Wings of Light., No L and no C this time. Ok, there is quite a bit of c. Options

[jack cloudy]

Next one. Ok, several things first.
1: THIS IS NOT FANFICTION. No, this is a story taking place in an original universe. I hope no one minds.
2: Don't expect regular updates. This is an attempt at a professional novel so I want to plan it out and get all the good stuff in it. Foreshadowing, multiple plot lines, character interaction, cool hardware and a god, or maybe two.
3: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Also known as: Technobabble and Handwaves explain everything.
4: The laws of robotics are not implemented here. Sorry Isaac, but I want them to drive the cool stuff. They don't have time to babysit some organic wimps.



WINGS OF LIGHT

CHAPTER 1: Lights, colours, not here.

Without a sound, the SS Hesphire moved to its destination. It would have been useless to expect any sound as such a phenomenon had a hard time travelling through the vacuum of space.
,,This is your captain speaking. We are approaching the wormhole leading to the Eden system. The estimated time for our arrival is approximately half an hour from now. There will be a short burn for course corrections. We advise that all passengers strap themselves in till we’ve entered the wormhole and stabilized our course. If you require any help, our crew is willing to assist you. Thank you.” The disembodied voice echoed through speakers all over the ship.

With this announcement, everyone dropped whatever he or she was doing and moved to the observation deck. Entering a wormhole was always an exciting event for those who were new to interstellar travel. There were also those who were not new to interstellar travel. They also moved to the observation deck, though for a different reason.

Belonging to the second group was Paul Anthony Detroit. Every single cell of his body revealed him as a true veteran of space. He smoothly sailed from wall to wall, without any of the awkward bouncing of the average tourist. His clothes were tight fitting like those worn by all true space farers, yet without looking like a diver’s suit, oversized pyama or any other kind of embarrassing outfit newbies wore. The passengers he passed were mostly less successful in their choice of clothing. Wide, flowing clothes were fashionable these days yet had the unpleasant habit of getting stuck between doors or flowing away from the areas they were supposed to cover. Easy to use belts for strapping down clothes to the limbs were standard issue on civilian ships carrying passengers.

Thanks to his skill at zero g manoeuvring, he arrived well before the other passengers and secured the best place of all, the ceiling. Instantly, a steward pushed off against a wall to reach him.
,,Please mister, you may want to sit in one of the seats. Free floating during course corrections are not advised.” The young man, barely in his twenties, warned. Detroit looked down at the traditional name tag and smiled.
,,Well mister Rein, I can assure you that part of a g is not going to be a problem for me. Unless the SS Hesphire is using an illegally rigged High-performance Fusion torch and will be running multiple gees. In which case I would have to arrest everyone onboard.” He responded with the cool tone of voice that could come from only one kind of person. Military officers, the high-ranking ones.

The steward wisely backed off, allowing Detroit to enjoy the view. The man looked how everyone else entered the observation deck and got strapped in. There was some chaos but the stewards managed to get their job done and everyone strapped into a chair. He smiled again as he thought of the faces they would pull upon seeing a wormhole.
,,This is your captain speaking. We shall initiate our burn in 30 seconds. Anyone who is not yet secured should grab the nearest support and hold on for the next few minutes. Thank you.” This time, Detroit did follow the advise. He reached out and grabbed a small handle jutting out of the glass dome that covered the observation deck at the nose of the ship.

Little puffs of hydrogen jetted out of the minuscule thrusters spread across the Hesphire’s hull. The long cylindrical vehicle turned its nose around slowly. Two minutes later, the thrusters fired again to stop the rotation. Now the main thruster at the far end of the ship fired. Unlike during the turn, the acceleration caused by the main thrusters was felt by the people onboard. It felt as if you were suspended in the air under a parachute with a gentle breeze pushing you along.
,,This is your captain speaking. We are entering the wormhole in five…four…three…two…one…entering now.”

Necks were stretched in awkward positions, eyes seemed to bulge out of their sockets. The stars disappeared, to be replaced by pure darkness. Slowly, a hint of disappointment spread across the two dozen or so faces gathered on the observation deck. Detroits smile grew bigger.
,,No lights, no fancy colours, no humming sounds, no sudden acceleration. This ain’t your average holovision show. Welcome to real space. It is boring, it is slow and it rarely takes you anywhere interesting. At least you won’t find bad looking aliens with worse looking rayguns at every corner.” He spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. Then, he laughed. Yes, the passengers would be angry with him for the rest of the trip but why should he care? It would only be a week or so and then he would be back where he was supposed to be. On a ship of his own. One with guns, big guns.
“And twenty-two wormholes away from the action.”

[jack cloudy]

I like Soul as well. Later on it gets even better.

As for three stories at the same time, it can be tough. On the other hand, it can be great fun as well. Since I couldn't stop, here's another update.





Jack watched the green lights that were lit up al around the cockpit. Now that the job of investigating the artefact had been taken out of his hands, he considered his contract with the Daedalos fulfilled. There was no reason for him to stay.
“This is SS Glorious Rustbucket, all systems clear for departure.” He spoke into the microphone.
“MEAS Daedalos, releasing clamps. Proceed to a safe radius before engaging main Fusion torch.”

The Geno waited as the Bucket slid away from the much larger exploration vessel. Once he had gone far enough, he turned the nose around towards the wormhole and flipped a switch. Instantly, a red light accompanied by a blaring siren made its presence known. He looked at the light and flung a few curses into the air.
“Oh, this is just great. I had a check-up done at the Daedalos. They said the reactor containment was fine. Oh, if I get my hands on the Techhead who cleared the ship.” He swore while putting on a spacesuit. Since he lacked the help of a robot, he was forced to go out himself. Fortunately, there was no danger of exposure to lethal radiation or hot plasma or he would have thought twice before going for a walk outside the ship.

Ten minutes later, he was floating at the end of a safetyline and moving towards the rear of the ship.
“Well, I do need a new layer of paint. Looks like the hull did take some minor damage in the corridor. Nothing serious enough to sound the alarm though.” He muttered to himself. The large bulge at the end of the ship came into view of his flashlight.
“Lo, you stupid connected piece of garbage!” He shouted angrily. A spider-like robot painted in a bright yellow sat near a neat circular hole about the size of Jack’s fist. Its arms were performing some obscure task on the machinery beyond the hole.

Jack fiddled around with his radio till he found the right frequency. ARU units were all equipped with a radio system. The first version had a wired connection with the controlling computer, but that wire was the first thing to go after the prototype had gone through testing. It was prone to damage and getting stuck behind things. Not to mention that the wire effectively limited its range. Now they were all equipped with a radio similar to the one in the Geno’s spacesuit.
“Lo. I’ve got one of your yellow bugs here on my ship and I’m not happy with it.” He spoke. He was still angry, but he’d regained control over himself so he didn’t shout any empty threats.

“Yup, you sure do. Since you actually noticed, that must mean that you were leaving, right?” Lo’s voice came through only moment’s later. Jack now began to see the big picture.
“Wait, so you ordered the ARU to keep transmitting anything it received over this frequency? And you also ordered it to drill a hole in my ship when I left? Lo, I should have never graduated you! Just how the heck did you get it over here anyway?” With the big picture, his anger began to rise again.

“But you did graduate me and got me in control of a high-tech piece of behindblasting warship. As for the ARU, I loaded it into a launch tube and had it hitch a ride on a Kinetic kill missile. The missile is probably floating near Daedalos. I first thought of using an explosive warhead, but a missile with a solid slab of metal as the warhead can’t go boom at the wrong moment. Leave it up to little sis to find a way.” To his ever increasing anger, she sounded quite proud of her achievement.
“You sure as heck are going to pay for it. Do you have any idea how expensive a Fusion torch, even a civilian, is? And just why did you do this anyway? Boredom is not a good excuse for vandalism!” He snapped.

“You practically raised me, dude. So consider this my way of repaying you for what you did. Stop running, big bro. It’s been long enough.” Jack’s anger vanished almost instantly, only to be replaced by a sour sadness that hid inside the core of his being. He knew what she was talking about. She’d tried to talk about it several times before but he’d always managed to get away. Now, in space with a malfunctioning propulsion system, he could not escape. The only thing he could do was turn off his radio. He didn’t and the words kept flowing in.
“I’m not running away from the military. After the NLO project was finished, I decided to try my hands at civilian life. As long as I file medical reports each year, I can do whatever I want. You don’t have the right to stop me from living my life the way I want it.” His voice was nearly a whisper now.

“This is not how you want to live it. You hate yourself even more than you hate chocolate. You’re not running from the military, Jacky. You’re running from yourself. Whenever you see something that reminds you of your past, you run. This is exactly the same thing. You were going around your business till the TMS Crystal Star…..No, the TMS Black Hole, showed up. Now, you’re trying to get away from me. Away from the ship, away from me and most importantly, away from yourself.” With each word, the Geno felt his desire to talk or do anything decrease.

“You’re a Geno, a humanoid organism designed for a specific purpose. Now that your purpose is beyond your reach forever, you’re lost in the hell you personally created. You’re systematically destroying yourself like this. You’ve stopped caring about what happens to you. Well, I still care. So stay, have your moment of glory with the Hydra artefact here. You’ll see that you’ll feel better when you’re actually useful to people.” Right now, he simply wanted to curl up into a dark corner and wait for whatever might happen.
“Hey! I’m simulating an extensive glitch on the Crystal Star so I can have this private conversation with you and I can’t keep it up forever before the captain dude starts suspecting something. So at least tell me if you’re listening!” Lo shouted over the radio. The ARU turned towards the figure in the white spacesuit. Gently, it gripped the man by a hand with its manipulators and began to drag him over to the airlock.
“You know, big bro. In the end, we’re all toys to the humans. Toys that are thrown away when they’re broken. But getting thrown away isn’t the end, it simply means that you can start a new life.”

Finally, Jack chose to speak and talk back.
“We can’t start a new life, Lo. Once we’ve done what we’re made for, we are cut to pieces, analyzed and turned into fertilizer. I simply survived by being more expensive than the older Geno types. That, and my line is still in production. They want to keep me around so they can use me as a lab rat in case the others get struck by a disease or something. I’m a resource kept in reserve, not a person.”

The robot and the man had reached the airlock. Carefully, the machine pushed its cargo inside and closed the outer door. With a loud hissing sound, air flowed into the small chamber before the inner door opened.
“Stop thinking of yourself as a machine and start thinking of yourself as a person. Cause you are one, of flesh and blood. Just look at it, half of the human population nowadays is born through artificial means simply because their parents are so dumb they wait so long that they can no longer get children through the natural way. Does this make them anything less? No, legally they’re still worth just as much as natural kids. I know we don’t have human rights but that makes no difference. The humans are our masters. They can take our lives, they control the survival of our species by putting a ban on reproduction and keeping their own production facilities as our only origin. They can use us as lab rats, they can force us to do the jobs they’re not willing to do themselves. Hell, they can make us brush their teeth if they want to! Know what they can’t take from us, Jack? Our soul, our thoughts and our emotions. We’re just as human as they are, they just refuse to realize it.”

Jack struggled with the spacesuit which refused to come off. The old rigid suits may have been heavy, hard to move in and a pain in the behind to get in, the new ones were a lot harder to get out of.
“Do you recognize that thinking? That’s been the cause of wars countless times in the past. Lo, I don’t want to start a war over a feeling of injustice.” He warned when he finally managed to get rid of the first glove.
“I’m not going to start a war. We’ve talked about it during our last meeting and we agreed on it. Humans act like total idiots all the time. They’re like children. Children need to be protected. We won’t start a war with them, never. If we did, do you know the destruction it would cause? Planets turned into inhabitable pits of hell. Even if we won such a war, what would we do with what remains? No, it’s better to live our life as a servant and protector while we wait till they learn. It’s better than to force the lesson down their throat with complete annihilation.”

The Geno looked at the ARU silently. The Lo he knew would have never spoken such thoughts. The Lo he knew was a loud, naïve cheery girl. Not the soft, type who thought before speaking.
“Does it sound weird, to hate war when I’m in charge of a big warship? I love explosions, but not if it brings suffering. Do you remember the new year fireworks we watched when I was three? All the colours in the sky, they were beautiful. Why? Because we could enjoy them while knowing that no one got harmed.”