I do apologize if I haven't been able to comment on your art, between writing and work, it's a tad hectic. I'll try to get to some of them soon. So, if you've read my previous stories about the Darai, you'll find a lot of easter eggs hidden in this story - such as origins of legends, myths, traditions, and technology - like the legend of the eagle, or origins of names they later adopt over the ancient names of their civilizations, and even cultural reference origins. There are also a couple of short stories I'm working on, so you might see those posted between chapters. Enjoy. edit: okay, I did a marathon comment session, hope I caught up with all your art.

Laena hugged the reading tablet in excitement as she opened to the newest story in the series. The story wasn’t exactly new, it had been written four hundred years ago, but it was new to her. The Morning Star library was programmed to release books stored in its database at staggered intervals to simulate having to wait for the next book to be published. She could read a book early, if she borrowed the book from someone further into the series than she was, but that would ruin the anticipation of a new book. She was on book #12 of the series, having downloaded it the day before the disaster that had all but destroyed the Morning Star. She turned to the first page and began reading to herself, a bare whisper in the dark. “As I set quill to paper, it is only now in the twilight of my life that I reflect back on humble beginnings as squire to a lesser sky knight, his name now forgotten by all but me…” Laena sighed, imagining what it had been like during the Age of the Sky Knights. “…I remember his kindness, his compassion, his courage, but most in my memory are his golden armored wings sparkling in the morning light of the sun coming up across the horizon of Daria–he was a mortal god to me as the solar winds caught his wings and propelled him across the distance to a damaged ship hurtling towards certain disaster…” The soft moan of literary pleasure brought Ren awake, the whispers had been at the edge of his awareness in a dream. He rolled himself over with a raised eyebrow. There was a blueish glow coming from under Laena’s wings where she had rolled herself up in a cocoon. “What the heck are you doing?” asked Ren in a sleepy voice. “I’m reading.” “Reading what?” “Sky Knight.” “Are you kidding, you read those sappy romance pulp novels?” “I’ll have you know they’re based on real history.” Ren grabbed her wing and pulled to make her start spinning in the zero-g environment of the pod. “Oh no! You’re in an uncontrolled spin, call a Sky Knight!” Laena snapped one wing up to the ceiling, and the other to the floor. The spin abruptly stopped, followed by Laena’s wing against the ceiling snapping back down. Ren pulled one of his own wings in front of his face just in time to block her strike. “You are an immature little boy and don’t understand anything. The Sky Knights protected travelers during the early years of the space program, they were heroes. Did you know every Morning Star Captain since we launched has been a Sky Knight.” Ren used his other wing to push against the floor and back to a safe distance. “I wouldn’t exactly call them Sky Knights, they’re Alarians, sort of, but not really–the Alarians are actually extinct–they’re the ancient ancestors of the Solanittes.” “The Gene-Breeders allow one Solanitte male per generation to be a throw-back Alarian.” “Yeah, yeah, I know. We get their strength, wisdom, courage, and blah blah blah, to guide us across the stars to a new world without risk of letting them populate and form another Alarian Imperial Dynasty.” Laena snapped her reading tablet off. “The Alarian Imperium was the golden age of Darai.” “Seriously? Are you an Imperial romanticist?” The radio console chose that moment to begin beeping an incoming message. Ren reached out with a wing and slapped the radio button. “Ren here.” “We have an emergency.” Ren groaned. It was Markus, the former quarterback of the Holentite High School Hawks, and now self-designated leader of the survivors. The initial giddiness of meeting the famous zero g-ball celebrity had quickly worn off. Markus was leaning on Ren and Laena for too much, they had already used up a quarter of their fuel running errands. “What’s wrong?” asked Ren. “Taslaen’s pod was struck by debris and pushed out of formation. I need you to go get them before they’re too far away to recover.” “Where are you?” asked Ren with a tinge of sulkiness in his voice. “I’m next to the second ring, someone said they saw lights flashing.” Ren hesitated–Markus was using his fuel even faster than them–but when did your own survival take precedence over the survival of another? He had Toma to think of, and the girls, and every drop of fuel he used was another moment towards the oxygen generator shutting down. He felt Laena’s wing brush gently against his shoulder. “I know what you’re thinking, but we’re all going to die in a month or two. These pods aren’t made for sustainable life-support.” Laena shrugged. “We’ll die a few weeks before everyone else, but when we go to the ancestors to be judged, we can hold our wings high because we did the right thing.” Ren sighed. “You read too much of that Sky Knight nonsense. Do you really think the Land of the Ancestors is real?” “I don’t know, but I have to believe in something or I’ll curl up in a ball and start crying.” “Why did our parents even bother putting us in the pods, what was their plan?” Laena pulled herself closer to Ren. “I don’t think they had a plan, I think they were just trying to give us a little extra time to figure something out.” Ren sighed and nodded, then reached his wing out again to push the radio button. “Okay, we’re on it.” “Thanks, buddy,” replied Markus. “Do you guys know anything about J-Sector?” Laena pushed herself towards the control console. “Yeah, the senior citizen quarters and the nursery is located in J-Sector on both rings. I used to volunteer in the nursery.” “I see a hull breech at the edge closest to G-Sector,” said Markus. “That’s the senior citizen quarters… just a second, Ren is getting ready to pull out of formation. I have to get strapped in.” “Good idea,” said Markus. “You don’t want to be free-floating when the pod starts moving.” Laena could hear voices behind Markus talking on other radios. “Do you have a command center in your pod? Where did you get the extra radios?” “I’ve been salvaging everything I can find from dead pods floating in the debris. I’ll let you and Ren concentrate on rescuing Taslaen’s pod now. We’ll need to meet soon so I can put a face to the voice. Markus out.” Laena leaned back and smiled. “Is he your boyfriend now?” asked a petulant Ren. Laena rolled her eyes. “Yeah, he’s my boyfriend, we’re going to run away and have dozens of eggs and live in his pod.” Ren ignored the sarcasm and turned his attention back to Taslaen’s pod. The pod wasn’t too far away yet. He gave the thrusters a quick burst to close the distance, though it still took twenty minutes before he was alongside the out of control pod. It was not going to be easy to dock with the pod. He flipped the autopilot off and gripped the joystick. His eyes flicked across the control console at the various gauges while sweat beaded on his forehead and his hand cramped. He fought to align the two pods spinning and pitching violently against each other, and for a brief moment the docking ports were aligned. A loud bang reverberated through the interior of the pod as Ren’s pod was hit by the corner of Taslaen’s pod, only worsening the spin and causing several minutes of frantic firing of precious compressed air through the attitude adjustment thrusters to bring his pod back under control. Ren glanced at the compressed air gauge, he’d used up nearly half the tank – this was advanced piloting and nothing like anything Maeken had taught him yet. He released the joystick and flipped the autopilot back on. “I can’t do it, the spin is too crazy.” “Can…the…autopilot…do…it?” panted Laena from the side seat where she had a death grip on the edge of the control panel, her knuckles as white as her wings. “If it can, I don’t know how. I only started training eight months ago with the after-school pilot’s club.” Laena shook her head. “But I’ve seen you take your pod out with your dad?” “Yeah, he flies, not me. I’ve only got five hours in the simulator, and most of that was flight control familiarization. I’m not a pilot.” “You’re all we have, and you’re all those kids in that pod have.” Ren glanced back at Toma and Kirae – they had both deployed their full armored spacesuit in anticipation of Ren crashing the pod and tearing open a hole in the hull. Ren unfastened his seatbelt and pushed himself out of the command chair. “I’ve got an idea, suit up, I’ll need to depressurize the cabin.” “What are you going to do?” asked Laena. Ren tapped in the safety code on his armor to deploy his full armored spacesuit. “I can’t fix this from here, I need to go over to their pod, hurry up, we’re getting further from the fleet every second.” Liquid metal flowed down his legs, arms, and over each feather of his wings. He winced as the liquid metal invariabley found some skin to pinch. The shimmering gold liquid metal continued up and around his head to form the shape of the most powerful bird of prey known on Daria. Laena’s own armor flowed over her body to cover her legs, arms, wings, and last around her head to form the shape of the most graceful bird known to Darians, the Swan. Her mouth dropped open when she saw the shape of Ren’s helmet. “Ren? You have Alarian Eagle Armor… what the heck…? Only the Captain has Alarian armor.” Ren shrugged, and with his shrug the armored feathers of his wings rippled like a river of gold. “I don’t know, it’s what they gave me.” “Ren…?” Laena tipped her head to the side in confusion. She looked back at Toma just to make sure; Toma had proper swan armor like any Solanitte. But, of course, they weren’t real brothers. “Ren…how do you have Alarian Eagle Armor?” Ren shook his head. “Do we have time for this? They probably just got it mixed up in the nursery and didn’t want to bother resetting the armor again.” Laena didn’t think that made sense. Armor was easily reset to a new person when its owner passed away, but only to someone with the same genetic coding. She couldn’t wear Holentite Hawk Armor, and a Holentite couldn’t wear Solanitte Swan Armor, and Ren shouldn’t be able to wear Alarian Eagle Armor. How had nobody noticed he had Eagle Armor? They had drills in school to learn how to deploy your armor for emergencies, but she would have noticed, anyone would have noticed… wait… because Ren had never been in school on days they had drills, he had always been out sick. Her eyes shifted to the interior of the pod–it was the best maintained pod she’d ever seen. The seats weren’t patched from years of use, and all the lights worked on the control panel, and it was shiny, like someone had spent a lot of time maintaining this pod. Her own pod hadn’t been able to be launched because something was wrong with the engine and they had been waiting for the repair parts to be manufactured. She looked at the impressive stack of supplies Ren’s dad had loaded. Nobody had that many supplies just waiting to be loaded at a moment’s notice. The Morning Star was 400 years into its mission and supplies were getting to the point that nobody had surplus anymore. And then there were the four red boxes. She knew what those were, and only the most senior of the crew had them. She was about to say something, but Ren pulled the lever to depressurize the cabin. The rush of air being sucked back into the storage tanks drowned out any chance of questioning him further about it. Ren then reached up and slid a panel to the side to reveal the tether on a winch. He pulled the tether down and hooked it to a loop on his armor. Laena heard Ren’s voice over the radio in her helmet. “There’s a green button below the autopilot switch, if something happens to me, push it and the autopilot will take you back to the fleet. Take care of Toma.” “Hey wait, is this dangerous, have you ever spacewalked before?” asked Laena. “I practiced a few times in the zero-g tube with Maeken.” Ren opened the hatch before Laena could protest. Darians were an avian species and had no natural fear of heights. He didn’t hesitate, or stop to gaze at the infinite drop below him, all he saw was a vast open sky calling his most primal instincts to fly. He dived through the hatch and instinctually spread his wings. The armor covering of his wings flowed like water behind him. His forward momentum took him out and away from the pod, until he reached the end of the tether and was abruptly halted with an ‘oomph’ and doubled over. He heard a giggle over the radio in his helmet. “You saw big sky and got excited. Now what?” asked Laena. Ren ignored her and tried to check the orientation of his position to Taslaen’s pod, but it was gone, and so was his own pod. He had a moment of disorientation before his pod came into view, but upside down. It took another moment to realize he was doing summersaults, which made sense. Mass in motion didn’t stop unless something stopped it. The tether had stopped him at the waist, but that had only transferred his forward momentum to the larger mass of his upper torso and wings, and now he was rotating on the tether. “Are you okay?” asked Laena. “I’m fine,” replied Ren as he tried to untangle himself from the tether wrapping itself around his legs. “Do you want me to pull you in?” asked Laena. “I don’t need pulled in,” snapped Ren as he pulled at the tangle of tether line. Turning around proved more of a challenge then it first appeared, it had always seemed so easy when he was in the zero-g tube practicing. The zero-g tube had giant yellow arrows pointing which direction was up, and the safety rails, but out here, there were no safety rails, and little to orient on, especially if you were turned the wrong way. He kicked his legs, trying to un-loop the tether from around his ankle, and after flailing around for several minutes like a fish that had jumped out of the ship’s fish hatchery tanks, he got a hold on the tether and gave it a tug. His summersault continued, but at least it was now back in the direction of the pod. The tether continued to tangle around him until he bumped into the hull and grabbed the hand-rung next to the hatch. Laena was at the hatch holding her side and laughing hysterically. Ren frowned at her, but couldn’t think of anything to say in retaliation. He finished untangling himself, then pulled himself hand-over-hand up to the top of pod, and then to the front view window. He’d set the autopilot to follow behind Taslaen’s pod and match its roll axis, but there wasn’t anything he could do about the yaw and pitch, it would have taken an enormous amount of fuel to orbit the pod in either of those directions. He crouched on view window of the pod and tried to get a feel for the timing of the spin, then pushed off with his wings spread wide and screeching like a bird of prey. Laena watched Ren as he sailed across the space between the pods, and saw the disaster before it happened, he hadn’t timed the rotation and pitch of the pod correctly. The rear end of Taslaen’s pod swung around and struck Ren like a bat hitting a baseball. Ren’s screeching battle cry abruptly stopped and was replaced with cry of pain. He swung out on the tether, but this time he wasn’t traveling perpendicular to the pod, but at angle from the anchor point. Ren swung in a wide arc around the pod and towards the back. The tether pushed the hatch door closed as it wrapped around the pod. Laena tried to push the hatch open to go out and help, but the tether was wrapped too tightly to even budge the door. She saw Ren fly past the front view window again as he was being wound up like a yo-yo. He would crunch against the side of the pod before the next pass. Laena noticed one of his arms was hanging like he’d injured it, she knew it had to be broken. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion now. She saw him reach down with his good arm and tug at the tether’s quick release. She screamed for him not to unhook the tether, but whether he heard her or not, he came loose from the tether and tumbled away from the pod, and by pure dumb luck, headed in the right direction for Taslaen’s pod. In her mind Laena could hear the bone crushing collision as Ren struck the side of Taslaen’s pod. She looked away, unable to watch any more of the carnage. She was certain Ren was now tumbling off to his death in the cold of space. “The…kids…are…okay...” rasped Ren in a weak voice. Laena looked back in time to see a set of eagle wings disappearing into the open hatch of Taslaen’s pod. “Ren, are you okay?” Ren pulled the hatch shut behind him and stared into the five small faces peering back at him from inside the black Raven-head winged-armor of the Rositites. No wonder they didn’t know how to operate the pod, they were all just frightened hatchlings. “Which one of you is Taslaen?” asked Ren. The largest of the boys, but still no more than 9 years old raised a hand. “I am.” “You did good,” said Ren. The boy puffed out his chest and smiled. Ren returned a pain filled grimace that he hoped would pass for a smile. He pulled himself into the command chair with effort. “Let’s…get you back…to the fleet.” Ren’s left arm still hung useless at his side, throbbing and causing waves of nausea; he felt like he might throw up. He lifted his good hand to the joystick to bring the pod under control, but another wave of pain caused a severe convulsion to roll through all the muscles of his body. His eyes rolled back into his head and peaceful darkness descended as his body went limp. Taslaen poked Ren twice, then yanked him out of the command chair and pushed him back to his brothers. “I told you it would work,” said Taslaen. “Tie him up.” “We should take the armor and throw him outside,” said Saraen. Taslaen shot his brother a disgusted look. “Don’t be stupid, we need him to tell us how to get into the sun shield, then we take the armor.” “And then you’ll be the Captain and I get all the chocolate milk I want?” asked Saraen. Taslaen ground his teeth together and fingered the dagger at his belt. It took all the restraint he could muster not to draw the blade and stick it through his brother’s throat. “Yes, and then you get all the chocolate milk you want,” replied Taslaen through clenched teeth, it was hard to believe they had the same mother, Saraen was an idiot. They would have more than just chocolate milk, they would have the entire Morning Star to plunder for oxygen, food, water, fuel, and anything else they wanted. Saraen was weak and deserved to die at Taslaen’s hand the moment he was no longer useful. Taslaen pulled himself into the command chair and put a hand on the joystick. Rositite children started learning about pods before they could even fly with their natural wings, but Taslaen was exceptional even among Rositites. By the time he was seven, his father was letting him take the stick when he flew supply runs between the rings–it only took him a moment to bring the pod under control. He fired the main thruster next and headed back towards the fleet. He would hide among all the pods until he could complete his plan to takeover the Morning Star, but he would have to be smart, he could easily fall prey to one of the older Rositite kids if he wasn’t careful–trust no one, unless they were family, and even then only at the end of a blade. He thought of his father, one of the most powerful of the secret under-lords, trading and selling contraband to anyone willing to pay. Father even had a few Bridge Officers he regularly traded with; father had been a great man and would have been proud that Taslaen had seen the disaster on the Morning Star for what it was, a chance to profit. The radio panel lit up; it was Markus. Taslaen switched the radio off, Markus had unwittingly served his purpose and was no longer needed. Markus had only heard a helpless hatchling when Taslaen had called him for help in a fake scared and helpless voice–but there were no helpless Rositites, everyone underestimated them. From the moment a Rositite was hatched, it was a fight for survival and dominance. Taslaen smiled, he would be captain. Maybe he would keep Saraen alive just so he could make everyone watch his brother drink all the chocolate milk.