Faltasey
Temporal Aurielian Guard
PRE-STORY NOTE: I am not sure which final draft this is, as there were three(one before submitting, one after, and one after the editor of the student magazine edited it), so apologies if there are typos or weird grammar/ syntax errors. I hope you enjoy it, ONWARD! 
Chapter: Canis Major
Location - Unregistered Planet; Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy; 25,000 Light Years from Earth’s Solar System.
Registered Ship - UDT-31333 Nickname “Deep-Root,” currently residing at the bottom of a crater with no power.
Date - Unknown; Post-Earth System Collapse.
Situation: Critical; in the middle of a civil war between the Goltrere rebels and the Joletses military (planet-based government.)
“Oh no, dontcha even think about it!” Tate screams at the roid-induced Goltrere rebel, waving his ugly gun around and trying to recreate a scene out of internationa-air-tv.
“Oh, what, you don’t agree with this five-inch barrel, coil-shell beam emitter?” smirks the Goltrere rebel.
Tate scoffs, an angled eyebrow and a confused thought process later: “Seriously, what are ya buzzin’ about?” he says, in complete disbelief he got caught off guard by a neanderthal.
“Can you two zip it?” Davon recoils, with a twitch of the lips. “I can’t get mah brain rollin’ in ‘ere, let ‘lone while two ‘idgets fight over how fast they can kill each other.”
Buddies Tate and Davon find themselves at the center of conflict, trapped inside a hastily made prison. A civil war yet again caused by the United Dominion of Terra, the UDT. The UDT was formed after the collapse of the old-earth government, literally built on the ashes of the old world.
Bombarded by mortars, the room shakes occasionally, and rubble will fall from ceiling to wrist cuff. A rainstorm fills the empty noise between gunfire and bombs. Tate and Davon are out of place with the under-clothes of their suits, scuffed and slightly time-worn; a navy jumpsuit with off-white and wooden accents. The logo of the UDT military is dirtied and desecrated with x’s, patched upon the left side of their chests.
The rebels guarding them are anxious. Inherent fear is deep in the eyes of both sides soldiers. Their sun is leaving, but they seem to be asking themselves if they will leave with it.
“So how ‘bout you let us skiddaddle, huh Jeff?” Tate shouts to the officer of the Goltrere sitting in the corner, smoking an ECG.
He takes a huge puff blowing out smoke and popping his lips together. “Who gave them permission to speak?” Jeff retorts, with a raspy and rigid voice. “Look, I can’t afford to let two random offworlders come into my war and cause everyone trouble. So you’re going to stay here, and that is final.” he says, flicking the ECG across the floor and exiting the building.
Davon surveys the small but well-improvised prison, his eyes connecting to the man beaten and broken in the cell next-door, equipped with a thousand yard stare. He wears a coat vastly different and more ornamental than the Goltrere rebels outfits. Davon sees only two guards in the building so he pokes Tate, points to the Guards and they both nod in agreement to an unspoken plan. He proceeds to wriggle his thumb deep into a pocket of his synthetic suit to grab a little pin barely noticeable from afar.
Tate walks over to the other side of the cell and starts distracting the guard by the door. The guard, unamused, approaches the cell.
“What do you want?” he says in a spiritless monotone.
“What’re ya actually fightin’ for?” asks Tate.
“For freedom. For peace.”
“Ya ain’t. Y’all are fightin’ for a dyin’ rock, and a solar system that’s so disoriented they can hear the commotion lightyears away,” Tate exclaims. “Y’all fightin’ for naught; as the sun is slowly driftin’ outwards your entire planet is flyin’ off its course. Soon, like the rest of civilization, ya’ll will feel lost.”
The rebel looks outside at the war going on around him, and in the split second of his averted gaze, Davon picks the lock to the cell. The guard turns back around only to be pulled towards the cold metal bars by his shirt. Tates guard falls to the floor, out cold. The other guard gets punched right in the jaw by Davon and drops unconcious.
“That kinda got me feelin’ poorly,” says Tate.
“Yea, no kiddin’.”
They arrive in the holding room of the prison to collect their belongings, Tate relieved he can finally activate the marker on his tablet. Tate presses a button and the antenna detaches itself from the tablet, morphing into a small blimp-shaped airborne device. It proceeds to bleep red, and zips past Davon's ears through the harsh environment outside.
✦
“It’s bringin’ up lot’s of distorted terrain reading’s,” yells Tate to Davon over the ripping noise of the storm. “Ya needa be careful where ya step, or else ya could fall into a quickmud sinkhole,” as he sprints in the direction the marker is heading.
“Tate; don’tchya forget why we’re here. It’s the only way we gonna’ figure out why the UDT sent us to this deathtrap.”
“Can’t never could,” responds Tate “but this terrain ain’t very reassuring.”
“I’ll show ya reassuring if ya don’t move it, Tate. You don't see the bullets flyin’ and the bombs goin’ off? Or mayhaps the screamin’ soldiers? What about this angry storm?”
“I hope ya head get’s knocked ‘round so you can stop bullyin’ me.” they laugh in unison, unbothered by the commotion around them. Two little peas in a pod.
They approach a roofed barricade and decide to rest. Gazing upon the rebels being shot as they run past the barricade, unaware of the sweet release death has dealt them. The Joletses are unfazed by the storm and move on past the duo. Tate and Davon lay low pushing their ballistics in the mud as armored HV3R tanks roll through the muck.
They scurry off following the path set for them by the marker, which has now completed its mapping of the complex. It zips past Tates head and comes back to click into place back on the tablet. There are life signatures covering the screen on the borders but the building itself seems empty. They approach metal double doors welded shut from the outside. A shoddy job meant for scavengers to ignore, but they’re no scavengers. Davon takes his PL43 and proceeds to cut a clean hole in the doors.
While the border of the hole is still glowing red, guns up and eyes forward, they move in scanning the outer-corridors for people. You can only hear the humming of the neon-white lights bordering the walls and the floors. Gunfire and explosions become muffled and muted as they move further inside.
Tate and Davon approach an archway leading into the massive cafeteria, where plates of freeze-dried food lay upon the tables. Tate glances over at Davon, as he sits down on one of the chairs. Davon’s shoulders are slouched, and his eyes look cold and tired.
Davon looks up at Tate slowly as he gathers himself back together shortly. “I feel like they were playin’ a joke on me. A soldier, a pawn,” he looks back at the cold ground, “They say in silence, ‘You are expendable, Davon,’ with their cowardly demeanor.” He winces at the memory.
Tate jumps towards Davon and then grabs him by the shoulders. “No. No, ya ain’t expendable. No, ya ain’t invaluable. No, ya DO have a purpose. Ya DO have meanin’, and yer my best friend. Ya have talent, ya have passion, ya have love and anger. Ya can fix spaceships and fly fast, ya can make a day turn from gray to bright blue and it’s all ‘cause of you. Don’t ever again think for a second that ya have no value. Because ya mean the universe to me,” stops Tate, with the most stone-serious face Davon had ever seen him have.
“I’d think you were a shepherd if I ain’t know better,” Davon says, with a grin becoming more and more lively. They both chuckle. “Do you think this mission’s worth it? They sent us to a dyin’ planet to retrieve paperwork on a dyin’ alliance.”
“No. But I think it’s worth it to just exist. There’s so much more ‘out there’ than this and I guarantee we’ll find it. If ya just stick with me, a’ight?”
“A’ight.” Davon spills “I’ll try.”
✦
Tate and Davon push deeper into the central state building, where they see three officers of the Joletses command. They draw with guns almost aimed at our duo, but are quickly dispatched by laser-fire from a distant hall. Officer Jeff from the prison approaches the two, disoriented, sweating, and in a rush.
“I knew I shouldn’t have even bothered trying,” Officer Jeff says under his breath. He ignores them and storms off through the corridors.
“I don’ think this is a good place for a Two-Step,” Tate says, trying to imprint scandalous humor upon Davon. They both walk past the dead Joletses where burnt holes fill the space between their foreheads.
“I reckon the two of us’ steppin’ away is enough,” as they both continue through the hallways to the control room.
They find Officer Jeff on his knees with paperwork in his hand, crying and sobbing heavily.
“Can you fill us in, Officer?” Tate says to Jeff, genuinely concerned if those are the paperwork he and Davon were sent to gather.
“The worlds done. It’s over. Our fighting was… overshadowed by our government. They left no means of leaving behind. They… they set us up. To… to die.” he says, curling up to a fetal position on the floor only to be completely and utterly disabled. He whispers to himself in hymnes, probably trying to drown out the noise and thoughts of being alone in an ever-expanding universe.
Tate picks up the papers Jeff dropped on the ground. He skims over the pages becoming wide eye’d. “My, my,” says Tate, scrambling. “They’ve been keepin’ secrets. Who would’a guessed.”
“What’d they do this time?” Davon asks, approaching the main computer terminal to access it.
Tate scoffs, and becomes distraught. “They were gonna blow up the planet.” he says behind a piercing silence.
“For what reason?” says Davon.
“Gravitational disturbance. They were gonna ’sacrifice’ this planet.”
The Milky Way’s gravitational force was exascerbated once the project failed to keep the solar system together with dark-matter gravity. The planets now float in random directions, and the alliance that held them together is now deeply unstable and diminished.
Tate breaths deeply, “This ain’t what we were sent here for, though.”
Davon nods in agreement but has a look on his face. “I don’t really see the point in goin’ on either.” while staring at Jeff who never moved from the floor. “Why are we still fightin’ for people who abuse us? Who demean mankinds value? They let Terra die. We may’ve not been alive to see it, but they let Terra die from famine, from rot, from greed, and from a lack of life. Real life,” he starts to mutter to himself indescribable thoughts. Tears start to drip from Davons eyes.
Tate looks up at Davon and feels a rush of deafening ideals. Through the hot gas pockets, the dying stars, and the center of galaxies they speculate contain a massive black hole. All of it feels moot when you lack a purpose. They fear the loneliness will drive them away from humanities yearning corpus. They stand alone even with another person still in the room.
“Like I said before Davon, we don’t live for ‘em. We live for us. Ya have to admit, this was still a fun adventure, no? We got shot at, got thrown in a cell, and ran sprintin’ through heavy rain on a dyin’ planet,” Tate grins.
Davon wipes the tears off his face, his inner strength coming to save him. “I suppose you’re right, ain’t yah?” He laughs, finding something on the computer moments later. “Looks like we got our next target, Mr. Sentimental.”
“Yeah?”
“The UDT states they found a document containing first hand experience with an artifact of unknown origin. It seems to radiate a magical aura. They state that the person they got it from retrieved it from a planet that has supposed magic not usable by offworlders,” says Davon, wide-eyed with a marble gleam.
Chapter: Canis Major
Location - Unregistered Planet; Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy; 25,000 Light Years from Earth’s Solar System.
Registered Ship - UDT-31333 Nickname “Deep-Root,” currently residing at the bottom of a crater with no power.
Date - Unknown; Post-Earth System Collapse.
Situation: Critical; in the middle of a civil war between the Goltrere rebels and the Joletses military (planet-based government.)
“Oh no, dontcha even think about it!” Tate screams at the roid-induced Goltrere rebel, waving his ugly gun around and trying to recreate a scene out of internationa-air-tv.
“Oh, what, you don’t agree with this five-inch barrel, coil-shell beam emitter?” smirks the Goltrere rebel.
Tate scoffs, an angled eyebrow and a confused thought process later: “Seriously, what are ya buzzin’ about?” he says, in complete disbelief he got caught off guard by a neanderthal.
“Can you two zip it?” Davon recoils, with a twitch of the lips. “I can’t get mah brain rollin’ in ‘ere, let ‘lone while two ‘idgets fight over how fast they can kill each other.”
Buddies Tate and Davon find themselves at the center of conflict, trapped inside a hastily made prison. A civil war yet again caused by the United Dominion of Terra, the UDT. The UDT was formed after the collapse of the old-earth government, literally built on the ashes of the old world.
Bombarded by mortars, the room shakes occasionally, and rubble will fall from ceiling to wrist cuff. A rainstorm fills the empty noise between gunfire and bombs. Tate and Davon are out of place with the under-clothes of their suits, scuffed and slightly time-worn; a navy jumpsuit with off-white and wooden accents. The logo of the UDT military is dirtied and desecrated with x’s, patched upon the left side of their chests.
The rebels guarding them are anxious. Inherent fear is deep in the eyes of both sides soldiers. Their sun is leaving, but they seem to be asking themselves if they will leave with it.
“So how ‘bout you let us skiddaddle, huh Jeff?” Tate shouts to the officer of the Goltrere sitting in the corner, smoking an ECG.
He takes a huge puff blowing out smoke and popping his lips together. “Who gave them permission to speak?” Jeff retorts, with a raspy and rigid voice. “Look, I can’t afford to let two random offworlders come into my war and cause everyone trouble. So you’re going to stay here, and that is final.” he says, flicking the ECG across the floor and exiting the building.
Davon surveys the small but well-improvised prison, his eyes connecting to the man beaten and broken in the cell next-door, equipped with a thousand yard stare. He wears a coat vastly different and more ornamental than the Goltrere rebels outfits. Davon sees only two guards in the building so he pokes Tate, points to the Guards and they both nod in agreement to an unspoken plan. He proceeds to wriggle his thumb deep into a pocket of his synthetic suit to grab a little pin barely noticeable from afar.
Tate walks over to the other side of the cell and starts distracting the guard by the door. The guard, unamused, approaches the cell.
“What do you want?” he says in a spiritless monotone.
“What’re ya actually fightin’ for?” asks Tate.
“For freedom. For peace.”
“Ya ain’t. Y’all are fightin’ for a dyin’ rock, and a solar system that’s so disoriented they can hear the commotion lightyears away,” Tate exclaims. “Y’all fightin’ for naught; as the sun is slowly driftin’ outwards your entire planet is flyin’ off its course. Soon, like the rest of civilization, ya’ll will feel lost.”
The rebel looks outside at the war going on around him, and in the split second of his averted gaze, Davon picks the lock to the cell. The guard turns back around only to be pulled towards the cold metal bars by his shirt. Tates guard falls to the floor, out cold. The other guard gets punched right in the jaw by Davon and drops unconcious.
“That kinda got me feelin’ poorly,” says Tate.
“Yea, no kiddin’.”
They arrive in the holding room of the prison to collect their belongings, Tate relieved he can finally activate the marker on his tablet. Tate presses a button and the antenna detaches itself from the tablet, morphing into a small blimp-shaped airborne device. It proceeds to bleep red, and zips past Davon's ears through the harsh environment outside.
✦
“It’s bringin’ up lot’s of distorted terrain reading’s,” yells Tate to Davon over the ripping noise of the storm. “Ya needa be careful where ya step, or else ya could fall into a quickmud sinkhole,” as he sprints in the direction the marker is heading.
“Tate; don’tchya forget why we’re here. It’s the only way we gonna’ figure out why the UDT sent us to this deathtrap.”
“Can’t never could,” responds Tate “but this terrain ain’t very reassuring.”
“I’ll show ya reassuring if ya don’t move it, Tate. You don't see the bullets flyin’ and the bombs goin’ off? Or mayhaps the screamin’ soldiers? What about this angry storm?”
“I hope ya head get’s knocked ‘round so you can stop bullyin’ me.” they laugh in unison, unbothered by the commotion around them. Two little peas in a pod.
They approach a roofed barricade and decide to rest. Gazing upon the rebels being shot as they run past the barricade, unaware of the sweet release death has dealt them. The Joletses are unfazed by the storm and move on past the duo. Tate and Davon lay low pushing their ballistics in the mud as armored HV3R tanks roll through the muck.
They scurry off following the path set for them by the marker, which has now completed its mapping of the complex. It zips past Tates head and comes back to click into place back on the tablet. There are life signatures covering the screen on the borders but the building itself seems empty. They approach metal double doors welded shut from the outside. A shoddy job meant for scavengers to ignore, but they’re no scavengers. Davon takes his PL43 and proceeds to cut a clean hole in the doors.
While the border of the hole is still glowing red, guns up and eyes forward, they move in scanning the outer-corridors for people. You can only hear the humming of the neon-white lights bordering the walls and the floors. Gunfire and explosions become muffled and muted as they move further inside.
Tate and Davon approach an archway leading into the massive cafeteria, where plates of freeze-dried food lay upon the tables. Tate glances over at Davon, as he sits down on one of the chairs. Davon’s shoulders are slouched, and his eyes look cold and tired.
Davon looks up at Tate slowly as he gathers himself back together shortly. “I feel like they were playin’ a joke on me. A soldier, a pawn,” he looks back at the cold ground, “They say in silence, ‘You are expendable, Davon,’ with their cowardly demeanor.” He winces at the memory.
Tate jumps towards Davon and then grabs him by the shoulders. “No. No, ya ain’t expendable. No, ya ain’t invaluable. No, ya DO have a purpose. Ya DO have meanin’, and yer my best friend. Ya have talent, ya have passion, ya have love and anger. Ya can fix spaceships and fly fast, ya can make a day turn from gray to bright blue and it’s all ‘cause of you. Don’t ever again think for a second that ya have no value. Because ya mean the universe to me,” stops Tate, with the most stone-serious face Davon had ever seen him have.
“I’d think you were a shepherd if I ain’t know better,” Davon says, with a grin becoming more and more lively. They both chuckle. “Do you think this mission’s worth it? They sent us to a dyin’ planet to retrieve paperwork on a dyin’ alliance.”
“No. But I think it’s worth it to just exist. There’s so much more ‘out there’ than this and I guarantee we’ll find it. If ya just stick with me, a’ight?”
“A’ight.” Davon spills “I’ll try.”
✦
Tate and Davon push deeper into the central state building, where they see three officers of the Joletses command. They draw with guns almost aimed at our duo, but are quickly dispatched by laser-fire from a distant hall. Officer Jeff from the prison approaches the two, disoriented, sweating, and in a rush.
“I knew I shouldn’t have even bothered trying,” Officer Jeff says under his breath. He ignores them and storms off through the corridors.
“I don’ think this is a good place for a Two-Step,” Tate says, trying to imprint scandalous humor upon Davon. They both walk past the dead Joletses where burnt holes fill the space between their foreheads.
“I reckon the two of us’ steppin’ away is enough,” as they both continue through the hallways to the control room.
They find Officer Jeff on his knees with paperwork in his hand, crying and sobbing heavily.
“Can you fill us in, Officer?” Tate says to Jeff, genuinely concerned if those are the paperwork he and Davon were sent to gather.
“The worlds done. It’s over. Our fighting was… overshadowed by our government. They left no means of leaving behind. They… they set us up. To… to die.” he says, curling up to a fetal position on the floor only to be completely and utterly disabled. He whispers to himself in hymnes, probably trying to drown out the noise and thoughts of being alone in an ever-expanding universe.
Tate picks up the papers Jeff dropped on the ground. He skims over the pages becoming wide eye’d. “My, my,” says Tate, scrambling. “They’ve been keepin’ secrets. Who would’a guessed.”
“What’d they do this time?” Davon asks, approaching the main computer terminal to access it.
Tate scoffs, and becomes distraught. “They were gonna blow up the planet.” he says behind a piercing silence.
“For what reason?” says Davon.
“Gravitational disturbance. They were gonna ’sacrifice’ this planet.”
The Milky Way’s gravitational force was exascerbated once the project failed to keep the solar system together with dark-matter gravity. The planets now float in random directions, and the alliance that held them together is now deeply unstable and diminished.
Tate breaths deeply, “This ain’t what we were sent here for, though.”
Davon nods in agreement but has a look on his face. “I don’t really see the point in goin’ on either.” while staring at Jeff who never moved from the floor. “Why are we still fightin’ for people who abuse us? Who demean mankinds value? They let Terra die. We may’ve not been alive to see it, but they let Terra die from famine, from rot, from greed, and from a lack of life. Real life,” he starts to mutter to himself indescribable thoughts. Tears start to drip from Davons eyes.
Tate looks up at Davon and feels a rush of deafening ideals. Through the hot gas pockets, the dying stars, and the center of galaxies they speculate contain a massive black hole. All of it feels moot when you lack a purpose. They fear the loneliness will drive them away from humanities yearning corpus. They stand alone even with another person still in the room.
“Like I said before Davon, we don’t live for ‘em. We live for us. Ya have to admit, this was still a fun adventure, no? We got shot at, got thrown in a cell, and ran sprintin’ through heavy rain on a dyin’ planet,” Tate grins.
Davon wipes the tears off his face, his inner strength coming to save him. “I suppose you’re right, ain’t yah?” He laughs, finding something on the computer moments later. “Looks like we got our next target, Mr. Sentimental.”
“Yeah?”
“The UDT states they found a document containing first hand experience with an artifact of unknown origin. It seems to radiate a magical aura. They state that the person they got it from retrieved it from a planet that has supposed magic not usable by offworlders,” says Davon, wide-eyed with a marble gleam.
