Mindshard (ON HOLD)

Cityscape

     The shuttle, a miniature duplicate of the larger teardrop Vaughn had traveled in before, with a four-passenger capacity, smoothly rose from the medical facility’s rooftop auxiliary pad on her maneuvering thrusters.  As soon as she was ten metres clear, the shuttle’s omni-field powered up and took over from the thrusters, orienting the streamlined silver drop towards the city in the distance and sending her speeding away in absolute silence.

     Behind the shuttle’s controls, a modified concave panel complete with holographic interfaces, displays and control pads, Ixim finished inputting the shuttle’s destination and turned his attention to keeping the shuttle in the air.  Speed, omni-field strength and vector were all at his fingertips and, with a deftness that surpassed most Sidhe, he unerringly flew towards Ven Cor’brin.

     In the left-hand, copilot’s seat, Vaughn stared out the wrap-around cockpit window, her mind mulling over a number of things, including what she had learned about the being seated beside her.  What sort of creature, in possession of extraspacial powers so great, they could warp reality itself, needed to live in a nest?  Of course intellectually she knew he could be using an anachronism, an ancient term to describe a more modern object.

     But, in reviewing how Ixim had said it, with its emphasis and near reverence, Vaughn was forced to come to the conclusion that such a place truly existed.  It shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise.  The world she now found herself in was significantly different than the one she was born into.  With the technology and alien power that existed here, just about anything was possible, including the existence of drax nests.  She could only hope the nest wasn’t too far outside of her ability to understand!

     Silently the shuttle passed out of the Silver Mountains, its jagged, granite peaks fading into the gentler vales and ridges of the K’nor Vorn.  These were the foothills that spread from the rocky feet of the mountains and into the Cor’Asel’s relatively thin protrusion between the mountains and Ven Cor’brin.  Here, at the interface between rock and tree, the hills tumbled into a green river, the trees dense and thick enough to hide even the most stubborn of rocky outcroppings beneath its canopy, the forest unrelenting until it reached the outskirts of the venerable Sidhe city.

  “Update current traffic flow and density patterns.”  Ixim suddenly requested, his voice close and loud in the cockpit’s confines, enough to startle Vaughn out of her momentary reverie.

     Responding to his voice command, the shuttle’s dedicated AI quickly established a link with the city’s traffic network and created a continually updated, real-time database of traffic as it poured in and out of the city.  A primary city on Galus, Ven Cor’brin was a hub for trade and transport.  That meant her skies were almost continually filled with an unending stream of transports, shuttles and flitters, a type of personal aircraft.  To venture into such chaos without proper information was to invite certain disaster.

  “Link to intra-city traffic control established, Var Ixim.”  A soft female voice reported from the console.

  “Very good.  Three dimensional map of the city core, if you please, with traffic corridors marked by speed and direction.”

     A holographic globe spun into being between the two seats, half a metre in diameter and glowing a soft blue.  Inside, between the ghostly outlines of impossible skyscrapers, traffic patterns were traces of brilliant blue, purple, yellow and red, each sending its tendrils reaching out over the core like a gigantic spider web.  Into this particular web they would fly, hopefully without becoming entangled.

     Nodding as he made note of the traffic flow, Ixim’s fingers danced across the control pad.  A heartbeat later the small shuttle banked to the left and Vaughn watched as the city’s outskirts flitted by beneath them, nearly a full kilometre down.  But the gap rapidly narrowed when the shuttle began to smoothly lose altitude in the middle of its bank.