#day before yesterday i was at starmarks

[butchkaramazov]

is it just me or do y'all hate people who read for the aesthetic

[crunchyplastic]

Chapter 10

The Dahlia mottles into shades of green as they drop from the sky. The planet Pulsor Minor had once been home to a thriving Class B sentient race. Just a few inventions away from the ability to travel beyond their star system, upgrading them to a contacted planet and Class A species. They hadn't had the chance to do it themselves, not when an unknown group had discovered highly valuable energy crystals beneath the surface and robbed them blind.

The planet had been attacked, mined and nearly destroyed in the process. Leaving behind a now critically endangered people on a dying planet.

From the exosphere the damage is more readily visible, wide vivid scars run across and through the crust, dividing entire continents with stripes of planetary core magma. Between the scars are burning swaths of jungle life, struggling to pull through as the atmosphere thins and begins to fail, gaps in the ozone leaking solar radiation like a faucet.

Alex pilots the ship carefully, staying low enough to hide just above the canopy. Their jet trails stir the top most portions in a short ripple of leaves and thin branches.

The Dahlia changes direction, flying upward to follow the shape of the mountains and setting down on a thin arched rock outcropping. The strange peaks are a bare white stone, breaching the forest like the rib bones of an enormous animal decaying under moss.

Ahead of them is a valley, ringed with more of the rib mountains, shorter and smaller. The barge they pursued sits in the middle, its bay doors hang open, and there the yetis are doing.. something.

Alex zooms the camera to the best of the Dahlias ability, but the dense jungle is desperately throwing up steam and plumes of black smoke, struggling to reestablish the atmosphere as the world grows hotter by the hour.

“Should we get closer?” Phantom suggests.

Alex shakes his head and leans back. “I don't want them to know they've been followed.”

“So… will we go down there ourselves?” Phantom's helmet tilts and Alex's breath catches.

He's being cute again.

“It's, um, ah,” Alex fumbles his words, mind’s eye flashing with Phantom showing off his armor the days before, yesterday's training and the way his new apparel clings to him in every pose. “A-a stake out. We're just going to observe and if anything really illegal happens we can uh..”

Alex's plan fizzles to an end there. 

He isn't an officer anymore. If anything he’s disobeying orders by delaying the job he’s supposed to be doing right now, 7 lightyears in the other direction.

“Report it and hope the admiralty lets us continue to pursue them,” He finishes lamely.

“Okay then,” Phantom nods after a minute, “and what is considered illegal then?”

Alex's expression hollows, haunted suddenly in memory.

Wrecking a militia ship into a planet. Locking his superior officer in the brig so he can command other GU vessels to land and be taken by surprise by the rebel armaments. Freeing refugees and letting them escape into the tundra.

“A lot,” Alex shrugs, staring at his hands. “In this case it's capturing the natives and removing them from their home planet unwillingly.”

Phantom's helmet tilts the other way and he's slower to respond. “Right.”

They sit in silence for a while. As the sun sets, the barge lifts off. Alex calls in the situation and Paulina shifts the Starmarker to the southern pole to continue hiding.

Alex takes the Dahlia down to the abandoned valley and inspects from the air.

There's no one down there; his infrared sensor picks up only small animals, nothing bigger than his left boot comes to light as he sweeps the area in a spreading spiral. The ship finds little more despite the passing hours and Paulina calls him back.

“I assume they took the locals.” Alex tries not to grind his teeth as they leave empty-handed. The silence after is awkward and stiff.

“Maybe it's good they left,” Phantom admits quietly as the Dahlia leaves its signature thousand pointed trail in the atmosphere. “It doesn't look like they'd make it otherwise.”

The molten scars in the planet’s crust burn a luminous orange-red behind them.

“Maybe.” 

They follow the barge to two more planets in a similar disarray, and each time the local population drops to zero after the barge has gone.

“We've taken enough time following them around. We should report the activity and move on,” Paulina advises as in the distance the barge lands on a fourth planet. 

The bulky gray hull glows a dull orange as it breaches the atmosphere and vanishes into the cloud cover.

They're hovering above a desert planet. The once beautiful bluffs and gullies are full of fracking holes so large they are visible from the atmosphere. Upon closer inspection from the Starmarkers cameras an acrid black water drains from them, poisoning the water supply and the ground around them. Rings of death spread from the holes like infection, plants shrivel and the color is leeched from the sand, turning the orange red to green and gray. The sheer number of holes makes the planet’s crust look like a wasp’s nest–nightmarish.

Alex sighs, strapping on his usual gear then stopping. He doubts himself, and pretends to read through the displayed information again 

They're late for their original assignment, worthless as it is. But further disobedience could throw him back in prison. Alex weighs the cons of running away entirely. He stares at his left arm, seeing through the red and white sleeve to the tattoo beneath. They didn't want him anymore–not that he wanted to be a part of the program anyway. 

His stomach aches uncomfortably and not for the first time, he debates digging out every chip they'd stuck in him. The identification, the bank chip –though how he'd survive without money in the universe was a daunting thought– and the prison’s tracking chip. His arm flinches, knowing just how deep they'd pushed that particular needle.

“After this one we'll go.” He pulls his guns from the charging port on the wall, giving them a quick once over instead of watching Paulina sigh and storm away.

She probably has a hundred messages asking for reasons for their delay. And she has none to give until they sent in a properly organized report.

“Ready to go?” Alex turns to Phantom.

Phantom has been steadfast and almost strangely loyal for the past few weeks. He follows Alex like a shadow sometimes, chipping in with paperwork and general tasks about the Starmarker. When they sit on stake outs, they just talk; the topics seemed endless despite Phantom's short memory. Even his lack of an obvious education doesn't leave him lost or ignorant about the universe around him and how things worked from a scientific standpoint.

Often he'll puzzle out the workings of the destroyed planets they've come across before Alex can, designing some imaginary machine that would have been capable of such destruction, discover what the planet was made of and what had been taken.

In this case Phantom notes the holes and fluid and pieces together that some rudimentary oil had been of some quantity here, and after being drained, it had poisoned the water.

Paulina had been shocked for a moment, and Navi had asked if he'd remembered how to read. Alex just stared at Phantom and wondered who he used to be.

The trip down to the surface is quick and easy. A smog fills the atmosphere and collects in clouds, poisoning the rainwater before it can even fall. They hide in the rising water and land a short distance away in a gap between large rocks, the resulting debris from all the tunneling and drilling.

Alex has become more confident of the Dahlia’s cloaking and decides that as their final attempt to discern the yeti’s motives, he'll risk being seen for a closer look.

Phantom watches through the ship cameras and after a long moment frowns in confusion. “They're on the ground with their bay doors open like before.”

Alex leans closer to the grainy screen displaying the same image Phantom was getting. The barge was easily ten times the size of the Starmarker, maybe more, and its enormous bay doors were open, looking more like long vents than doors with the great hulking bulk of its main body looming above.

In the barges shadow the areas remaining native species groups together. Steam plumes from cook fires, and the people swarm the area in droves to get something to eat. Other sections of the camp are being steadily abandoned, leaving only the black smoke of put out campfires as many of the people begin to board the ship. The lines of refugees look much like they had on each of the previous planets; haggard and withered people struggling to survive, weeping over their loss and grimly accepting their ambiguous fate in the stars.

“They're going aboard but… they're feeding them too.”

Alex sighs. “Yeah, it's not technically illegal to feed the natives. We aren't supposed to contact planets that haven't made it to space in at least some small way. But.. it looks like they're doing some charity work I guess?”

Phantom jerks and the ship rocks slightly as one of the sniper guns pivots sharply skyward.

“It's Hailwind!”

Alex startles as well, the screen he'd been watching zooms in on the landing ship, the grainy image is barely able to depict the pilot through its tinted windshield. “Hailwind? How can you tell?”

“That's him, in the pilot's seat. Its a small transport ship. It's damaged, but I think it's from the inspection bay we were assigned.” 

Alex stares at the operation on the ground, puzzled. “So.. he's recruiting for the rebel army?”

“They don't look like fighters,” Phantom remarks stiffly. The gun camera follows the little transport ship to the ground where the local population has dwindled to maybe a few thousand left on the ground. Hailwind is quick to get out of the ship, but he vanishes easily among the yetis on the ground.

“How many people can they fit in there? This is the fourth planet.”

“Around ten thousand can fit.” Alex bites his knuckle. “A larger barge would be too suspicious, but if you packed them in you might be able to fit fifteen to twenty. I wonder how they're feeding them all?”

Phantom is leaning forward in his seat, his hands gripping the arm rests. “Should we go down there?”

Alex shakes his head no. “There should be enough evidence now to convict the farfrozen. Though I really wish it was someone else.”

Phantom's sniper view pivots skyward again but he can't respond in time. Alex catches the briefest glimpse of something shooting across the targeting screen.

The Dahlia rocks sharply as gunfire rains down on them, a triple shot that fires repeatedly, leaving a stripe across the ground and destroying the Dahlias cloaking.

Alex shouts a curse and throws the accelerator down. Boots press the shifting pedals with surprise driven clumsiness but he gets the Dahlia into the air. The long artful wing struts flare like a compass and the Dahlia corkscrews in a rising arc. The attacking ship pursues them, still firing. Stray bullets fall like plasma rain on the edge of the crowd and on one rotation Alex can see the people fleeing into the surrounding landscape.

Phantom clings to the seat handles beside him, groaning as the g forces change direction over and over.

Alex wants to reassure him, but he's tied up in pulling the brake lever, shifting gears and pushing the throttle, reaching for buttons and adjusting shield levels while picking different drag panels to spin the ship in an elaborate evasive maneuver. Multitasking enough to make his head spin faster than the barrel roll he spins the ship through. Decoy shrapnel drops from the end of the boomerang wings. The blink of the red ship on his radar falls back just enough to breathe.

“Phantom, assist!” 

But it's all he can say before another barrage of plasma bullets sing past them and he's pulling the yoke hard and the g forces change direction again. The Dahlia jets skyward in a short loop. The planet and sky trade places briefly, driving nausea into his guts and making his head feel light and dizzy. The engines seem to groan in relief as they arc over and back down, no longer fighting the planet’s gravity.

Planet based dog fights are dangerous, more so for the chance that the engines could stall during the erratic flight maneuvers than the actual damage. Gravity would take them before any gun could– and the Dahlia is older, slower and weaker than the sleek red and black ship pursuing them.

But his piloting outmatches their attacker, even if the Dahlia didn't. 

The Dahlias blue black nose ends up just behind the red ship and Baxter reaches for the targeting system buttons. But the screen is already working and hands are already there, pushing the sliding buttons and flicking the cover off a set of six buttons.

The first set is a four shot that beats rhythmically, peppering the red ship in heavy white plasma. The second set charges up and as the red ship twirls, carves the air with another nearly sparkling white streak of energy.

Baxter focuses on flying, struggling to trust Phantom to work the guns. The Dahlia isn't designed for a single pilot, but letting go of control is difficult. He's spent nearly six years learning how to do everything himself and as the semi-automatic turrets begin firing he can't help but glance over. There's a setting he wants to activate, but the button is on the other end of the board.

Wordlessly Phantom's hands find it and flick the setting on.

Oh.. Alex's face flushes pink in brief surprise. He's good at this.

The red ship rolls to avoid their fire and its red shield ripples with every on target bullet.

Alex grins and gives chase, harrying the enemy to the ground. They dance between bluffs and Phantom shoots the rock wall ahead of the enemy, showering dust and debris onto the red ship as it shoots past. The ship turns, clipping another section of rocky outcropping as the sand screen obscures the enemy pilot’s sight. Alex's grin stretches wider, flying through the thin screen of dust and chasing the other ship around the rocks. They have the upper hand now, it won't be long until they ground their attacker and–

The red ship is gone, vanishing around a bend and leaving no trail.

Baxter banks sharply in surprise, turning the Dahlia in a gentle rise to survey the area. The rocks and bluffs are tall and deep, and the hundreds of holes in them make it hard to pick out where their enemy has slipped off to. The diameter of every cavernous fracking tunnel is easily five times the Dahlias wing span. And their inky depths reveal no details as they fly cautiously across one after another.

The Dahlia screams a brief warning siren before the entire left wing is decimated. 

The red ship shoots skyward, trailing debris and flames from the Dahlias left wing engine. Baxter’s blood thunders through his ears while adrenaline makes his hands shake. There's little he can do to slow their inevitable crash landing. How long has it been since he'd crashed? Since Paulie’s wreck? That'd been years ago. 

The Dahlia twirls briefly, sickeningly, all the directions of the compass spiral around, the sky and crust taking turns above his head. Sirens blare unhelpfully and he grips the yokes tight.

More gunfire peppers the broken ship and Alex flinches from the windshield as it shatters above them. The glass, thick as his hand, rains down in shards the size of dinner plates and trails glitter in the sky above them as the Dahlia falls faster and faster. 

The red pilot is trying to kill them. Whoever their attacker is, they’re violating battle conduct. An unwritten and universally understood rule, you don't shoot a falling ship. You don't kill people midair like that–unless–had that been the goal all along? Who is it?

Alex curses and works what's left of his controls. The long flanges that gave the Dahlia its ripple effect stretch out in place of the lost wing while the right engine is allowed to shift to lower gears and nearly idle.

Another pass of gunfire and Alex curses the other pilot when the right wing tip splinters.

“Hold on!” Phantom takes hold of the edge of the dashboard with a death grip and Alex glances at him in confusion.

“J-just keep flying.”

And then the Dahlia trickles into nothing beneath his metal touch.

Alex's eyes widen, fear making his hands shake as the Dahlia disappears one arm length at a time. He keeps the scream inside as the yoke and buttons all vanish, the invisibility traveling up his hands where he holds the controls tight.

But his ship is still there, despite its disappearance. He can feel it, see its edges if he squints. And then a new fear comes unexpectedly when he looks down and finds himself hundreds of feet in the air with nothing visible holding him up.

“What the fuck?!” He shrieks, trembling from head to toe. “What the fuck did you do?”

“Land!” Phantom shouts back at him.

Alex wants to glare at Phantom, to throttle him and demand he undo whatever magic bullshit had just turned his ship invisible. But the red ship shoots past and circles around, firing pointlessly into the landscape. Alex watches the red ship circle wider and wider and decides to aim for a crash landing in the lake near the barge. At the very least they could get some kind of support from the yetis. Maybe even some answers.

Ahead of them the barge smokes, the long rectangular ship slightly askew as it sits on one landing leg with the rest shot out from under it. They can't catch more than a glimpse of the situation. Of Dalvco ships being boarded by thousands of people.

The Dahlia flickers to visibility and Phantom groans with effort, clearly struggling to keep a hold on the invisibility. The ship blinks invisible again, but it's obviously failing, sections of the wingtips flickering to visibility and back.

The lake ripples beneath them as the Dahlia slowly dips her lowest wing into the water, then the next and the one after. Baxter works the controls, panels along the ship pushing open and a parachute flutters open behind them. They skip once, twice and then skid across the water, throwing up a spray easily a half mile wide.

But the lake isn't long enough at its widest, and Alex hasn't been able to take full advantage of his landing zone. Ahead the shore splashes calmly, unaware of its guest. The Dahlia’s hull shatters on the sand, grinding to bits across the stone and the remaining wing and ailerons splinter into a thousand shards of shrapnel.

Alex clutches the controls as they crash, even as they become useless in his hands. 

Trees and bushes roll across the hull and dirt sprays inside. There's a noise like screaming as the ship slides gracelessly to a stop, stones scraping and trees cracking like twigs before the metal bow. The engine sputters and belches black smoke before going forever silent. Debris rattles and rolls as it settles around them, a half strung vine stretching from the bent nose to a tree several meters behind them. The ship blinks visible and Alex forces his fingers to release the controls.

“Phantom?” His voice is strange, almost airy and thin like he'd been the one screaming.

Alex turns when he gets no response and then he's scrambling out of his chair, throwing the flight harness straps aside.

“Hey! It's okay!”

Phantom's shuddering, his metal hands denting the dashboard in a crushing grip as he hyperventilates. He releases his deathgrip and smacks away Alex's reaching hands, tugging weakly at his own harness as he kicks and struggles.

“Phantom! C'mon, now is a really bad time to be freaking out.” 

Alex catches one hand as Phantom swings at his face and wedges an arm over to the release button on Phantom's other side. The retracting straps only make him thrash harder, clawing up toward the cracked remains of the windshield.

“Stop!”

The man flinches bodily and his attempt to climb over the dashboard slows, the lens adjusting and focusing on the sky.

“Come here,” Alex orders again and Phantom turns to face him, seeming calmer. “That's it, just breathe.”

Phantom's legs collapse slowly, but Alex is quick, catching him by the arms and propping the metal helmet against his shoulder. Alex sinks to the ground with him and hugs him tightly. 

“We made it, it's alright.” Alex whispers into his ear. “Even breaths okay? Like mine.”

Alex tries to breathe slower, to make an example of the task, but his own body is trembling. He clings to Phantom harder, his heart pounding.

Phantom shudders, his metal hands curling into Alex's open jacket. “We’re.. we landed?”

“Yeah, back on good old ground again.”

Alex rubs his back, a sour self hatred creeping through his chest. He had caused this, and had given Phantom this feeling twice over. 

“It's not exploding.” Phantom shudders again and presses his face against Alex's shoulder. “Did we die already?”

“The Dahlia is a better ship than that. Or, she was at least.” Alex's gaze rolls across the damaged insides, full of blowing dust and cracked black screens. “Cmon, we need to get off the planet.”

Phantom nods, lingering for a moment longer and slipping his left arm around Alex’s ribs. Alex hugs him back, his heart slowing from panic and fear to something sweeter, safer. He slides a hand to the back of Phantom's head to hold him close, resting his cheek against the silver metal helmet. Phantom inhales and sighs, the shudders stopping.

This won't fix the pieces of Phantom that were missing, but Alex is going to do everything he can to keep Phantom together; he owes him that much at least. He hugs Phantom tighter, imagining he could glue the other man's psyche back together via willpower alone. Phantom wheezes a laugh and Alex hides his smile against the black hair.

There's mixed gunfire in the distance, heavy low booms of ship cannon fire and a quieter higher rate of fire from turrets and handguns. The ground rumbles with the steady impact of plasma fire, a firing pass that rocks the Dahlia and Alex's heart sinks. That’s the red ship again.

Phantom jerks into motion after the red ship’s pass is complete, lurching out of Alex’s hold and stumbling outside. Alex’s hands clench, and he aches at the loss of contact. He needs to fix this, get them back to the Starmarker and maybe they could, if for just a little while, find a hint of that safe feeling again. He follows Phantom slowly, fingers dancing across his wrist communicator. The signal is too poor to reach the Starmarker, even if there wasn't the possibility of a jamming screen.

“We need to contact the Starmarker.” Alex ducks as the red ship passes by again.

“I'll cover us.” Phantom speaks with such certainty that Alex eyes him.

As if they could do anything from the ground.

“We have to get help from the yetis, I don't think you can take on a ship in the sky.” Alex explains the severe difference in fighting strength and follows him outside. “Let's leave the Dahlia and return for it once we're back on the Starmarker.”

Alex leans on the charred outer frame as they step over the uneven carved ground. “Though I'm not sure she's worth the trouble at this point.”

Phantom's helm tilts curiously. “Trouble?”

Alex shrugs and tugs on one metal hand, leading Phantom towards the tree line, little more than fifty feet of bare ground and sparse shrubbery between them.

“She's probably beyond repair after this wreck,” Alex explains, half heartedly ducking behind a struggling shrub as the red ship peaks above the tree line in the distance.

Phantom's hand slips from his and Alex doubles back to grab him.

“Phantom, come on we need to get under some cover and over to the barge.” Alex hisses with a growl of frustration.

Phantom stands tall, facing the red ship as it circles for another pass. “And what, outrun them? They can fly faster than we can flee.”

“But we can hide faster than they can find us if you'd just–” Alex's stomach sinks in cold terror as the red ship aims for them, the broad flat nose glinting in the sunlight as it drops altitude for a lower sweep.

The world seems to move in slow motion as the triple shot fires, a single stripe blasting the ground sixty meters away. Each round of gunfire feels hollow, vibrating through the ground with each impact. The rocks and pebbles kicked up rain down around them as each set lands closer and closer.

All while Phantom stands there, immobile and undaunted.

Alex cringes before the impact, flinching and arms raising to protect his head for all the good that would do once he was hit. He can imagine the damage already; the 30mm round will shred through him, put a hole in his ribs that will hopefully kill him instantly. Alex doesn't want to survive the first pass, it'll be agony. An agony he can almost feel as ten meters away the next round impacts the soil, throwing up an enormous dust cloud built upon all those previous rounds.

Phantom's back opens like the spines of a scaled beast, revealing the ominous green inner glow. From this angle Alex stares in open awe at the beautiful cyberware, at the hypnotic green swirling inside.

Phantom throws a hand out and the enormous bullets explode on a green barrier, swirling and contorting with each impact. Sets of three bullets ripple the iridescent green surface.

The red ship shoots by overhead and Alex stares up at the glazed green sky in amazement, and then confusion as the green dissipates, returning the sky to a dull gray blue.

“Dash?” Phantom's at his side and Alex sits up, nearly knocking their heads together.

“What the fuck.”

“Are you–”

“No seriously, please.” Alex grabs him by the face, holding him still and looking into the lens. “How are you doing this?”

Phantom's face turns red and his response is little more than a stammer.

“You-you did the thing before, where you just walked through me. That's not normal. That's not human. And before that your teeth grew back. Humans don't grow teeth back!” 

Alex is spiraling, staring at the lens as the dials twist and adjust focus.

“A-and now a shield th-thing? I-We almost died. You turned my ship invisible. You turned me invisible.” Metal hands press over the back of his own and Alex's mouth hangs open, panting.

“What are you?”

The fingers curl gently around his hands and pull them away. Phantom's quiet, biting his lip and then pressing his mouth into an uncomfortable line. The red ship banks in the distance, coming back around for another pass.

Phantom shrugs and smiles weakly, his unkempt black hair fluttering in the wind, “I'm.. I'm a monster.”

The engines roar in the distance and Alex glances between Phantom's self depreciating expression and the red ship. 

He wants to ask more questions, but Phantom drops his hands and turns to face the oncoming enemy. His spine bows, cords sliding out and attaching to his thighs and right arm. A fourth presses against the back of his helmet and branches out, plugging in like roots.

Alex watches transfixed as a line of white light crawls over Phantom’s skin in a ring and his entire body shifts colors. The cords inside his cyberware legs glow in lines of green, his gray white armor inverting to a deep matte black and slate. Finally the ring passes over the starchesia helmet, turning the silver metal black. The messy hair flashes white and flutters like snow in the wind, the rings flickering to sparks and vanishing above his head.

He crouches, and then against all common reason Phantom leaps for the oncoming ship.

Those cyberware legs crackle with green energy, launching him further than Alex could have anticipated, easily putting himself in the path of the oncoming ship.

The red ship veers, but it's too close, too late and Phantom's body dents the nose on contact. They shoot by over head and Alex cranes his neck to keep them in sight, rolling onto his feet and trailing after them. His boots crunch through the dusty ground and he stops as they vanish over the tree line. 

Alex searches the sky, even spins around once to see if they might circle around like the red ship had been doing before.

He feels profoundly useless as the moments pass, worry stacking like bricks on his shoulders. 

Should he try to chase after them? 

The Dahlia creaks behind him and the second wing bends slowly to collapse in the dirt.

Alex decides should try to contact the Starmarker; maybe the Dahlia’s communicator is still working. He scrambles back the way he'd come, wondering if the Starmarker is even remotely operational, if Paulina and Navi are currently engaged in a fight themselves. Alex bites his lip and hops into one of the ruts carved in the dirt. He hopes they're okay.

A loud engine whine is all the warning he gets.

He ducks, for all the use it is and stares up at the red ship, wide eyed and baffled. Phantom has dented its shell further and his weird cords are plugged into the breaks between panels. The engines stall and the ship pirouettes chaotically, nose pointing up while the engines scream blue flames, keeping the ship only a few hundred feet from the ground. The ship shoots skyward in a heartbeat, trailing black smoke and Alex stumbles backwards as the intense heat from the exhaust cooks the ground.

The engines crackle and sputter as the ship reaches its zenith.

The glass windshield of the red ship pops off, ejecting the pilot in their seat.

And the red ship, with Phantom still on it, turns upside-down and begins to plummet towards the lake.

Alex's insides seem to freeze and burn all at once.

Phantom is going to die.

He's falling and there's nothing Alex can do to save him.

Common sense is to run away from the falling ship, but nothing is making sense anyways. The world moves past him like the background in a puppet show, looking down he finds his legs running beneath him, taking him closer. Maybe it'll hit the shore? And Phantom probably can't swim with how heavy that cyberware is. Phantom is lucky in the sense that he'd survived a similar drop before. Alex fervently wishes for a similar landing even as the ship plummets, gaining speed with every passing second.

Alex screams for him as the ship crashes, bursting into blinding red and gold fire.

He’s hardly covered any ground at all, the ship having fallen in only a handful of breaths and he stands at the edge of the lake, where grass gives way to sand and pebbles.

Another whine of engines makes him dive instinctively and gunfire peppers the ground and around the burning ship. His hands cross behind his neck and he presses his forehead into the rocks.

Peeking upward he sits up abruptly.

“Phantom!”

Phantom doesn't respond, or even turn to acknowledge his call. He's on some kind of red hoverboard, grappling with a female dressed in red armor. The board pivots and rolls, responding gracefully to the woman's balance and pose.

Alex stares, jaw dropped at the ship on the beach, still several tens of yards away. He hadn't fallen with the ship. Had he leapt at the woman's ejected seat? And it hadn't been a seat but instead some kind of advanced hoverboard.

The board turns upside-down and rakes Phantom against the water. His grapple turns to a cling, fingers digging into the woman's back. They skip like a stone, Phantom streaming water as he coughs. He's crouched low, with his arms around her legs and she beats at his helmet and arms.

He drops during the board’s next spiral over the sand, body slapping into the ground and sliding.

“Phantom!” Alex's teeth grit and he draws his gun. 

The red huntress turns and Alex fires. The plasma bullet splatters the red armor, leaving a dark smear and the spark of damaged circuitry.

The board pivots and she draws her own weapon, returning fire. The first bullet melts into his thigh, the armor plate warping and burning hot against his skin. His next shot catches her in the shoulder and she whips by overhead. 

Alex stumbles to one knee as the pain intensifies, struggling to keep the muzzle trained on her as she zips around. 

The hoverboard whines and suddenly jerks higher into the air, narrowly dodging a bright green bolt of plasma. Another bolt clips the board’s nose and it drifts backwards unsteadily, the huntress flailing her arms for balance.

“Dash!” 

Alex looks over and is nearly overwhelmed at the rush of relief. Phantom’s okay. He’s running over, the palms of his hands glowing green, and there's a smear of smoke and ash on his face. But he's moving, he's okay, he's not smashed under the ship, he's not falling to his death. 

“Pha-”

Hot plasma cuts through the armor plate on the back of his shoulder and he drops his gun. The pain is aching, burning and sinking into his flesh. For a moment he can't remember how to breathe, caught between an inhale and exhale.

Phantom screams his name again, but Alex's ears are ringing too loudly to hear it. The air is punched out of him and his diaphragm struggles to work. He watches Phantom run, wheezing through the haze of pain that clogs his thoughts. Between blinks the green accents on Phantom's body burn bright crimson and Alex's eyebrows pinch together in confusion.

More bullets crash around them, but Phantom has dyed the world that filmy green again, the shield muffling the sound of each impact.

Hands on his shoulders hold him and Alex's head bobs unsteadily as he looks up. Phantom's teeth are bared in a grimace, and clear lines run through the dirt on his cheeks from the visor to his chin. The red is too bright, the lines of the Starchesia helmet blurring and pulsing; Alex closes his eyes to it.

“Dash!” 

“I'm okay,” Alex heaves a breath, back pinching and aching with every movement. Breathing is a nauseating struggle, and his skin feels clammy, his shirt glued to his skin uncomfortably beneath the armor plates.

Phantom's hold on him trembles, or maybe it's the air around them. Alex's skin tingles and the hairs on his neck rise. The air seems almost charged, as if they’re moments before being struck by lightning. Phantom stands again and Alex watches in disbelief as the red huntress circles around for another pass. Who is she? Why is she after them so desperately?

He doesn't recognize the red and black suit, or the person at all. Maybe there’s a bounty on him and she’s another hunter after his head. The GU had posted a price on him once before, and though the reward was low it had certainly scared Alex into obedience. 

The fear feels real now as the hoverboard swoops and closes the distance for another pass.

The air sparks.

And Phantom makes a noise unlike anything he'd ever heard before. It’s like if lightning bolts could break, if electricity could scream. The sound resonates and cracks with shockwaves. The hands over his ears do nothing and Alex trembles under the planet shattering force.

Starfall | DannyPhantom | Explicit | Swaggerbishie | AO3

Prologue

Hours run long and late, time slipping by as the single night turns to days becoming weeks and months; the millenia pass. The concept of time itself is lost, human constructs become meaningless, an endless march without units to quantify the passing. And despite the measurements, the time or distance, depth or density: everything stays exactly the same. Compression, expansion, a dance the cosmos repeats tirelessly. A heartbeat, a breath: elastic. Space does not expand in every direction endlessly. Yet the remains of humanity sit still in this endless place, frail pioneers in interstellar space. Here the dips and heights in density are less to do with the false shape –the saddle– and more to do with the rises and falls akin mountains and valleys on a planet's crust, uncharted and vast. Time distortions settle into the nooks like oxygen covets gravity. Wormholes stripe the vast open plains, an oceanic undercurrent that transports nutrients across vast distances, ever evenly dispersed.

The universe is round.

The universe is massive, where measuring the visible light plane is the same as staring at the ground between your shoes. Once, machinery had spied the ‘horizon line, deeming the universe a flat, ever expanding wealth of nutrients and dust. Perfectly mixed, synthesized so that every corner is exactly the same. Believing the universe is flat is the same as thinking a planet is flat. Seeing the faint curvature at altitude is spying only the first piece of the enormity.

The universe is complex, varied.

Life exists beyond the stars. Far beyond the ones visible from the wandering vessels dormitory windows. Constellations of old are lost in the rhythm, the expansion, contraction. Present becomes history, lost and forgotten, archives discarded, no one left could read them. The languages had been adapted, changed, evolved until what is spoken now, could hardly relate to what was once the ‘original.’

The universe is cruel.

Despite hundreds of years of evolution, exponential advances in science and technology. Everything stays exactly the same.