stress builds. Its too fast, she has never gone this fast. They will crash!

She pulls on the wheel though her bones feel like they are being flattened by a mountain. The pedals are like hot pavement under her feet. The windshield cracks leak glass into the star’s orbit. She pulls with all her remaining strength and the fire leaves them. The cabin cools, the pressure to go faster releases. But they do not slow.

They are launched, faster than any human has ever gone into the black of space. It is almost hyperspeed.