Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Jein ma'Ju - Dreaming of Home ❯ Chapter one ( Chapter 2 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Oboeta on 
Anime/Manga: Sailor Moon Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Suspense / Supernatural / Adventure / Action | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 07.28.2004 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.5K | Visits: 127 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: Sailor Moon Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Suspense / Supernatural / Adventure / Action | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 07.28.2004 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.5K | Visits: 127 | Status: Completed
Jein ma'Ju - Dreaming of Home
Chapter one
~~~~~
Of all the skills on an interstellar transit ship, navigation is perhaps the most important. As star systems circle around on the galaxy's spiral arms, it's as important to know their headings as it is to know your own. The longer the voyage, the more pronounced the results of even the smallest miscalculation of a star's travels; the slightest mistake could send the ship and its crew ignorantly gliding into the great beyond.
Kishatta wasn't worried, however. The crew was the best - Sagittarius Galaxy's finest - and the navigator was no exception.
If they had been traveling towards home, she could have guided them towards the planet, just from the pull she felt in her heart. Homesickness was awful for almost everyone, but she imagined it was particularly difficult for a celestial guardian. When she was away from the planet Chuu, the tug just never went away.
This mission was important, though. She knew she had to set her own feelings aside, and just try to get buy with the occasional bout of tears into her pillow. The Sagittarius Galaxy was being slowly pulled into the Milky Way's gravity, and soon all its star systems would be part of the Milky Way's spirals. The celestial guardians of Sagittarius had an uncertain future, and so they sent her as a diplomatic envoy and representative. She would help both galaxies plan for the future.
Sighing, Kishatta turned her full attention to the ship's navigation system. She wasn't sure of the outcome of this trip would be, but even if destiny would be kind she still had to leave her family and home and travel into a possibly dangerous situation. This wasn't the first time she'd risked her life to save other communities, and she was sure it wouldn't be the last.
"What's wrong, Kishatta," asked Ren, one of the members of her crew, with a tentative frown as she approached respectfully. "You seem sad."
"It's just that I don't really want to do this. I don't like leaving home and going so far away all the time," she mumbled, brushing some of her gray fring out of her eyes. Kishatta was a freely speaking person, which had made her fast friends with Ren even if the other girl behaved with awkward respect. "The sad part of it is...I enjoy it at the same time. I love navigating, particularly a ship as well-engineered and responsive as this one, and I love the feeling that I actually could help someone."
The raven haired compainion stood silently, thinking of a way to help her friend. Ren was twenty-two, a few years older than Kishatta's seventeen, and though a skilled pilot in her own right Ren felt rather embarassed giving the younger girl advice. Kishatta was a person of legend, after all. As the guardian of the planet Chuu and holder of its essence, she had almost certainly seen things of which Ren could only faintly dream. Moreover, Kishatta had a cultivated aptitute for navigation, and in order to save the costs of an additional navigator had been given the duty of ensuring they reached their destination across the vast folds of space-time. Ren was the pilot, on hand mostly for those situations where an unexpected situation required manual control over the ship, and she privately considered navigation to be significantly more difficult than simply using her quick reactions to boost the ship out of harm's way.
Then, too, there was the fact that the entire crew was leaving their home galaxy, and they had all pledged their lives to protect their peoples' best hope for the future in the form of this young navigator. Objectively speaking, the only difference between Kishatta and the rest of the crew was that she had been born to be a guardian, and the others had volunteered to take up the burden.
All this meant that when Kishatta expressed sadness and conflicting emotions, Ren could understand. But she still felt too much awkwardness to know how to respond.
Clearing her throat slightly, Ren's voice lowered to a husky murmur to indicate concern. "You are helping all of us. I know I speak for everyone when I say that we have faith in this mission, and in you. She paused. "Have you been working on your memoirs? We still have ten weeks to go before we rendezvous with the Pesselin system for refueling, and it'd be grand to be done with The First Years by then."
Kishatta smiled and nodded slowly. "I've been thinking about using this time for that purpose. As soon as I'm done checking these calculations again, I'll work on some more of the writing. I'd like to hyperspace First Years back home at Pesselin, so that at least I can say that I produced something, particularly in case..."
She trailed off, but it was obvious what she meant. 'In case anything happens to me, and I never return home.'
Not having anything else to say, Ren nodded, then bowed quickly and moved back towards the storage area.
Kishatta turned back to the navigational calculations, not particularly caring to think about Ren's seemingly strage variety of hero worship. That would resolve itself in time, at some point in the long journey ahead of them. She hoped.
Anyway, the calculations required her more immediate attention.
Kishatta was extremely fond of charting; it was one of her few hobbies not directly related to
maintaining physical, mental, and spirital discipline. It was ironic, in a way, that the only learning Kishatta had undertaken solely for her own interests had been what thrust her into her biggest duty yet. After all, if the Guardian sent to the Milky Way could also serve as navigator, that'd be one less necessary crew member, which meant better fuel and supply efficiency.
If Kishatta had been interested in botany instead, the other Guardians would probably have chosen someone else.
She had always been fascinated by navigation, though...by the interweaving between gravity and space-time. The interest was so specific, and had been so fatefully cultivated by environmental factors, that the path between the beginning of her studies and this ship seemed almost straightly linear. It had the mark of destiny.
In order to navigate a ship properly, there were an amazing number of variables that needed to be taken into account. You needed to know the ship's objective bearing and speed, which could be difficult to discern in deep space. You also needed to know the bearing and speed of your destination, since solar systems orbited around galaxies just as planets did. Even for inter-system travel, knowing precise velocity of a destination planet was absolutely essential; for intra-system, and in this case intra-galaxy, even the smallest miscalculation could result in doom. As if that wasn't complicated enough, other factors needed to be taken into consideration - for example, the gravity of a nearby star could speed up or slow a ship's progress, or even divert them off course. In a long voyage, even the small gravity pocket of an unexpected asteroid could put a ship thousands of miles off course. Traveling at FTL required even more careful calculation, since the local conditions for the next jump needed to be known down to the slightest precision.
Kishatta thrilled to the challenge.
The ship's advanced computer was her constant aid. It was designed to routinely send out recoverable beacons ahead of the ship, which relayed back pulse waves of a known frequency and amplitude. Through variations in the pulse waves, any local distortion of space-time could be identified and its severity judged. There wasn't much out in deep space that would create a gravity pocket in space-time, but Kishatta had the beacons sent out as a precaution, anyway. They had the spare fuel. Plus, they had already once come across an unexpected, solitary field of asteroids even after they had long since left Chuu's solar system behind. Kishatta was certainly glad she had taken the precautions then. Because Kishatta had received ample warning of the gravity pocket, she had been able to calculate the precise effect it would have on their progress; as a result, Ren had used the boosters to put them back on course with maximum efficiency and minimal use of fuel propellant. That had been about nine weeks ago, but Kishatta was still being cautious.
At the moment, she was double-checking her calculations. She had seen some unusual readings come back from the beacon, and the computer didn't know what to make of them. There wasn't much she could do at the moment other than hope that they hadn't been unknowingly sent off course, but her fears were allayed slightly by the knowledge that the readings from the beacon indicated that it, at least, was stationary. The waves were misaligned, but not distorted, so whatever was affecting the waves was not directly affecting the beacon itself.
She was somewhat prone to worry, but this time it would drive her mad with frustration if she didn't watch herself. The best thing to do, she decided, would be to go to her quarters and listen to some music from home. A little R&R never hurt anyone.
Walking into her room she flipped the light on and turned and put her favorite crystal in. She was happy that she had a chance to propperly load the files she wanted to bring with her on this trip. She smiled as her favorite song in 3/3 time came on. Sighing in satisfaction, she flopped back on her bed, and enjoyed the rest of the song.
Soon a lullaby like song started, and she drifted off to sleep.
A few hours later she woke up and looked out the window. She wasn't very suprised when she noticed a thin layer of frost forming on the window. She scraped at it, to clear it out of her way so she could see.
"Come in," she called when a knock at the door was heard.
"Dinner is ready ma'am," Ren said.
"I'll be there shortly," she turned to look out the window again. "What are we eating tonight Ren?"
"It's a suprise!"
Kishatta stood from her seat and turned to look at Ren. "Shall we?"
"After you my lady."
Silently the two walked down the hall towards the kitchen, upon entering an older looking man-maybe in his early 40s- named Melij greeted her, soon followed by Ochetta, and Ereia. They were all already seated at the table waiting for Kishatta and Ren to take their seats.
Dinner was a quiet affair, everyone too engulfed in their food to bother speaking. Tonight they were eating Kishatta's favorite meal, and she was enjoying every bite of it.
Finally after dinner Kishatta turned her attention to Ereia, "will we be ready to make another jump soon?"
The engineer nodded his head, "Yes my lady."
"Good, you may be excused to go tend to the engines," she announced.
"Yes, my lady," he stood and hurried off to get ready.
"Ochetta, I'll help you clean the kitchen. It's the least I could do after such a wonderful meal," Kishatta announced. "Ren, why don't you go to the navigational system and set the coordinates, and Melji, why don't you go do a once over and make sure everything is safe."
The crew had gone through many jumps so far, and so the process was pretty much automatic at this
point. They all knew what to check, what to do, and when to do it. By the time the engines had
powered up enough to make the jump everything was long since set to go.
Each of them were carefully strapped into their seats on the ship's small bridge when the time
came, and Ren pushed the button.
Kishatta felt the most instantaneous sensation of her breath catching and some giant lid taking
one quick blink. Then it was over. As usual after a jump she was a little bit tingly - she had
suddenly tunneled through space-time a distance of approximately one hundred light years, and if
nothing else the sudden extra distance away from her planet made her feel disconcerted.
The others all began to unstrap themselves and began to make routine diagnostic checks of all
systems. Kishatta worked herself out of the harness with a slight trembling of her hands, and stood up to shake herself to alertness. The next step was to recover the beacon and send out the next. She moved over to the navigational terminal and blinked in confusion. Their ship, though small, still created a barely perceptible gravity pocket - it wasn't usually enough to interfere with the beacon's pulses. But the pulses she was getting back were slightly altered, and that alteration was increasing. That meant that there was some sort of external gravity field in the area...and it was getting closer.
"Incoming ship!" Kishatta yelled before she even knew that she had spoken. There was a brief flurry of activity, a scream of "Mother of all!" as Melij glanced out a window in passing, and then the ship shook with a grating noise as some heavy metallic creation jutted up against their side.
Everything went silent and still. The lights flickered and died, and as they went so did the artificial gravity. Ren whimpered quietly and made a desperate grab for a hand-hold. Ochetta closed her eyes and quietly chanted. Ereia pushed himself off towards the central power relay and cursed furiously. Melij simply grabbed a wall and looked determinedly at the door lock. Kishatta was simply floating in space, grim and worried, when the door burst open with an explosion of pressurized air. The entire crew was blown back against the far wall. Kishatta felt pain explode across her face as her nose rammed straight into a bulwark.
"Well, well. A mouse caught outside her hole," came a voice from the direction of the door. "And this is your crew? Pathetic. Simply not fit for a visiting dignitary. Good thing we came along to escort you directly...."
Chapter one
~~~~~
Of all the skills on an interstellar transit ship, navigation is perhaps the most important. As star systems circle around on the galaxy's spiral arms, it's as important to know their headings as it is to know your own. The longer the voyage, the more pronounced the results of even the smallest miscalculation of a star's travels; the slightest mistake could send the ship and its crew ignorantly gliding into the great beyond.
Kishatta wasn't worried, however. The crew was the best - Sagittarius Galaxy's finest - and the navigator was no exception.
If they had been traveling towards home, she could have guided them towards the planet, just from the pull she felt in her heart. Homesickness was awful for almost everyone, but she imagined it was particularly difficult for a celestial guardian. When she was away from the planet Chuu, the tug just never went away.
This mission was important, though. She knew she had to set her own feelings aside, and just try to get buy with the occasional bout of tears into her pillow. The Sagittarius Galaxy was being slowly pulled into the Milky Way's gravity, and soon all its star systems would be part of the Milky Way's spirals. The celestial guardians of Sagittarius had an uncertain future, and so they sent her as a diplomatic envoy and representative. She would help both galaxies plan for the future.
Sighing, Kishatta turned her full attention to the ship's navigation system. She wasn't sure of the outcome of this trip would be, but even if destiny would be kind she still had to leave her family and home and travel into a possibly dangerous situation. This wasn't the first time she'd risked her life to save other communities, and she was sure it wouldn't be the last.
"What's wrong, Kishatta," asked Ren, one of the members of her crew, with a tentative frown as she approached respectfully. "You seem sad."
"It's just that I don't really want to do this. I don't like leaving home and going so far away all the time," she mumbled, brushing some of her gray fring out of her eyes. Kishatta was a freely speaking person, which had made her fast friends with Ren even if the other girl behaved with awkward respect. "The sad part of it is...I enjoy it at the same time. I love navigating, particularly a ship as well-engineered and responsive as this one, and I love the feeling that I actually could help someone."
The raven haired compainion stood silently, thinking of a way to help her friend. Ren was twenty-two, a few years older than Kishatta's seventeen, and though a skilled pilot in her own right Ren felt rather embarassed giving the younger girl advice. Kishatta was a person of legend, after all. As the guardian of the planet Chuu and holder of its essence, she had almost certainly seen things of which Ren could only faintly dream. Moreover, Kishatta had a cultivated aptitute for navigation, and in order to save the costs of an additional navigator had been given the duty of ensuring they reached their destination across the vast folds of space-time. Ren was the pilot, on hand mostly for those situations where an unexpected situation required manual control over the ship, and she privately considered navigation to be significantly more difficult than simply using her quick reactions to boost the ship out of harm's way.
Then, too, there was the fact that the entire crew was leaving their home galaxy, and they had all pledged their lives to protect their peoples' best hope for the future in the form of this young navigator. Objectively speaking, the only difference between Kishatta and the rest of the crew was that she had been born to be a guardian, and the others had volunteered to take up the burden.
All this meant that when Kishatta expressed sadness and conflicting emotions, Ren could understand. But she still felt too much awkwardness to know how to respond.
Clearing her throat slightly, Ren's voice lowered to a husky murmur to indicate concern. "You are helping all of us. I know I speak for everyone when I say that we have faith in this mission, and in you. She paused. "Have you been working on your memoirs? We still have ten weeks to go before we rendezvous with the Pesselin system for refueling, and it'd be grand to be done with The First Years by then."
Kishatta smiled and nodded slowly. "I've been thinking about using this time for that purpose. As soon as I'm done checking these calculations again, I'll work on some more of the writing. I'd like to hyperspace First Years back home at Pesselin, so that at least I can say that I produced something, particularly in case..."
She trailed off, but it was obvious what she meant. 'In case anything happens to me, and I never return home.'
Not having anything else to say, Ren nodded, then bowed quickly and moved back towards the storage area.
Kishatta turned back to the navigational calculations, not particularly caring to think about Ren's seemingly strage variety of hero worship. That would resolve itself in time, at some point in the long journey ahead of them. She hoped.
Anyway, the calculations required her more immediate attention.
Kishatta was extremely fond of charting; it was one of her few hobbies not directly related to
maintaining physical, mental, and spirital discipline. It was ironic, in a way, that the only learning Kishatta had undertaken solely for her own interests had been what thrust her into her biggest duty yet. After all, if the Guardian sent to the Milky Way could also serve as navigator, that'd be one less necessary crew member, which meant better fuel and supply efficiency.
If Kishatta had been interested in botany instead, the other Guardians would probably have chosen someone else.
She had always been fascinated by navigation, though...by the interweaving between gravity and space-time. The interest was so specific, and had been so fatefully cultivated by environmental factors, that the path between the beginning of her studies and this ship seemed almost straightly linear. It had the mark of destiny.
In order to navigate a ship properly, there were an amazing number of variables that needed to be taken into account. You needed to know the ship's objective bearing and speed, which could be difficult to discern in deep space. You also needed to know the bearing and speed of your destination, since solar systems orbited around galaxies just as planets did. Even for inter-system travel, knowing precise velocity of a destination planet was absolutely essential; for intra-system, and in this case intra-galaxy, even the smallest miscalculation could result in doom. As if that wasn't complicated enough, other factors needed to be taken into consideration - for example, the gravity of a nearby star could speed up or slow a ship's progress, or even divert them off course. In a long voyage, even the small gravity pocket of an unexpected asteroid could put a ship thousands of miles off course. Traveling at FTL required even more careful calculation, since the local conditions for the next jump needed to be known down to the slightest precision.
Kishatta thrilled to the challenge.
The ship's advanced computer was her constant aid. It was designed to routinely send out recoverable beacons ahead of the ship, which relayed back pulse waves of a known frequency and amplitude. Through variations in the pulse waves, any local distortion of space-time could be identified and its severity judged. There wasn't much out in deep space that would create a gravity pocket in space-time, but Kishatta had the beacons sent out as a precaution, anyway. They had the spare fuel. Plus, they had already once come across an unexpected, solitary field of asteroids even after they had long since left Chuu's solar system behind. Kishatta was certainly glad she had taken the precautions then. Because Kishatta had received ample warning of the gravity pocket, she had been able to calculate the precise effect it would have on their progress; as a result, Ren had used the boosters to put them back on course with maximum efficiency and minimal use of fuel propellant. That had been about nine weeks ago, but Kishatta was still being cautious.
At the moment, she was double-checking her calculations. She had seen some unusual readings come back from the beacon, and the computer didn't know what to make of them. There wasn't much she could do at the moment other than hope that they hadn't been unknowingly sent off course, but her fears were allayed slightly by the knowledge that the readings from the beacon indicated that it, at least, was stationary. The waves were misaligned, but not distorted, so whatever was affecting the waves was not directly affecting the beacon itself.
She was somewhat prone to worry, but this time it would drive her mad with frustration if she didn't watch herself. The best thing to do, she decided, would be to go to her quarters and listen to some music from home. A little R&R never hurt anyone.
Walking into her room she flipped the light on and turned and put her favorite crystal in. She was happy that she had a chance to propperly load the files she wanted to bring with her on this trip. She smiled as her favorite song in 3/3 time came on. Sighing in satisfaction, she flopped back on her bed, and enjoyed the rest of the song.
Soon a lullaby like song started, and she drifted off to sleep.
A few hours later she woke up and looked out the window. She wasn't very suprised when she noticed a thin layer of frost forming on the window. She scraped at it, to clear it out of her way so she could see.
"Come in," she called when a knock at the door was heard.
"Dinner is ready ma'am," Ren said.
"I'll be there shortly," she turned to look out the window again. "What are we eating tonight Ren?"
"It's a suprise!"
Kishatta stood from her seat and turned to look at Ren. "Shall we?"
"After you my lady."
Silently the two walked down the hall towards the kitchen, upon entering an older looking man-maybe in his early 40s- named Melij greeted her, soon followed by Ochetta, and Ereia. They were all already seated at the table waiting for Kishatta and Ren to take their seats.
Dinner was a quiet affair, everyone too engulfed in their food to bother speaking. Tonight they were eating Kishatta's favorite meal, and she was enjoying every bite of it.
Finally after dinner Kishatta turned her attention to Ereia, "will we be ready to make another jump soon?"
The engineer nodded his head, "Yes my lady."
"Good, you may be excused to go tend to the engines," she announced.
"Yes, my lady," he stood and hurried off to get ready.
"Ochetta, I'll help you clean the kitchen. It's the least I could do after such a wonderful meal," Kishatta announced. "Ren, why don't you go to the navigational system and set the coordinates, and Melji, why don't you go do a once over and make sure everything is safe."
The crew had gone through many jumps so far, and so the process was pretty much automatic at this
point. They all knew what to check, what to do, and when to do it. By the time the engines had
powered up enough to make the jump everything was long since set to go.
Each of them were carefully strapped into their seats on the ship's small bridge when the time
came, and Ren pushed the button.
Kishatta felt the most instantaneous sensation of her breath catching and some giant lid taking
one quick blink. Then it was over. As usual after a jump she was a little bit tingly - she had
suddenly tunneled through space-time a distance of approximately one hundred light years, and if
nothing else the sudden extra distance away from her planet made her feel disconcerted.
The others all began to unstrap themselves and began to make routine diagnostic checks of all
systems. Kishatta worked herself out of the harness with a slight trembling of her hands, and stood up to shake herself to alertness. The next step was to recover the beacon and send out the next. She moved over to the navigational terminal and blinked in confusion. Their ship, though small, still created a barely perceptible gravity pocket - it wasn't usually enough to interfere with the beacon's pulses. But the pulses she was getting back were slightly altered, and that alteration was increasing. That meant that there was some sort of external gravity field in the area...and it was getting closer.
"Incoming ship!" Kishatta yelled before she even knew that she had spoken. There was a brief flurry of activity, a scream of "Mother of all!" as Melij glanced out a window in passing, and then the ship shook with a grating noise as some heavy metallic creation jutted up against their side.
Everything went silent and still. The lights flickered and died, and as they went so did the artificial gravity. Ren whimpered quietly and made a desperate grab for a hand-hold. Ochetta closed her eyes and quietly chanted. Ereia pushed himself off towards the central power relay and cursed furiously. Melij simply grabbed a wall and looked determinedly at the door lock. Kishatta was simply floating in space, grim and worried, when the door burst open with an explosion of pressurized air. The entire crew was blown back against the far wall. Kishatta felt pain explode across her face as her nose rammed straight into a bulwark.
"Well, well. A mouse caught outside her hole," came a voice from the direction of the door. "And this is your crew? Pathetic. Simply not fit for a visiting dignitary. Good thing we came along to escort you directly...."