Star Sailor
by: Chris Fox
#2
Otto al-Kara of Rangpur
a story published by Writers’ Bloc
https://writers-bloc.tumblr.com/stories
copyright: 2013
This book is DRM free, because DRM is stupid, and I want you to read this story for free. It would be nice if you downloaded this legally. But you can totally share it with friends if you want to. Just don’t charge people for it, and tell them to get the real thing at the official website, listed at the end of the book.
Now let’s get on with the story…
In a Universe of infinite space, girl travels by raft amongst the stars.
#2 - Otto al-Kara of Rangpur
Najima gazed upon the quiet surface of an uncolonized moon. It was small and battered with craters, the soil a slight pinkish hue, and she thoughts of how beautiful it looked in its desolation before she bit the end of her ink pen as she turned her gaze to the distant sun. The bright blue kiln baked the entire solar system, making its nearest planets all but inhospitable lumps of crusted earth floating in the void.
Najima returned to her bound, paper journal, and resumed her writing.
I'm currently in orbit around Nanda IV. I'm over the pink moon. I like the colour. It looks like someone molded a giant ball out of pastel chalk. I remember visiting Nanda IV on holiday, long ago. We used to have family here, before the war days. Their land is probably still planetside. But they have no doubt moved to the inner regions of the Empire long ago.
I'm here on business this time. It's nice to feel productive. I haven't had a real job since the last entry, almost three weeks ago. I could do with some money. I took a job before I left Yala II after my last ordeal with those bandits that were harassing those farmers I met. The family was so happy, they insisted they find a reason to keep me traveling, and sent me toward their family here. They wanted to deliver some heirlooms, but they've never been allowed passage across the interstellar borders from the Vengali Commonwealth to Empire space. Helping them makes me feel useful.
Najima bit her pen, thinking of what to write next, before scribbling I’ve been thinking on the page. Immediately and violently, she scratched the word out as soon as it was set to the page, and attempted writing again. I felt was on the page before she sliced an ink-slash through the words. Staring at her scribble, she could still see the indention of the words in the page, and in a fit of anger, she threw her journal into the depths of space. She watched as it floated off beyond the field of oxygen that surrounded her small wooden raft, and off into the distance.
As it drifted on, Najima sighed and traced her leg with her finger, beginning at her knee until she snaked her finger through the anklet resting just above her foot, a shimmering bit of slim but unbreakable twine that glimmered multicolour like a rainbow. With half reluctance and another punctuated sigh, Najima rose, fixed the mast and sails of her raft, and sailed to the journal as it drifted aimlessly with inertia through the blackness.
After retrieving the journal, she tended to her raft once more, and guided herself to the other side of the moon, revealing its parent planet. Nanda IV was completely within view, a great marble of pale tan, with dots of green and small pools of water that were hardly excuses for oceans. The fast-spinning desert planet was carved by crags and mountains ranges so massive they were the most prominent objects visible from space, their deep browns contrasting the khaki earth.
Najima checked her bearings with her Multiscope, her telescopic gadget used for navigation. Adjusting her mast and sails, and adjusting the anti-grav engine in the center of her raft, she set a trajectory to enter the atmosphere. As the raft slowly drifted toward the planet, she floated her way through the zero-gravity of space back to her bedding. Curling herself up with her tattered thermal blankets, Najima returned to her journal.
I can't help but think. My thoughts consume me out here. It's the worst part of the traveling. I get distracted by a smell, a colour, or a memory, and I start thinking. And then I overthink, and then it's all over. My thoughts only go to one place. I can't help them, and they frustrate me. But that's the life of a girl like me, I guess.
You know all this already.
I need to occupy myself. Adventures.
Adventures, Najima. Get to them.
∞∞∞
Within the hour, Najima was descending into the atmosphere on the night-side of the planet. Since the planet had a fast rotation, with seven hour day-night cycles, the countryside below was illuminated by the dual moonlight of the full moons in the sky, the third moon on the daylight side of the planet. Following her Multiscope's directions, Najima traveled toward the planet's magnetic north, where the tool showed her destination, an otherwise unremarkable town known for its massive underground lake, which was the major export to the rest of the planet's dry countryside.
As she passed the scrubby, parched landscape beneath her, the sky lit up into a bright pink. Najima had reached the planet's morning side; the sky slowly darkened into an orange hue with musty turquoise at the highest point of the sky, while the rocky ground below whipped a mix of sand and dust in the morning winds that blew Najima's black hair off her shoulders.
The distant blue sun's UV rays were already beginning to take a toll on Najima, and she took off her messy, paint-splattered, black jacket, opting for some shorts and a white tank top, putting on her trusty combat boots last, and lacing them tight. As she drank from a water bottle, she shaded against the sun as she reached her destination.
The town was a mishmash of architecture. Twenty story skyscrapers with tinted glass lined the business district on one end, very en vogue Dravidian architecture; the other end made of industrial styled buildings, dotted by bulky, squat structures compacted together, with linear roads lining city blocks - popular architectural styles in Vengali cities.
The majority of the town was as Najima remembered: highly traditional buildings - most either four stories and slim, or constructed in a square with a central riad - a shared courtyard for the residents - all made of materials natural to the region, with alleys cutting through the tightly knit houses at mathematical angles while streets intersected at many traffic circles.
The pre-Imperial minarets, dating back to the Sixth Era - architecture completely disparate from the modern Seventh Era - towered above everything but the skyscrapers, at four corners of the town. These once secured the town in an oxygen rich environment during the early days of terraforming, many millennia ago, much like Najima’s oxygen generator worked for her raft. They still stood as a mark of history and ingenuity, or at very least a petty tourist trap.
Even from Najima's height, floating over the streets, she could smell the town's rich scent. "Never changes," she hummed to herself, looking at the people milling about below. Lately Najima had been traveling back and forth along the invisible line that separated the Vengali Commonwealth and the Dravidian Empire. Her last adventure took her to the Commonwealth, but Najima had always called the Empire home.
She always took a liking to the energy of an Empire controlled planet, even a smaller, less populated planet like Nanda IV. No matter how small the town on the planet, stores there would always be filled with the freshest commodities, their bazaars rich with varieties of food from across the galaxy, their cafés roasting the freshest coffees and steeping the finest teas. Success through production, the pundits would say on the news channels that broadcasted on the Stream, calling the Empire a place of capitalist opulence. And it was hard to argue them.
Najima landed at the spaceport on the Imperial side of town, and brought her rickety raft next to a small freighter, although small was relative, as it rea
ched almost ten stories in height, and the length of nearly 300 meters. The dock manager gave Najima an odd look, although it was difficult to tell whether it was a look of confusion or revulsion at Najima's comparatively pitiful wooden craft. Nevertheless, he had Najima pay her parking toll in Paisaz, before she wound her way down the stairs and through the halls of the spaceport to the streets.
The town was busy with morning activity, and Najima remembered this same street as a child, at the entrance to the same spaceport. When she was first here, she remembered crying as soon as she hopped onto the sandstone streets from the metal stairs. No sooner had she stepped onto the sidewalk was she trampled by a bulky man with a full beard. The man flummoxed over her, his boot kicking her in the chest, before he began cursing at her - an eight year old - for blocking HIS path as she ran and shoved her face into her mother's sari while her father yelled.
That was the nature of Nanda. Days were short here, so you didn't slow down. You fought and jostled your way through the daylight. So as Najima hopped off the metal stairs of the refurbished spaceport nine years older, she blended into pedestrian traffic without a second's hesitation, and walked with the floods of people toward the bazaar.
The market was boisterous with