July 4th, 2486 - Planet Bungirba, Raven’s Crater - Amami’s House

Sunlight split the darkness, scattering glittering molecules of dust in its wake. Ichiro’s eyelids squeezed open, blinking rapidly as his eyes adjusted to the light of a new day. A shower buzzed rhythmically somewhere to his right, and the hum of voices reached him from below. The sleeping bag that Amami had given him the night before had been far more comfortable than the hammock in Angora’s shack; nevertheless, Ichiro couldn’t wait to get back to his comfortable double bed in his personal quarters on The Phoenix. The single bed in Amami’s dusty guest room had been stolen from him by the princess, who openly balked at the idea of sharing a bed, and so he had spent the night on the floor. Slowly, Ichiro slipped out of the sleeping bag and stood up, stepping across the wooden floor boards to close the lime-green curtains, shutting out the offensive sun. The buzzing next door stopped abruptly.

Ichiro perched himself on a windowsill and waited for Abiona to enter the room. He heard the slap of bare feet on the floorboards outside the room, and then the door creaked open. Abiona was already dressed, in sweatpants and a baggy V-neck shirt, with the words, ‘UNDER-CITY KINGS – SANCTUARY 2473’, splashed across it in black.

‘Can’t believe Amami had an Under-City Kings shirt’, Abiona said, unravelling the towel from around her head and tossing it onto the dishevelled bedsheets.

‘Didn’t take you for a fan of their music’, Ichiro said.

‘Wish I could have seen them live … I’ve never been allowed to go to planet Sanctuary though, since it’s on the cusp of the frontier…’

She sat on the bed, wriggling her toes and sighing deeply.

‘That would have been my next destination, you know. If you weren’t kidnapping me and all.’

‘Hey, if anyone was kidnaped it was me’, Ichiro retorted. ‘Maybe I should have seen it coming, but you won’t fool me twice. You’re under lock and key when we get back to the Phoenix, I can guarantee it’.

They sat in silence for a while, listening to the voices coming from below. The words were indistinct, but what was happening was easy to decipher; a mother was sending her children to school.

‘Why do you keep trying to run away, Abiona?’ Ichiro eventually asked, his words slicing through the silence.

Abiona shifted uncomfortably, and she stared daggers back at him. Then, her features relaxed, and she was unexpectedly smiling.

‘Go shower’, she said, clearing her throat. She stood and walked quickly towards the door, and stopped under the doorframe. ‘Wear something cute.’

She was gone, and Ichiro sat on the windowsill, alone.

*

Abiona watched as Ichiro descended the stairs, coming to a stop in the middle of the kitchen. The house was open plan but small, sunlight streaming in through large windows that took up much of the house’s wall space. The book shelves in the living room were piled high with medical tomes, children’s toys lay here and there on the carpeted floor, and a presenter silently read the news through an older model holographic television.

‘Ah, Ichiro—there’s some breakfast on the table, nothing fancy’, Amami said, moving past him to check her makeup in a cracked mirror by the oven.

‘Alcorna meat on toast’, Abiona said, taking a bite of the alien sandwich.

She watched in amusement as Ichiro crossed the kitchen, thanking Amami awkwardly and taking a seat at the table. He looked incredibly uncomfortable out of military clothing; he wore a traditional green-and-purple-striped tight fitting Bungirban shirt, showing off his chest through a thin strip at the front, and simple black trousers. He ran a hand through his short hair and rubbed his eyes with a free hand.

‘It suits you’, Abiona said with a wink, adjusting her ponytail.

Before Ichiro could respond, Amami unlocked the front door and turned to them.

‘You can eat while you walk—half the town already does, God knows we never stop working. I’ve got to get to work; I’ve given your girlfriend 1000 GSC so you shouldn’t starve. Come back to the house tonight before you guys go off-world, I’ll have dinner waiting.’

In Galactic Standard Currency, or GSC, a thousand would be enough for two meals at most … Abiona’s mouth almost watered at the thought of real street food.

‘She’s not my—’, Ichiro began, but Abiona cut him off, with a quick thank you to Amami.

With that, they were off, descending the steps from Amami’s stilted house out into the streets of Raven’s Crater.

*

Amami left the pair in Tapeti market, and hurried off to her clinic. The heat was sweltering, and despite it being early morning, the din of haggling and advertising was already deafening.

‘It’s a colony planet, and a tourist world’, Ichiro began to elaborate. ‘Locals know that the best deals are found in the morning. Every price is changeable—the lower the stock, the higher the price. That’s why it’s best to come early.’

They walked amongst the stalls, Ichiro trying not to lose track of the princess as she bounced from seller to seller, asking excitedly about this and that.

‘How much is this—is it local, or from off-world? What kind of stone is that? Is that a religious artefact? Oh these look great—what kind of animal did you say these pelts were from?!’

It was no wonder that they didn’t recognise her, and when she asked about it, Ichiro set her worries at ease immediately; not a soul would believe that the royal family would visit Bungirba in a non-official capacity. Leisure visits for the upper crust were reserved for Goldagar, or similar planets frequented by high society. Once Ichiro had explained that in places like this, meals could be bought for 300 GSC or less, he decided to introduce Abiona to the world of haggling at the next stall they visited.

‘What do you want?’ he asked her.

The stall wasn’t crowded; it was, however, right next door to a food stall, and Bungirbans thronged around it, a sea of long, multi-coloured, rabbit-like ears, twitched and folded excitedly. Occasionally, someone bumped into them from behind, and on one occasion Abiona was nearly thrown into the stall.

‘You okay?’ Ichiro asked her.

She was transfixed. Her eyes remained glued to an object lying in the corner of the stall’s red linen covering; it was a necklace, depicting a bird of some kind with its wings outstretched.

‘This one—I want this one’, she said at last.

‘The one with the bird on it?’

‘…It’s a sparrow.’

‘...and that's a type of bird?’

She made a face at him and he chuckled.

‘You rich people accrue so much unnecessary knowledge. Okay ... watch me work my magic’, he said.

They left the stall with the necklace firmly secured around Abiona’s neck. Ichiro had dropped the price from 1200 GSC to 700, leaving only 300 GSC to spend on food. Abiona seemed happy with it, and Ichiro was confident that 300 would be more than enough; and it was. They settled down for the afternoon at a little restaurant on a food street. The whole street was covered by a bright yellow tarpaulin, casting a golden glow onto the apartment buildings and restaurants below. They ate skewers of chicken, alcorna, and a bizarre multi-limbed fish called an ‘aguilatal’.

‘My brother would love these!’ Abiona said, shaking the aguilatal’s rubbery limbs at Ichiro.

They spoke to the kindly restaurant owner; an elderly Bungirban woman with olive coloured skin, and silver hair and ears.

‘Oh, it’s not so bad around here… so long as you don’t go out at night. Tourist or not, the soldiers seem to jump at the chance to put a bullet in someone … they don’t use blasters ‘cause they don’t want the wounds to cauterise’, the woman said, shakily lifting the sleeve of her shirt to reveal a nasty scar from an old bullet wound. She grinned from ear to ear. She wished them luck when it was time for them to leave, and Abiona thanked her profusely for the food. Ichiro noticed that Abiona couldn’t stop looking back at the restaurant for some time after they left.

*

Evening came again quickly, and the sky turned a brilliant ruby, slowly staining with violet. Something flew through the air and hooted gutturally, landing on a telephone post with others of its species, and preening each of its four wings in turn. Abiona led Ichiro back towards Amami’s house, through rapidly emptying streets lined with stilted houses. They stopped at a bench, under the sputtering light of a lamppost that had fallen into disrepair.

‘Look at that, Ichiro’, Abiona suddenly said. She pointed upwards, towards a heavily guarded checkpoint, beyond which Ichiro could make out mansions and towering steeples. ‘Look up that hill. Doesn’t everything look better up there? Cleaner, kinder, more civilized… over fifty years ago, the Imperial Flagship, ‘The Raven’, fired a beam of superheated plasma into the surface of this planet. There was a Bungirban city here; in less than six minutes, it was reduced to ash. The beam cracked the surface, atomising the earth, and left a crater in its wake. That’s what Raven’s Crater is, Ichiro; it’s a monument to the last great Bungirban city, a monument erected to, and controlled by, the Wulver Empire. Soldiers march these streets with guns in their hands, Bungirban natives are afraid to leave their homes at night, and none of this information is public knowledge. How the hell am I supposed to rule a galaxy I know almost nothing about? How am I supposed to keep my subjects’ best interests in mind, when I don’t even know what problems they’re facing? Can you answer that for me, Ichiro?’

Ichiro could not, and he remained very quiet.

‘Tomorrow morning I’ll get one of those guards to bring me to a phone. We’ll be gone by tomorrow evening—please don’t try to run’, he said at last.

‘So it’s just that you don’t care.’ The Princess replied. She lowered her head, clutching at the sparrow glinting on her neck. ‘I was never trying to run away.’

What happened next, neither of them could have predicted. They sat on the bench, Ichiro drumming his fingers on his knee, Abiona gazing at the checkpoint.

‘Abiona Var Oostabar Gan Kuji the Third?’

The voice was soft and feminine, and came from a figure in a hooded robe, who had appeared before them as if from thin air. Ichiro’s eyes grew large, and he watched as the hooded figure raised their hand in a swift motion. The palm burst, a fiery blue eye burning itself into the hooded figure’s hand and casting the pair in blinding blue light. One of the soldiers guarding the checkpoint yelled something incomprehensible at the hooded figure.

‘Do not try to run. It will be over quickly’, the figure insisted.

Ichiro grabbed Abiona and yanked her from the bench, barrelling towards a nearby alleyway. Abiona yelped, bouncing on her feet and stumbling after him.

*

‘Stop right there!’

Sister Clerica turned to meet the eyes of the approaching soldiers. The barrel of his gun almost poked under the hood of her robe. She stepped back, offended by his audacity; to dare point a gun at a Sister of Ulgara was unbelieve disrespect.

‘Is that a gun—is that a blaster?! Stop right there, place the blaster on the floor and put your hands behind your head!’ the soldier spat through gritted teeth, his eyes wide and wild.

‘What blaster? My hand is obviously glowing. Are you a simpleton?’ Sister Clerica said, completely earnestly.

‘No excuses—I said put that blaster down now!’ the soldier yelled.

‘You dare impede the will of Ulgara?’ Sister Clerica asked, the tone of her voice growing low and dangerous.

‘I said—!’

*

Just before they reached the end of the alleyway, Ichiro felt the ground shake, felt heat on his back and heard a loud roar. He fell, holding Abiona close to him and stared wide-eyed back down the alleyway. The lamppost fell from above, clattering into the street. Blue flame licked the pavement, and the hooded figure stood at the end of the alleyway. She raised her hand once again, and Ichiro watched in horror as her palm erupted into blue flame.