Aetheral Space

Dragan landed on the grass with a thump, a pang of numb pain ringing out from his newly-healed arm. Grabbing a fistful of grass as he clenched his fist, he kicked backwards at his assailant - and missed, Skipper simply stepping out of the way of his attack. Blue Aether coated Dragan's body, but Skipper was handling him easily with just his base physical activities.

"The sparrings meant to end when you fall down, kiddo," said Skipper, smirking.

Dragan growled - if you listened, you might make out the barest impressions of a word, but it was really just frustration.

They'd walked a short distance from their encampment to spar - Skipper wasn't worried about anyone seeing them, he just didn't want to get in anyone's way. Apart from Dragan's, obviously.

"You give up way too easy," sighed Skipper, hand on his hip, looking down at him. "When you dodged me there, you could have stayed standing. You didn't need to roll into the ground, you know."

Dragan glanced away. "If I'm going to lose anyway," he said. "What's the point in dragging it out?"

"Why do you assume you'd lose?"

He rolled his eyes. "Because I lost the last fifty times, that's why."

Skipper held up a finger and grinned. "Well, you never know - fifty-one could be your lucky number!"

"It wasn't. I just lost."

"Well, don't give up on fifty-two."

Dragan clambered to his feet, brushing the grass off his knees. "Whatever. Are we done now? I'm tired out."

"There you go again - giving up!"

He shot Skipper an exasperated glare. "Yeah. I'm giving up. Sue me."

As they walked back to the encampment, Dragan glanced at his surroundings. After spending perhaps the worst day of his life in the industrial wasteland of Caelus Breck, the grasslands of Yoslof were a welcome contrast. Pure green fields stretched to the horizon in every direction, interrupted only by the occasional thin tree or half-eroded ruin.

A yellow sun blazed in the sky a comfortable distance away - not too cold, not too hot. That was probably the reason the planet's original occupant had settled here in the first place.

Their encampment was built out of the grand ruins of a large fortress - tents and temporary buildings littering the ground around it, their ship parked a short distance away, shining with reflected sunlight. People came back and forth, carrying articles out of the ruins for inspection. A young woman with long white hair and patchwork clothes stood in the center of the settlement, calling out orders from a script's holographic screen floating in front of her. She looked up as they approached.

"Mr. Skipper," she smiled. "Mr. Hadrien. Having a pleasant day?"

"I sure am," smiled Skipper, stretching. "Not sure about the kid, though."

"Funny," said Dragan. "What a funny guy you are. I'll kill you."

The girl - Helga, if Dragan remembered correctly - offered a sympathetic smile. "Keep at it, Mr. Hadrien. I'm sure you'll get him yet."

Dragan nodded wordlessly and followed Skipper towards the ship, moving on.

They weren't alone here at the ruins - Skipper had brought them here to take refuge with a sect of Humilists from the Final Church that were friendly with whoever it was he worked for. The Supremacy would no doubt be looking hard for them after the stunt they'd pulled on Caelus Breck, so they needed to lay low for a little while.

And Skipper was clearly taking the opportunity to humiliate Dragan under the pretense of providing training.

"You know what your problem is?" said Skipper as they walked towards the ship, grass crunching underfoot.

"I'm being beaten up every day by the most annoying man in the world?"

"No, no. You're very lucky to be beaten up by my esteemed fists - er, fist - besides, I'm not beating you up, I'm training you." He paused for a second. "What were we talking about again?"

"You were about to tell me what my big problem is. I'm waiting with bated breath here, you know."

"Ah, right!" Skipper snapped his fingers. "Your big problem, Mr. Hadrien, is that you keep trying to hit me!"

Dragan shot him a skeptical glare. The advice, as per usual, was near-incomprehensible.

Skipper chuckled awkwardly at the harsh look. "No, come on now, hear me out - when we train, the only thing you're trying to do is get a hit in with your Aether. Your only objective is landing a punch."

"If I'm not at the point where I can land a hit on you," said Dragan, raising an eyebrow. "There's not much else I can do, is there?"

"You keep trying to hit me like that, and it's predictable," said Skipper, clearly ignoring him. "All I have to do is keep dodging and you tire yourself out. You're thinking that hitting me is your win condition, but it's not. The win condition would be knocking me down."

"Well, that'd be impossible."

"Because you don't try!"

"I don't try because it would be impossible. If you waste your energy trying to do something when you already know you can't, you're an idiot."

Skipper sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "You're not an easy guy to talk to, you know, kiddo?"

"That's not true. I'm charming and loveable."

It was somewhat satisfying to be able to annoy Skipper, after so long of experiencing the opposite. It was a small victory, but honestly speaking it was the only one Dragan would be able to achieve.

They arrived at the ship, the gaudy yacht sitting in the grass. Ruth lay on a deck-chair a short distance away, wearing a pair of sunglasses and scrolling through her script. Bruno and Serena were nowhere to be seen.

"How long did it take you to win, Skipper?" Ruth called out as they reached the ship.

"Nineteen seconds!" said Skipper, looking much too happy for someone who had just assaulted a poor, innocent clerk. "Two seconds longer than usual."

"Niiice," she said. Dragan rolled his eyes.

Skipper poked his head into the ship. "How's the refueling going, Bruno?"

Bruno's voice was distant, muffled. "Bad. The fuel converters are set for fancy jet-light stuff, not the organic type the Humilists have."

"Keep at it, pal," Skipper said, thumping the metal wall encouragingly. "We got an ETA?" Dragan wasn't sure how the resulting rattling was meant to do anything but give Bruno a headache.

"It's done when it's done," snapped Bruno back.

"And when's that?"

"When it's done."

"Roger, dodger!" said Skipper, throwing up an exaggerated salute. Bruno rolled his eyes - well, Dragan assumed he rolled his eyes. He couldn't see Bruno, but he was sure there was nobody in the galaxy who could witness that display and not feel exasperated.

He glanced down at Ruth, still lounging in the sun. "It'd probably go faster if you helped, you know," he said, raising an eyebrow.

"I can't," smiled Ruth, patting the bandage on her arm smugly - the spot where Atoy Muzazi had cut through it with his sword back on Caelus Breck. "I'm hurt. Why don't you help?"

"I'm injured," said Dragan. "Besides, Skipper's got me doing all this pointless sparring. I don't have the time."

Ruth raised her sunglasses, peering at him from behind them. "It isn't pointless. If you're going to be running with us, you need to be able to handle yourself."

"I can handle myself."

She looked skeptical. "The first time we met, I beat you up in like half a second."

"That was different," said Dragan, glancing away. "You were cheating."

"How was I cheating?!"

"I need to go now," said Dragan, walking back over to Skipper. "Hey, Skipper. I'm going to let these poor bastards know they'll have to deal with you for another couple of days."

Skipper's head was still poking into the ship, and he clearly wasn't listening. He'd taken a liking to the yacht, it seemed, and was determined to make sure it stayed in flying shape. No surprise it was his priority right now. "Hmm?" he said. "Yeah, yeah, cool. Go for it."

Stretching, hearing his joints crack with dull satisfaction, Dragan headed back over to the Humilists' compound.

The ruin they'd made their encampment around was a strange construction - he'd called it a fortress earlier, but it was more like a palace than anything else. It was nothing compared to the Heart Building, but it was still damn big. You could probably fit fifty star-yachts in the building and still have room to walk around. The tents around the palace were pretty sizable, but in comparison they were like ants.

The size of history, Dragan supposed. The older a thing was, the more time it had to get gaudy.

Speaking of gaudy, Dragan couldn't help but wince as he approached the encampments - saw the kind of clothes the Humilists were marching around in. The Humilist sect of the Final Church believed in becoming closer to God - to Y - through ultimate humility. They didn't have the arrogance to make a single new thing, and only used that which had previously been thrown away. As such, all their clothes were pretty much patchwork, clashing colours fused together into a nauseating rainbow. Dragan didn't want to judge, but couldn't there at least have been an attempt at colour coordination?

Even the ship they'd come in on, a vertical rocket jutting up out of the ground, looked decades old at least - salvaged without a doubt.

As Dragan came back to the center of the Humilists' camp, Helga looked up from her script, eyes glittering. "Isn't it exciting?" she said, grinning - obviously she'd received some good news.

Helga was just slightly better-dressed than the rest of the Humilists'; the different patches that made up her dress were mostly the same colour, at least, even if the sleeves looked like they'd once been the legs of a pair of pants.

Apparently, Helga's group of Humilists were focused on archeology. Dragan supposed that made sense. Digging up the bones of the past was the ultimate form of salvaging, in a way. From the look on her face, her crew had obviously made some kind of discovery.

"What's exciting?" he said, cocking his head. Truth be told, he wasn't really that interested, but he thought it better to indulge her before giving her the bad news.

She turned the script towards him, still grinning widely, and as Dragan looked at the screen he saw that it was displaying an image of some kind of sphere. The object was slowly rotating - clearly it had been scanned for this kind of display - strange pinprick holes covering its surface.

"Do you know what this is?" said Helga, almost hopping in place in excitement.

"Yeah, of course," said Dragan automatically. A moment later, he corrected himself: "Uh, no. What is it?"

"This," she said, tapping the script's screen with her hand. "Is a pheromone sphere. It's what the Gene Tyrants used to store information. Oh, if this belonged to Elizabeth, the kind of history it could hold…"

Dragan scanned the object, looking the image up and down. "How's it work? Are the holes, like, braille or something?"

She shook her head vigorously. "No, no, no! You see, the way it worked was that in the center of the sphere you'd have this organic core - engineered, of course - that released pheromones that, when absorbed by the right kind of sensory organ, could communicate tremendous amounts of information! Reading through smell, actually reading through smell! Incredible, isn't it?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess so," said Dragan, nodding awkwardly. "How're you supposed to read it, though? You're no Gene Tyrant, you can't just grow whatever kind of organs you want."

Helga waved a dismissive hand. "Minor details. Once we get back to the Humilist fleet, I'm sure they'll have a computer lying around that can read this type of information."

It must be hard to be a Humilist, Dragan thought. You always had to hope something was just 'lying around', or else you'd never get anywhere. Were they allowed to light their own fires, or did they have to stand around and wait for lightning to strike? He was tempted to ask.

"Here's hoping," he said, swallowing his unkind words. "So, ah, I actually need to tell you something -"

Helga had already turned around, was already rummaging around in one of her many boxes of scrap. "Hold that thought!" she said, holding a finger up. "I need your help with a thing!"

Dragan glanced away. "Well, that's -"

"It'll only take an hour or two, don't worry! We just need someone combat-ready to escort us while we're digging through the palace."

He stepped forward, concern quickly flaring up. Combat-ready? In what world was he combat-ready?! "Now, hold on just a second -"

Helga did not hold on for just a second. Instead, she stuffed an old flashlight into his hands, followed by a pair of generation-old vision goggles and a piece of mining equipment coated with so much rust it was impossible to tell it's former shape. Before long, he was holding a veritable pile of - well, there was no nice way to say it - a veritable pile of trash.

Dragan sighed. This was going to be a long day.