The Mirrorverse

Ka

Ka returned to Eden a different man to the one who had arrived only days ago. Silence met him and Xhisara as they took their places behind trees in case of further gunmen.

They were missing Les, Syrhahn and April out of their immediate party, with no clue as to the fate of Xhisara’s friends that had come to Eden to apparent safety. The forest bore no sign of the carnage that had desecrated it only hours earlier.

Finding the others appeared to be harder than he had anticipated. Ka had been braced to come across bodies, but ill prepared for the innocence of Eden.

Ka and Xhisara both froze at the same time as they heard a voice from the direction of the cabin. Ka listened carefully and began to make out the song.

“Ah it’s a pirate’s life for me!” Les sang, or rather slurred at the top of his lungs.

They followed the drunken spiel, meeting no obstacles or gun wielding maniacs on the way to Les.

“Les,” Ka approached Les to see his face streaked with tears, an amber fluid filled bottle airborne in his left hand.

“It’s a pirate’s life for Ka!” he slurred loudly, belching. He looked away from Ka, shaking his head. Ka presumed his presence brought him back to earth as it were, more than the bereaved man could handle.

Not pursuing a line of conversation that would hurt him more, Ka wondered out loud where he had acquired the single malt whiskey he was waving around.

“Ah, this noyce lair-die asked wut oy needed, ah whiskey!” the Irish accent combined with the blood on his clothes to change Ka’s friend into someone he didn’t recognise.

“Come on, time to go,” Xhisara was right, they didn’t need to hang about. “Syrhahn and April, have you seen them?”

“I’m going nowhere,” Les pronounced, backing away clumsily and losing his footing. Ka caught him and Xhisara portalled them all back to the clearing, the last place Les needed to be.

“Syrhahn!” shouted Xhisara. “April!”

“I don’t think they’re here, April’s taken them away to safety,” Ka looked at Xhisara, trying to read her passive expression.

“You’re right, we need to go.”

Les started stumbling away from them, crying and then screaming at the blood on the ground, Rob’s blood.

“I’m not leaving him here,” Ka glared at Xhisara, knowing that Les couldn’t come on their mission in that condition.

“Okay, we’ll leave him with friends,” Xhisara didn’t give Ka a chance to reply before grabbing him and Les and taking them away from Eden.

The heat hit them as they arrived in a stunningly beautiful vista. They were stood at the opening of a cave, with the sea venting its anger at the rocks below. Comparatively to the perfect temperature of Eden, it was like entering a raging inferno, and Ka worried for Les’s hydration levels with whiskey as his thirst quencher.

Well there’s no point in asking where we are, what would I do with the answer? What planet in what solar system in what universe?

“Do your friends live here?” wondered Ka aloud, receiving a sharp head shake from Xhisara. She entered the cave without indicating whether they should follow or not, so Ka proclaimed himself the Les protector.

“D’ya think ya’d die down there?” Les was far too close to the cliff edge, so Ka grabbed him and pushed him into the wide cave opening.

“No,” Ka told him, no for everything.

Shortly Xhisara reappeared with a shoulder bag which looked heavy. Ka guessed it was full of the gold that they needed.

“Shall I?” he asked, reaching for the bag, in true gentlemanly fashion.

“No it’s fine,” Xhisara replied lightly, and grabbed the both of them again.

This time they arrived into shrubbery, and emerged into the centre of a large city. The major difference between it and every other city Ka and Les had ever seen, were the flying ships traversing the night sky in neat lines.

“Is this where your friend is?” Ka asked softly, propping Les up. He really didn’t want to leave him somewhere he couldn’t collect him from.

“No, we can’t let him go, we’ll go together and deal with it,” Xhisara informed him, retaining her perfect composure.

Ka breathed a great sigh of relief, as he grappled with Les to keep him upright. It had always been one of Les’s quirks, the insistence that he could walk when he couldn’t, and the refusal of help that usually resulted in the pair of them landing on the floor. This time there was no merriment, just grappling.

Xhisara got hold of Les’s other arm and together they wrenched him upright. Ka couldn’t blame Les one bit. He couldn’t get his head around watching Maya die then show up. One dead body in his arms, the other alive only feet away. He was so lucky that Maya had come back from the dead. No-one was going to bring Rob back.

“I don’t know what time it is here,” Xhisara grunted breathlessly, laden with the gold and Les. “I don’t know what time sales happen.”

“Do you know where?” asked Ka as the whiskey bottle smashed on the ground, empty already. Les had fallen unconscious, and was now easier to manage with a leg and a wing. Ka got the wings, Les’s arms, and Xhisara grabbed his legs. Awkwardly, they progressed down the street.

“Yes, I brought us as close as I could, I hope it’s close enough,” she was panting at a similar rate to Ka, he didn’t see how much longer they could sustain it. It wasn’t just carrying Les, he was a dead weight, a sack of spuds. Ka appreciated that oblivion was the best thing for Les right then, but in that strange city in the dark, wet streets, it wasn’t the best thing for Ka.

They rounded the corner of a block to see the ground was all taken as a pedestrian zone, as the traffic was flying above them. Ka suspected it wasn’t too late by the sheer volume of air traffic, but what did he know, that could have been the middle of the night traffic.

The tall buildings gave way to the most spectacularly bizarre sight Ka had ever seen. Somehow, the thought of a spaceship shop was a vast open area of ground, it had never occurred to him that it would, like the traffic, be in the air.

Open fronted skyscrapers flanked the pedestrian area, with ships of every shape and size crammed into floor after floor of ships. It was sci-fi heaven. The buildings were lit both externally and internally, creating a spectacular light show for prospective buyers.

Ka wondered how you sorted the cheap from the expensive, the new from the old, as the buildings were as numerous as the floors they held.

Les’s loud snoring assured Ka was still alive. While Les was a drinker, that was a litre of whiskey he had polished off in a very short amount of time.

“We get ourselves a sales guide who will take us to the ships that meet our specifications,” Xhisara informed Ka.

They approached the nearest glowing spectacle and were immediately accosted by a number of sales persons, most of a somewhat dubious nature. Ka wondered at the kind of world that has technology that provides flying ships, but doesn’t provide its occupants with a dentist. Some of the sales people were definitely lacking in the tooth department.

They were all Xhisara’s size, Ka felt like a hobbit amongst men and wizards. It was actually quite nice to not understand a thing the rabid throng were shouting in whatever language was theirs. He was still rather relieved when Xhisara pulled out a translator.

“We need a moderately sized ship for twelve or more people for inter-system travel,” Xhisara informed them, assisting Ka to place Les carefully on the ground and then shield Les’s inert form between them.

“Is he dead?” asked one of them.

“No! He’s my friend, he’s drunk,” Ka protested a little too loudly, which was punctuated by a large Les shaped snore.

“How much currency?” the toothless asked.

Xhisara pulled out a gold bar, leaving her bag looking depleted and empty.

Their eye’s widened as dollar signs lit up in them. Xhisara put it back into her bag with difficulty, glaring at them as if to challenge them to steal from her. Personally Ka thought she was barking mad pulling out something like that in a place like that, but she knew what she was doing. Maybe toothless people didn’t steal gold bars in worlds with aerial supermarkets for ships.

Now they had to choose a sales person, each one was clamouring over each other for the commission. Ka noticed a guy shoving another guy off Les’s leg, protecting him.

“You!” said Ka abruptly, surprising Xhisara. He pointed at the guy and quietly explained to Xhisara what he had been doing. She nodded and they picked the young guy with a full complement of teeth who cared more about protecting Les than getting his commission.

With some difficulty the three of them picked Les up, and were led by the man on Les’s left leg to a building on the right. It was lit up like the rest, but on closer inspection the ships were shinier, bigger.

Each floor of the building varied in height, as in all the buildings. Some were only thirty feet in height, others a hundred feet or more. The lower floors were vast; air plane hangar kind of size, and then some.

They all boarded that planet’s version of an elevator; a small open topped ship, the cabriolet convertible of the spaceship world. Getting Les in was interesting, and keeping him in once he briefly woke up was even more fun. Luckily he passed out again, leaving Ka little time to admire the view as they arrived at the right level.

It was a hundred footer level, and despite the open front, had incredible acoustics. Ka would have loved to have heard an opera singer wail in those concrete walls. They were led, literally, as the salesman had picked up Les’s leg again, the gold bar beginning to visibly weigh Xhisara down as the satchel was cutting into her shoulder. Ka knew why he couldn’t carry it, he couldn’t portal out of there if a thief appeared. He also presumed he might not have the physical ability to carry the exceptionally heavy looking bar and Les as well.

And there she was, the most beautiful ship in the multiverse. Ka was no expert on spaceships, but none could top that ship. Ka and Xhisara nodded their agreement at the ship and indicated to the sales guy that they liked the look of that one.

“You can get a better ship for your money,” he said, but Ka was inextricably drawn to that one ship. “It is a good ship though,” the salesman added quickly, not wanting to lose his sale.

The Nysterie was long and thin, oval discs on either end of a sleek golden connecting tunnel. She shimmered somehow in the lights, a vast beauty overshadowing her competitors. Ka and Xhisara saw a man waving at their sales guy, obviously intending him to take them to his ship, a perfectly nice one, but it wasn’t the Nysterie.

“Can I get a pilot to take her into orbit? We’ve got a pilot joining us off world,” Xhisara lied, as they looked around the ship’s control deck. She could hardly say that they have a traveller called Maya who can teleport ships.

Les was lying on the ground in the mess hall where they had abandoned him. Ka sank down next to him, overwhelmed by his tour of the ship, most of which looked pretty much the same. Metal walls, metal grid-like floors, metal doors. He did like the mess hall, it was huge and shiny. In fact, in any other circumstances, he would have said the Nysterie was just perfect.