Flashes of orange, red, and yellow whipped about the exterior of the small cargo ship as the planet’s gravity pulled it down into the upper atmosphere. Tamiyo kept a firm grip on the helm and piloted her spacecraft through the air friction, leveling out and maintaining a high altitude. The location that she had selected to land was currently in the early morning, just after dawn, and Tamiyo had a clear view of the forest far below.
When she was nearly above her desired landing zone, she began to quickly descend. There was no way she could completely hide her presence if someone were to look up, but she hoped she was far enough away from the settlements to avoid major detection, given she got out of the air quick enough.
Pulling out of her rapid descent, Tamiyo glided the small cargo freighter above the trees until she came upon the clearing she had picked out. The forestation, while dense, was not egregiously overgrown, and so she was able to find a suitable place to safely land her ship. The clearing was slightly larger than the ship itself, and as she hovered and slowly lowered the ship down to the ground, the exhaust from her engines kicked up leaves, small dead sticks, and other small vegetation, pushing them out and away from under the ship.
She extended the ship’s landing gear and gently touched down to the ground. She powered down the ship’s engines and took a moment to think before making her next move. She had chosen specifically to land in this location because it was far enough away from any settlements that she hoped she could sneak in unnoticed, but it was close enough to two settlements that she could scout both for supplies and equipment. About 5 miles to the west of her landing zone lay the settlement of Owangara, one of the three towns listed in the nav charts as having a spaceport. About 13 miles to the northeast was the smaller settlement of Berilinsk. From the small amount of information available in the nav charts, it looked like Berilinsk was some sort of agricultural settlement and Owangara had been a fishing village before it had built one of the planet’s three spaceports.
Tamiyo walked back to the center room of her small cargo freighter to check on the mysterious passenger she had plucked from the stars. Over 7 feet tall, muscled, and insanely heavier than he looked, he was still laying face down under the table in a position that did not look very comfortable. She had thrown a blanket over him and a pillow on his head, but the pillow seemed to have shifted and fallen off during landing. His cheek was still pressed up against the metal table support and he had begun to drool. His health did not appear at any risk of declining, so Tamiyo decided he would be safe where he was and she prepared to venture out.
She went to the engine room and spent about 20 minutes quickly removing a critical control cluster responsible for transmitting many complex command signals from the engines to the thrusters for precise flight. Without it, the ship could maintain a pleasant interior climate, but wouldn’t make it off of the ground. It would take longer to reinstall, but that was worth ensuring that she didn’t lose her ship the same way she had acquired it.
The past several weeks had been spent on the run, quickly learning how to pilot a starship and read the navigational charts, after she had stolen it and fled Batist. After years of abuse at the hands of her new ‘owners,’ she had finally snapped and killed someone. She wasn’t proud of it, and she had been surprised that she was even able to, given she was originally programmed for servitude. But it had happened, and as she felt his trachea crush under her grasp, and she watched the light fade from his eyes, she knew she had to run.
Engineered with an alloy skeleton much stronger than steel, and built with synthetic muscles to assist with carrying various heavy objects, Tamiyo had lifted the man completely off the ground and held him only by the throat. These same synthetic muscles jolted and helped her flee with haste. She had dropped the corpse and ran in one swift motion, and she was more than 100 meters down the road before his body touched the ground.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
She ran, she hid, and she ran some more. She found herself at a busy spaceport, one of many on Batist, and she found a ship that had just come into dock. Tamiyo stood in the shadows of an alleyway observing, looking somewhat more disheveled than when she had been delivered to Walter almost 6 years prior. Her white service uniform had some tints of dirt both accrued over time and recently acquired during her hasty escape. Several rips, tears, and general wear down across her outfit had come as a result of years as an… object.
Tamiyo had watched from that alleyway as a man exited a small cargo freighter, watched him talk with a docking attendant who then hooked up a line to refuel, and she watched as the man walked away from his ship towards a nearby tavern.
She had learned to lie during her time after Walter, and it was not something she found inherently difficult to perform. She approached the starship and told the docking attendant that she was the personal assistant CIPHER to the owner of the ship. Despite her appearance, the attendant had paid her little mind, and she simply boarded the ship and analyzed its layout. After quickly acclimating herself, simultaneously reviewing several instructional videos on the internet about the ship, and making sure no one else was on board, she fired up the engines and hastily began to depart.
The refueling line was still hooked up, but that was not of much concern to Tamiyo. She pulled the ship off the ground, spun it 180 degrees, and burned sky towards the stars. The refueling line had severed from the dock, spraying fuel all over the port and the poor attendant. As Tamiyo burned hard towards the expanse of freedom, the remnants of the still attached fuel line wriggled like an angry worm sticking from the side of the ship.
She packed the cluster into a backpack along with some simple rations, three bottles of water, and a tidy sum of money she had found stashed in the previous owner’s belongings. She wrapped herself in a light traveling cloak with a hood that she left down for the moment, and opened the starboard access hatch. The hatch stood about 15 feet above the ground, so Tamiyo pulled a lever just inside the access hatch to extend out a ramp she could walk down. A small tablet on the wall next to the lever acted as an access key for the ship, and Tamiyo removed it to take with her. Standing outside the hatch, she keyed on the tablet to close the hatch and lock it. She then stored the tablet in her pack, walked down the ramp, and set off west toward Owangara.
Maintaining a brisk pace, it would take Tamiyo about 90 minutes to reach her destination on foot. She found this distance to be an acceptable balance of safety and hardship given her situation, but only time would tell if her precautions were enough. Observing her surroundings as she traveled, it appeared that the planet Nox was home to all manner of strange creatures. She spotted a deep green reptile with six legs clinging to the side of a tree. Several minutes later a motion at the edge of her vision indicated something was swinging through the upper branches, but it was quick and moving away from her so she didn't get a good look at it. Overhead, a beautiful gold and pink bird flew above the forest. She could hear all manner of strange noises from insects and animal cries as she walked, but nothing seemed particularly interested in approaching her.
The trees were not growing close enough together to make it difficult for Tamiyo to traverse and keep her bearings, and some sections even opened up into sandy pseudo-pathways that allowed her to see off into the distance. She was finding that she enjoyed walking through nature, as her time on Batist had been spent in heavily populated urban and city areas. The 6 years she lived there were all in service, with little in the way of recreation or free time as CIPHERs were not afforded such a liberty. The views of those on Batist were generally that giving CIPHER any sort of time off would be the same as giving their toaster a vacation.
After Tamiyo escaped, she had spent several days just ensuring she was not being followed since the ship would surely be reported stolen. The fuel had luckily been replenished right before she tactically acquired her new ride, but several weeks of flitting about different star systems had burned through most of her reserves. She would need to source some more before leaving the planet to ensure she didn’t end up stranded in space.
In addition to the fuel, she needed to acquire some various medical and scientific equipment to scan the man drooling under her table and hopefully find out more about how he was able to survive in space. Some basic medicines to treat likely issues would be ideal as well, she just hoped she had enough money to get everything she needed.
