The Ghost of an Empire

Chapter Five

It was time to wake up. Today was the day. I grabbed my pack I had gotten ready days earlier, to make sure I didn't  forget anything. I had food. Drink. A WeatherCape, to protect me from all weather. My wristband, of course. My personal documents. Stun pistol. Knife. A first-aid kit. A change of clothes. Some emergency batteries for my shoe jets. And money, of course.

I typed in the travel coordinates in my wristband. I had to fly to the Space Port. Because I was flying to Zjarr, the fire planet. To meet the leader who had first defied the Dictator.

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I was flying to the Space Port. The Capital City was far beind; It was noon. I decided to land and eat some food. I soon found a nice cloud platform, with some Raus grazing. Raus were white, fluffy mammals that ate some types of cloud. They were quite small, and had little horns. They looked up slightly uneasily and made those funny soft "Baaa"-ing noises they always make. I guessed they weren't used to humans landing on their clouds. They hurried away to another cloud, using their floating feet. I looked around. Surely they weren't that uneasy just because of me, right? 

It turns out I was right. There was a strange woman staring at me from across the cloud field, sitting on an air scooter. She had cinnamon-colored hair, and some sort of strange white robe, with a golden animal on it. The moment the woman saw me looking at her, she put a gun in a belt pouch, and kicked her scooter, which silently came to life and carried her away. 

Uneasily, I continued on. Who was she? Why did she land on my cloud platform, and why did she put her weapon away, if she was an enemy? And if she wasn't an enemy, why didn't she talk to me? These were the questions I pondered over, as I flew over a tall cloud. And there was the Space Port. But I couldn't look at it very long. 

I heard an engine. I looked behind me, but something was thrown over my head and I was lifted up. I was thrown into the back of a vehicle, which I could only guess was the air scooter I had seen before.

The first thing I did was push the textile off of my face. I was pretty sure it was meant to incapacitate me. A quick scan from my wristband showed me I was right. I put it in the corner farthest away from me, which wasn't very far at all. I tried to open the door of the place I was in. It couldn't be opened from the inside.

"It looks like I'll be here for quite a while",  I thought. Then I  switched on my communicator. "Udara CID, receiving from Agent Operation Skyscraper.", I began. "Ran into slight trouble. Will miss ship.Nothing serious. Problem nearly solved", I said to keep people from worrying.

As soon as I had sent the message, the air scooter stopped. The door was opened and I saw some daylight before something was sprayed onto my face and I fell unconscious.

Hey guys! It's your author, strangeamatic!

Anyway, just wanted to talk about Udara's landscape. You may have noticed people don't really see land on this planet. It is there, but because of something that happened in the evolution of the planet, there is a very small planet, and a very thick oxygen layer around it. So everyone basically lives in floating skyscrapers. And outside the cities: Scientists of Udara found some sort of fastener chemical in the clouds which made the clouds quite solid. You can still fly through, but it would feel like pushing through a very very tough, thick wall of ivy. So you can also just sit on the clouds. Then there are the Raus. They are kind of alien sheep, and their hooves have little bits of hard cloud on the bottoms so they can walk in the air. Just thought I'd explain :)