Cosmos (Discontinued)

2: Conspiracy (part 1)

My hands began to tremble. How was I doing this? How long would this last?

The ground lingered below, not deep enough to hurt or kill me now.

Somehow that thought weakened the raging current within me. I sank downward.

The fuselage settled nose-first with a soft thunk and keeled sideways.

I flung the restraints off my chest, ripped my helmet off, and tumbled out of the mangled cockpit, hands grasping at soft dirt and snaking rainforest roots. The firmness of the ground felt good. I was no longer falling. Calming myself with steady breaths, I brushed the sweaty straggles of hair from my face and stared at my palms. What was that?

A red dot blinked from my wrist, the square screen of my Qbit alerting me that my distress signal had been activated. Meanwhile, the girl who'd witnessed the whole thing started forward to speak, but then her gaze snapped toward the rustling sound deep within the thick batches of ferns.

A voice shouted, "Talitha!" Then Vel burst out between us, panting, his flight helmet in hand and his hair like that of a woolly mammoth. He took brief notice of the girl, then, not deeming her a threat for the time being, dropped his helmet and took me by the shoulders.

"Talitha!" he gasped with a quivering voice and his face paler than ice.

I hid my palms. Did he see what I did? He couldn't have, not while he ejected, landed, and ran through the jungle to find me. And -- wait -- "Did you just call me Talitha?"

Vel erupted into a hysterical laugh, which he immediately -- and shamefully -- snuffed out under his hand. He kept staring at me with bewildered awe. "How are you still alive? You went up in flames! I didn't see you eject!" He panted and shook his head, adding, "thank the Empress you're alive!"

Vel took my arm and turned it upward to check my Qbit. With two fingers, he swiped upward against the screen, causing it to expand into rectangularly. "Your vital signs are normal, and the diagnostic of your suit's bio-feedback system checks out. Aside from minor bruising, you are unharmed. I don't know how, but I still want to get you examined in the infirmary. The flotilla has received your distress signal. They will be here within the hour."

"Goody," I grumbled, poking at the swollen cut on my jaw. I broke protocol, pursued an unknown craft I knew absolutely nothing about, violated a treaty, crashed my Persecutor, nearly died, and I had nothing to show for it. Except for whatever this was inside me. I needed to figure out what it was, but where would I even start?

Vel, meanwhile, said nothing of my decision to chase the object. Like it never even happened.

I frowned. He should be chastising me over my stupidity, telling me, I told you so. Why was he so annoyingly superior all the time? Of course, mother would be far less forgiving...

Finally, after lurking at a distance for so long, the girl inched closer and said, "you should come with me."

Vel's focus broke from the screen. "She most certainly will not."

I shared a dumbstruck grimace with the two of them. She saw what I did. Vel did not. This is awkward, I thought. Was this the right time to tell him? What would I even say? The girl saw what I did, so it wasn't like I could pretend that nothing happened.

Her stare never left me, like she was waiting for me to fess up and admit. Seeing I wasn't so keen on it, she added, "in time you will only have more questions than you can answer."

I looked away, avoiding eye-contact. No way she could have an answer. She was an exile, a religious fanatic who was likely to accept anything as a divine miracle. Or whatever.

She continued, "I can --"

"Enough!" shouted Vel. "We will have none of your fanatical babbling! Return to your rat's nest, exile!"

The girl lent him a brief glance but tried again, taking another step. "We know what you are!"

Vel shot to his feet and drew the Pugio pistol from his hip, aiming at her. "She is her royal majesty Talitha Niraemius, crown princess and heiress to the throne of the Elysian Empire! And if you take one more step, I will put you down!"

With a hard glare, the girl relented and retreated into the forest. Vel lowered his weapon and slid it back into the slot on his hip.

I had a nagging feeling that if I didn't say anything, he would start questioning me over it. "Way to keep up relations with the neighbors," I teased him.

"Considering what they've done to your family and to our people, allowing them to even live with the bounds of the empire is gracious enough." He turned a glance after the girl long out of sight and sound by now. "We should relocate. I don't want to risk an encounter with her tribe, or clan, or whatever the Augurs consider themselves nowadays."

I nodded, but twisted around to glance at the cockpit.

The displays inside flickered.

"The IMS!" I stumbled to my feet, but my sore muscles cried out and a lightheadedness took over, weighing me down into a stagger.

Vel caught me. "We'll send for it later! For now let's get you to safety!"

"And risk leaving it with them?"

"They wouldn't know what to do with it. It's not like they can do any more damage to the systems than has already been done."

I couldn't take my eyes off it. "Can't we just see?"

Vel sighed and sat me back down against a bundle of jungle roots. "Try not to move, I'll see if I can extract anything." He clicked his Qbit and crawled into the fuselage.

I winced and shifted off the hard roots, bending around the trunk of the tree to watch, but I could barely see. So I turned back, waiting patiently. Glimpsing my crumpled helmet on the ground, an idea came to me. I raised my hand, examining it like some foreign specimen. I had to figure out what this was, so I reached out and tensed my fingers.

The helmet stared back at me in motionless defiance.

I dropped my hand, suddenly feeling silly. Maybe I'd imagined it. Or maybe my thrusters lit at the last moment to save me. No...the girl saw it too. It was real, and I felt it, even though I'd never felt it before in my life. Was it this planet? The people here? Could that Augur girl really know what I was?

"Systems are unresponsive," Vel's voice echoed from inside the overturned cockpit, then he pulled himself. A puzzled frown haunted his expression. "I don't understand...you struck the terrain well in excess of 100 G. That amount of deceleration should have..." he didn't dare finish his words, but it ate away at him.

I sat stiff-lipped, not ready to tell him. It ate away at me too. Whatever it was, it was powerful enough to save me from certain death. I owed my life to it. But how would I find out what caused it? Was it still inside me at this moment?

"Let's find high ground. The Savants will figure this out when they examine the wreckage. I imagine researchers from Segreto will arrive to haul it off, given its interaction with a non-human entity. As for you, we'll perform a full screening to be sure."

I clambered up from the ground along the side of the tree, traipsing lightly to avoid aggravating my bruises. Then I froze. Segreto...and a screening. The answer slapped me right in the face. Maybe I couldn't figure out what this was. But I knew who could.

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