Iter Per Astra: Volume 1 - Lost Princess

Rose ran into the woods and bushes, and Joseph chased after her, shouting her name whenever he got the chance.

“Rose!” He called. “Please, stop!”

“No!” She answered. “I don’t want to put you in harm’s way, I won’t let that happen again.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“NO!” She shouted. “I will not take that risk.”

Rose closed her eyes for a moment, trying to calm herself in the darkness as she tried to forget the haunting memories of her past. Of the events that happened that day she ran away to Coryzen. However, her moment of solitude was short-lived as she stumbled over a fallen tree branch and tumbled to the ground. She quickly flipped around to stand up but then she saw Joseph kneeling beside her.

“Please, let me help you,” Joseph said. “You don’t have to keep running anymore.”

“No... No, I won’t let you!” She crawled backward trying to get away from Joseph. “Please stay away from me. Just knowing my name will get you killed.” She continued as she managed to stand up and continue running.

“I promise you that won’t happen. You can’t keep running away forever, you will just end up all on your own...”

“You’re right.” She said as she slowly stopped running. “There is nowhere I can hide from them; I might as well just be dead.”

“That doesn’t need to happen,” Joseph said as he slowly approached her. “We can help you, just because you are a Xenohuman doesn’t mean that you have to die. That is what they want the people to think out there, but it doesn’t have to be like that.”

“It’s not just being a Xenohuman...” She continued as if she was going to say something else but stopped. “It's...”

“You are running away from someone... aren’t you?”

She remained silent.

“The confederacy, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know...”

“Tell me, what happened that caused you to run away like this?”

“Well... around fifteen years ago, the same ship that hovered here today came to my village, but it wasn’t just one, it was dozens of them, and they decimated my village; at the end, they took a lot of us prisoners.”

“And you escaped?”

“I don’t remember how I escaped, but when I woke up, I was near a city that I had never seen before, I knew that I was on another planet, but I didn’t know which one. I made a couple of friends and I told them who I was, and...” She stopped talking as the bad memory came back.

“And?”

She remained silent.

“Rose... Rosalina was it... I need you to tell me what happened. You will not heal if you don’t open up to other people.”

She nodded.

“Now tell...”

“T-The day after... they... they were all dead...” She said as she covered her face with her hands. “In their house, there was this man in black armor, he also wore a black helmet and black mask, I could only see his eyes, and... he told me, that anyone who knows who I am, they... they will end up like them.”

“Black armor...” Joseph said. “That’s a Confederacy Blackguard trooper. Why would they send a Blackguard after you? Those are some of the most elite troopers of the Confederacy.”

“I think it’s because of my powers...”

“Why do you think that?”

“I was one of the people who had the highest concentration of nebulite in their blood, the higher the concentration, the more powerful my abilities will become. I also remember that I was the person with the highest concentration in the history of my village.”

She was going to continue talking about why the Confederacy might be after her, but she stopped as she noticed a stone slab on the ground with some sort of writing on it, it was covered in moss, dirt, and old leaves, she remained fixated on it and then started cleaning it out a bit.

“I didn’t know we were in this area,” Joseph said. “Although I should have suspected it by the direction you were going in.”

“What area?” She asked curiously looking at him.

Joseph stood up and turned his gaze to an old village that was completely abandoned. The old structures were overgrown with wildflowers and moss, the streets were completely overgrown by tall weeds and small trees that had started to grow, and the entire village was below the canopy of trees that blocked much of the sunlight that would have touched the ground of the village.

“This was the site of the Indigenous people that lived on Coryzen before we arrived.”

“I didn’t know that there were people who lived here before you.”

“Some people said that they should be called Coryzians as well but when the current civilization came here, they had already left, this is all that they left behind. We don’t know who the people were.”

“Wow!” Rose said, she then started to push away any dirt and leaves that were atop the slab, and as she did that, she noticed a familiar symbol on the rock. The symbol looked like an oversimplified version of a galaxy spiral with a clear vertical separation in the middle, on the top of the left half circle and the bottom of the right half circle had a small tail that represents the outwards flow of stars. And in the middle was a simple musical icon. She passed her hand slowly over it, removing some dirt that was stuck on the engraving.

“Is that symbol something important to you?” Joseph asked as he kneeled beside her looking at the symbol.

“It is.” She answered as a tear came out of her eyes. “This is the royal symbol of the Novasong family. This is the tomb of Velmar Novasong.” She then looked at Joseph. “The first Novasong.”

“Yes,” she replied, a single tear escaping her eye. “This bears the royal emblem of the Novasong lineage— this is the resting place of Velmar Novasong.” She shifted her gaze to Joseph. “The first Novasong, this is my oldest ancestor with the name Novasong.” She was without words. “I can’t believe that I found this.”

The remains of the small city-like structure remained barely intact. The streets were empty and silent, except for the occasional rustle of leaves or the creak of a loose roof board. The buildings were crumbling and decaying, their glass windows broken and their roofs sagging. Some have collapsed entirely, leaving piles of rubble and debris. The paint was faded and peeling, and the signs were barely legible. The town was surrounded by overgrown vegetation of the forest around it, vines and weeds invaded every crevice and corner of every building. The air is thick with dust and a sense of desolation. There were also remains of several vehicles with clear marks of burning in a fire or heavy bullet fire.

“I see you know your history,” Joseph added.

“I know,” Rose answered. “I barely ever left the castle back home; I barely know anything outside of Elysium. How I miss that place.”

“Did you ever thought of going back home?”

“I would love to, but my home is hidden from the galaxy’s navigation charts, I wouldn’t even know where to look.”

“What is this written here?” Joseph pointed at a passage that was engraved on the tombstone. “I don’t recognize the letters.”

“This is Elysium scripture. My father told me that these letters were designed so that only Xenohumans from our village would be able to understand them.”

“Can you read it?”

“I can, but I am a bit rusty on the letters.”

“So what does it say?”

Rose started reading out loud. “For those Xenohumans who want to join us in a place where you will not be persecuted anymore, you must follow the path that we did as a civilization, you will jump from planet to planet but in the end, you will find us in Elysium.” She stopped for a second. “This is great!! There is a path back to Elysium, that’s my home!”

“I can’t believe that the Confederacy has done so much damage to the galaxy. Joseph thought for a minute looking at Rose and the ruins before him. Shortly after, he made a decision. “Rose.”

“Hm?” She answered. “What is it?”

“I will help you.”

“Help me?” She asked. “Help me with what?”

“I will make you a promise, Rose,” Joseph said grabbing her shoulders.

“Huh?” Rose’s cheeks turned bright red as she didn’t know what was happening. She didn’t even know what to say at that moment.

“I will take you home.” He declared.

“WHAT?!” Rose said surprised. “You.... you-you-you-you don’t have to do that.”

“I made the decision.” He reaffirmed himself. “I promise you and I will follow it to the end.”

“Commander!” Rose shouted to try to make him understand. “Please think about what you are saying!”

“I already told you; I made the decision. And I will not back down now.”

“B-b-b-but—” Rose tried to come up with a reason for him to decline. “That would mean you have to leave your post and everything you did in the CRN to get to where you are now!”

“You are the second person who has some sort of relationship with me that I’ve met that has lost everything because of the confederacy,” Joseph answered. “The first time I wasn’t old enough to make a difference but now I can. I know that I can’t fight the confederacy directly, but at least I can try to fix the damage they made.”

Rose took a few steps backward.

“A-Are you sure about this... My family is nearly twenty generations long, and most of them moved from their planets which could mean visiting at least twenty different planets and the nations of those planets could be aggressive to us.”

“I am prepared to face all the dangers that could come with this.”

Rose took a deep breath and then looked at Joseph in the face.

“Okay, but if we are going to do this, I want you to call me by my real name. Rosalina Novasong, but call me Rosalina. And please don’t call me Princess, I feel that it will attract the wrong attention.” Rose said.

“Rosalina, then,” Joseph answered. “And I want you to call me by my name as well.”

“H-huh? O-o-okay, J-J-Joseph then.” She said with a bit of difficulty and cheeks blushed.

“Now that we got this cleared out, there are other things that I want to make clear.”

“What things?”

“From here on out, we will also refer to each other as equals, just because I have a higher rank than you in the CRN doesn’t make my opinion the one that has to be done. You understand?”

“Yes.” She answered. “Are you telling me that we are not going to do this trip under the CRN?”

“No, I’ll ask Father if he can lend me one of the old ships by the graveyard for this trip.” He then extended his hand to Rosalina. “As I said before, I promise to take you home.”

Rosalina looked at his hand and then at Joseph.

“Does this mean something else on your planet?” He asked worried.

“No no.” Rosalina quickly said back. “I was just thinking that you might be the first real friend that I’ve made.”

“I’m glad that I was able to be your first friend.”

After a few seconds, she accepted and shook his hand.

“I accept. So what name are we going to go with?” Rosalina asked excitedly.

“What?” He said laughing a bit. “What are you talking about?”

“A name for the team. If we meet more people, we should use a name to identify ourselves with, I was thinking of going with Star Knights.”

“Fine.” He smiled. “We’ll go with that then.”

“Yay.” Rosalina smiled back.

Shortly after, someone was closing to their position, from the sound of the bushes and branches snapping, Joseph determined the direction of the person.

“Someone is coming,” Joseph said. “Get behind me!”

Rosalina quickly moved behind him, peeking a bit from the side.

“Could one of Iago’s soldiers follow us here?” She asked.

“Not sure, be ready to run.”

Joseph reached for his blaster but then realized that his blaster had been destroyed by Oliver earlier.

“Blast.” He muttered. “I’ll have to use this.”

He reached for a knife he had tucked away in one of his shoes and prepared to attack whoever came out.

Melody then stepped out of the thick shrub surrounding them.

“Melody!” Rosalina said.

“Finally... caught... up... to you...” Melody said seemingly without breath.

“You, okay?”

“I’m fine...” Melody said as she slowly sat down on the floor. “I just need a minute.”

“To think that you can easily run around the harbor in seconds, but take that away and look at you, dead tired after a short sprint.” Joseph teased Melody.

“I’ll... get you later...” Melody said.

“Come on Commander, don’t tease her like that,” Rosalina said.

“What happened to calling me Joseph.”

“Oh right... Sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry about Joseph,” Melody said as she slowly stood up. “We are siblings, we sometimes talk to each other like that.”

“But your last name isn’t Terix?” Rosalina asked. “Are you adopted?”

“I am adopted. Joseph’s father rescued me from a village that the Confederacy destroyed, Iago and I were the only survivors.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“The confederacy attacked your village, didn’t they? Do you know if there are any survivors?” Joseph asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I guess that is where we are going.”

“Going where?” Melody asked.

“To Elysium,” Joseph stated. “I am going to take Rosalina to Elysium.”

“Um... What? What made you come up with that?”

“This city is from my ancestors and there is a possibility of a map leading to Elysium.” Rosalina said.”

“Joseph, you do know what has recently happened here right?” Melody asked.

“I’m not sure what you are talking about.”

“This city has been conquered by a bandit gang of weapon smugglers.”

“They’ll be using normal blasters right; we can handle that. And as we don’t have to attack them”

“We can’t.” Melody interrupted. “The latest weapons they stole were designed by the late Starline’s daughter.”

“I see,” Joseph answered sadly.

“Isn’t Starline the name of the station?” Rosalina asked.

“We are talking about Marek Starline’s daughter,” Melody informed. “She had to be the best mind in the galaxy, well... before she disappeared.”

“Come on, we just have to avoid them, we don’t have to interfere with them,” Rosalina said.

“What can you possibly want to get from this old city, this place is around two hundred hundred years old.”

“You know that I want to return home, right? the location of Elysium on the Galaxy was hidden from everyone on the planet including Royalty like me to protect everyone on the planet.”

“Then how did the Confederacy find the planet?” Melody asked.

“I would like to know as well, but the only way to return home is to follow the path my ancestors took.”

“Planet hopping?! Really?!” Melody shouted. “Is that your best plan?!”

“Melody calm down,” Joseph said. “You’re scaring her.”

“How can I be calm? That is the worst idea you could have come up with. Is this what you were taught in strategy training?”

“I admit that it is not a great plan but is the only way we can find the planet,” Joseph said.

“So, you’re telling me that your plan will have you visit all fifty-two thousand six hundred and forty-two nations in the galaxy and that is without including the secondary colonies which makes it around a hundred thousand nations!! And Elysium isn’t even on that list hence why it is lost!!”

“But the hardest step is already done!” Rosalina said.

“What did you just say?” Melody said surprised. “The hardest step is already done. What do you mean by that?”

“Y-Yes.” She continued. “The first step was to find one of the old cities, once we find one, we can find the next one and--.”

“So, you’re telling me that there is possibly a map leading to Elysium?” Melody asked.

“There is a map... if what my father told me is true,” Rosalina said.

Melody took a long sigh and thought about it for a moment.

“Fine.” She said grumpy. “I’ll help you get the location for the next city, but on ONE condition.”

“What condition is that?” Joseph asked.

“That we stay as far away from the bandits as possible. You understand?”

“Understood.” Joseph and Rosalina said at the same time.

“Joseph, you take this,” Melody said handing the blaster she was carrying to Joseph. “I’ll stick to my melee weapons for now.”

“Got it.” He answered. “Rosalina, what will you use?”

“She must remain hidden,” Melody said before Rosalina could answer. “She is not good with a blaster so she should remain our guide as she is the only one who knows which building the map is on.”

“I think I can do that,” Rosalina answered.

“You better,” Melody answered crossly. “Because I would rather not die being disintegrated by a Starline weapon.”

Rosalina took a few steps closer to Joseph and whispered. “Is she always like this? I thought she was kinder when I first met her.”

“When she is angry, she gets really really angry like you see now, but she is not always like this.”

“Good to know,” Rosalina said.

“When you two stop whispering, we can move on,” Melody shouted.

“Yes ma’am,” Joseph said calmly while Rosalina said the same thing but almost without breath because of the scare.

To Be Continued... on Volume 2: Fearless Commando...