Eternal Rage

Time immemorial. It had been more than a thousand of the small being’s lifespans since she’d last felt the black thrill of her charge’s emotions, since she’d known what she was doing. That last flash of hatred, defiance, the vow for revenge, which was all that was driving her forwards. She was so close, she could almost feel him, almost touch him, she was so close to seeing her charge it was driving her mad. It had been this way for so long, and she’d tried everything. Soleara could remember the early days, when being Free hadn’t been so painful, when she was full of optimism and hope as well as desperation. The need had been as strong then as it was now, but somehow it seemed more painful these days. She’d flown thousands of light years in mere days, slipping into the ‘star stream’ (the dimensionally warped wake left by ships travelling through hyperspace) in order to travel faster than physically possible. But she’d been too late; she had entered the orbit of the right planet only to find her beloved charge had just been imprisoned for his crimes. She had no idea what he’d done, or even what species he was, but when the prison ship left she knew he was on it. It was as she pursued the ship out of the atmosphere she’d felt his last emotions, his last thoughts before his mind had fallen silent. But she could still feel his life pulsing before her, and in that moment of grief and confusion she’d hesitated, allowing the ship to leave the atmosphere and set off into space. It was her biggest regret; if she’d have acted then she’d be connected by now. She’d chased after it the moment she’d got her wits together of course, but in the vacuum of space there was no way she could open the ship without killing her charge. So now here she was, following this oval metal thing on its seemingly endless journey, protecting the thing she hated most in the galaxy like it was her own pod, slowing her pace to match its infuriating sublight crawl. She understood now that her charge had been cryogenically frozen, but there was still nothing she could do about it. It was beyond infuriating, knowing that all that separated her from her charge was a metal skin a similar thickness to her wing membrane, that and the laws of physics. The last thing she wanted was for her charge to die from explosive decompression the moment she laid eyes on him. If he was male that is, over the years she’d got so used to referring to her charge as male she seriously hoped that was the case. She could smell a solar system approaching, the few wafts of stray atmosphere telling her exactly what gasses made up the planets orbiting that star. She breathed deep, the holes in her neck opening wide to get the best possible scent. She stopped suddenly, unsure if she was dreaming. She sniffed again, this time it was unmistakable. Oxygen, the gaseous type. An awful lot of nitrogen as well, but there’d been some nitrogen in the world he’d come from too, so it couldn’t be poisonous to him. Hope swelled in her breast in the first time since her charge was so cruelly snatched from her. There was an asteroid belt between her and her goal, as well as four gas giants, but Soleara didn’t care. For the first time in thousands of years, she knew what she had to do. She dug her hind claws into the ship and grabbed it tight, then set of for the living world that shone out as the hope in her life. Don’t worry little one She thought. Not long now.

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