Heavens of Glory

2.3

Orion stepped into the cockpit and sat down. He rubbed the back of his head gingerly- it still hurt from the computer chip that he had installed to allow an easier uplink into the mainframe. He leaned his head back against the seat and tapped a button on the console in front of him. He felt the computer connect into his mind through the chip as he saw the console flash to life. The gravity shifted instantly to artificial, changing directions just slightly, as if floating in the sea. The monitor before him showed a massive display of pylons and fighters. The voice an announcer screamed over the comm.
         “Welcome, Fight Fans, to the virtual world of the Star Arena. We continue today’s exciting line-up of qualifier rounds with another group of twenty fighters! These brave souls will duke it out before your very eyes! For those of you who have bought the FlyTour option, you may activate it now!
         “Prepare, one and all, for this startling three-dimensional real-time saga. These are real pilots, not machines, that are risking it all for your pleasure! And remember, you can buy replays after the round is over!
         “This qualifier round is brought to you by Seti Electronics: the search continues. Now, pilots! Fly!” The artificial gravity in the simulator cockpit doubled and whirled around towards the back as Orion slammed his hands forward on the controls…

         Once again, the voice of Rem Aleem came over speakers, and the translator kicked in to interpret the series of trills and screeches. “Alright, my warriors. Our patrol is done. Fleet Command has called us back to interrogate the prisoners. Prepare for one more jump, to Home.” And Orion felt a leap in his chest. Home. But this was the wrong home. This was the home of the tonorions, not his.
         The home of the tonorions…
         Sela.
         Orion looked over at Qik and Vlent, the only surviving Feilons from his crew. He could see that they, too, had both come to the same realization.
         Their homeworld, which no Feilon had touched in a millennium, was the new destination. He felt the slight jilt in his abdomen as the ship moved into delta space.
         A few hours later, the Frectisiil jumped out of hyperspace, presumably in the area of Sela. A series of guards came into the brig, two for each Bonscout, slapped the wrist-binders on them and marched them out of the room. They took Orion first, knowing he was the Captain. Through corridor after corridor, around turn after turn, they wove their way through the ship. He had not previously appreciated the immensity of the warcruiser. He would easily have gotten lost in the maze of metal.
         At last, they arrived at a door. Orion’s two escorts shoved him through the hatch, which opened at their presence. He found himself in a translucent tube leading into another ship, much smaller, and capable of atmospheric flight, from the looks of it. The startling backdrop of the Untouched Planet hung in the sky. He paused as he walked across the tube to gaze at the beautiful globe. Most of the surface had been converted into a city, even over the parts that had once been an ocean. Yet still the planet maintained a green-on-blue appearance from the billions of gardens on rooftops- the smooth surface was a monotone color throughout. No clouds obscured the vision except on the dark-side, where atmospheric control modules maintained a gentle rain every night.
         One of the guards pushed him over the bridge between ships and he entered into the shuttle. He grabbed onto one of the bars on the side as they brought in the next prisoner. There were no seats inside the vessel, for the tonorions could not sit down- instead they would use raised supports for their chests to recline on as they relaxed.
         One by one, the rest of the survivors of the Neyna were herded into the vessel. The ship shook slightly as the docking clamps were released and the thin tube shimmered away into nonexistence. Sela whirled around until it was centered in the view of the cockpit. The walls began to shiver as the three rear boosters fired up. Vlent and Qik gazed forward at the ship’s destination, longing and hope abundant in their eyes.
         Yet they were the only two prisoners aboard that ship who were even remotely happy. Orion slumped down on the floor and rested his arms on his knees. There could be no escape from this planet; it had thousands of military vessels in orbit, half a dozen security-screening posts, and who knows what other security measures.
         Lect came over and sat down next to him.
         “It’s hopeless, Captain. We aint gonna get out of here alive. No way.”
         Orion nodded silently.
         “We might as well have just never have become Bonscouts. There’s nothing good that’s come of it. We’ve done nothing significant in the war, and now we’re just going to be info-tells to the Union.”
         Orion turned to him. A sudden determination was in his eyes. “That’s not true. We have made a difference. I know we have. We must have. Think back to the bombing run against the Soan station. We were the ones that identified the shaft leading to the power core. We were the ones who dealt the fatal blow to that station. And in the Andromeda. Few other captains would have continued with their mission even though they had been cut off. You’re wrong Lect. We have made a difference.
         “And we’re not about to stop here.” Orion stood up. “We’ll find a way out off of Sela. We’ve been through too much to simply give in now. We’re almost home! Can’t you feel it? This is just normal, routine business compared to what we’ve been through in the last few weeks.” Orion was speaking to all fifteen crewmembers now. The tonorions up in the front of the ship didn’t seem to care what they were saying. It was possible the forcefield that separated the prisoners from the captors blocked all the noise.
         “Every Bonscout makes a difference in this war. Every single one! The Alliance may have an army of over a billion soldiers, but if every one of them decided they didn’t make a difference, that army would disappear.
         “Think of your homes back in the Alliance, of your families and your friends. Think of the gentle lapping of the ocean against brown sand on the water planet. Think of the great towers of Toan, the monuments. The Square Princepis that overflows with people every year. Remember all the times you’ve been short of change, but the cashier let it slide. Remember all the citizens you’ve run into on the streets of a foreign planet, always so willing and helpful. Remember all the tourists that have come upon your own homeworld and admired the spectacles, loved every part of the land. This is the Alliance. It is for this that we must eternally continue to struggle onwards, for this that we cannot give in.
         “Our stay on the ancient Sela will be short, but we will leave our mark. We are Bonscouts of the Alliance of Five! We have been trained for exactly this kind of situation. We will have no trouble getting out of it.”
         The starcraft touched down on metal. The hatch opened, and a squad of tonorions came into the holding room. They pushed each of the Bonscouts out the hatch and onto the landing platform. Orion found himself inside a giant room. The metal floor stretched away for grasecs in all directions, and the roof towered have a grasec above. Thousands of platforms covered the walls, most filled with starships. To his left, Orion could see the giant square of light opening into the air.
         The tonorions led the prisoners to a large transparent tube. A part of the tube shimmered into nonexistence at the touch of a hand, and cylindrical craft with wheels on all sides came rushing in. The Bonscouts were ordered in. One by one, they filed into large compartment. The tonorions stood between them inside, with one up at the front of the cylinder. Orion was thrown backwards as the vehicle sealed itself and hurled forward. The giant hangar faded into a grey blur as they sped along. Gravity suddenly disappeared as they turned sharply downwards, emerging into the blue sky. Orion could now make out the giant structures of the city all around him. Most of the buildings had grown together, creating one giant mesh of metal that covered the earth as far as the eye could see.
         Gravity shifted again as craft hurled along at were probably supersonic speeds. Orion could see the evacuated tube ahead leading directly into a giant wall of metal. In no time at all, the craft at reached the wall and turned sharply upwards, speeding straight towards the sky. For hundreds of grasecs they wound their way around and through giant metal structures. Occasionally other tubes could be seen branching off or running parallel to their own.
The vehicle slid to a smooth stop as they reached the top of a giant tower. Again, a part of the vehicle and tube dematerialized to let them out.
         A team of twenty more tonorions stood in formation as Orion stepped out, following two of their guards. These tonorions carried themselves more formally than the others, and their back-straps were made out of a thin shimmering silver fabric with small extensions that ran down their sides. They reminded Orion of the August Guards on Toan.
         They stood on a massive platform, open to the skies. All around them, ships and aircraft whirled through the open air. In the distance, they could see thousands of steel structures stretching away into the horizon, lifting their thousand-story floors to the heavens. The sun beat down through the cloudless sky onto the myriad of grey labyrinths.
         The sixteen Bonscouts lined up in front of the assembled guards. Their previous escort spoke something to the nearest of the silver-backs, then got back in the tube and dropped over the edge. The tonorions at the end of the line motioned to the Bonscouts. “Leet’s meve eut. Thees waey.” The twenty silver-back guards shifted into two lines and flanked the Bonscouts on either side. Two broke off from each line and stood behind and before the captives. As one, the tonorions moved forward.
         Orion, however, at the front of the line of Bonscouts, didn’t budge. The same tonorion that spoke before turned around. “I saed leet’s geo. Whet’s the held-ep?”
         “Actually, I think I’d quite like to stay right here.”
         “Thet ees net en eption. New leet’s geo!”
         “Umm, no thanks.” And without any warning, Orion dove as hard as he could at the nearest tonorions and delivered a harsh head-butt. The lizard fell over on its side, and Orion grabbed a laser off its back-strap, struggling to hold it properly with his hands still bound. He shot the guard in its head. He whirled around and shot the leading tonorion, shouting, “Come on, get them! Don’t let them react!”
         But the tonorions were fast in their reflexes. Half had already drawn their own lasers and began to shoot into the Bonscouts. Three other captives had managed to steal a laser off the guards and were returning fire as best they could. Orion shot the metal bar between his two wrists and the forcefield bonds disappeared. He grabbed a second laser off another dead tonorion as he shot a third down.
         Firing with both hands, he threw himself behind the small metal box not far from where he was standing. He found Seedo already there.
         “Great way to pick a fight, Orion. When we’re completely outnumbered and outgunned.”
         “Hey, I happened to like the odds at the time.”
         He turned and put his back against the box as he waited for the lasers to recharge. He chanced a quick look around the roof. There were about a dozen of the metal boxes in all, spaced in regular intervals. He saw four other Bonscouts- Scarth, Sel, Qik, and Ter- crouched behind a few of them, shooting at the tonorions. The rest of his crew had been slaughtered.
         Orion whirled around again and landed a shot directly in the neck of silver-back. Ter dispatched the last of the guards with a well-aimed shot, and the six Bonscouts stood up.
         Sel looked around at the carnage littering the rooftop. Dozens of bodies were everywhere. Blood of six species mingled and flowed along the edges of the structure, leaking down over the towering sides. Shock was evident throughout the scyther’s face.
         “They’re dead. Schoona! They’re all slagged dead.”
         Orion saw grief overtaking his five other companions, in the four different guises of each species. He shoved his own sadness away as he continued looking at the dead bodies. “Look, I know you’re all stricken by this, but we have other things to worry about right now.” He looked Sel directly in the eye. “There will be a time to grieve. Not only for the people lost here, but also back on the denesec planet. But that time is not now, do you understand?” The scyther didn’t reply. "Collect all our comrade's tags. Leave the bodies."
         With a quick glance at the others, Orion said, “We need to get back to that hangar. Take all the weapons you can carry off the dead. We travel alert at all times. It won’t be long until they discover this mess up here, and then we’ll be in trouble.”
         He slipped the two lasers into an appropriately sized slot in his leg-holsters and walked over to the clear tube, waving his hand in front of it has he had seen the tonorion do. When nothing happened, he hauled over the hefty carcass of one of the dead silver-backs. He moved the still-warm hand in the tube, and another vehicle appeared.
         “Alright, let’s go.” He hauled the dead body into the craft and then waited for the others to pack in. Orion slid up to one side of the vehicle and examined the console there.
         “Damn, can’t understand a thing here. It’s all written in tonorion.” Qik moved up beside him to examine the computer.
         “It looks like a variation of the Warrior’s tongue alphabet. Let me see what I can do.” She examined the symbols for a few minutes, then said slowly, “KKsttCLigtk YtiShTikttttjkkkkt.” The symbols disappeared from view and were replaced by the more the more familiar letters of Common Galactic. Orion looked at a few of the markers then tapped a few places on the controls. The vehicle responded immediately and dropped off the roof.
         “Let’s hope I got that right,” Orion said with a smile. He watched the tube woosh by in front of him.
         Two minutes later, the huge opening of the hangar was visible directly in front of them, and their vessel ground to sudden stop.
         A voice came over the intercom, speaking in the tonorion language. “Warning. All power as been cut to the WTS due to a small domestic threat. Please remain calm while we locate the perpetrators.”
         Orion looked over at the five Bonscouts. “Looks like we’ll have to run.” He drew the two lasers and shot a hole through the front window, then hopped out. “Let’s move out! Double-speed! It looks like it’s a couple of grasecs over to the hangar, and we can’t risk hanging around in these tubes for too long.”
The small party jogged forward at a fair speed, slowly making progress towards the giant structure of the enclosed spaceport. Orion pumped his arms, pushing each step ahead of the last as he lost his breath. The building was still so far away, and when he looked down at his feet, all he saw was the thousands of platforms jutting out of the gigantic buildings. The ground was too far down to be visible.
         At the far end of the tube, near the giant tower, a few small specs approached the party.
         “Incoming!” Orion shouted, never breaking his steady stride. He pulled out the tonorion lasers and held them in his hands as his arms continued to swing. Within only a couple minutes, the quick-footed tonorions were within firing range. Orion and Seedo shot them with impeccable aim before the Union soldiers even prepared to fire, never missing a single step. The group leapt, unregretful, over the four bodies as they passed.
         Twenty minutes after the beginning of the run, the six Bonscouts reached the spaceport. Orion stopped abruptly as they reached the wall. He held up his hand to stop the others and motioned for Seedo to take a look on the other side of the metal barrier.
         Over forty silver-backs stood just inside the cavity, each holding a large pulse rifle and looking ready to kill. The tube itself had been cut off a short ways into the port. The Bonscouts moved back a few steps.
         “Those first four tonorions must have alerted the rest.” He touched the forcefield wall with his hand. “Think this tube’ll block laser fire?” Orion asked.
         “Well, let’s find out.” Seedo shot a bolt of energy into the tube wall. It streamed right through the forcefield, and the walls around them began to crackle and shimmer.
         “Shit! Run!” Orion shouted as the floor began to disappear. The six tumbled into the hangar. Thinking fast, Orion drew his own lasers and fired into the ranks of the silver-backs. “Back! Back! Back!” He motioned for the other five Bonscouts to jump behind the nearest ship. The silver-backs, although at first taken by surprise, quickly shouldered their rifles and began firing at the Bonscouts.
         Once behind the vessel, Orion did a quick head count. He was relieved to see that no more of his crew had been downed. “Alright. There’s no way we’ll win this in an open battle, and we can’t stay here for long. Did anyone nab any grenades or blast charges?” Sel nodded and pulled three spheres out of his belt. “Good. When I give the signal, Sel, throw one of those into the tonorions. Then we scramble. Get behind any ship that will offer cover and try to open it. Open fire if you have a clear line, but try to avoid being in view of them.” Orion chanced a quick glance around the ship. “Alright, they’re fanning out to look for us. You sure you know how to use those?”
         “Of course, Orion.”
         “Good. Throw them now. Once they explode, we run.”
         Sel pressed a series of buttons on the sphere and chucked it clear over the ship. A second later a massive blast shook the floor and the six Bonscouts scrambled into other hiding spots. Orion shot down two tonorions as he dodged to the next ship, and the silver-backs returned with half a dozen balls of energy aimed, rather poorly, at his head. Orion slipped behind the hull and found the hatch. It wouldn’t open to his touch.
         “Throw another, Sel!” His shout was soon greeted with another floor-shaking explosion, this one sending out a massive shock wave that rocked the ships and knocked Orion down. He jumped up quickly and dodged behind another ship, constantly keeping his lasers in the directions of the tonorions.
         “I found one that opens!” The shout rang out through the metal structure.
         “Where are you, Qik?”
         “By the large corvette, the one with the silver and black markings!” Orion saw the described ship.
         “OK, Sel, throw the last grenade! Everyone, get in that ship!” The small device could be seen flying in a smooth arc through the air. A thunk sounded as it hit the ground, but no explosion followed.
         “Shit, Captain! That one was a dud!”
         Orion looked around the hull of his ship and shot at two tonorions. He hit one as twin pulses whirred past his head.
         “Alright everyone! Head for that ship anyway. Get ready to shoot!”
         Orion hurled himself out from behind the ship, shooting at the tonorions approaching his position. He came out of the dive in a smooth roll, still firing. He launched himself further over to the left with a powerful spring of his legs just as three pulses slammed into the ground where his feet had been a millisecond before. Another dozen pulses of energy slammed into the nose of a ship as he flew behind it. He could hear shots echoing out from other parts of the hangar as he prepared to close the last gap between his ship and the opened one.
         He hit the opening at a full sprint. Running as fast as he could, he covered the two hundred feet between the ships in a matter of seconds. Volleys of rifle shots hummed through the air around him, blasting holes in the floor and nearby ships. With a set of lucky shots, Orion took out two tonorions as he disappeared behind the final vessel. He found the open hatch and dodged inside. Seedo, Qik and Sel were already inside, and Scarth bounded in a few seconds after Orion. The sounds of laser fire denoted the continued struggle of Ter.
         Orion and Seedo looked at each other quickly and saw that they each had the same thought. Together they ran out of the ship again. One ship over, they saw Ter, cornered by a continuous stream of fire.
         “Alright Seedo, Up And Down, just like in Battle School.” Seedo nodded and they moved over to the corner of the vessel. Moving in an interchanging serious of bobs and weaves, the two began firing upon the tonorions hassling Ter. Their laser fire began weaving itself in the air before them into a continuous tube of energy that swept across the ranks of the silver backs. Ter looked over as the duo cut down five of the tonorions and darted over, sprinting as fast as his feet would carry him. Seedo and Orion ducked back behind the metal hull as the silver-back fire turned towards them and peppered the air with lethal light. They nodded to Ter and sprinted inside.
         “Qik, close the damned doors!” The two Bonscouts Ter and Seedo leaned out through the opening and fired off another volley of shots at the tonorions. Orion jumped towards the nearest control panel.
         “I’m sorry, Captain. I don’t know how! The doors were open when I got here.”
         “Dammit.” Orion’s hands spun around the strange console as he tried to deactivate the control-lock. “Can you at least get me Galactic Standard so I have some inkling of what I’m doing?”
         Qik nodded and ran over to stand next to him. She spoke the same words she had in the tube-vehicle. “KKsttCLigtk YtiShTikttttjkkkkt.” The words on the console again disappeared and reformed into Common Galactic. Looking over the changed console, Orion gave a shrug of despair.
         “Alright. Looks like I’m gonna hafta do a Dive.”
         “Orion, don’t. You don’t know what security this ship’s got. You might get yourself caught in the computer’s mainframe, or you could trigger the internal defenses.”
         A series of shots lanced in through the open hatch and blew a part of the wall into smithereens.
         “Do you see any better alternatives, Seedo?” Orion turned towards the console. “Space, this is gonna be slag hard without Dive glasses.” He began typing furiously on the computer until a layout of the ship’s computer relays displayed itself on the screen. He glanced at it then pulled off the panel below the console and began rummaging through the hundreds of wires. Eventually he pulled out a set of five and stuck them forcefully into slots on the console. The entire ship suddenly began glowing a dangerous orange as the console began a series of loud chirrups.
         “See what I mean, Orion? You’ve done something slishk crappy already.”
         “Calm down, Seedo. Don’t distract me now.” Orion began tapping dozens of buttons on the console, barely even looking down to see what he was pushing. The view on the screen suddenly began shifting in crazy directions.
         “Alright, I’m in,” Orion said. And suddenly he was connected. It wasn’t quite the same as with Dive glasses; he wasn’t completely immersed within the computer world, but his mind easily slipped into that state of one-sightedness necessary for a Dive. He ceased to notice everything around him, and saw only the red screen before him. He could feel the remains of the computer chip in his head connecting to the computer, rather weakly. He was thankful it hadn’t been completely destroyed. He began typing, not even aware of the action itself, but rather only of the effects. He began racing through the red and gold lines of the ship’s mainframe, pausing at the towering silver pillars of control to examine their function. Through function after function, through command after command, he flew through the cyber world. His hands had adapted almost instantly to the foreign control board; few mistakes pushed him back. He masked his path as he continued to move. Every now and then he caught sight of the elusive shadow of a defense program, lurking within the world of numbers and shades, but Orion was too good of a hacker to be caught. Finally he stopped before another glowing pillar.
         He tested it. He moved his virtual self slightly forward, just touching the edge. No alarm sounded as the functional information flowed into his view. It was the pillar to control the outer hull. He moved entirely into it, then began manipulating its contents.
         He first found the mechanism to close the door, and followed a silver string from there once the door had been shut to the locking mechanism, whence he followed another string to ship’s control-lock. He deactivated the locks permanently, then followed the strings back to the original pillar. He found more strings branching off to the armor and shield controls, and followed each of them in turn, overriding their fail-safes and deploying the defenses while still on the ground. He could feel the energy flowing through the ship.
         From there, he found his way into the computer defense controls. It took him a long time, but he slipped past the demon programs without being noticed and moved directly into the pillar. He knew an alarm would go off, so he didn’t bother being careful; there was no way he could have been careful enough. He worked as quickly as he possibly could to disable the computer’s defensive programs as he saw his virtual self start to become chewed away at by the demon programs. They were breaking further and further into all the information that had accumulated during his brief Dive, analyzing every aspect of his movements and gathering huge quantities of data from the seemingly insignificant source, and were discovering that there were enemies within the ship. They began boring directly into the computer chip installed in his head. Orio did his best to stave them off, for just a little longer. He saw the control pillar for the internal defenses start to change colors as he suddenly deactivated the computer’s defenses. The control pillar returned to normal color.
         His task done, Orion pulled himself out. He mentally blinked, forcing himself away from the screen. He had probably done some irreparable damage to the system through his haphazard tampering, but it shouldn’t have compromised any of the memory banks or primary controls. And those were the only really vital parts of the ship, the only aspects that they needed now. He yanked the groups of cables off the console and returned them to their original positions. Such a forceful exit would definitely have damaged the computer. Orion turned around to the inside of the vessel.
         The other four passengers were staring at him.
         “That was really, really scary, Orion. Don’t do that ever again.”
         Orion looked quizzically at Seedo. “What?”
         “You were in that dive for close to an hour. The ship’s functions were going crazy while you were in there. Consoles began running random programs, servos began activating irregular functions. And just five minutes ago, the internal defenses turned on. We had to shoot them out.” Seedo pointed towards the dozen scars around the room.
         “Damn,” Orion muttered under his breath. He looked back up and shrugged. “Sorry. But hey, we don’t have to worry about the tonorions any more, right?”
         “What tonorions? You blew up everything within a quarter of a grasec when you turned on the shields.”
         “Double damn,” Orion muttered again. “Whatever. Let’s just get out of here.”
         “Oh, and another thing, Captain. We already are out. Seedo motioned to a side monitor, showing the dark-grey of a wall ten grasecs above the ground. “Just about right after you started the hack, the doors to the hangar began to close. Scarth jumped into the helm and flew us right out of there. Boy, we barely made it, though, you know? A second’s hesitation and we would have been stardust. Scarth parked us in some nook inside a building a couple grasecs from the hangar.”
         Orion fumed. “You flew the ship while I was in the Dive? You could have gotten us all killed! The computer was way too unpredictable for that!”
         “I wouldn’t really call it flying, Captain,” Scarth replied. “I couldn’t find the actual helm controls, so I jacked into the helm remotely and flew it with,” Scarth shuddered, “buttons.”
         “Oh, great! That just makes it a whole lot better! So you actually went into the computer yourself while I was in there. We’re lucky we weren’t slagged by the engines exploding, for Schoona’s sake!”
         “Well, hey, it worked, right?”
         Orion stormed into the back of the vessel, stretching his cramped arms. “Whatever.”
         The tonorion vessel was actually a rather large one, designed for a crew of somewhere around forty soldiers. The smooth circular halls and rooms were startlingly different from the sharp octagonal corridors of Alliance ships, yet actually seemed more comfortable. More homely. However, Orion didn’t bother to remark on the architecture as he searched for the bridge. The room that they had been in couldn’t have been it- what kind of a stupid design would make the bridge the first room to be boarded?
         He found the searched for room at the rear of the vessel. It was much more open then the secondary command room, with displays and screens scattered throughout the area. Orion found the rest-chair that was probably the captains and did his best to recline on it, but found the thing far too uncomfortable. With some effort, he turned the thing around and sat on it as best he could. After a few failed attempts, he activated the control panel on the side of the rest, and a glowing hologram appeared before him, floating in the right direction despite the reversed disposition of the chair. Orion scrutinized the display before pushing three buttons. A small device, a solid white sphere contained within a semi-opaque yellow sphere of energy, rose up from the floor, supported by nothing yet floating steady in the air.
         After tapping a few more buttons on the panel, Orion shouted, “Hey everybody, I think I’ve figured out the helm. And the comm, for that matter. Come over to the bridge, it’s in the back of the ship.” Within a few minutes the other five Bonscouts had all arrived.
         Scarth nodded towards the floating sphere. “Is that the helm control?”
         “I think so…” Orion said, cautious of being entirely wrong.
         “I though you said you had it figured out?”
         “Yeah, umm,” Orion bit his lip. “Figured out in the sense that I found something that could be it. Look, I’m gonna see if I can fly this bucket of bulk. We can’t stay in the shadow of this building forever.”
         Scarth nodded, but Seedo said, “Wait. We need a name.”
         “A what?”
         “A name. For the ship. You’re usually the one who’s so adamant about that sort of thing. What do we call this boat?”
         After only a few seconds hesitation, Orion said, “She’ll be the Tournia. The A Enga Tournia. May Schoona shine favorably upon her.” Seedo and Scarth nodded their consent while Ter, Qik and Sel just looked at each other in confusion.
         “Alright. Now that that’s over with, let’s get this thing space-bound!”
         And with that, Orion reached his hands gently into the yellow energy sphere and grasped the globe; the energy of the device flowed around his finger tips, crackling and tingling over his knuckles and nails. The view screen suddenly shifted in front of him, and an image of the ship’s forward position was displayed over a trimensional hologram of the nearby area. “Sel, see if you can separate those two images.”
         The scyther moved to do so, but Orion suddenly said, “No, wait.” He squinted his eyes for a few seconds. “Leave it. I think I use it.” He slammed the white globe forward to the front of the yellow sphere. The Tournia shot forward out of its hiding spot, and Orion twisted the globe to angle the ship upwards, still holding it forward to accelerate. “Yeeaah!” The view raced forward, constantly keeping in perfect overlap with the 3-D hologram as the Tournia plowed through the airs, climbing steadily away from the tonorion Sela.