Worlds Collide

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

Kyle didn't care. "AAAHHHHHHHHHH! GET AWAY FROM MEEEEE!"

He screamed to himself. Not in rage. Not in fear. He screamed for the thrill.

The buzzing in his blood, the pure energy packed into his muscles. It needed an out.

He screamed to black out the past, to be lost in the moment.

He screamed to live.

Dropping low into a crouch, he shoved off the wall.

A harpoon cleaved through the space he had just left, burying itself in the padded wall. He didn't need to hear it to know how close he was to being skewered.

He didn’t look back. Had to keep moving forward. He watched the ceiling rapidly approach. Five feet. Four feet.

Wait for it.

Wait for it…

His outstretched arms touched the ceiling.

Now!

Using the impact to his advantage, he bucked his arms outward, converting the motion into a forward roll while putting his weight on his left side, resulting in a leftwards tilt. A harpoon struck the spot he would’ve been in if he’d rolled straight.

Kyle ended up in a low squat. Casting a glance to where the harpoon mounts were sitting, he was met with a fully mounted harpoon staring him down.

Collapsing Cosmos! Didn’t they let off? He could feel the burn of exhaustion in his legs, and he noticed that his breath was getting shallower, from deep and rhythmic to shallow and ragged.

He released a grunt as he forced his legs to move.

He did not contact the floor gracefully. Panting, he struggled to his feet, only able to manage a feeble jump in the air as another harpoon sailed right below his legs. He cleared it but was now just floating in the air. A sitting duck. Comets!

The second Hookie didn’t fire straight away, waiting patiently for its friend to reset.

Kyle's hope was slim.

He focused on his breathing, feeling his chest expand to its limit and contract, focusing on the harpoons. In. Out. In. Hold.

He exhaled slowly. Deliberately. He was in control.

Kyle breathed in again. His world narrowed, his peripherals going blurry, like his eyes were using all their power to focus on the harpoons. A moment of stillness followed, the tension rising.

He was the first to move. Slowly, almost gracefully, he started to arc his body, stretching as one might after getting out of bed. He kept his eyes fixed on the harpoons.

Another moment of stillness.

Kyle breathed in.

He almost saw the impact ripple through the mounts as the harpoons launched, seeking his blood. He brought his hands down with every ounce of strength he had.

They collided, creating a shower of sparks around him as the harpoons were knocked off course by his arms. He was forced backward as the chains connected to the harpoons surged past.

He’d come across a small book written in a scrawled hand. The book had been filled with ideas, theoretical and hypotheses. He’d just proven one of them right. He was sure the book was old, as was the need to counter harpoon attacks. Their primary use was to rein in loose cargo and other things in space. Or a stubborn student that refused to leave the zero-grav training box.

His mind caught up with the action.

He began to laugh, softly at first but progressively bolder. A crazed grin appeared on his face. He’d done it! He didn’t need some old book to tell him the technique would be unreliable. The timing needed to be extremely precise to hit the harpoons at a specific spot.

But he’d pulled it off!

At that moment he felt powerful, ready to conquer the world. Flying backward, out of a shower of sparks he’d summoned by deflecting two harpoons with his gloved hands. For a second, he wasn’t Kyle Drezz, attending FomalHuat Space School. He was someone from the stories he’d been told of as a kid. Strong, fearless, and kind.

One by one, the sparks winked out of existence, the metal rapidly cooling and losing its glow. His dream disappeared with it.

He felt cold.

Instantly he was sucked into his mind, the outside world going fuzzy as he tried to stem the flow of memories.

Spaceship. Father. Black cross on red.

The next harpoon took him in the chest, hard enough to shock him out of his daze. He concentrated on his breathing. He could breathe.

In. Hold. Out. Repeat.

Eventually, he relaxed, turning his attention outwards. He was being reeled back into the waiting bay, a rectangular hangar where the harpoons were mounted at either side. In the middle of the hangar, his teacher at the front, was the rest of his class. While his teacher was tapping his foot impatiently, he didn’t look overly angry. Mr. Beaduris had gotten used to his disobedience. In every other setting, he liked to think he was an average student, so he could push the boundaries here without severe repercussions.

The Hookie operating the harpoon he’d been reeled in with detached the harpoon, letting motion carry him the rest of the way. He landed properly, leaning backward, knees bent, and arms outstretched as the magnets in his suit activated again, creating enough of a force downwards to simulate gravity.

Using the hand language of Sommoris, Beaduris motioned for them all to go shower and change before meeting back at their classroom in Centori Peak tower. Steel doors closed off the anti-grav box behind them before air vents above opened and stabilized the pressure, allowing them to remove their helmets and begin conversing.

"So you were saying - she asked him out?"

"Hey, Fel; have you finally finished Circles of light? The sequel just came out!"

"Stars, bro. These helmets never smell any different. You gotta wonder if they're cleaned by Wash-T or just chucked back up in their boxes.”

Kyle wove through the gaggle of slow-moving students to join his friends. A head turned his way, nodding in greeting. His thin brown hair was parted into curtains, his easy smile and hazel eyes identifying him as Jennel. Jel was Kyle's friend of many cycles, not all coming from their star, FomalHuat. Jel wasn’t stupid by any means, but also never seemed quite there. Like he always had something on his mind that required a piece of his attention.

"Five minutes off your record there Kyle. Good run."

“Could’ve been better though. Call me crazy but those Hookies seemed way more focused th—”

"Nah Kyle you just suck," Lyve interrupted, punching his arm. She had somehow appeared on his left, an impish smirk on her face. Auburn hair fell past her shoulders, with dimples and a knowing smile. She always seemed to know what was happening in the school.

"What does that have to do wi—”

"She's right Kyle,” Ivy said, also interrupting him.

"You have no proof of my suckiness," He huffed. "Didn’t see any of you out there getting hunted by harpoons by yourself. You couldn’t last a second.”

Evek glanced back, an amused smirk on his face. "Even after the teacher had warned us that if we didn’t appear in the box in the next thirty seconds we’d be hunted down mercilessly? Seems to be damming proof that you do in fact suck.”

Kyle raised a finger. "Ah but you see Ev, it's the old bait and switch from the teacher. It's not my fault y'all are too stupid to read between the lines."

"Sure sure," Ivy said, pulling Lyve off to the side. The two conversed in a short series of whispers before giggling and disappearing into the girl's showers.

Kyle and the rest of the boys tromped into the men's shower room. They stripped off their loaned spacesuits, vocally relishing the feeling of freedom that the sweaty space suits stole from them. They unceremoniously dumped them in a large trolley off to the side, pushing a series of buttons that sent the trolley on its way to the Wash-T zone.

~

Kyle turned the hot water to almost full blast. Letting the steam envelope him, he closed his eyes and let go of the tension in his muscles, relaxing almost immediately. He performed a few basic stretches, feeling the water cascade over his skin. Relaxing. Just relaxing. The session had gone well, but that bit at the end…

Kyle wasn’t sure how he’d opened that floodgate again. Maybe he just overworked himself that time. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on the warmth of the shower and reminded himself of where he was.

Eventually, he opened his eyes. Taking the magnesium soap from the dispenser, he started washing himself down. The bar was engineered to have the right amount of magnesium to refresh his muscles. If he concentrated he could feel the bar shrinking in his hands. When the bar disappeared completely, he basked in the water for a moment longer and stepped out.

The showers were mostly empty. He walked over to the trolley in the corner, which had come back with their classroom uniforms. He located his and dressed. White pants and a navy blue shirt that buttoned down the left side for males or the right for females. Jel was waiting for him at the other side of the showers.

They engaged in easy conversation while walking back.

At one point in the conversation, Jel fell unnaturally silent. Kyle turned his head to look at his friend.

Jel looked awestruck. Turning his head to where Jel was looking, he could see why.

They’d passed a window exposing the rest of the RingShip. The two sides were lit up beautifully, appearing from the left and right and extending gracefully for kilometers. You could just see where the edges met up.

His eyes strayed upwards, and he smiled. Littering the emptiness around them were thousands upon thousands of stars. Tiny pinpricks of light amidst the deep velvet black of space. So randomly scattered, but somehow perfectly placed.

Someone, somewhere, was gazing up at the sky. Perhaps their eyes were fixed on this very star, smiling with wonder.

Kyle smiled back.

And hovering off to the left, taking up a sizeable portion of the night sky, Cigmus B. Cig B was the second of four planets that orbited FomalHuat, the only one that was visible to the naked eye. The climate of the planet was unique, even among the millions of documented planets. It held an exorbitant amount of water but had weak tectonic plates that moved easily and often.

This combination gave way to the nightmare of Cig B. Since the tectonic plates moved often, huge rifts in the ground could appear in minutes, exposing the massive lava oceans that the plates float on. From these rifts, lava spewed forth when the plates moved to close again. The lava would move lazily across the surface of the planet, cooling rapidly. Overnight the landscape of the place could change dramatically as the lava cooled into rock. The process of glowing liquid slowly flowing down hills and into crevices was nothing short of mesmerizing. People thought it was fascinating, even charming.

It was when the lava found its way to one of the oceans or massive lakes that things shifted gears.

Huge eruptions of steam billowed up from the contact site, called steam sprays. These would quickly form into massive thunderclouds, spewing forth lightning and heavy cascades of rain. Another plate would shift, more lava would emerge, and the cycle would being anew.

And if a rift appeared over a body of water…

The planet was known as Nat D - due to the sheer number and force of natural disasters that occurred daily on it. Looking closely, he thought he could see a steam spray happening at this very moment. Even though it wasn’t a pleasant event in any sense, he smiled. Such an event was terrifying, but also wondrous and awe-inspiring.

It made him grateful to be alive.

Realizing he'd been staring through the window for this entire time, he looked back at Jel. His friend was weeping, silent tears pouring from his eyes in wonder. Kyle smiled to himself, grabbing Jels hand and pulling him along toward the Vertivator

Jel had always been fascinated by the natural beauty in the galaxy. He could - and had - talked for hours about how life adapted to a new environment, about the hidden beauty that surrounded them. Interestingly, he was just as fascinated with the detail and depth in a person's eyes and often said each person had their unique galaxy hidden in their eyes. Kyle didn’t understand, nor did he share the same passion, but was happy that Jel had found something that he was so passionate about. Kyle pulled him along until they were past the window, and Jel seemed to bring himself back to reality a little, enough for him to walk.

Three steps from the Vertivator his chest started vibrating - aggressively. Pulling out his tablet from his chest pocket, he was greeted with three large words: ‘PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE NOW.’

He looked at Jel, one eyebrow raised. Jel read the message and looked back.

"Weird."

"Right? A bit out of the blue as well."

"Welllll," Jel trailed, "We’ve just finished another anti-grav session where you disobeyed the teacher again.”

"I do that every day though! Bea and I have reached an understanding!"

"Mr. Beaduris," Jel corrected. "And perhaps he was just waiting.”

“For what?”

“Dunno. For you to waste a certain amount of his time?”

Kyle sighed. They wouldn’t get anywhere with speculation. He didn’t think it was a coincidence he’d gotten it a few steps away from the Vertivator. He was probably being watched.

The Vertivator was a hollow cylinder that started from the ground floor and extended to the very top. It was completely smooth, broken by small, cut-out incisions that marked every floor. Jel punched in Floor 28 while Kyle hit Floor 79. Thin green circles started appearing from the ground, climbing the walls upwards. The Vertivator was active. Grabbing the bars on the side and settling into a squat, Jel winked at him.

"You'll be fine.”

Kyle laughed and pushed off, feeling gravity let go of him.

The Vertivator was a fabricated low gravity environment. It allowed you to jump to your chosen floor by deactivating the magnetic field generated by your suit, letting momentum carry you up. Kyle chased the green circles up to the 79th floor, where a padded plate shot out of a crack in the wall, stopping him. He used the bars on the side to maneuver through the doorway, swinging himself back into gravity.

He'd never personally met with the principal of the school. The man - or woman - was a shadowy figure. They ran the school. He attended it. They shouldn’t need to talk.

But here he was. The doors in front of him opened before he could mentally prepare himself. Muttering under his breath, he entered the room.

Why did he feel so nervous? Surely he wouldn’t get expelled for such a juvenile act. Maybe he’d pushed too far.

The room felt like a different world. It contrasted so heavily with the clean, shiny steel that covered the rest of the RingShip. Dim yellow lights lined the bottom of the walls, illuminating only the floor, which was made of some dark wood. Heavy Burm? Derrish Alpine? Maybe something else entirely.

Ornate picture frames hung on the wall, most of them empty. Faintly outlined in front of him was a desk, a shadowed figure behind it.

The room felt sinister, but that wasn’t the worst part.

It was cold. He could see his breath.

He hated the cold.

"Kyle Drezz?"

It was a female voice, direct and critical. The sound seemed to have come from behind the desk, but the room was so muffled it was throwing him off.

"Principal." If she wanted to be distant, Kyle would reciprocate.

He could see the steam pour out of his mouth. Did he sound nervous? Or was it the wood soaking up his voice? He felt smaller than usual, an animal outside its typical habitat.

"Excellent."

The desk light flickered on - also yellow - revealing a woman in her thirties. Angular face and thin lips. Her black hair was pulled up into a bun, and she looked over at him through business-like glasses. Her eyes were the only part of her that stood out.

Stunning, ice blue, completing her distant and unforgiving look.

That color… He snarled, memories stabbing his mind.

She gazed at him before speaking. "Kyle Drezz. Your father is here to speak to you."

His mind shattered, memories flooding into his consciousness, filling his senses.

Kyle could feel her watching him for the slightest reaction.

He didn’t care.

His arms hit the ground, screams filling the air as scenes from the past flashed before his eyes.

The flash of a blade as it arced over his head.

Droplets of blood being sucked into cold, unforgiving space.

Dead men and women floating around him.

The cold crept into his veins, riding them up to his heart.

He screamed as he had when the Echo-47 had taken off into space, abandoning him.

He howled as he had when he realized what his father had done.

He bled as he had on the ice sheets of Garm-GY, tears freezing on his cheeks.

Minutes, or perhaps hours later, his vision started to clear. Again, he focused on his breathing. In. Hold. Out. In. Hold. Out.

A muted whirr announced that someone else was entering the room.

He still carried his old presence. Defined jawline with days worth of stubble on it. An angular and stone-set face, locked in a state of apathy. Short brown hair smoothed back. But you never noticed these features. The eyes. It was always the eyes you were drawn to, like a moth to a flame.

One was electric blue, but not a block color. The iris seemed to shift and spin, the colors overlapping like waves on the shore.

The other eye wasn't his. Blood red with a black cross in the center, it marked him.

Nova.

He was Nova.

Kyle was bent over on the floor, shaking. He grinned, exposing two rows of glinting teeth.

"Found me at last, father."