Chapter 1Aydann awoke with a start when his spacecraft's console emitted a warning tone, telling him that he was approaching a large solid object. He had been sleeping soundly, but for how long, he knew not. He quickly gripped the controls and dodged a gigantic asteroid the size of a mountain only to find countless more spread out before him. Off to the west lay a planet glowing in the black void, surrounded by these asteroids and getting awfully close in his veiwport.
"Crap!" he exclaimed as he dodged one asteroid after another. "Where the hell am I?"
His navicomputer told him nothing of his location. In the instant it took to look at the computer screen, his wing was hit by one of the tumbling boulders, sending him out of control toward the planet below. Warning klaxons blared as he fought in sheer panic to regain control of his ship, but to no avail.
As his crippled scout ship hit the planet's atmosphere and began to heat up, Aydann could feel himself lose consciousness. Falling toward the planet's terminator, he succumbed to G-lock and passed out, but could still hear the synthesised voice of the ship's main computer constantly repeat, "Warning! Pull up!" for what seemed like an eternity.
*****
Princess Seraphi walked along the beach, listening to the crashing of the waves in the morning twilight. A salty breeze gave a pleasing coolness through her thin, silky garment as the foamy sea washed over her bare feet. All of a sudden, she heard a loud bang from high above. She stopped walking and looked up to see a bright meteor falling. She stared at the fireball as if mesmerised, her fawn-coloured eyes following it down as it fell.
She reflexively flinched as it hit the ground a kilometre ahead of her. A hot wind rushed past her at the moment of impact. She blinked a couple of times to remove a grain of sand from her eye and stared for a moment at the smoking impact crater. Curiosity took over and she ran over to see what was left of the meteorite. What she saw as she peered over the rim of the flooding crater was no piece of rock. It was clearly artificial; a spacecraft and it wasn’t Terrani.
Water from the sea hissed against the hot metal creating steam as wave after wave crashed upon the shore. Seraphi crept down into the crater, careful not to touch it or any loose parts of it. She leaned over to the shattered canopy of the cockpit and saw that the force of the impact had thrown the pilot forward, headlong through his viewport. He lay sprawled, as though dead, on the broken nose cone of his craft.
“Oh my God!” Fearing the worst, Seraphi shouted as loud as her lungs would allow, “Someone help me! Anybody!”
A servant of hers heard her cry and came running. “Dyl! Help me move his guy, please.” Seraphi instructed as she saw his face peek over the crater’s rim. It took him a moment to comply, as he had never seen a craft such as the one that lay in pieces before him. Together, they carried the pilot to the safety of the palace courtyard, where professionals were summoned, which took him to a nearby hospital.
Hours passed without event. Princess Seraphi had felt obliged to stay with the young man while he healed, being the only one to witness the cause of his injuries. To her relief, the doctor said that he was alive, but just unconscious. However, he would have to come to before they could use microbial therapy to heal his bandaged wounds. What amazed the doctors was the fact that he only sustained a few cuts, bruises, and burns.
Seraphi sat patiently at the pilot’s bedside, waiting for him to open his eyes. She studied his strange attire: a grayish-blue fightsuit, a helmet with an electronic scope-lens attached to a communication headset, black leather boots and gloves, and a laser-pistol sidearm unlike anything manufactured on Terran. His face and body was that of an attractive Human. “Where are you from?” she asked in a whisper, thinking out loud.
As if to answer her question, the man stirred and groaned. Seraphi was startled at first, but quickly calmed down; happy to see he was recovering. When a couple of minutes passed without further signs of vitality, she stood up and sat down on the edge of the man’s bed, her hand on his chest. His heartbeat was steady, but slow, as was his breathing. Her hand then found its way to his face, wiping some of the dried blood from his left cheek. He stirred again, this time he actually opened his bluish-gray eyes. Without moving his head, he made direct eye contact with her.
For the longest two seconds either of them had experienced, they stared into each other’s eyes. The pilot broke the silence with a groan and a question. “Where am I?”
Seraphi smiled and answered, “You crash-landed on the planet Terran. I was the one who found you. I’ve been waiting for you to come to for hours. My name is Seraphi.”
The pilot blinked and nodded slowly in comprehension. “Aydann Korso…” he replied, reaching up to shake hands. He could feel a gentle, comforting warmth through his glove as Seraphi took his hand. He sat up straight and looked around the strangely shaped room. It looked as though the place was grown rather than built; as though the building itself was alive.
“Aydann… that’s an interesting name.” Seraphi said, attempting to make conversation. “So, Aydann, where are you from, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Aydann pulled his legs up and around, allowing them to hang off the side of the bed like Seraphi’s legs did and removed his helmet, revealing his dark-blonde hair. “I’m from the planet Freejia. I’m a pilot in the Navy.”
Seraphi raised an eyebrow. “Interesting… well, the doctor says you’re pretty lucky to have taken so little damage from such a crash… let alone survived. You’re scheduled for a microbial therapy treatment whenever the doctor decides to come back.”
Aydann looked at her with uncertainty. “Microbial therapy? What, dare I ask, is that?”
“It’s a medical treatment for wounds of various kinds.” Answered the doctor as she came through the door. “Glad to see that you’re finally awake. I’m Doctor Ayla and I’ll be taking care of you for the time being.”
Aydann looked back to Seraphi who smiled at him. Then he asked the doctor, “So how will this treatment work? Are there any needles involved?”
Doctor Ayla smiled, apparently amused. “No. You will be immersed in water, with a breathing receptacle, of course. Then a special bacterial culture bred for the specific purpose of assuming the position of lost tissue and triggering the growth of new tissue will be introduced. It’s a medical marvel that, as far as I know, only we can provide. It’s painless and it’s all over in about half an hour.” she explained and paused for a moment before adding, “There’s a sedative in the air you’ll be breathing, so you will more than likely feel sleepy. It’s perfectly fine to fall asleep in there, just so you know. In fact, it keeps you from messing with your wounds while they are being treated.”
Aydann was relieved to know that weren’t going to use needles, but was still a little anxious about a medical treatment he had never heard of. He looked at Seraphi again. He felt like he could trust her. After all, she did stay by his bedside while he was comatose. She apparently cared for him.
The pain from his wounds told him to go through with it and so was led to another room in the hospital. Before him stood a tube made out of some transparent material that looked different from glass or plastic. Doctor Ayla removed the bandages from Aydann’s wounds and instructed him to remove his flightsuit and everything else down to his underwear and approach the tube. He did so and a pale-yellow membrane on the front parted with a weird slurping sound to allow him inside. He stepped warily inside the tube, which then closed its membrane behind him with the same interesting noise.
From above, an organic-looking breath-mask lowered itself and attached to Aydann’s face, covering his nose and mouth. The moment it touched his face, the obvious occurred to him: these people use organic technology. He glanced around him. It became apparent that they have a living analog for just about anything. The tube began to flood with surprisingly warm water until it completely submerged him. The aforementioned sedative was beginning to take affect, as his eyelids began to grow heavy.
Over the course of the half-hour, Seraphi watched Aydann’s battered body gradually heal. To her, it was almost like watching an old, wrinkly man magically become young and handsome again. She stared at him intently while the microbes did their job, admiring the boy’s attractiveness. She felt like she was falling in love, but suppressed such emotions as soon as she caught herself feeling them. She had no idea what his personality was like. He was handsome on the outside, but what was he like inside?
She looked down at his clothes that lay in a heap before her. Curiosity drove her to kneel down and look through his pockets. She wasn’t looking for anything in particular, just some clue as to what kind of culture he belonged to and what sort of person he was on the inside. She pulled from one pocket a palm-sized holoprojector. She examined the device intently and figured out how to activate it, pressing a small stud on one side. From the projector issued holographic still-images of Aydann and other people whose company he appeared to be enjoying. “Hmmm… friends of his?” she thought out loud.
One picture showed him and his friends sitting around a table, playing some sort of card game. Another showed them posing together in front of a craft similar to the one he crash-landed in. She continued pressing the button that showed the following pictures, each new image more interesting than the last. Mere curiosity was fast evolving into obsession, and she knew it.
Reply
