(The Silence of Ancient Light, continued)
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A distant flash shook Anna from her reverie. She pulled her gaze from the receding destruction of the station with all its awful fascination and focused on the tiny yet intense flare of light near the horizon’s arc, beyond the terminator and approaching night, almost lost in the dreamlike sapphire veil of the upper atmosphere. Before she could bring any of the limited instruments available from the lander’s console to bear, the flare ended as abruptly as it had begun.
“Did you see that?”
“See what, Anna?”
Laxmi climbed up the ladder and into the copilot seat to gaze beside her into the inky black.
“That was a fusion engine. It didn’t last long, so I think it was an attitude correction and not an acceleration burn, but they’re out there.”
“Will they come for us?”
Read more at
(1,448 words; 5 min 47 sec reading time)
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While months have passed for us, dear readers, only minutes have passed for our heroes, through the magical time dilation of a story on pause while the author is busy with other things. But we have returned to Anna, Laxmi, and Ca-Tren, and they have escaped the destruction of the Kwakitl space station. Finally, after more than two months on the planet’s surface and much adventure and setback, they are about to arrive back at Aniara, silent all this time. As the scene opens, the lander has flipped end over end and is decelerating toward the starship, so from the cockpit they are looking back the way they have come. And that’s when Anna notices the flare of a distant fusion engine.
The Orta are coming for them.
They have time, but the mystery of what happened to Aniara, and to the captain, David, remains. What will Anna and her crew find when they arrive? Whatever caused the ship to go silent, will they be able to get it going again before the Orta arrive? And just what do the Orta want? Why have they been pursuing our hapless heroes across oceans and into orbit? Are they bent on interstellar conquest, or is it all just a misunderstanding?
It’s a mystery.
So, go click that link above, read the scene, and if you haven’t already, hit the Follow button, hit the Like button, and if you’re especially daring, leave a comment!
header image credit: Matt Fraser
Matt Fraser 