The Sirvenal sat still in dock, far above Itavai. It was over three hundred meters, massive, by the standard of most anything else she had ever seen. Past it, the bright little star that Selvas had been told was Solis, stood out in the starfield. For a moment, she couldn't quite take her eyes off it, lost in frantic memories; she shook off the thoughts with a shudder, quite unrelated to the cold atmosphere of the station. Today had been long, and it was going to be longer; the final preparations had been made, and the first unassisted launch of the ship would be made. She was to be the Kir Sessarin of the vessel, a decision made years ago, now. The only thing for it now was to cross through the transfer lock and into the ship; the rest of the crew would either be making the final checks, or on their way themselves. This place was strange and dull, still, as familiar with it as she had become. Metal panels and insulated walls, the silence of work and research, the occasional shudder of stationkeeping or the work on the Sirvenal; there were no ornaments or songs, not even solid ground or the comfort of true gravity. She would be happy to leave it.
The Sirvenal itself was very near to a work of art, no effort spared by the Asersin, the halls were covered in patterns and murals, engraved histories both grand and tragic, poems threaded into curtains wherever they could be hung, even the plain warnings and markings of the Solvarin were carefully integrated into the beauty of the ship. The Solvarin had opposed this strongly, speaking nonsense of the needs of fuel and weight, but the scarcity they demanded was enough to drive anyone to insanity, and tradition won out. The first journey of the Selan beyond their home would be a ceremony with spread wings - to be honored forever, and, perhaps, marveled at by those creatures that live beyond.
According to the Solvarin, however, it lacked a secondary hull, unlike the station, which necessitated the use of sealed armor in most sections of the ship. That she could stand, she was used to wearing armor, and as fine as the armor was, there would be few complaints from the young Sessarin that made up the ship's complement thereof. They were in striking red and blue, marked with their caste and subtly different for each. Hers was distinctive, a pair of ruby bars hung from the right side of the helmet. Another flash of memory, no kinder than the last, but it marked her as Kir. The armor sealed with a hiss, then opened its oxygen circuit, relying on the atmosphere of the ship rather than its own until it was needed.
With that, she set off to the command room. It was two chambers, one for the functions of the ship, another, for the consensus of the Kir - one of each caste, - that would command the vessel. Two others were already assembled; according to what she could hear from an Iseres by the display lattice, the rest of the crew was coming in now.
"Selat," she called, startling the diminutive Solvarin from his conversation, "My tribe is ready. Is yours?"
"Momentarily, we are nearly done. I won't have our launch delayed by a... faulty capacitor." The Asersin, the Kir, if the ornamentation of their armor was to be believed, next to him seemed to take offense.
"There will be no flaws, Solvarin, we have done our best for the Sirvenal." He punctuated the statement with an unpracticed Sessarin salute. "Kir Selvas, it is good to see you again."
She returned the gesture, in proper form. "Kir Talsen." She recognized the voice. He was a Vras-Sessarin, one of desperate warriors of the Elder War, and one she knew well. He did well not to display that fact. "I had not realized you were the Kir Asersin of our Sirvenal." She hadn't realized that he had returned to the life of the Asersin, even. There was a time when he would have told her the moment such a decision was made.
"I have known of your part, I had wondered when we would meet," he said.
The remaining Kir entered the room with that, casting anything more that could be said to the winds. "Kir Viraas, Selthen," she said, quickly turning to meet them. Viraas was Asiren, Selthen, Iseres. She knew neither of them, but they had been chosen for this task, and that would be enough for her trust.
"Very good, we are all here then," said Viraas, "Will we set off, then?"
Selat checked a small computer console. "Yes, yes, now." He paused. "If there is, consensus?"
Agreement was swift, there was no sense in delaying any longer. The collection of Solvarin and Iseres in the room quickly set about the last few tasks before launch; signalling the station to remove the docking hold, ensuring a clear path to their final position before the jump. Eventually, Selat gave the order to activate the superluminal drive, overseeing its first true test himself as the Solvarin worked.
For a brief moment, there was light.
The Solvarin device had worked, or at least, it had appeared to. For thirteen days the ship had traveled, and for thirteen days the stars had been strange and drifting. On several occasions Selat had tried, and failed, to explain the function of it to her; supposedly it had taken the darkness-between-stars and warped it, pushing the ship along like a wind. But something had changed. The Solvarin had become worried - an Asersin had died when a maintenance room collapsed, some parts of the ship had been locked down, marked as unsafe. It was when one of the engines sheared off the ship that Selat and Talsen called the Kir to consensus.
Selthen was first to speak, as was her right. "We should have convened sooner; I had not been told of the death. To Kir Talsen, where is your confidence in the Sirvenal?"
"It remains," he said, his tone hardly concealing that it had faltered, "Rooms do not simply... fall down, in space. Kir Selat, explain."
Selat flipped through a notebook for a few moments before continuing; Selvas could see what was written, but Solvarin script remained largely meaningless to her. Still, the pages were well-filled. "I... have reason to believe that it is the superluminal drive. The field is unstable, there are too many energy fluctuations, even - even gravity, seems to be affecting it."
Selvas spoke in the silence. "And what does this mean, Solvarin?"
"It means the device is a failure; it is getting worse, and I cannot stop it. When I... came upon this theory," he gestured lightly to Talsen, who lowered his gaze immediately, "It was already too late. Stopping it may kill us, it can no longer safely return space to its proper state."
Viraas spoke up, then. "So your device has lead us to death, Selat? There must be something that could be done."
The ship shuddered, as if in answer. Moments later, an Iseres came to the chamber. Another section of the ship had collapsed, this time part of of the fuel system.
"A wonder we are still alive, then," said Talsen. "Selat, this is your curse, end it before more die."
Selat gave a sharp gesture towards Talsen. "Disabling it may kill us all, do you even listen to me? I do not even know if I can collapse the field, now!"
"If you had listened to me earlier, we would not be having this discussion."
Selat was silent for a moment. "There was still time, then. I might have - you cannot blame me for this, Talsen, I could have repaired it."
"Perhaps, but you did not."
Selvas was growing tired of deliberation, and she stood to make her final point, only to be interrupted by Selthen. "If we face certain death to do nothing, and... near certain death, to act, then we have to act."
"Agreed," said Selvas. "There is nothing to discuss, Kir, this consensus is foolish." With that, she left the chamber, and the command room entirely, retrieving her gauss rifle on the way out. No one stopped her on her way to the drive chamber, if only because most of the linking rooms to it were too dangerous to traverse normally. In more than a few, her armor sealed itself, finding the atmosphere too thin to use.
The drive was a twisted mass of metal, folding into itself and tearing loose of its mountings; it hardly resembled the device she had seen before launch.
She took aim, and fired, and for a moment, there was light.
She awoke to the sound of blaring alarms, some from the ship, some from her own armor. It took her a moment to quite realize the significance of her armor's 'low oxygen' warning, even written in familiar scripts. She pulled herself up from the floor, and slowly made her way back to the command room, careful to avoid jagged spikes of metal and the great holes in the ship's hull on her way. On more than one occasion, she passed by the body of someone who hadn't been so lucky as her.
Talsen was supporting an injured Asersin, near the entrance. "Sessarin, if I had thought there was another option, I would kill you where you stand. Help me with this one."
She couldn't say whether she agreed. Some part of her screamed out in her own defense, and another was sunk in the shame of her actions. She took the unconscious Asersin from the smaller male. "To the infirmary?"
"It's gone," he said, "Enough of it is. The command room, for now."
She brought the injured Selan into the room and set her down against the wall, quickly checking her for injuries, finding nothing, at least, nothing that was obvious through the armor. That was the extent of what she could do, - an Asiren waved her away a moment later, the task for her caste regardless.
With that, she set about collecting the injured, while Selat prepared a basic transmission for what remained of the communications array, hoping that he had at least been right, that they were not alone out here.
