Galactic High

The house, as it turns out, was massive. The first two corridors housed several abandoned rooms that could have easily housed 20+ more people, with large bathrooms dotted around at regular intervals. Jack thought back to some of the slums they had walked through to get here and didn’t understand why this place was so sparse.

“Here’s my room!” exclaimed Nika as she looked at Jack with quite a telling smile, opening the door.

Nika’s room at first glance looked like an abandoned garage. That probably wasn’t too far off the mark despite Jack not seeing any cars, with posters of intimidating looking warriors covering the crumbling grey bricks. Most of the room seemed to be reasonably maintained, though a little spartan. There was a raised platform with a punching bag, and several weapon racks dotting the walls, though hardly anything filling them, just a couple of pistols, a battered looking rifle and some basic looking melee weapons. Taking up the far end of the room was what looked like a workstation, with something bulky and metallic taking up some space. Looking round, Jack could see a pile of cushions near the door with a thin see-through curtain drawn around. Was that where Nika slept?

“What’s that in the corner?” Jack asked, pointing to the work area.

“That is my latest pet project!” Nika replied proudly. “Rebuilding a security automaton! We have several security measures to protect our little sector and this will be one of them...assuming I can get all the parts.”

“Working on it!” Sephy added with a smile. “We’ve still come a long way though!”

“That’s true! Sephy’s been helping with the coding and the acquisitions.” Nika smiled, patting Sephy on the back, as the group walked over and examined the thing. It looked somewhat humanoid in nature, slightly rusted in areas and fresh in others, the different metals and colours revealing a patchwork of vastly different parts that had obviously been cannibalised from other machines, including what looked like an attached three-barrel machine gun of some kind. “Once it’s done I’ll have it guarding the place and we’ll move on to the next one!”

“Sounds like a lot of work, it looks really good!” Jack replied, confused as hell but impressed by the tech. “I thought you said I wouldn’t need to know this kind of stuff?”

Nika grinned widely at the compliment. “I just taught myself. They don’t really teach this kinda stuff in school, but it’s easier than it looks once you get used to it. Building and fixing isn’t a problem, the real issue is getting compatible components...“

“Well, you could always help me hit the Prefect’s Lockup!” Sephy interjected, with a tone that suggested it was something they had spoken about before. “Bare security, no records, and stuff dating back centuries, maybe even longer!”

Nika gave an exasperated sigh and a rolling of the eyes, not even bothering to acknowledge Sephy’s suggestion. Jack, however, was a little curious. More naturally an introvert, he was not particularly good at starting small talk, so maybe he’d ask Sephy later.

“Well anyways, that’s it for my room!” Nika finished with an excited look towards Jack, glad he seemed to approve of her unusual interests when so many others did not. “If we get more parts I can show you how we fit them on, and feel free to come over and train with me any time you like!"

Nika said that last part, almost caressing one of the training dummies, looking Jack directly in the eyes with a seductive gaze.

"How come you've never offered to let me train with you?" Sephy asked pointedly, a mischievous grin on her face as Nika gave the Skritta a dark look.

"On with the tour!" Alora chimed in with a cheerful smile, deciding to move things along before there was a murder.

Sephy was next.

“And these rooms are mine!” the hyperactive Skritta exclaimed, tapping on the doors in question after passing several more empty chambers.

“Rooms? More than one?” Jack asked, confused.

“Yup!” Sephy exclaimed with a grin, opening them up. “I sleep in this one here!” She waved Jack over eager to show him. He wouldn’t exactly call her room messy, Jack noted, but aside from the soft looking double bed in the back and a desk housing several monitors, she seemed to have a lot of random things on various shelves. “I don’t want my sleeping room getting too cluttered so I keep my collections in the other rooms!”

“Wow! You’ve got a lot of stuff!” Jack replied, complimenting Sephy. “Where do you buy all this?”

At that question Nika roared in laughter and backed away down the corridor to calm herself down. Both Chiyo and Alora stood there with a bemused expression at their flustered friend, who was clearly trying to find a good answer.

“Well….I…kinda...didn’t buy all this!” Sephy finally admitted.

“You stole it?” Jack asked, incredulously. The purple pixie had been almost overbearingly friendly to him and a little hyperactive, but he didn’t get the feeling she was a bad person. Was he wrong?

“Wait what? No! Well...not in that way!” Sephy replied in a panic. “Most of the stuff I’ve taken is from abandoned places, though I’ve pinched a few things from monsters or assholes that attack us from time to time!” She looked a little distraught from having to admit that as she stared with worried eyes at Jack.

“Oh….alright! That sounds fine then!” Jack quickly replied with a shrug.

Sephy gave a happy sigh of relief with a smile, before coming up with an idea. “You just have that bag of stuff right? Nothing else?” She pointed at Jack’s backpack.

“Yeah,” Jack gave a soft reply, eyes downward. “I think I have what I need for school, but I’ll probably need to buy some essentials and get a job to pay for the rest.”

“Don’t worry about it!” Sephy skipped forward. “I’ve got a lot of stuff I don’t need, so you can make better use of it than I can!”

“That would be really nice of you!” Jack replied shyly, a bit embarrassed to accept the help.

Sephy blushed at his reaction. “I’ll put some stuff together for a welcome present later,” she said nervously, avoiding the human’s gaze. She couldn’t handle how cute he was being!

Chiyo looked to Alora, who spoke on her behalf.

“All right, we’ve done the ground floor, time to see the basement!”

The basement, as it turned out, was entirely the domain of Chiyo, which was a shame since Jack would have loved to have picked the spot himself. But he couldn’t deny why the Ilithii claimed it. It was a very clean and spacious chamber, with side rooms having bookshelves, cupboards and other furniture for Chiyo’s belongings. The middle of the room had several runic circles of ever-increasing complexity enveloping a small 5 metre centre, where apparently Chiyo preferred to rejuvenate, meditate and study.

I can split my consciousness and multitask effectively here. It really helps with homework! Chiyo typed out on her device to show Jack, apparently uncomfortable with Alora doing most of the translating and wanting to ‘talk’ herself when possible.

“Is that why you have all these books?” Jack asked, curiously. “That sounds amazing!”

Chiyo smiled and typed again.

The books contain a lot of useful things you may find interesting, feel free to ask me about them if you can’t find anything on the datanet!

“I don’t know where to start, to be honest, I barely know a thing about this...” Jack replied frustrated, but Chiyo had already used her power to pull one of the books from the far corner of the basement to her, which she handed to Jack. He looked at the title. “Modern Society, and How to Persevere”. A strange title for a book, but by the way Chiyo sweetly smiled at him, it seemed to be as good a place to start as any.

“Chiyo would also like you to come down here to visit so she can work on your joint psychic link and be able to talk to you properly,” Alora added.

Jack nodded. It wasn’t fair that the others could talk to him and Chiyo couldn’t, and personality-wise she seemed similar to him in ways - minus the psychic powers!

They went to Alora’s room after that on the upper floor; She had a very fancy setup with fine silks and linens lining the chamber and a natural motif of plants and trees, many of which seemed to be alive. It very much bought into the whole ‘elf’ stereotype that Jack had initially thought of, with tree roots swirling around the floor and springing up to form desks, shelves and other static furniture. The chairs and other movable objects looked like they had once been part of a tree system and naturally grown. When asked, Alora nodded.

“Yes. Long ago my ancestors brought a seed of the Mother Tree sacred to my people to this sector and cared for it as best they could, but unfortunately they were lost during a Demon Lord invasion. When my family rediscovered the sector coordinates and access codes, they sent me here to reclaim our ancestral estate while attending school. What was left of the tree here had mostly died but I was able to recover a cutting and grow it here.” Alora walked over to a potted plant on the ground and picked it up to show them before hugging it, which the winding roots and vines seemed to allow her to do without disturbing anything. “In our shame my House expected the tree to be dead, but we were glad to be mistaken. While I live here I would like to take care of it, and take it with me if it allows.”

“It’s a shame that tree can’t make a starship!” Sephy giggled. “That would be cool!”

“Well in the early days of my ancestors, it was through the Mother Tree that we first reached the stars.” Alora smiled at Jack’s obvious look of disbelief. “But she had been growing for millennia, maybe even longer. No starship for us unless we buy one!”

“So you’re saying this plant can create anything?” Jack asked, even more confused than before.

“In a way, yes. My people guided our saplings with magic and prayer, and that’s how we prospered in the early days. It was when my ancestors came together with a few other species did we begin to unify Drift Travel. It was one of the only things we did agree on in the end.”

Chiyo gently tugged on Jack’s arm before he could reply and showed him a message

What was it like where you are from?

Jack thought for a moment about what he would say. His new housemates did seem like good people, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be telling them all of his secrets just yet. Best just go with the basics. “Well, we don’t have magic or active gods like you do. According to scripture, we may have in our ancient past but not now. We have different countries that fight among each other but it very rarely gets bad since we have nukes now…”

"A godless people and a magicless world?" Nika wondered out loud, amazed. "I have never heard of such a thing!"

"We're Deathworlders, we've done alright."

Chiyo looked amazed at that revelation. She had no idea what ‘nukes’ were though, and it was obvious Jack didn’t want to go into any meaningful details about his home world right now. She would have to work on communicating with the human boy as soon as possible!

The group walked outside to the abandoned sector. It was strange to think that they alone had this entire sector to themselves and that there wasn't anyone else here. He knew Alora owned it but that didn't explain why he had seen so much cramped housing and squalor.

“It’s not too confusing when you think about it,” Nika replied when asked. “Some people like to trade space for security, that’s why they bunch up like that. Our Hive Station has been around for millennia, abandoned and rediscovered a few times. Realistically only about 35% of the station is properly inhabited, the rest has all sorts, and thanks to the monsters and other assholes it’s difficult to map, and it’s because of that a lot of people don’t want to spread out so much.”

Jack’s thoughts turned to worry. If many people banded together in slums for mutual protection, wouldn’t it be dangerous here too?

As they walked around the exterior, Jack noted that it was mostly unmaintained with a few exceptions. There were some fruit and vegetable patches which Alora had been cultivating, a tradition apparently highly common amongst her people. Nika's robots and turrets were fairly spread out around the accessible entrance, while Chiyo had protective runes placed around strategic points. For her part, Sephy had thoroughly 'explored' the abandoned houses for anything left over, and had scrambling code in place to keep them safe from the prying eyes of drones. What would Jack be expected to do to protect the sector?

“We should go up to the watchtower and get a good view!” Sephy suggested to Jack in a lightbulb moment as they walked back to the ladder at the sector entrance.

“Sure, I’ll go first!” Jack noted, remembering they were all mostly still in their school uniforms. The last thing he wanted was to be labelled as a perv in a mostly female house! Climbing up, he noticed Chiyo floating up in the air right next to him with an amused expression on her face.

“That’s cheating!” Jack grinned at the psychic girl, who giggled silently.

As he got to the top, Jack looked up. The horizon of the hive station never seemed to end, the gigantic ringworld rising up and away in the distance, curling around its star before looping back in a perfect circle. It was probably many, many times the size of Earth by his estimation. He also saw strange beauty in the steady stream of ships coming and going, backlit by the fading light of the local star they were orbiting. He could see one of the solar plates begin to eclipse the star, absorbing the energy needed to power the districts while giving the residents of Hive Station Bastilla a ‘night’ phase in the process. He was captivated by the diverse honeycomb of sectors that made up the ringworld. Some rose above their surrounding walls with neon banners advertising the latest shows and products, others were a stream of little lights moving about the town like fireflies, and many more he couldn’t really make out. The school was off in the distance - a large pyramid cluster that dominated the landscape in the distance.

“We usually camp up here when there’s a riot or battle going on so we can see better!” Sephy added, having been right behind him

“Does that happen often?” Jack asked, concerned. The last thing he wanted was to get attacked by another murderous mob. He didn’t want a repeat of what happened before...

“Technically we camp up here to protect the place from a good position,” Nika replied after effortlessly sauntering up. “Though some of us are better than others.” She gave a pointed look to both Sephy and Chiyo at that.

“We haven’t had anything too bad recently,” Alora puffed as she made it to the top, “Though it usually spills over eventually.”

“Sounds like I’d better train harder,” Jack whispered more to himself than the others. He had learned a few basics of judo and karate, but he knew that did little in a world of guns and psychic powers.

“You’ll get used to it.” Nika patted him on the back as she tried to reassure him. “We can test out some guns over the weekend, see what you like!”

“Sure, that sounds good!” Jack replied, trying to sound as confident as he could as he cursed himself inwardly for letting that slip. He couldn’t afford to show weakness in front of the others. He was meant to be a Deathworlder, right?

“But today we have an early night thanks to this solar plate, so that means bunkering down with lots of TV!” Sephy added.

Chiyo looked to Alora, whose eyes widened at whatever she was told. “Chiyo thinks you’ll like Top Flight!”

Immediately Nika and Sephy nodded enthusiastically in agreement.

“It’s hard to explain,” Alora started, trying to find the words. “It’s basically a show about drift ships, but the presenters like to mess around while on challenges. You’ll have to watch it to understand it.”

Jack gave a legitimate smile at that. There were countless things he missed from Earth. His family, his friends, his life. But an alien program that showed some actual starships? Surely that would help cheer him up!

******

“Klaarxon you blithering idiot!”

Jack smiled as the four xenos around him roared with laughter, as shards of asteroids rained down on the other two ‘reasonably priced’ starships behind Klaarxon.

“How do you like the food, Jack?” Alora asked him between chuckles.

“It’s good,” Jack replied in between mouthfuls, and he meant it! He assumed Alora would just cook a vegetarian dish but was surprised when meat, eggs and cheeses were incorporated into the pasta-like dish. He would have to research the ingredients when he got the chance. He was glad Alora had made a lot, as the others seemed to be as hungry as he was! As they watched TV, Jack thought about his crazy day. It was a mixed bag, but making new alien friends in the process was definitely worth it!

The students eventually started to turn in for what passed as ‘night’ on the Hive Station. Nika was the first to leave, who usually liked to go to sleep early and be the first one up to do some exercise. She gave a polite goodbye to the others and slinked off to her room and headed straight to her sleeping area, barely pausing to slip off her outer clothing before curling up in her underwear. She grabbed one of the larger pillows she had used before and cuddled the thing hard, her mind adding quite a bit of imagination. She liked Jack, though she knew it would take a while for them to be fully comfortable with one another. But she was patient, and she trusted Alora’s judgement. She had never heard of a ‘Deathworlder’ before and was very curious, hoping she could get him to spar with her at some point. The thoughts rolled in her mind, as the Kizun went to sleep

Alora and Chiyo went at the same time, and that was the signal that Jack and Sephy should turn in soon, much to the dismay of the Skritta, trying to fight back waves of tiredness before giving in. Sephy skipped to her room with strong feelings she hadn’t really had to deal with before. She had crushed on guys (and gals) before much to the chagrin of her friends, but never like this. Seeing him walk up to the front of the class would have been enough for her- he wasn’t particularly fat, he groomed himself well enough and he wasn’t too aggressive or too timid. The whole ‘Deathworlder’ thing sounded cool too!

Yet he was living with them now, and had spoken with all of them. And that was so much better! Sephy had even made him laugh, which Alora subtly told her was the first time she’d seen him do that, and the way he complimented her was just so cute! She couldn’t recall any boy doing that before! But despite her rambling thoughts, the strongest feeling Sephy had always felt was for her friends. She had always been the joker of the squad and sometimes went a little too far with her antics, but she loved her friends like a family. They all seemed to like Jack too, but how would that work out? Sharing partners with few strings attached was perfectly fine and not unusual in galactic society, but done poorly and it could break their group, and Sephy was damned if she was going to let that happen.

But in the meantime…

Sephy stripped and laid down on the bed, not even bothering to get under the covers. Her hands massaged her body with more force as her breathing grew heavier. It didn’t take long for her hand to slide delicately down her stomach to its intended destination, while her mind was entirely laser focused on the human boy.

Alora lay in bed, ready for sleep. She was glad that everything had gone smoothly and that Jack seemed to fit in. She felt the familiar sensation in her mind as Chiyo spoke to her.

Are you going to tell me why you really invited him to live with us?

Alora sighed, knowing she would get this question. Not much got past Chiyo.

“You mean aside from the fact that he’s alone in a galactic sprawl he knows nothing about, needed a place to live and had very little to live for?” Alora asked. “How different is that from when we all arrived here?”

It is not much different at all, but hardly a unique tale for the hive. He is different, however. I got that from his aura.

“Yes. Rumours were rampant all throughout the temple when High Priestess Cornelia had her vision and her Paladins came back with Jack. I had no idea what to expect when they suggested I talk to him, but I was curious.”

And?

“Initially he told me that I shouldn’t feel pressured to talk to him and that he’d probably bore me if I tried, but I stuck with it. He didn’t try to idolise me or profess his love or do anything strange that most others our age do, he just spoke to me like a normal person as we went on with our temple duties. Eventually, when I told him of my family he didn’t even react.”

You told him you were nobility of your people?

“Not the full details, but yes. That’s when I realised I liked him, and knew you would too. He’s kind and intelligent, but he’s in pain, and needs to move on and find happiness.”

His aura shows a great sadness. I have never seen anything like it before in any living being. You are right that he needs to heal. I just wish I could talk to him...

Jack washed his face and brushed his teeth before plonking his stuff on the old, crooked desk in the corner. The bed wasn’t the best, with ancient old sheets but he didn’t care. He stripped off his clothes, added ‘pajamas’ onto his shopping list and lay down, thinking and paging through the book Chiyo had given him. Lately, when he'd had time to himself, he often thought of this new galaxy he'd found himself in. Away from everything and everyone he knew, surrounded by the strange and bizarre.

As he lay there, he considered that tonight had been the first time he'd felt himself begin to relax. Eating with friendly people, strange as they all were, joking and talking about school was something he was familiar with. Not to mention how animated his new housemates were.

Nika was sporty and competitive and seemed happy to help Jack train and get more physical. Chiyo was smart and friendly, eager to help teach Jack more about the world, and when Jack could speak to her through a psychic link, that would only get easier. He liked Sephy too, who made him laugh and seemed determined to be friends with him.

And Alora. Jack got along with her well at the temple, but he wasn’t too sure what her deal was. He had known seemingly good-hearted people back on Earth who were usually hiding ulterior motives or dark truths about themselves. She had volunteered to help him adjust as one of her housemates, but had no reason to do so from his perspective. She was friendly to him just as he was to her, and they mainly just talked about trivial things and shared stories as they worked together helping the priests. Maybe he was just paranoid. Maybe not. Taking inspiration from stories and labeling himself a Deathworlder certainly caused many to keep their distance, though he did not know how long he could maintain the bluff.

If this galaxy was anything, it was chaos. And in chaos, you needed to be able to survive.

Jack knew from experience that, if nothing else, humans were survivors.