Digital Galaxies

The Turshen’s hangar bay door increased rapidly in size as she closed in on my orbital position. Bundit was in control of itself, letting out little bursts from its thrusters to keep us on target with the still relatively small opening. Hopefully once I was inside, Jason and Ed could catch me.

My mech’s aetheric syphon was completely busted now, having shorted out and unravelled when the enemy ship’s reactor went critical. I was running on reserve power now and my oxygen was running low. The thin pressure suit I was wearing was less than ideal too, only barely keeping me from dying to vacuum.

“Almost got you,” Gloria called over the comms. “Almost got you.”

It felt like one moment the Turshen was closing fast, but still at a rate I could comprehend. Then suddenly, I was bouncing around inside the hangar, doing damage to bulkheads and equipment all over the shop.

“We got her, hit the gas, Gloria!” Ed called, while he and Jason fired magnetic harpoons at me to keep me from flying back out or doing more damage.

The hangar doors crashed closed with a bang, and I felt the ship surge as the engines strained to escape the planet’s gravity. Before I’d even spoken to anyone, I flicked my view screen to show the planet behind us. I wanted to know what the hell was going on.

The surface of the planet was rapidly becoming engulfed in fires all around where the enemy ships had been. Smoke and ash from the explosion billowed upwards, reaching out to touch the edge of the atmosphere. Secondary detonations flashed inside the cloud cover, clueing us into the fate of at least some of the other Cyborg ships.

Not all of them, though. First one, then another of their ships burst out of the clouds, scarred by battle damage and trailing smoke, but still flying. A third joined them a moment later, but it seemed like all the others had gotten caught in the eldritch explosion of the aetheric reactor. I could only imagine what horrors the Cyborgs created when exposed to aether.

Still three of them, I messaged, linking up with the Turshen’s network so I could keep an eye on her systems.

“We’re making a run for it,” said Roger absently. “Even damaged, I don't like our chances against them.”

“Can’t we just have Alia flamethrower their asses again?” Jason asked.

I broke Bundit’s power plant to do that, I told him. I was way too tired and overstimulated to actually speak. Plus the unique atmosphere of the planet gave me the oxygen I needed for combustion, and their shields were at low power to allow the air to pass through. It was an intersection of unlikely events and a huge helping of dumb luck that let me do that.

He grunted amicably and gave Bundit’s chassis an awkward pat. “Alright. Well, thanks for the crazy stunt either way. It was badass.”

“Alia, secure yourself to a power plug and the deck. Everyone else, back to your stations, there’s still three of them,” Roger interrupted, pulling us all back to task.

Everyone gave a chorus of “ayes” and rushed to do what he said, while I got Bundit moving towards the machine shop. There was a power link in there that I could use, and if I had time, I could try to shove another syphon into the mech.

First things first, though. I needed to get into a proper space suit. Specifically, the custom one I made for myself a while back. I didn’t expect to be in space by the end of the day, so I hadn’t worn it.

When I had the suit on, I ran back to Bundit and hustled to plug it in. I’d be tethered to my machine shop until I could get a new syphon made, but that was fine. I figured I would just—

Something brushed against the back of my head, and I dropped the power conduit in fright. Spinning around, nothing presented itself as the culprit of the touch, and I frowned, trying to figure out what had touched me. Another light, inquisitive prod, and I felt my whole body go stiff with fear. Something was definitely moving around me, but it wasn’t on this side of reality.

Like a character in a horror movie, I slowly opened the door to the aether and peered over the threshold. My sense of the other side was dim and very new, but every time I used these strange new powers, I gained in ability and strength.

Looking into the aether was a uniquely strange experience. A long time ago when I was a kid, I vividly remembered asking my father what it was like to see through the eyes of a prey animal. I couldn’t wrap my head around the mechanics of something that had eyes facing in opposite directions. He obviously looked at me like I was an idiot child, because he lacked the empathy to even conceptualise the idea in his mind, but anyway… That’s what this was like.

I could see the machine shop through my real eyes, but then there was my mind’s eye which could look into the aether. The scary thing was that I could actually make tangible sense of it. Kind of. At least, my whacky new abilities were interpreting things in a way that I could properly comprehend.

A dark shape moved in the clouds below me, and then like a repeat of the first time something like this happened to me, a single titanic eye opened to stare right at me.

What. Are. You.

The words slammed into me with a force so staggeringly powerful that I was thrown bodily from the aether. My senses snapped back into their normal configuration, giving me a strange sense of whiplash, and I fell to my knees gasping for air.

“A-alia to bridge,” I coughed, trying to clear my choked up airways. “Do not jump. I repeat, do not jump. Something is sitting on the other side.”

“What do you mean?” Cerri asked anxiously.

Gloria spoke at the same time, with concentration straining her voice. “It’s either that, or we eat forty-plus nukes.”

“How do you know there’s something there?” Roger asked, speaking over both of them with his captain’s voice. “What exactly is this other side?”

What was I meant to say to answer that? Did I just go on and tell them about how I broke the syphon and stuff? Did I tell them about how I could feel the aether with my freaking mind? Instinct took that idea and filed it firmly into the definitely not column.

“It’s in the aether,” I said, finally getting my breathing under control. “I think it’s the same scary monster from when I got stuck in space. It’s swimming around inside the clouds… watching us.”

Cerri was the one to follow up on the part of his question I didn’t want to answer. “How do you know that?”

“Check the aetheric sensors,” I said after a pause that was far too long for Cerri to believe me. I’d… I’d tell her later.

During the silence where they did as I asked, I plugged Bundit into the ship’s mains and turned for the spare parts bin. When I was initially redesigning Bundit, I printed and tested a bunch of different power plant designs, including a regular mini fusion reactor. It was like the one my original Bundit had, but more powerful. Installing it would completely fuck the gyroscopic chair movement and I’d have to remove the emergency tools that were under the seat, but it was better than nothing.

“Bundit, open reactor housing!” I called over my shoulder when I reached the parts bin.

“Opening the reactor housing!” Squeakybun called, to the backing music of metal grinding on metal. “Some of the armour plates were partially fused together by the heat from the syphon.”

“Is it open?” I asked, rushing back.

“It is. The atmospheric seals are beyond repair, however, and will need replacing,” he replied, sounding almost a little grumpy over how busted the mech was.

Grizzlybun’s rumbling voice made the fine hair inside my ears tickle funny when he said, “A small price to pay for eight terminated enemy cruisers.”

“If the boss’ suit had malfunctioned, she would have died from lack of atmosphere!” Squeakybun protested. “We got lucky!”

“Luck is just a word people use when a risk pays off, champ,” the other bun rumbled, almost peaking the bass frequencies in Bundit’s speakers. “Since we are speaking of the madam mechanic, I am going to throw that word out the airlock and apply the word skill in its place.”

The two buns continued bickering while I hastily jammed the fusion reactor into the housing and wedged in the messily welded steel framing to keep it there. If I’d had more time, I’d have printed up a proper frame for it and actually put some threading in the holes… nevermind. Not important.

“Boot the fusion reactor up,” I said, interrupting Squeakybun while he was in the middle of lecturing Grizzlybun on the science of chance. “I have a feeling we’re going to need it sooner rather than later.”

Low shield alarms began to ring out across the ship as if to illustrate my point while I strapped myself into the seat and closed the hatch on Bundit.

“Reactor is warming up, containment is steady,” Squeakybun told me. “Igniting in three, two, one… ignition. Holding… reaction sustained. We have power.”

“Alia, strap in!” Roger said over the comms. “We have no choice but to jump. Cerri doesn’t see anything in the aether, so we should be fine.”

Arctic ice took hold of my stomach, and I timidly peered into the aether again in the hopes of seeing where the monster was. Nothing was there, it was empty except for the clouds, and I breathed a sigh of relief. The creepy eldritch whale thing had even spoken to me. Like, what the hell?

“Jumping!” Gloria yelled, and we punched through the membrane between the game’s reality and the aether.

Now that I had a firmer grasp of the aether, I tried to look around while we were actually submersed in it. The ship existed within a bubble where the normal laws of physics still applied, but beyond it, the chaos of raw potential churned like the combination of sea and sky.

It looked even weirder while I was inside, like some sort of AI generated fever dream. The clouds had waves on them that crashed relentlessly on shores that couldn’t be seen. Sparks of energy flitted from one random spot to another, like tiny animals made of pure indecision. It was magical and terrifying in equal measure.

From the Turshen, several funny glowing lines drifted up and out of the ship to disappear into the distance. Most were centred on the bridge, but a few were in other places across our ship. One even came in towards me. No wait, it was attached to me.

When I turned my gaze inwards, I gaped in open fascination at the thread that was tethered to my mind. It made it perhaps ten kilometres out before it simply faded from view behind a cloud. I got the distinct impression that if I tried to follow it, I’d never find the end of it.

Tentatively, I reached out and plucked at it.

My whole world shuddered, and I almost threw up in my helmet. Jesus, what was that?

Focusing on the cable, I inspected it with renewed curiosity and care. It had the distinct impression that it was stronger than any thread of any material I’d ever encountered. It felt invincible. I could, however, see data streaming up and down it almost too fast for the eye to track.

Wait. Multiple threads of data, each one corresponding to a crewmate, plus one that attached to the ship’s computing core… was this the uplink we had back to the game’s respawning mechanic? If so, why did it feel like I was drunk when I touched it?

Also, why wasn’t I affected when the thread I assumed belonged to Cerri brushed mine? Was it the act of touching your own thread? Did it somehow create a feedback loop? I had so many questions, and nobody to answer them.

Where. Are. You.

The voice shook the aetheric clouds, and my attention snapped out towards the direction the voice had come from.

Like some primordial god of myth, the massive abomination swam out of the murk. It was thick at the front and thin at the back, like a moving prince rupert’s drop made of navy blue muscle. Its skin was slick with an unknown liquid that appeared to undulate and shift over its body at random. On its cone shaped nose, three eyes were fixed on me, each one the size of the Turshen in its entirety.

I was too scared to speak, too scared to react, too scared to even pull myself back from my new aetheric sight. All I could do was watch as the monster swam towards us.

Its eyes shifted as it got closer, drifting up and behind us, like it was looking at… the threads.

What. Are. These.

It didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, it swept its impossibly long tail around and surged upward, following the threads.

The ship shuddered and rocked in its wake, and to my horror, we were swept in behind the gargantuan creature. Oh god, oh god, oh god. What was happening? Faster and faster we moved, like the aetheric space whale had grabbed us in some telekinetic hand while it swam past.

All the while, our threads stayed taught, unmoving and unresponsive to the stomach turning acceleration. And yet… the monster was following them. Everything but the threads, the monster, and the ship became a blur. Nothing was tangible, nothing made sense to look at, and my body ached.

The wall hit me like a brick to the chest, and I was thrown violently out of the aether for the second time in ten or so minutes. Maybe an hour. I wasn’t sure how long the monster had been swimming now.

Alarms were wailing, both inside and outside of Bundit, and it was the urgency of knowing I had a job to do that snapped me back to my senses.

“Hull. Breach. Hull Breach,” one alarm informed me in a monotone version of Elissa’s voice. That was the least concerning damage report I was hearing.

“Aetheric Reactor malfunction. Code: NULL.”

The. Ocean. Is. Rich. Here.

I.Will. Make. It. Mine.