The Sealed Planet

Welcome to Space

Domel Arcturus

To be honest with you, once I got myself involved in space, things took the turn for the awesome. True, I liked Earth, but my real home is in space, where the spaceships and the aliens were. Why, you ask? Because the danger is infinite. A galactic empire is a temporary solution to keep things peaceful. Unlike a planet, a galaxy is huge, and controlling everything in that galaxy is not going to work perfectly. There's always part of that galaxy that no one cared, and other parts of it are basically a peaceful utopia.

Earth, unfortunately, fell to the category of 'no one cared', or in our words, a backwater planet. It's a good thing the aliens did not bother with anything on the planet. Well, until the pathfinder device brought them here.

And it was not surprising that even after 3000 years, Orians were still notorious pirates. If you wonder what an Orian is, they look just like a human, but their skins are blue, and their eyes are completely black. Their hairs are always white, so it is hard to distinguish one Orian with another. Not all Orians are bad, though, but it's rare to find a good and trustworthy one like Cassie, our comm.

As I woke up, George was no longer beside me, and I was put in a different cell, being interrogated by an Orian. He commented on my lack of clothing, thinking that I was either a Heretic or a deserter. I did not want to give him the satisfaction of knowing everything, so I just told him to guess. Then, he told me that humans like George was a rarity, and they even considered starting a s*****y business by abducting less advanced races and sold them. Of course, I did not agree. Enslaving a space-faring race is already bad, but if you go beyond that and starts exploiting the lower level civilization, then the galaxy is already beyond saving. There is a reason why we categorize planets, which, thankfully, still hold after more than 3000 years.

But you do not argue with someone who clearly takes profit from backwater planets. I was angry, of course, but I also knew that they did not know how to restrain a Vyrnian properly. Or...they had forgotten. Also, it was their mistake to put up a force field in the first place and not any other kinds of metallic door. I was rather convinced that the Vyrnians of this time did not have the training I once had, especially since this ability was always there since birth.

The Orian guarding my cell was young, judging by how naïve he looked and who was rather...scared of me? I could scare him, but there was also a chance that he did not look like how he acted. So, I took the waiting approach. As I had predicted, the Orian became bored after I went docile and decided to walk away. It was time for me to work.

If there was one thing Vyrnians were proud of was not because of our natural flight capabilities, but our ability to manipulate and convert artificial energy. I learned later that it was similar in concept with how spells on Earth work, except spells used mana for the conversion, which was a naturally occurring particle on Earth's atmosphere, while mine relied entirely on artificially generated energies such as those found in battery and warp cores. Basically, I am a living conductor, and also one who's immune to a certain degree of radiation. However, I knew several tricks the police academy once taught young cadets in case we were captured or held hostage by those who used force field cells.

I acted quickly. I was out of practice, so I concentrated in trying to move the constant energy of the force field. Once I found the right frequency, I let the force field energy to be absorbed into my body, creating a hole through the barrier. This hole was only temporary, however, so I quickly stepped through as the hole closed behind me. Then, I looked at my hands, crackling with energy.

I did say that I was a living conductor. However, I also stored a limited amount of that energy in my body that I could use for many things, such as offensive capabilities. I hid behind the doors leading outside, waiting for the Orian to come back. Once he did, I quickly acted. Putting one of my hands on him, I sent a shock through his body, enough to instantly knock him out, but not to kill him. From my personal experience, these slavers had a price on their heads. I just hoped things worked just like it was back then.

The ray gun I took from him was slightly smaller than what I was more comfortable with. I could not complain. Vyrnians were bigger than most other races, anyway, and we were at least two heads taller than a human. Also, our wings could cause problems for some weapons, but not all weapons. However, we had adapted the use of our wings for something else.

My size was also a problem. The Orians were human-sized, and I was practically too big to sneak around. However, I was helped by the fact that I was not 'jammed' (a term to nullify my biological abilities) and I was on a ship. My only concern was that I did not get too over-excited and ended up frying the life support system.

Approaching a nearby junction box, I quickly assumed that the ship's system was centralized with several branches throughout the ship. I pulled the power from the ship and caused system shutdown due to lack of energy, essentially plunging the whole place in darkness. I was helped with the fact that my scales were black, effectively making me invisible in the darkness.

I did not need to move a lot. I just waited for the Orians in one of the dark rooms and dispatched them one by one with the energy that I absorbed. While Vyrnians could not see that well in darkness, we could still sense a nearby presence, especially if you had trained yourself to do it (again, I owed everything during my cadet years).

However, my strategy had its limits, especially after power had been restored and I was in plain sight. They pointed their guns at me. Energy guns. I was naked and I only had a small ray gun to use, but I was lucky that they were using energy guns instead of bullets. I could absorb the energy from the guns while taking cover. I did not like this strategy because my energy absorption had limits, and those energy weapons could still give me pain. Just imagine getting hit by a rubber bullet. It hurts and with sufficient force, it can injure. That's what I must endure before I could overload the room's environment control and electrify the whole place. It was enough to short the room's systems and gave me time to escape out from the door behind me.

Another luck came to me when I crossed the corridor amidst the sound of the alarm blaring around me. It was my human partner, stuck inside a smaller force field cell. He quickly noticed me as I went through the door and destroyed the automatic system, locking us in. This gave us time to prepare and to bust him out of that small cell.

We had a little talk about the ship and the fact that we were no longer on Earth. George surprisingly took it rather well, but I knew deep down he was rather worried. But it did not really matter. We needed to either escape the ship or, even if we thought was impossible, h****k it.

Several factors helped us take over the ship. First, the ship's crew were highly undisciplined and tried to fight without coordinating their efforts against someone with a strategy like me. Second, their ship practically became their enemy when my Vyrnian biological ability caused many systems to fail, even to the point of almost compromising the ship's integrity. I tried my best to stay under control. There were many examples of reckless Vyrnians ended up killing themselves.

Finally, the ship was smaller than its suggested size, and we quickly found the bridge after getting through a couple of Orians trying to stop us. In addition to the three factors, my training as a Vyrnian special forces and George's own rigorous training as a dragon rider of the Order helped us reach the bridge. By that point, the crew had finally given up. Well, except the captain, who was knocked unconscious by George after simply walking towards the blue humanoid, knocked his gun away, and hit his back with the pommel of his heavy sword. We quickly took control and declared that the ship was our own.

In total, we managed to defeat a crew of at least 15 Orians, all of which we put inside the cells that they put us in. Once that deed was done (and also ensuring that the cells were also Vyrnian-proof), I returned to the bridge to check the map of the region. As I did that, I noticed George staring at the dark expanse of space.

"So, this is...space?" he said, apparently mesmerized. "It's so...dark, and cold."

"We're in the middle of nowhere." I glanced at the nearby monitor. "At least one light year away from the Tervos System. I'll set a course to Tervos 3."

"Where is Earth?" he asked.

Luckily, I had an answer to that. The pathfinder device I retrieved from the storage had Earth's coordinate, one that I quickly inputted to the system. Somehow, the technology became less advanced. Back in my time, they already had holographic interface and were experimenting on neuro-navigation systems. Something must've caused the sudden decline of technological advancements if the holographic interface was replaced with bulky tube monitors with hard to press keyboards, along with switches and knobs that was once already obsolete. What in the world happened while I slept?

After pushing a couple of buttons, flipped some switch, and even twisting some knobs trying to make sense how they worked, I finally found a way to display the coordinate in relation with the galaxy map, along with the distance between this ship and Earth. 35 light years. That's far. Really far.

Not a problem for a warp-capable starship. One problem, though. We had no more fuel for another attempt at a constant warp. Sub-warp speed would take us at least 5 months to reach Earth, compared to ten hours. I told George about it, and he seemed to take this in for a while. Of course, with the spirit of adventure, I told him about space and the mysteries it held. I knew George well enough to know that he longed for an adventure. He was still thinking about this, however, but after a while, he decided to accept my proposal.

"Besides," I remember he said. "Earth's not going anywhere, right?"

I agreed. Thus, with this decision, I inputted the course to a nearby space station to drop of the criminals (and get some good amount of money for travel) and traveled to the set course.

Our adventure in space, and our involvements to the events, was just beginning. It started with only two at first, but slowly, and surely, our journeys and adventures made us allies, both from the past and from the present. However, this adventure affected me more than anyone else. Everyone changed, but for me, it's something more personal.

And it involved my race and our home planet, Vyrn.