The spinal column of our prison was our prison was our home/ and the shadow of our home/ lay in the vessel’s bones/ and we knew these halls these halls but smaller/ in this temporary hauler/ and we ascended
We ascended
We ascended
And rung by rung the vessel sung and we sung a...
2023-04-24 23:22:30 +0000 UTC View PostI move my stuff into Habitation Ring 1 that night, choosing a room as far away from the one where I found Leilea Arc Hess as possible. While I’m moving, I take the time to go through every currently unoccupied room in Habitation Ring 2, checking dresser drawers for false bottoms until… yes! A...
2023-04-23 00:15:10 +0000 UTC View PostHammond stepped in front of Saina. “Parvi,” he muttered, “I’ll distract her attention; you hide in the seats until she’s clear of the door and then get out – ”
The pair were surrounded by a tornado of fire. Saina squealed and grabbed Hammond as the flames crept closer. A hole ...
2023-04-21 23:24:10 +0000 UTC View PostDespite Sands making it clear that Movie Night is in no way compulsory, almost everyone shows up. The only one absent is Celi Tate, the new doctor, and our existing doctors explain that ke’s under sedation in the medbay, dealing with complications from chronostasis that they refuse to elaborate...
2023-04-18 23:34:28 +0000 UTC View PostOkay. This was nothing to worry about.
I put the pearl back on the plinth, but the light didn’t come back on. Moving it must have permanently disconnected something. This was… this was nothing to panic about; I should have expected this. Removing the heart probably shut down the whole m...
2023-04-17 23:37:06 +0000 UTC View PostI’m checking our various hardware supplies on a terminal in Network and Engineering Ring 1 later that day when our new psychologist walks in.
“It’s Aspen, right?”
“Sure is. How are you doing, Renn?”
His grimace makes his perfectly symmetrical cheekbones stand out eve...
2023-04-17 00:23:20 +0000 UTC View PostThe thing they don’t tell you about riding the wires, right, is that there’s always, ALWAYS a way back to you. Stands to reason. I mean, you’re in your meat; can’t escape it. So riding the wires, there’s always that line, back to the meat. And if you make that line – and you gotta mak...
2023-04-15 06:22:23 +0000 UTC View PostIt took me a little while to be sure what I was looking at.
Not because the room was poorly lit or anything. The stone within the 2m space glowed as brightly as the stone outside it, although instead of a plain white, it shone in all kinds of colours, seeming to almost display recognisable ...
2023-04-14 23:29:50 +0000 UTC View PostBy the next morning, everyone’s awake, registered, and well enough to (at Captain Sands’ insistence) attend a morning meeting at our usual picnic table, even though there’s no way we could all fit. (Everyone except Zale and Clover, our two failed revivals who are still on life support. Doct...
2023-04-11 23:29:28 +0000 UTC View PostThey say that if you hit water from a high enough height, it’s like hitting concrete.
Well, I wasn’t worried about that. I knew I wasn’t high enough for that to be a concern. I’d fallen off this exact cliff before, struggling with di Fiore over a counterfeit Guardian Ring. And that ...
2023-04-10 23:20:17 +0000 UTC View PostSunset moves in her bed, and the Friend quickly shoos us all out. “Go and inform the captain,” it says, which… okay, yes fair, he should be informed, but I still can’t help but feel annoyed. If I was still captain, I – well, if I was still captain, we wouldn’t have two medbay...
2023-04-09 00:10:34 +0000 UTC View PostSaina pulled a couple more people into the link, one at a time, to ask for updates. I didn’t know them or have any context for what they were discussing, but she didn’t drop her link with me the entire time. I think she was worried I might freak out again.
In my defence, a lot was happe...
2023-04-07 23:25:14 +0000 UTC View PostHave you heard of the magical girl genre?
Fuck yes, have you read Sailor Nothing? World-changing. Preneek. Literature. I mean we only have two thirds of it but they were a great two thirds.
If you had awoken in Captain Aspen’s situation, would you have waite...
2023-04-07 23:10:04 +0000 UTC View PostThe first of our new crewmates to wake is the doctor, Celi Tate. The doctors are insistent about kem not being crowded, so it’s a few hours before I’m allowed to see kem. Ke blinks up at me from the hospital bed.
“Captain Sands says you’re famous,” is the first thing ke says to me...
2023-04-04 23:26:46 +0000 UTC View PostI screamed.
There was a startled sound. Not me, not the monitor beeping next to me; something from outside the soundproofed curtains. But not from the rest of the hospital. Something from… somewhere else. Like the hand.
I shut up and listened.
“Points, Kayden!” Saina excla...
2023-04-03 23:58:13 +0000 UTC View PostAll eight of us crowd around the chronostasis pod. It doesn’t take the entire crew to revive someone; we could work a lot faster if we split off into groups of three, but no one, event he captain, has suggested doing that. It’s not like we’re on a time limit. And sure. If something goes wro...
2023-04-02 00:08:05 +0000 UTC View PostI woke up feeling a lot better. Not great, but a lot better.
There was still something… itching… in the back of my head. Not quite a headache, although it did carry the unpleasantly disorienting tingle that signified magic in my body that wasn’t Kylie’s. But it was more than that. I...
2023-03-31 23:17:47 +0000 UTC View PostThe funny thing was, the cell they lead me to wasn’t all that different from my room in the school.
I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, really, but it made sense. I already lived in a cave underground, with a magically sealed door and no possibility of windows. Where could they put...
2023-03-31 22:27:36 +0000 UTC View PostThe video in question is from the two cameras on Denish’s space suit. I watch him exit the ship through the pod launch ring 3 airlock, wait for the giant lens to be cycled, through, then help Tinera down.
“All good?” Adin asks through the radio.
“All is good. We are ready.”<...
2023-03-28 22:19:15 +0000 UTC View PostOne of the sekuranti settled a cloak over my shoulders, concealing my hands shackled behind my back. Ralphie adjusted his collar to hide the tattoo on his neck. Ralphie left, half a minute later the tall bald guy hustled me out, and the last one waited until we were a ways down the corridor befor...
2023-03-27 22:27:14 +0000 UTC View Post“Well, this isn’t great,” Lina says as we pluck beans for dinner. It’s less than ten minutes after my meeting with Captain Sands, and the two of us are alone in Greenhouse Ring 1 – the captain had said not to tell the rest of the crew that he and I were onto their criminal pasts, so I c...
2023-03-26 00:44:59 +0000 UTC View Post“Di Fiore betrayed me like that?!”
“He understood his duty and the importance of keeping an eye on an active danger to the school. What is the key for?”
I considered lying. But the instant I got caught doing that here, this information game was over, and I needed information t...
2023-03-24 21:35:47 +0000 UTC View Post“Alright,” Captain Sands announces, wiping coolant off his arm with a rag as he strolls into Recreation and Medical Ring 1, “the coolant system’s as fixed as it can get. Tal, go turn on the oxygen.”
Tal shoves one last piece of pancake into kes mouth, leaps up, and dashes for the ...
2023-03-21 22:30:23 +0000 UTC View PostI hesitated. What was the plan here, exactly? Get into a fistfight with my surveyanto? This wasn’t the time to panic. I had no idea what he actually wanted.
“What did you just try to drug me with?”
“A truth potion. It wouldn’t have hurt you. I just wanted the chance to ask y...
2023-03-20 22:26:45 +0000 UTC View PostThe doctors shoo us all out of the room pretty quickly so they can run tests. About an hour later, I’m let back in alone. Keldin is significantly more awake, sitting up in bed and sipping some of that disgusting protein broth that we all had to drink after chronostasis.
“You didn’t te...
2023-03-18 22:13:55 +0000 UTC View PostOver the next few weeks, we planned. We gathered supplies. We hung out with our loved ones when we could.
I packed everything I thought we’d need. Food, water, first aid kit. Lighter, knife, some light climbing equipment. Oxygen tanks, for a part of the journey that I really wasn’t look...
2023-03-17 22:25:31 +0000 UTC View PostSo guess what I forgot to queue for February 22nd? This, apparently! Apologies for the super late installment.
2023-03-16 05:15:27 +0000 UTC View PostSend in your questions by the end of the month!
2023-03-16 03:11:39 +0000 UTC View Post
ID chips were implanted into colonists shortly before stasis for recognition aboard the ship and new colony, but during the training, accommodation and boarding process, it was more convenient to use these paper ID cards.
2023-03-14 14:10:09 +0000 UTC
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