SciFi and Fantasy Stories: The Prophecy Chapter 5

Savina and Sagacious were halfway down the boarding ramp of the Revelation by the time Amnot had reached the opening. The first thing Amnot noticed was the diaphanous fog that was enveloping the spaceport. The second thing he noticed was that the fog had increased in intensity. The third thing he noticed was that it was not, in fact, a fog at all.

"Cloud beasts," he whispered.

Savina and Sagacious were halfway down the ramp. They did not hear Amnot, and had no warning. They were thus justifiably surprised (to say the least) when the "fog" burst into life, forming itself into thousands of distinctive shapes. The shapes instantly started advancing towards the ship.

Savina, whose reactions were much faster, scrambled aboard the ship before the cloud beasts reached it. Sagacious was not so fortunate; a fist of mist enshrouded him, and he was gone. Savina, acting in the interests of her crew and Amnot, closed the hatch of the ship and started to lift off.

Had Amnot been a typical hero he would have screamed, "No!" and proceeded to jump out of the ship to save Sagacious. But, as his name suggests, Amnot was not a typical hero. He was only a child, and he did nothing but stand, silent and still, just behind the hatchway, watching unblinkingly as Oral receded into the distance.

The Great Search may have begun, but it did not look like it was going to be doing much else for a while. With only a mere shipful of people, how could they possibly search the galaxy in its infinite entirety? They were relying only on luck, and luck was not getting them very far. As the Amncient Amnphet saying goes, however, "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a beginning". Even if the first step is all you end up taking, at least you have started your journey. This, unfortunately, did not make General Misconduct feel any better. After all, what is the point of a journey, if not the successful conclusion of reaching a destination?

He had been feeling a vague urging ever since he had fled Thear. Now that urging had brightened and cleared, and he knew what he had to do. He had already informed his crew that he was leaving, and that they were to carry on the search without him. Now he intended to suit action to his words. He climbed into the small one-man fighter craft, and lifted off. He was not sure exactly what he was looking for. All he could do was follow his instincts.

When he realized where his instincts were leading him, he almost had them surgically removed. He would have, had he not been crammed into the tiny cockpit like an anophel in a canolith. Not that you would know what those are, but I think you get my point. Anyway, as it turns out, his instincts were leading him in the right direction. Right in front was him was the unmistakably brilliant sight of the planet Oral. Well, no, actually. Technically, right in front of him (on a collision course with his ship, in fact) was the unmistakably, unequivocally terrifying sight of a rapidly approaching ship. In this case, the Revelation. Behind that was Oral. Just to make things quite clear, let us go over that again. General Misconduct's small, one-man ship. Directly in front of that, and closing fast, the Revelation. After that, the planet Oral. And now, BOOM!

The impact jolted Amnot out of his stunned daze. It also jolted a tooth out of his mouth. Clutching the latter, and cursing silently the cause of both the former and the latter, he stumbled towards the bridge. Halfway there he ran into Savina (literally). She was holding a vial of some sort. He remembered seeing her working on it while they were headed for Oral, and wondered fleetingly what it was.

"Sorry!" he said. "What happened?"

"No idea," said Savina. "Felt like we just hit something!"

Amnot had to agree. Together they resumed stumbling towards the bridge.

When they arrived, Savina almost wished they had remained on Oral. A one-man spaceship had smashed into the bridge. Lying sprawled amidst the wreckage lay a limp form. Savina, however, was more concerned with the strewn wreckage than the limp form. Amnot stood in the doorway looking stunned, while Savina wandered around the still-smouldering bridge, also looking stunned. The bridge was almost completely destroyed. Only a few screens still glowed vainly. There were several sparking screens strewn about the bridge, debris was everywhere. Luckily, while the hull was breached, the electromagnetic containment field around the ship was intact. They were not losing any air, but that was only a small consolation.

"Well," said Savina, looking at Amnot. "Looks like we're going to have to find some other way to find this GEB." She turned, and stopped suddenly as one of the faintly luminous screens caught her eye. She peered closely at it. Suddenly, the limp form groaned and became not-quite-so-limp. General Misconduct sat up, clutching his head.

"Wha... what happened?" he asked.

Amnot could hardly believe his eyes. "G… General?" He turned excitedly to Savina. "That's General Misconduct! I've seen him on LV! We weren't the only ones to survive!"

Savina and Amnot dragged the General to the medical facility of the Revelation, where they were met by the rest of Savina's crew, who were demanding to know what had happened. Savina pointed to the General, who was not limp at all anymore but still groaning. "His ship crashed into us. Lost the bridge. Going to be stuck here for a long time," she said.

One of Savina's men, a rough-looking man (well they were all rough-looking, but never mind) with a goatee, spoke up. His voice was soft, a surprising contrast to his coarse exterior. "The bridge may be destroyed, but our engines are still running. Without the bridge we can't shut them down."

"Of course!" Savina said, looking at Amnot. "Saw one of the screens on the bridge. Navigation screen, still showing our course. We're on a collision course with Oral's moon!"

Sagacious shook his head, allowing himself a rare moment of anger. That accursed GEB had ruined everything! He turned and walked off in the direction of the Oracle. Never mind, he thought to himself. It's nothing much. I just need to change the order, that's all. This first, that later. He broke into a smile as he walked. He did not notice the man, bound and gagged, that lay in a small alcove near where the Revelation had been parked. Had he seen the man, he would have noticed that the man was rough-looking, with a goatee. But even if he had seen the man and noticed that he was a rough-looking man with a goatee, it would have meant nothing to him.

GEB looked into his "crystal ball". It was not made of crystal and it was square in shape, but GEB did not care about this. He called it his "crystal ball". It did the same thing normal crystal balls do, whether or not they are made of crystals and whether or not they are spheres: they show events that are happening at that time, anywhere in space. How exactly this is achieved, nobody knows for sure. There are many theories, such as those involving parallel universes, time warps, wormholes, and so on. However, none of these theories is as satisfyingly mystical as the theory that nobody really knows how it does what it does. Therefore, that is what everybody believed. Anyway, GEB looked into his "crystal ball". He smiled at what he saw. He smiled for two reasons: firstly, everything was going as he had planned. Secondly, he liked smiling. Who says Galactically Evil Beings, etcetera, cannot smile? Anyway, GEB looked into his "crystal ball", and smiled at what he saw, and so on, and so on, and so on.

Savina turned to Amnot. "Escape pods! Does this ship have escape pods?" Amnot shook his head.

"I don't know," he said. The rough-looking man in the goatee spoke up.

"I saw some escape pods back near the galley," he said. "I think there were two standard ones. They can take four people each." Savina did a quick head count. Eight people, just enough. "All right," she said. "Get moving." She looked at the man who had spoken. "Lead the way, Kloud," she said.

The Revelation plummeted towards the dark moon. Just before impact, there was a sudden brilliant double flash, and the two escape pods shot up and away. The shockwave from the collision chased them up into the sky, rocking the two little escape pods. Debris was flung upwards, underneath them, past them, and into them, rattling the pods even further. Finally the pods reached apogee and began their long descent, bright orange parachutes fluttering like wings behind them. It was strange for the Revelation's escape pods to have parachutes, for these had long since been considered obsolete. But they lent a silence to the descent that would have been impossible with the more recent anti-gravity generators. By the time the escape pods touched down, all that was left of the Revelation was an ugly scar on the barren side of the moon.

Time meant nothing to the Oracle, but the Oracle understood all about time. The Oracle knew that the Revelation had crashed on Aural. The Oracle knew that the Oracle's time had come, and that it was time, in the sense of the word which we understand, to leave. The Oracle knew everything. Well, almost everything. The Oracle still did not know how it could be that knowing everything could be so irritating at times. Since the Oracle knew that the Oracle would soon have to leave, and that there was nothing the Oracle could do to prevent the Oracle's departure, the Oracle did nothing. The Oracle knew that doing nothing could be very irritating. In time (again, in the sense that we understand it), the Oracle "died" (this time, not in the sense that we understand death). A minute or so after the Oracle had "died", a man was observed (by someone) leaving the wooden door that marked the entrance to the Oracle. The "man" looked suspiciously like GEB, but then no one on Oral had actually seen GEB before, so although he was observed, he was not actually noticed. What was noticed, however, was that almost immediately after he had left, the old wooden door faded slowly away. People then began to talk about the strange "man" who had left the scene only moments before, but by then it was too late. No one remembered what he looked like anymore.

They emerged from the escape pods surrounded by the barren desolation of the other side of Aural. A stiff wind had sprung up, and Amnot felt like he was on one of the fabled ancient deserts of Thear. They stood like that for a while, just looking around, wondering what to do. Savina voiced the thought that was running through all of their minds. "What do we do now?" she asked.

No one spoke for a while, then Amnot suddenly remembered something. "The ring!" he cried, ignoring the six strange looks and one very interested look he got from Savina and her crew. He took out the ring that the Oracle had "given" him (he still wasn't sure whether or not he had actually been to see the Oracle), and examined it more closely. It looked like just a normal ring, shining and golden but nothing exceptional. What had the Oracle said? "When the time is right this will show you how to find me". What did that mean? Amnot thought for a while. He was too absorbed in this to notice Savina and her crew. Savina and her crew, for that matter, were too busy giving strange looks to Amnot to notice what Kloud was doing. Or rather, what the thing that appeared to be Kloud was doing.

After some moments, Amnot realized what he had to do. What did one normally do with rings? Put them on, of course. So he put on the ring, and promptly fell into the ground. The remaining people stood staring at the ground where Amnot had been, so shocked that they did not at first notice the tendrils of fog that were beginning to surround their feet. When the fog formed hands and started grabbing their feet, however, they noticed it in a hurry.