Kylos' mother knocked on the door of his bedroom.
"Come on, Kylos! Hurry up or we'll miss the launch!"
"Coming, mom!" came the response from the other
side of the door. Kylos adjusted his shoes, then left the room. His mother was
waiting impatiently outside for him.
"There you are!" she said. "You all ready
to go?"
"Ready," said Kylos.
"Alright then." Heading to the landing, she
called downstairs to her husband. "Honey! We're ready to go!"
"Well, get down here and let's go, then!" came
the response.
Today was a historic day for the Vodi. For the first time
ever, the race were about to send a person into space. General Eli Pereira had
volunteered to pilot the vessel, One-Vodi, on its voyage to the planet's moon
and back. A crowd of hundreds of thousands of Vodi were expected to turn out at
the launch site, the newly-christened "Lunar Square", to witness this
historic event, and Kylos and his family were to be among them.
The achievement was all the more remarkable given the
nature of both their planet and their species. The Vodi were a gelatinous race,
composed of a two-foot diameter spherical main body, and six appendages - two
hands and four feet - that floated independent of the main body, held in place
by a strange force that even the Vodi themselves did not understand. The feet
were perfectly spherical, and the Vodi moved by rolling them along the ground;
in this way they had remarkable stability, so long as they did not go too fast
downhill.
As for their planet, over ninety percent of its surface
was covered with water. Even with the recent raft of land reclamation projects,
there was very little space for the Vodi to live on. Living in the water was
not an option; it was populated with all manner of horrific, monstrous
creatures, and to stray too far from land meant almost certain death. Though
the Vodi could not tame the seas, their mastery of the land and its resources
had gotten them to where they were today.
Kylos and his parents rolled their way towards Lunar
Square. As they got closer, they could see the rocket in the distance, rising from
the ground like a giant silver bullet; it was easily thirty feet tall. A little
further on and the streets became packed with people heading in the same
direction, making it very crowded indeed. "Hold my hand tightly,
Kylos," said his mother. "Careful not to get separated from us."
"Yes, mom," said Kylos.
When the three of them reached Lunar Square, it was
already swamped with Vodi waiting expectantly for lift-off. Kylos couldn't see
a thing, but his father was prepared: he picked Kylos up and seated him on top
of his body, allowing him to see right over the crowd. "There you go,
son," he said. "Can you see the general?"
"No, not yet," said Kylos. "There's some
people around the rocket, but none of them is the general."
"They must be technicians," said his father,
"making sure everything's okay for the big launch."
"Everything is
okay, though, isn't it?" asked Kylos innocently. "Otherwise the
launch wouldn't be going ahead."
"Well, I'm afraid you can never be too careful with
these kinds of things, Kylos," said his father. "Rocket ships are incredibly
complicated, and if something were to go wrong once it's up there… well, Adha
knows we don't want that to happen, but-"
"I can see the general!" exclaimed Kylos
suddenly, pointing at the launchpad. "He's headed toward the ship!"
A great cheer rose up in the crowd as Eli Pereira made
his way across the launchpad. He was wearing a white spherical spacesuit, and
special gloves and shoes. The visor of the spacesuit was open, and though Kylos
could not see it, he was carrying a microphone in his right hand. As he reached
the spaceship, he tapped the microphone and a rush of static burst forth from
speakers placed all around the square, silencing the crowd and gaining their
full, undivided attention.
"I'm going to keep this brief," said General
Pereira. "This is, without a doubt, the greatest moment in the history of
our people. For the first time, we are going to breach the confines of our tiny
planet, and take our first revs into the infinite cosmos beyond. Even more than
that, our destination is Adhavo, the resting place of our exalted creator, Adha
Herself. She has no doubt waited all these thousands of years for her children
to pay her their first visit, and today, as Ambassador of the Vodi, and with
the whole world watching, I am going to do just that. May Adha watch over us,
now and forever, and- wait, what is that?"
Some in the crowd had already noticed the strange light
in the sky, and as the general fell silent, pointing at it with an awestruck
face, the rest of the crowd turned their attentions to it as well. As they
watched, it seemed not only to move slightly, but to grow larger and brighter,
as though it were getting closer.
"What is it, dad?" asked Kylos, amazed.
"I don't know, son," his father replied,
"but whatever it is, it's coming this way!"
The object was now undeniably on a collision course with
the launchpad. Security personnel began to evacuate the area, and a sense of
shock and panic began to ripple through the dispersing crowd. Kylos continued
to watch the object as it grew ever closer and brighter. Then suddenly, it was
no longer a light, but a strange object the likes of which Kylos had never
seen.
It almost looked a bit like the One-Vodi, but aligned
horizontally, with three wings sticking out at odd angles. After a moment,
Kylos realized that there should be a fourth, to make an X-shape, but it
appeared to have been shorn off; the tattered remnants of the wing were burning
fiercely. Despite how close it had now gotten, the object remained almost
completely silent as it plummeted towards the control centre. The remainder of
the crowd either stood in awe, or turned and rolled away as fast as they could,
screaming.
The strange craft was clearly trying to pull up and turn
away, to avoid hitting either the ground or the control centre, but to no
avail. It clipped the wall of the control centre at over two hundred miles an
hour, demolishing a sizeable chunk of it; its nose then dug into the ground, and
it was catapulted into a series of frightening flips and rolls that send it
hurtling straight through where the crowd had been not a minute before. Two of
the remaining three wings were smashed to pieces, showering the launchpad with
debris; remarkably, both the One-Vodi and the launch tower somehow remained
intact.
Finally, the craft came to a stop, and the launchpad was
engulfed in almost total silence, save for the hiss of the steam and smoke
escaping from the broken vessel, and the crackling of the flames as some of the
debris and parts of the ship continued to smoulder. With the chaos over, the
crowd could see to their amazement that this was, indeed, a spaceship, and
through the transparent cockpit, cracked only slightly, they could see its
occupant.
Princess Aurelia of Zeta-4 sat slumped in her seat, dazed
and barely conscious. Fluorescent pink liquid poured down her face, and ran
down her arm; it was blood, something the Vodi lacked. Though her vision was
blurred and unfocused, she could just make out the masses of strange beings
surrounding her. With the last of her strength, she raised a desperate,
blood-soaked hand and, to the astonishment of the Vodi, spoke to them in their
own tongue.
"Please…" she gasped. "Help… me…"
Then the arm dropped, and Princess Aurelia slumped forward in her seat as she
succumbed to unconsciousness.
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