“They both sound wonderful… not. What about the woman?” she asked.
“Akita,” he softly said.
She looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “The way you say her name, it makes me think you may have met her before,” she said.
“I have. As you can tell, she is a Marastin Dow. She is far more dangerous than He’lo and Orb combined,” he said.
Raia studied the woman. Her eyes were a strange reddish color with rings of white around them that matched her short white hair. Her face looked as if it were carved out of polished stone.
“She looks like a cyborg,” she warily reflected.
Behr nodded. “She has been genetically enhanced. If Maradash enlisted these three, you might have rescued me for nothing,” he said.
“If these three are as good as you say, then I think a change of plans may be in order,” she said.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
She nodded at the screen. “They will be looking for you at the Spaceports and nearby planets. So, one way to throw them off is to go to a place where they would never think to look,” she commented, programming in a new jump sequence.
“What if they do?” he asked.
“Then they better hope they can understand the language,” she said with a grin.
“Where are we going?” Behr asked when they emerged from the jump gate.
He stared at the unfamiliar nebula spread out before them. Vivid colors of red, blue, green, and yellow illuminated what should have been deep space. A large red dwarf star, probably millions of light years away, cast an eerie glow, intermingling with the light cast by the small yellow stars. A field of asteroids, varying from hundreds to millions of miles apart, created a series of rings between them and the nebula.
“To my hidden fortress,” she said with a smile.
“You have a hidden fortress?” he asked.
She grinned and nodded. “Yep.”
“Do you mind if I ask where we are exactly?” he prodded.
“The area is called the Triangulum. It is well off the main transport lanes, so nobody uses this jump gate,” she replied.
“Why?” he asked.
She nodded. “Because of this,” she quietly responded.
Behr frowned when he saw a hazy purple cloud spread out before them. The translucent appearance was deceiving. As the cloud engulfed them, visibility dropped to near zero.
“Switching to manual override,” she said.
“Is that a…?” his voice faded.
Raia had pulled up a map and was guiding them through a minefield of dead ships after switching on a series of low-level lights to illuminate their way. Behr read the name of a ship as they passed—Mercy.
The Mercy was lost nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, he thought.
The Mercy was a Marastin Dow tanker ship. There were twenty-five crew members and three officers aboard at the time of its disappearance. The records speculated that it perished during the Great War between the Sarafin, Valdier, and Curizans.
“This whole area is littered with spaceships. Do you see the asteroids with the purple light?” she asked.
Behr’s gaze moved to one of the asteroids with a faint glimmer that reminded him of the color of lavender. The asteroid almost appeared to be wrapping itself around the ship. A shiver of unease slid through him.
“Take a look at how the rock appears to be growing around the ship. Ander said it is some type of parasite that lives within the asteroids and exists only in this cloud. If you look at the readings, there is a larger composition of nitrogen, with a hint of methane. They feed on the methane, but they love oxygen. When a ship comes too close, they attach to it and eat through the outer hull, sucking all the oxygen out,” she explained.
He shook his head in wonder. “How did Ander discover this?” he asked.
“According to him, he met a short-range freighter captain. The man was the sole survivor out of a crew of ten. This captain told him about this place off the normal trading route. He said he’d purchased a stone tablet that described an abandoned planet held within a mystical ring that was filled with riches, and he babbled about this living rock that devoured ships. Ander thought the man was crazy until he pulled out the tablet. It was old… really, really, really old. Anyway, Ander convinced the man to draw a map, write everything he had seen, and describe in detail how he managed to escape. Ander also persuaded the captain to sell him the tablet. Although from what Ander told me, it didn’t take much to persuade the man. I guess the captain felt the tablet was cursed,” she explained.
Fascinated, he stared at the ship graveyard stretched out in front of them. “What did Ander do?” he asked.
“He found a mythical planet,” she replied with a grin. “The tablet was written in an ancient language, but what was even more fascinating was that there was a hollowed-out section in the stone that contained a map showing safe passage through the asteroid field.”
Behr’s eyes widened when the EA II broke through the cosmic cloud. In the distance, a bright blue and white planet shimmered against the backdrop of a brilliant yellow sun. He leaned forward, staring at the planet in awe.
“Does the planet have a name?” he asked.
Raia laughed. “Yes, but Ander renamed it. Welcome to Planet Raia,” she said with a soft smile.
Chapter Seven
Raia increased power to the front shield as they began their entry into the planet’s atmosphere. Pride welled in her when they broke through the clouds, and she heard Behr’s hiss of astonishment. Planet Raia’s beauty easily competed with the lush landscape and deep oceans found on the Valdier, Sarafin, and Curizan home worlds.
They flew over a brilliant blue ocean. As they neared the coast, the water became so clear that the vivid, colorful patterns on the coral were visible in the depths. A dark, swirling mass showed a thriving marine life below the waves. Birds flew off the cliffs as Raia began their descent.
A waterfall at least a thousand feet high spilled over and poured into the ocean along the cliff wall. Tall pillars stood on each side of the falls. The weathered remains of twin mystical warriors, whose spears formed an arch over the waterfall, guarded an enchanting city made of stone and glass.
Behr stared down at the city with a combination of awe and confusion. How could something so beautiful be deserted? Where were the inhabitants?
Graceful six-legged gazelle-like creatures, startled by the freighter’s approach, leaped away. Raia set the ship down in the center of an empty plaza and shut off the engines. They sat in silence for several minutes, staring out of the windshield.
Raia laughed when Chummy and Pi ran onto the bridge and began excitedly jumping around with joy. She rose from her seat. Her changing expressions communicated that she must be conversing with the two.
“What are they saying?” he curiously asked, rising from his seat.
She laughed again. “That I’m taking way too long. They love it here,” she said.
“I can understand why. What I don’t understand is why there are no inhabitants,” he wondered.
She smiled at him and waved. “Come on. I’ll show you,” she said, holding out her hand.
Her excitement was contagious. He gripped her outstretched hand and let her pull him along. Chummy floated down the corridor. The small Chumloo made him laugh when his little legs moved as if he were running while his long fluffy tail flowed like a dragon’s tail.