Back when we were kids, we swore we knew the future
And how our words would take us halfway 'round the world
But I never left this town, and you never saw New York
And we ain't ever crossed the sea
Always Gold – Radical Face
-
May(?) 10(?), 2893(?); Inner System Space
The ship's controls shook under her hands. The warp engines whined. In their defense, they hadn't been run for centuries. The craft's shaking gave the impression of being stuck in a giant old washing machine. Azra pushed the throttle harder, smiling when she felt the ship finally break free of Venus' atmosphere. The air turbulence vanished, but now the craft reached some resonant speed; the controls jerked: left, right, left.
It was twenty days after the Vault. It had been a hard twenty days. She'd nearly died at the Waking Ruins, stumbling out of the gateway, taking a breath, and panicking as it was locked away, taken from her and hidden behind some impassable barrier. The next breath came without her consent, blindsiding her. She couldn't move, couldn't even think. She gaped at the rising sun and the colors it spread across the sulphurous sky. A Vex laser to the chestplate had awoken her instinct to run, just barely in time. She almost hadn't made it out. The world didn't function as she was used to. She couldn't remember the present. The future was gone, the past was inaccessible.
It had been a hard struggle back to find time again. Hunger, thirst, and exhaustion assaulted her seemingly at random. And there was hostile Vex, the House of Winter, dangerous Sulphur vents. The open spaces were scattered with whispering bones and the dense underbrush hid scree slopes and pits of mud from view. But slowly, step by step, breath by breath, she'd found time's flow again.
Then she'd searched for Praedyth, but Praedyth was nowhere to be found. The gate, when she fought her way back to it, showed no record of ever being opened. They'd tried to call for help on the Vanguard channels, but there was no response. They tried every private channel they knew, and eventually just scanned through all the common frequencies, and found nothing, just ever-shifting static that gave her a headache. Whenever Praedyth was, she could offer no help.
Spark had a lot of corrupt data. There were so many errors and scrambled indices, it was hard to tell how much they were missing in the first place. To recover it, they'd need a reboot or a Cryptarch (and those were in short supply in the Venusian wilds). Neither of them was willing to take Spark out of commission, alone in hostile territory with no help coming. They counted hours by the shadows and days by the angles of the sun. They had left the Vault about three weeks after they'd entered it, if the orbits were to be believed. And then they'd had to muck around trying to remember how clocks work, and look for Praedyth, and figure out how to cook Venusian Tree-Cabbage, and track down a spaceport, and find a ship in good enough condition to get them back to Earth...
It hadn't been easy. But they'd done it. With a giddy expression on her face, Azra pulled back on the stick. Earth bloomed before them in real-space. It had always been her favorite planet: a shining blue sphere, wisps of clouds like scattered salt marbled on its surface. The poles glowed a shifting green and pink. Then, closer, the rugged topography in blue and green and brown. She could sit and admire it all day. But on this day there were other, more pressing matters. She steered the ship down into the atmosphere. The ocean gave way to mountains, and then a great white sphere appeared on the horizon.
-
It emerged suddenly from between the clouds. She didn't spare a single glance for the City. Azra's eyes were immediately drawn up to the sphere that overshadowed the mountain valley. It was huge . The shell was broken in places, showing dark gaps. The unmarred parts of the structure were dazzling and vaguely pearlescent. Azra's fingertips tingled. It seemed so familiar. Spark said something about a hangar. Azra nodded, still dumbfounded, and wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes.
YOU ARE READING
You've Got Time
Fanfiction"No one can open the Vault alone. I opened the Vault. There was no one with me but I was not alone." A team of six entered the Vault of Glass. Kabr fought and died. Praedyth was captured. Pahanin ran. Two were cut away, and one hid. This story story...
