Secret of Frost and Moon

Unexpected Message

Alaia Skyhawk: Here's the chapter I know you guys have been waiting for. Oh and before anyone jumps on me for the solar system stuff I use later in this chapter, I'm basing that info off the current IAU definitions :)

For those wanting the link to the picture of Solaris, this is it. Replace the symbols and remove spaces as needed. I'll also post it in my profile (note 'dot' replaced with . ) :)

fanart-central dot net / pictures / user / AlaiaSkyhawk16 / 838439 / City-of-Solaris

Disclaimer: I don't own Rise of the Guardians, the Guardians of Childhood, or any related characters etc. This story is written purely for entertainment purposes.

~(-)~

Chapter 113: Unexpected Message

People scrambled through the passageways, many of them in rumpled uniforms, having been roused from their sleep by the alert for the main shift crew to get to their posts. It wasn't a red alert, or even an amber alert. The weapons weren't being armed, and there was no enemy vessel to deal with. But a message capsule aimed at the Lumeris System, with an urgent retrieval notice on it? That demanded the attention of a fresh shift of crew, regardless of what news may or may not be contained within it.

The Captain rattled her fingers on the arms of her chair, as visibly nervous at the rest of those on the bridge. Was it a message of an attack near the border? But if so, why send it in such a slow-moving capsule? Was it an old message, gone astray? Perhaps, but it still needed to be checked.

The cruiser didn't take long to reach the capsule, and it was a simple matter for one of their shuttles to be launched to retrieve it. By the time both shuttle and capsule were inside the main hangar, the Captain had made her way down there to inspect it.

It wasn't what she was expecting.

The capsule was undoubtedly of Allegiance origins, but the abraded surface showed it had been in space for a considerable amount of time. The current standard emergency message capsules could go from one end of the Allegiance to the other in just four weeks, so when had this one been launched?

Further investigation of the man-sized cylinder revealed no other information, except that it was of a type never seen before by this crew. They didn't know how to open it, and to force it open might risk the message inside.

All of this was in the report transmitted to Lumeris, from which the return transmission gave instructions to deliver the capsule to the planet. Lumeris was only three hours away at in-system speeds, and it was with relief that the Captain sent the object down in a shuttle once they got there.

By that point the crew suspected it might just be another relic from the Fall, as astonishing as that might be. They no longer wanted to know what grim message it probably contained.

Which was much the thoughts of the Constellation it was brought to, inside the Citadel at the City of Lunestra. Tsar Gallus, some two-hundred and fifty years old, was an able leader in the majority of instances. But like his fellow Post-Fall Constellations, and every other living person in the Allegiance, when unusual things happened he deferred to the Pooka Brotherhood. For among their recovered numbers were the only fifty individuals, other than Father Time, who had known and lived during the Golden Age and its founding. All other Pookas born since, only knew the stories of those times and the long recovery after the Fall. So few people who remembered something other than the fear and dread that had shadowed everything since.

And so Tsar Gallus waited, pacing nervously back and forth near the capsule, until one of the oldest Pookas still alive came in through the nearby door.

Wyatt B. Devengard was typical of his race, seven feet tall if you included his ears, his fur a mix of grey-brown with darker markings. Also typical of his race were the long dusky-blue robes he wore. What was less typical was the lighter stripe of fur across the bridge of his nose, a reminder from a battle with Fearlings that had happened during the war. Not long before Father Time had chosen fifty of the Pookas and ordered them into hiding. The rest of them had continued to fight, and had died.