Page 47 of The Space Traveller's Lover

DESTINY

Impossible things are just hard. You only need to

find the tool strong enough to break them.

The departure-craft pinpoints its entry slot at the giant mothership’s flight deck port.

Like a piercing arrow, it perfectly slides into its target.

As it comes to a sudden stop, Rothwen runs towards the changing cubicle and opens the deep-sleep capsule.

Shaillah looks so comfortable and peaceful, as if she has suddenly fallen asleep.

He pulls her out of the snug-fitting bed, her body bending halfway onto his back.

He carefully dresses her, wrestling with her limp body while wrangling with his turbulent thoughts.

The multi-port bay folds into the mothership’s fuselage, merging into its sleek outline.

At the same time, the synchrotron rings swivel, extending and locking at the perfect launch angle, their flashing rim lights revolve faster and faster, flaring with ever-increasing power.

As the hyperdrive needles stick out from the front and the antiproton engines fan out from the rear, the autonomous space-time tunnelling spaceship prepares for its planned exit from the solar system.

Shaillah opens her eyes, rubbing her eyelids and peering through the blinding white glow.

She tries to sit up but helplessly falls back onto Rothwen’s shoulders.

She feels half-awake, half-asleep as Rothwen carries her through the swirling aisle.

Rows of white, rectangular spotlights brightly illuminate the glossy corridor, running endlessly into the distance as far as she can see.

She wriggles her body, trying to break free.

As Rothwen pulls her over and carefully stands her up in front of him, she keeps looking at her feet, hiding her face under her long cascading hair.

“Good! You are back to normal now.” Rothwen cheers. “It was only a blip.”

But she ignores him, turning around and inspecting her surroundings instead.

She reckons she’s standing on what she thought was the ceiling, but then she realises that the ceiling looks precisely the same as the floor.

Everything inside the broad gaping aisle is perfectly symmetrical and reflects each other, making her lose the notion of which way is up.

Then, the white, gleaming spotlights start getting progressively transparent as the whole surface turns into a boundless, see-through viewport.

The spaceship’s pulsating light beacons flood the entire inner space with its warm, soothing orange and blue glow, revealing the sleek outline of The Prestige , glistening against the daunting blackness of space, flanked by the glowing Sun and the barren Moon.

“Sheban lai” (It’s high time), “Shaillah. You’ve got to get ready.”

“I remember everything now—the dogfight, your choking embrace. What have you done to me?” She frowns.

“I saved you from certain oblivion. That’s what I did.”

“Where are my pendant and belt?” she asks while fumbling over her chest and waist.

“I’ve put them away for now … security reasons.”

“I’m done with fighting you, Rothwen. I’m going to go away as soon as I can.”

“Where to?”

“As far away from you as possible—but not before I make sure every bit of my feelings for you gets deleted from my brain. Or better still, I will keep them … to hate you forever. My soul will not rest in your presence.” She seethes.

“You insist on your rebellion. Well, you are a free space traveller now. Do what you want. But now, you need to follow me onto the flight deck. Once we reach the Grand Fleet, you can take the first departure-craft to Rom-Enjie.” He looks at her with such stony indifference it makes her despair inside .

“You can go ahead, fulfil your duty. I prefer to stay behind. I don’t want to be part of your wicked plan,” Shaillah scowls at him, her narrowing eyes channelling all her resentment. “As for you, I’ll make sure I never see you again.”

Rothwen presses his lips tightly together as his patience entirely runs out, realising that Shaillah will not change her mind.

She runs away from him, throwing herself against the transparent walls as if trying to escape from it all. “I hate you already!” she yells while hitting the glassy surface with her clenched fist.

“Shaillah, you must join me at the end of this aisle soon. We are setting off in T-1200,” he orders, briskly walking away, never looking back.

The powerful assembly of antiproton engines lifts the enormous spaceship out of its locked position and aligns it at the precise launch angle.

As The Prestige slowly climbs over the Moon’s bleak horizon, the serene image of Earth comes into full view.

Shaillah can see her homeworld emerging in all its majestic appearance.

Like an enchanting white and blue oil painting, drawn out against the vacuum of space, the radiantly azure image hangs seemingly undisturbed.

The thin iridescent atmosphere shields the bustling life below, a life utterly unaware of its impending fate.

She leans over the glass, pretending to hug the planet with her open arms, breaking down in resigned sobs.

She asks herself what else she could have done to save the humans, but she feels powerless.

At the flight deck, Kuzhma-Or and Athguer systematically check the departure sequences, the bright shapes and symbols constantly flickering, floating on the massive front viewing deck. Kuzhma-Or sends a message to Zula-Or, who is following every detail of the departure from her gem-studded garden.

“Is this the ending you were thinking of, Zula?”

“We have not finished yet, Kuzhma.”

“I have a pretty good idea of how all is going to go. I told you so as soon as he returned in The Prestige . Yet, I’m prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt—in case he changes his mind at the last minute.”

Zula-Or sighs. “Oh, why should we doubt? We have all the evidence.”

“Let’s see,” Kuzhma-Or mutters under his breath.

“I tried to warn Shaillah against him. I even gave her the Quark-Star diamond to guard her. But she used all that energy to love him even more. And Rothwen—every time he talks about her, he can’t hide his fixation.

Does it sound familiar, Kuzhma?” Zula-Or tries to break into the fearsome commander’s impenetrable heart.

“I never think about it. I keep it hidden, buried, locked … inaccessible,” Kuzhma-Or growls.

“But you won’t delete it, as I did. You are so strong!” Zula-Or praises him to appease him.

“Let everything take its course. We can always change it the way we want it—anytime.”

“There’s one thing we cannot change. We cannot change Rothwen,” Zula-Or markedly reminds him. “Only Shaillah can.”

“Lock up your hyper-shields,” Athguer quips as he sees Rothwen entering the flight deck.

“Everything is ready. I’ll proceed with activating the departure sequences,” Rothwen announces.

“Go on!” Kuzhma-Or urges him on as he brings up the swirling hologram of Earth, floating by his side.

“Stage One,” Kuzhma-Or boasts, “ The Prestige ’s powerful plasma rays will create fast-flowing currents through the planet’s magnetic field, causing an unrelenting self-amplifying effect.

This will dismantle their neurons into a useless mesh.

The disruption will be short, but the impact, devastating.

Our destroyer-crafts are already taking their positions to disintegrate what’s left of their useless bodies.

” He zooms into the heavily built robot-packed cities, its terrified inhabitants disorderly running away as the destroyer-crafts further descend, forming a glittering web under the thin New Moon.

“We won’t have to worry about the residents of this planet any longer,” Kuzhma-Or raves as he watches Rothwen pacing in front of the glimmering holograms, activating the preprogrammed flight path sequences with his thought-commands.

“Stage Two, Ei Reishojen’s protective antiboson cloud will expand. Once we reach our cruising speed, our antiproton flash-jets will erupt. And we’ll dart into the connecting hyperspace tunnel,” Kuzhma-Or continues with his booming voice.

“Stage Three, we’ll take command of the Grand Fleet. Then we’ll jet off towards Omega Centauri … as planned. ”

Rothwen walks away from the dazzling multichromatic sequences, signalling that he has finished the activation. He glances at the sequences countdown charts, and then he looks out for Shaillah. But there is still no sign of her. He stifles his impatience, staring at the rapidly flashing holograms.

The Prestige rises even higher over the Moon’s barren surface. A muffled whooshing sound reverberates through the aisles and flight deck. It feels as if the entire fuselage is taking a last deep breath before take-off.

The humming pulses stir Shaillah’s body as she slowly gets up from the floor. With her spirit crushed and her hopes in tatters, she knows she must run to the flight deck now.

T-200. Take your seat. The Prestige ’s sequence broadcast starts the countdown, transmitting the message directly to their brains.

Kuzhma-Or does a final check on the sequence stages before he and Athguer head for the high recliner seats on the main viewing deck.

As they sit down, the densely padded cushions snug around them as in a perfect cast. In front of them, the glimmering bodies of planet Earth and its Moon seem doomed, in all their fragility and vulnerability.

Kuzhma-Or’s eyes narrow while his face muscles tighten as he thinks hard about his imminent response to Rothwen’s actions.

Even if the departure sequences appear perfectly set, the veteran supreme commander knows that his master navigator will have in mind an unexpected move.

But he cannot foretell what exactly Rothwen is about to do.

Rothwen is still looking out for Shaillah.

T-60. Take your seat , the sequence broadcast alerts.

As Rothwen plunges into his seat, he sees Shaillah running past him while looking the other way.

Ai shewe ( All is well ). He sends her a thought-message, but she doesn’t respond as the protecting hyper-shields slide shut over their bodies.

Stage One , the sequence broadcast announces.

Shaillah closes her eyes tightly as the robotic voice sounding in her brain signals that the end of her cherished world is about to begin.

But an unexpected pause breaks the transmission. It lasts one second, but it feels like a long-drawn-out hour .

With a series of entangled thought-commands, Rothwen interrupts The Prestige’s central processor and completely replaces the Stage One sequence in real time.

Kuzhma-Or raises his eyebrows. A disgruntled groan escapes his curved mouth as he observes the zoomed-in holographic images, showing that the destroyer-crafts have moved away from their lower-altitude attack positions.

The Prestige shoots up into deep space, leaving planet Earth untouched.

“As I expected,” he seethes in his message to Zula-Or.

“All I ask you now, my dearest friend of a lifetime, is to show leniency to our most distinguished one-of-a-kind master of master navigators,” Zula-Or pleads.

“The more he challenges me, the more I will push him,” Kuzhma-Or rages.

But he is powerless to do anything. The protective hyper-shields won’t open until Stage Two finishes, after they traverse the warped space-time frames tunnel and reach the edge of the Grand Fleet, on the other side.

Stage Two, T- 300, Activating all antiproton engines. Full propulsion. Blasting off.

As it reaches its nominal speed, The Prestige swiftly penetrates the emerging hyperspace tunnel, disappearing into the swallowing black hole. At the same time, a colossal blast of ejected radiation shines as bright as an exploding sun, but only for a fraction of a nanosecond.

Even as the potent afterglow shines out of Earth’s line of sight, the planet’s upper atmosphere glows through the shower of energized cosmic rays.

By then, the swarming web of destroyer-crafts, hovering between the Earth and its Moon, has already deployed its wide-ranging magnetic field, stopping most of the radiation onslaught.

Stage Two, Complete.

As the hyper-shields spring open, Rothwen is ready to face his supreme commander, standing up on the flight deck platform as a raging Kuzhma-Or and an expectant Athguer walk towards him. Shaillah slowly gets out of her seat, trying to figure out what has happened.

Kuzhma-Or briskly approaches a defiant Rothwen, their fuming faces nearly touching. The surrounding air crackles and sparks, charged with their brainwaves’ intense vibrations as they weigh each other up .

Stage Three, T-600, Joining the Grand Fleet.

“There, I’ve done it. And it is irreversible!” Rothwen declares, immovably holding Kuzhma-Or’s fierce gaze.

“You disobeyed my command. You are a traitor,” Kuzhma-Or scolds in his booming voice.

“My Commander, the order was to disable the humans. They’re as disabled now as they can be.”

“The order was to destroy them!” Kuzhma-Or fumes.

Rothwen impatiently exhales, walking towards Shaillah as she runs towards him and hugs him, instinctively trying to protect him from Kuzhma-Or with her own body. Any moment now, she fears, the furious commander will unleash his mighty wrath on them.

Rothwen holds her by her elbows, pressing her body against his to reassure her while frowning steadfastly at Kuzhma-Or.

“A broken order is always a broken order,” Kuzhma-Or blasts. Then pointing his finger at them, he threatens, “You both will be held accountable, and I’ll demand severe sanction!”

“My Supreme Commander,” Rothwen states impassionedly, “as the undisputable leader of our Invincible Grand Fleet, I respect you. As our fearless, greatest space conqueror, I salute you.” Rothwen pauses, his pupils ablaze with utter resolve.

“But as the ruler of mine and Shaillah’s destiny, I must confront you. ”