Legends said that the only one to walk unaided on the surface of Epstrum was the emperor of the Domain, Teo Nora himself. The king of the galaxy was only deserving of the king of all planets, so he proclaimed it the capital of the Domain. To Teo Nora, it didn’t matter if the capital planet was too hostile for anyone but him to inhabit—Epstrum was his and his alone.
The Calamity Crew had lent Flint and Aurein a small cruiser ship to conduct their mission with. Now, it orbited above Epstrum’s bafflingly large surface, and the habitability readings read on Flint’s monitor as such:
Gravitational acceleration: 31.6 m/s2
Point surface temperature: 240.8 °K
Surface wind speed: 16 m/s
WARNING: SURFACE CONDITIONS UNSUITABLE FOR LIFE. UNSAFE TO EMBARK.
Flint’s digital map showed that they were approaching the correct coordinates on Epstrum’s surface.
“Twenty minutes until descent,” Aurein announced over the fleetwide comms.
A chorus of voices responded at once, all confirming Aurein’s observation. Behind the Lucre Main was a small fleet of light Talo cruisers, all present to ensure the safety of Flint’s, Allef’s, and Aurein’s arrival to Teo Nora’s grave.
Seeing the grave’s coordinates on a globe filled Flint with apprehension—it was located in a tundra dangerously close to one of Epstrum’s poles, and on a planet of extremes, the cold there would be unimaginable. There was a reason Talo’s presence on Epstrum was limited to a series of domes in a single desert.
Flint navigated the Lucre Main downwards, and Aurein announced their descent to the rest of the fleet.
“Just to confirm, are you two aware of the conditions we’re descending into?” Allef’s voice asked from the comms. Unable to seat her in Flint’s two-seated cruiser ship, she rode in a Talo cruiser instead.
“We are,” Flint said. “Why? Is something wrong?”
“Most ships like the ones we’re in aren’t built for the kind of wind shear we’re headed for. Not the ones I’ve seen, at least.”
Said the voice of the Talo mission captain on the comms, “This model of cruiser is built for planetary scouting and in-atmosphere evasive maneuvers. Rest assured, an agitated atmosphere would be the last thing to topple these craft.”
“I’ll take your word for it” Allef replied, her voice clearly disbelieving.
A quiet chuckle came out of Aurein. Flint looked to the man with knowing amusement—Allef still didn’t yet have much of a grasp on respecting her superiors.
The ships decelerated, allowing Epstrum’s monstrous gravity to pull them closer to the planet’s surface. At first, near the atmosphere’s edge, the shaking was minor, but it grew larger the closer they sank towards the ground, rattling Flint and Aurein in their seats. Strong polar winds rocked the fleet, the thick, dense atmosphere whipping around every vessel. Flint struggled to keep the Lucre Main pointing forward, much less on track, and felt a deep pang of fear at the prospect of flying into this climate with anything but a light ship like the one he was in.
They landed on a flat expanse of stark white tundra, mountains bordering the horizon and sharp, vertical rocks jutting out of the snow-covered land. The intense gravity of Epstrum compacted the snow into a thick, dense blanket, and snowflakes fell with the force of heavy raindrops instead of delicate feather-like particles. Wind whipped the landscape into a blur, and thick clouds turned the entire landscape dark.
When the Lucre Main and its supporting fleet were grounded, soldiers emerged in their EVA suits, lines of Talo’s reddish orange coloring their grey-black surfaces. They each carried with them large, dark, disc-shaped devices with a sharp point on their top and four sturdy metal legs. While the soldiers walked with ease on Epstrum’s surface thanks to their gravity-reducing boots built into their suits, the machines seemed impossibly heavy, as each soldier struggled to carry their device out of their respective ship. Each device was placed with a thud outside of their ship, and, from what Flint could see from the window of his light cruiser, the placement of each device formed a large, uneven circle around the entire Talo fleet.
Almost in unison, each Talo soldier hunched down over their device and manipulated the controls.
“Clear for gravity stabilization,” the mission commander said over the global comms.
Flint was watching the quickly falling snow outside when, all of a sudden, its rate of descent took a sharp decrease. Each snowflake now drifted softly to the ground or onto the light cruiser’s cockpit window. Just past the boundary of devices the Talo soldier had placed, the snow still hurried to the ground as if each flake was made of lead.
“Gravity field stable. Safe to disembark.”
Flint donned his Talo-provided EVA suit and disembarked his light cruiser, witnessing the altered gravity for himself. Although he had yet to enable his gravity-regulating boots, Epstrum’s pull still felt comfortable and the snow beneath his feet was light and crunchy.
Flint strode to the devices placed on the ground around the fleet. The cylindrical boundary they created seemed to be filled with an almost-invisible screen between each device that separated the slowly-falling snow from the quickly-plunging flakes outside, stretching upwards as far as the eye could see.
Flint stretched a hand towards the invisible boundary and stuck his arm outside the gravity field. His hand was rapidly, suddenly sucked towards the ground, threatening to dislocate his wrist. He pulled his hand back inside.
To counter Epstrum’s monstrous gravitational pull and make living on the surface possible, boundaries of gravity-altering energy like the ones in front of Flint were placed around Talo’s domes. It was the same technology used in almost every spacecraft in the galaxy to provide weight to the passengers within when there would otherwise be weightlessness, and reduce the sensation of acceleration when accelerating. Some gravity manipulating devices like these were even used in special weapons. Maintaining each one took a significant source of energy, but the possibilities they provided were endless.
Flint had never gotten close enough to the edge of Talo’s territory on the desert to see them in person, and especially never close enough to witness the boundary between intense gravity and a livable one. Witnessing the technology up close filled him with excitement—it wasn’t often he saw something new.
“Turn on your gravity boots,” the mission commander told him, stepping out from his ship. “The gravity stabilizers are only to prevent damage to our craft while we trek to the grave. You won’t be able to take a step out of here without your suit’s artificial gravity enabled.”
Flint obliged, pressing a button on his helmet that enabled his personal artificial gravity. There was a slight electric tingle all along the surface of his body, but no change in gravity—while he was still in the larger gravity field, there was no need to regulate it.
There was something off about the snow—the kind of snow Flint was used to was light and fluffy, but the flakes underneath his feet were small, dense, and hard. The immense atmospheric pressure on Epstrum’s surface had to have condensed each snowflake as it fell, turning them into small, icy crystals. Headlights on each ship and EVA suit illuminated the dark landscape, and when the light hit the crystalline snow in the air and on the ground, it had a shimmering effect, like the snow wasn’t snow at all, but instead a world of falling diamonds. Shining his headlight on the ground enshrouded the snow a faint, eerie blue glow.
Flint met with Aurein and Allef and began the trek towards the coordinates of Teo Nora’s grave, somewhere amidst the mountains ahead of them. His suit’s artificial gravity kept his bones and muscles intact while his suit’s thick, temperature-regulating material kept the frigid cold at bay. A screen on his arm told Flint that the temperature outside was 206 kelvin.
Judging by the way each gust of wind across the expansive snowscape threatened Flint’s balance more and more, the blizzard was worsening. Several miles through the walk, between the sounds of snowflakes beating on Flint’s helmet, he made out the voice of their mission commander.
“Communication with Talo headquarters has been severed. The storm appears to be thick enough now to block our signals.”
“Well, shit.” The voice was Allef’s. “Still think your ships can handle the ascent?”
“I’m sure we’re fine, Allef,” Flint said into the comms. “Right now, we should be more worried about getting to the grave before this storm blows us away.”
“I sometimes forget the rest of you don’t have heavy metal limbs. If you do fly off, just holler and I’ll catch you.”
Flint wasn’t sure if she was joking.
Even through the blizzard, Flint could tell they had reached the foothills of the mountains. The sky shrank to make way for tall, snow-covered hills and skinny, jagged peaks. Their coordinates had stopped updating after they lost connection with Talo satellites, but after enough wandering, a monolith came into sight.
The grave was a stain of pitch black against a dim white landscape. It was at least double the height of Flint’s current body, EVA suit included, shaped like a thick triangular prism sticking out of the ground which faced the group edge-on. Flint looked back at his two friends and the several dozen soldiers just behind, hardly able to believe what he could see. The sensation he felt in this location—it was just like when he stood at the Epicenter Research Facility on Erista, that same electric feeling of power and fear. Despite all the snow, Teo Nora’s grave remained perfectly clear and unobscured, every edge visible at all times. The storm seemed to weaken in the grave’s presence.
Flint was acutely aware of every step he took towards the grave. It was even more profound up close. He reached out a gloved hand to touch its surface, running his fingers across the words engraved within.
YOU STAND BEFORE THE FINAL LOCATION OF TEO NORA, EMPEROR OF THE DOMAIN AND CONQUEROR OF ALUE GALAXY, BEFORE HIS UNTIMELY DISAPPEARANCE DURING THE BATTLE OF EPSTRUM ON RELEAK 44, 8912.
ON THAT DAY, THE ZYSTINIAN GALACTIC ARMY ASSAULTED THE DOMAIN, FORCING TEO NORA’S RETREAT TO EPSTRUM. TEO NORA DEFENDED EPSTRUM, FENDING OFF ZYSTINIAN ATTACKERS UNTIL HE WAS CORNERED HERE AT THE MIRSKY TUNDRA. THEN, AT THIS LOCATION, SURROUNDED BY FRIEND AND FOE, TEO NORA VANISHED IN A FLASH OF LIGHT.
OUR SUPREME LEADER’S BODY WAS NEVER FOUND, BUT HIS MOST TREASURED BELONGINGS ARE BURIED HERE. THIS MONOLITH, BUILT IN HIS HONOR, CELEBRATES HIS LIFE AND PRAYS THAT HIS SPIRIT LIVES ON.
“There are no surviving records of his appearance,” said the mission leader over private comms. He was standing beside Flint, watching the obelisk with solemn respect.
“None?” Flint clarified.
“Every single record of his appearance, his personality, everything about him has been lost to time. Every picture of Teo Nora ever taken was destroyed by sheer chance. Photos spontaneously burst into flames, digital servers were hit by stray bullets. Every person to ever personally know him either doesn’t remember what he looked like, never looked at him, or died at this battlefield when he disappeared.”
“How is that possible?”
“Some say that it was a part of his Val, others think fate itself protected him. Nobody knows. But he did exist, and this is the final remnant of his existence. You can even feel his residual power. The Terminus must be here—let us look.”
Flint looked down at the snowy ground under his feet. The Terminus was right there. The site of Teo Nora’s disappearance and the sacred burial grounds of his belongings? It had to be. Flint’s heart filled with adrenaline.
A soldier brought Flint a shovel.
“It was you who found the Terminus for Talo. You should be the one to uncover it,” said the Talo soldier.
Aurein looked at Aurein, who solemnly nodded, at the shovel, whose handle was covered in flecks of snow, and the ground beneath the obelisk. Everything he wanted was right in front of him. All he had to do was take the shovel and dig.
Take it and dig.
Flint couldn’t move. Something was stopping him. Something in Flint’s soul was deeply unsatisfied with this situation, repelling him from the shovel and the grave. The idea of digging into this grave, uncovering Teo Nora’s belongings and the things he found precious was an action Flint could not imagine himself taking, even for the Terminus.
Flint recalled his own hanging, the graves of his parents, the graves of the friends he’d made and the comrades he’d fought with.
Could he really defile something so sacred?
“I can’t.”
The words left Flint’s mouth before he commanded them to. The group watched him with confusion, and he stepped away from the grave, turning around to walk back.
Aurein grabbed Flint by the shoulder and turned him back around. Through the translucent, tinted material in Aurein’s EVA helmet, Aurein’s expression was angry.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Why aren’t you digging it up?”
“Aurein, I’m sorry. I don’t know, I just can’t—”
“This is the Terminus we’re talking about, Flint! The Terminus! If you’ve lost your nerve and your motivation, at least do this for me! We agreed on this long ago!” Aurein shouted.
“I haven’t lost my nerve! I still want the Terminus!” Flint retorted.
“Then why aren’t you taking it?!”
“This isn’t how I wanted it to happen!”
“Flint,” the mission commander began, “we’ve uncovered the grave. You might want to see this.”
Flint walked back to the grave, Aurein just behind. A soldier was crouched by an open metal coffin with several miscellaneous objects lying at the base. There was a solid yellow scarf, two books in a language Flint didn’t recognize, a small antique gun, and a single physical photograph of what appeared to be featureless, solid black. No matter which item Flint set his eyes on, not a single one triggered that feeling of electric fear.
“The Terminus isn’t here,” the soldier said over global comms. “There’s nothing here.”
Shock froze everyone present. Nobody moved or made a single sound until Allef’s voice broke the silence.
“Hm? Oh, the connection’s back! Wait—there’s a message from Talo about Myasma!”
All eyes left the empty grave and turned to Allef. Flint watched her excited face as all joy slipped from her expression. It seemed to take her several tries to read the message’s contents.
“‘Myasma’s transponder has gone silent. Her final message is below,’” Allef read.
“‘Everything stops.”’
Another silence followed, more powerful this time. The heavy snowflakes beating against Flint’s helmet seemed to accentuate the static building in his mind.
“Allef? What does that mean?” Flint asked, his mouth dry. “What did Myasma mean?”
Allef’s anguished face could not form words.
“We must report our status back to Talo,” said the mission leader. “Allef, I am sorry for your loss, but we must quickly inform-”
“MYASMA’S NOT DEAD!” Allef yelled. “SHUT UP! DON’T SAY THAT!”
Aurein reached for Allef with an extended glove, but she recoiled.
“Get away from me! She’s not dead! SHE’S NOT!”
For all the commotion, Flint almost didn’t notice the bizarre streak of white in the sky. The snowstorm had eased, revealing an object in the atmosphere which was growing larger by the moment. Attached to the unknown object were two white trails—one was leading away from their viewpoint and another trail being carried by the wind. It looked just like a small comet descending onto their location.
“What the hell is that?!” Flint exclaimed, pointing at it. Heads turned.
“It can’t be…” the mission leader breathed. “Is he really here? The Comet of Keila?”
“What in Teo Nora’s name is the Comet of Keila?!”
As it came closer, the image became clearer. On closer inspection, the quickly-approaching object wasn’t an object, but a person. A man without an EVA suit.
Zero.
Zero landed in the snow less than a dozen meters from their location with not an explosion, but a gargantuan gust of wind. He strode confidently towards the Talo group, Epstrum’s thick atmosphere freezing into a white film around him before shattering into pieces with every step he took forward. The atmosphere that froze when it touched his body sublimated instantly, lingering visibly for a moment as a trail of translucent white gas that followed Zero’s every step and providing the illusion that he was the nucleus of a comet.
And for that reason, they called him the Comet of Keila.
The Talo soldiers scattered in every direction. Countless commands, yells, and screams came through Flint’s comms, blending together into a cacophony of panicked voices.
“MISSION CONTROL! MISSION CONTROL! DO YOU COPY?!” the mission leader was yelling. “ZERO IS ON-”
Zero unholstered a gun on his side and fired it at the mission leader. In the blink of an eye, a trail of frozen atmosphere jumped to the mission leader’s location, and Zero appeared next to him. Zero grabbed the mission leader’s helmet with both hands, freezing it and the head it protected instantly. Zero shattered the mission leader’s head with his bare hands like it was made of glass. He picked up the mission leader’s mic and held it to his mouth.
“I can tell you don’t have the Terminus,” Zero’s calm voice said through the global comms. “Why is that? It should have been here.”
Flint’s heart, somehow, dropped further into his chest. How did Zero find out the Terminus existed? Then it hit him—Flint had let it slip to Tro in The Ray long ago. Tro was one of Zero’s closest advisors—of course he would tell his leader about the Terminus’s existence.
Flint stopped running and turned to look at Allef, who hadn’t moved. Even through her denial, she had to know that it was Zero who killed Myasma. Through Allef’s helmet, Flint saw the hate-filled eyes of her sister.
“ALLEF, NO!” Flint screamed.
Allef’s scream rang out through Flint’s comms and she lunged at Zero. Aurein intercepted her, holding her back with all of his might, but her robotic limbs gave her too much strength, and she escaped from Aurein’s grasp. Flint watched as the EVA suit’s glove around Allef’s right hand exploded and Allef’s hand shifted its mechanical parts to make room for the nozzle of a miniature rocket engine. There was a gargantuan flash of light, and a colossal stream of hot plasma jetted out of Allef’s right hand in Zero’s direction, consuming him in fire and brimstone.
When the attack subsided, Zero’s intimidating figure was unharmed, everything surrounding him completely blasted away except for a shadow of snow and earth that his body shielded.
“The last of the Noll family,” Zero pointed. “First your parents, then your sister, Myasma, and now you. How does it make you feel that your entire meaningless family has died at my hands?”
Allef’s hand returned to the form of a fist and swung at Zero’s chest. Another rocket engine emerged from the back of her elbow and activated, accelerating Allef’s punch to extreme speed.
Her fist stopped immediately upon contact with Zero’s chest.
Zero grabbed Allef’s extended arm with a single hand, freezing it solid. As the robotic arm snapped and cracked apart in response to the rapid temperature change, Allef’s shoulder began to solidify as well. She screamed in pain and frustration, unable to leave Zero’s grasp.
Flint collided himself into Allef, severing the robotic arm Zero held from her body and throwing her to the ground. Flint fired several rounds from his ghostly revolvers at Zero’s face, but the bullets, even while ethereal, only hovered in the air at his skin.
“Everything stops,” Flint uttered, remembering Myasma’s message. Could he truly stop anything he touched? This man was invincible.
Zero’s eye twitched. “Where did you hear that?”
“From Myasma, you son of a bitch,” Flint shot. “What was that about the Noll family being meaningless?”
Aurein, with immense effort, picked up a limp Allef and threw her over his shoulder.
“RUN!” Aurein yelled.
Flint narrowly avoided a swipe from Zero’s hand as he sprinted away from Teo Nora’s grave. He and Aurein ran side-by-side, trying to put distance between them and Zero.
“She’s unconscious. Cold shock,” Aurein said. “And part of her frozen shoulder came off with her arm. If she keeps losing blood like this, she’ll die before we make it back. What’s his Val?”
“Anything he touches stops,” Flint explained.
“How’d he catch up to the commander so quickly?” Aurein asked, looking back at Zero. He was still only walking towards the three, not even bothering to run. A gun was in one hand, and a fresh pack of ammo in the other.
“He must be able to stop himself relative to other things, too. He’s going to use that gun to catch up to us by stopping himself relative to the bullet.”
“How the hell are we going to outrun a bullet?”
“We won’t. I’ll stop it. You take care of Allef’s bleeding—turn her shoulder to gold, if you have to, but leave Zero to me. I’ll catch up.”
Aurein nodded at Flint and continued to run. Flint planted a foot in the snow and turned to face Zero, who had just finished reloading his gun. Flint materialized his own ethereal pistol and pointed it at Zero. It was time for a century of sharpshooting practice to be put to the test.
Zero lifted his gun towards Aurein and fired. The bullet soared through the snowy air, Zero along with it, and in the fraction of a second the bullet moved, Flint pulled the trigger on his pistol. A translucent bullet screamed out of the barrel of Flint’s gun, soaring through the air towards Zero until, in a large, spark-filled blast, the bullets impacted midair. Zero’s rapid movement halted immediately, a far cry from reaching Aurein, and his face contorted into frustrated rage.
The two men reloaded their guns simultaneously, and then Zero fired again, soaring towards Aurein. Once more, Flint whipped his pistol towards the direction of the bullet and fired, intercepting Zero’s bullet with his own. Zero stopped once more, this time turning his cold blue gaze towards Flint’s EVA helmet. Now was his chance.
Once again, they reloaded. This time, however, Flint didn’t wait until Zero fired. As soon as the barrel of Zero’s gun was aimed between Flint’s eyes, Flint fired first, his screaming spectral bullet aimed directly at Zero’s gun. Flint’s bullet went right down the barrel of Zero’s gun and, before Zero was even able to fire, it exploded in his hand.
“You insignificant wretch!” Zero yelled. “You will not be able to frustrate my erasure of Talo forever! I will ensure justice for what your leader did!”
Flint looked into the eyes of Zero, leader of the champion faction. The man before him was the strongest force in the galaxy. Flint lifted both of his hands and extended his middle fingers directly upwards.
“Go ahead and try it, asshole.”
At last, Flint was safe in orbit once more. A fleet of Talo ships had come to intercept the unexpected Keila attack on Teo Nora’s grave—an unmistakable move to capture the Terminus—leaving Flint, Aurein, Allef, and the surviving Talo soldiers to orbit Epstrum until making their descent back to Talo headquarters once it was safe.
Flint and Aurein sat by Allef, whose right arm and shoulder was missing, the bleeding only stopped by the point of severance having been converted into gold. Frostbite covered her skin from the injured shoulder up to her chin, the more heavily damaged parts wrapped in bandages. None of them said a word, instead opting to sit quietly in the bay of the Talo ship they were riding on. Allef’s expression displayed no emotion except barely withheld grief.
The tense silence shattered with Allef’s voice.
“I’m sorry.”
Flint looked at the injured woman. Her eyes still stared directly forward.
“It’s okay, Allef,” Flint reassured. “It’s hard to blame you when you were—”
“No,” Allef interjected. “It’s not okay. Not even a little. I almost got myself killed, and you guys killed… what I did wasn’t okay.”
Flint remained silent. Tears were welling up in the corners of Allef’s eyes.
“But even then…” Allef continued. “What am I supposed to do? Forgive him? How am I supposed to respond to… what else could I have done but fight?”
Allef sobbed, covering her eyes with her remaining metal hand.
“We weren’t even together for a single day after we escaped. I just wanted to see her… I just wanted us to be free together…”
A tear dripped down Flint’s face before he even knew it. Aurein was looking away.
“All that’s left for us to do is keep going,” Flint said, his voice breaking. He took a moment to compose himself. “We have to keep going.”
“How?” Aurein asked, turning back towards Flint. “The Terminus is gone. After what just happened, every faction knows about it now, and everyone’s going after it. Where do we even go next?”
“I don’t know,” Allef said at last. “But all I know is I don’t want Zero to have it.”
“There’s one place we have yet to return to, and if we act fast, we might be the first to make it there,” Flint addressed the two.
“Where?” Aurein tried. Then, his face twisted into realization.
The image of two bootprints at the epicenter of a series of concentric rings amidst a landscape of charred regolith flashed into Flint’s mind.
“Whoever has the Terminus is still out there. As to who that is, I think only Erista knows.”
