Chapter 19 - Deep Dark

↤ Chapter 18 - Listener's Fever

In the weeks following the battle that had razed the detention facility to dust on the ground, Nova’s government came under hellfire for allowing the Abstracts to simply walk onto their homeland unimpeded. Even though he wasn’t a big fan of the governing bodies at the head of Nova, Glo tried his best to defend them in a few interviews he conducted alongside his companions. Izzac was much better, she just needed a night’s sleep to recuperate herself. Shure had gone back underground and had vanished from the public eye as he often did after big events like this, he acted like a scared mole, a mole that could destroy cities with an errant wave of his hand.

Cathode had mostly been with his twin, Anode, giving him titbits of information about things that were happening in the Noble community on Nova. Unfortunately for most of the Nobles, Anode was the chairman of a large news company on Nova, one that was known for just ‘discovering’ things that had happened between Novans.

Cat knew that he had some degree of control over some Nobles through their public reputation, these Nobles also knew that they couldn’t kill Anode or Cathode without causing absolute chaos on Nova. Cathode was well liked on Nova for his boisterous personality and his patient love of the limelight, so his death at the hands of his comrades wouldn’t go very well for the Nobles at all.

Glo had found himself aboard the replacement for the Pleaides, roaming space on his own. He often enjoyed piloting something on his own just to allow himself to think. Below him hung the dark blue and green planet we like to call Earth.

Glo enjoyed any time he could get on the human planet; it was mostly peaceful, even though the humans had a penchant for killing each other at the drop of a hat. Glo had found himself a wooden bench somewhere in the lake district in England, watching the cloudy blue sky calmly roll by. This place was lucky, Abstract attacks, and Novan retaliations were still going on around the universe.

Earth was a neutral ground, somewhere the rest of the universe had decided not to interfere with. Humans were one of the lucky few races that hadn’t had widespread contact with the many species in the universe, Novans were lucky to look similar to humans, they could go outside and interact with the native species of this planet even if the Nobles’ white skin got a few funny looks.

Glo enjoyed coming here. Nature was a good way of breaking out of the bustle and constant miasma that hung around the planet like a noose round the throat of a hanging criminal. He had his legs crossed and was happily basking in the autumnal cool; the Noble thought he might try to bring Quizzical here one day, she might like it. Glo couldn’t smile though, he had too much to worry about, the war that the Novans were on the slippery slope of losing, his own reputation and relationships could be destroyed and worse of all he had the volatile Svari to keep tabs on.

Nova didn’t want to utterly destroy Imagination, they had more than the capability to utterly wipe the Abstract race from the face of the universe, but that was a last resort. Nova rarely went to war, the planet had all it wanted and needed most other races and systems respected the Novan race too much to try fighting them.

Glo let his mind wander, letting it float off on the breeze and bring back any absent-minded thought it happened to land on. It quite surprised him  when he found himself thinking about the Abstract woman, Quizzical, the one he’d begun building somewhat of a romantic relationship with. Glo made a gentle connection to his nobility, blue sparks leaping between his fingers and up his forearms.

Glo’s nobility allowed him some degree of pre-cognisance, not being able to tell exactly what would happen in the future but a vague sense of understanding.

He thought of Quizzical and tried spying through the thick veil obscuring his vision, he could tell that he and her would grow much closer, but she would go through a lot of pain and heartache to be with him… yet every single time she would chose him.

Glo couldn’t really see anything that would be happening to her, but he could see that after all the heartache and pain, she would become so much happier but not without damage. Glo pushed the sadness and pain aside and tried to look at the happiness, Glo saw another Nobility flickering through the haze, orange and red flames licked around Quizzical’s emotions and warmed them. Glo smiled and dropped his hand to his lap, the blue lightning dancing across his arms gently petered out and faded.

The Noble rubbed his eyes to clear the haze from his mind, taking a deep breath of the cool English air. He hadn’t noticed during his foray through Quizzical’s future that it had begun to cloud over, dark cotton had flooded in from the corners of the sky and was threatening to soak the hills with rainwater.

He’d rather not get soaked by the drab English weather, so he stood up and began to head towards where he had parked the Pleiades under a bank of trees. After flying the first iteration of the Pleiades across the skies of Imagination, Glo had fallen in love with the Caston class ship, so he had purchased another of the rare spacecraft from a collector. Unfortunately for Glo, this one had come out of a war zone and was badly damaged, so the Noble had to gain a vast array of parts and fit them himself. This trip out to Earth was the Pleiades’ first trip any distance from Nova, a successful test run for his patchwork of repairs.

Walking around the ship, Glo was rather unexpectantly confronted by a pair of deep red eyes, ringed by perfect albino skin. Izzac, leaning nonchalantly against the side of the craft.

“I can see you found a new toy.” She snarked, much to Glo’s displeasure, “Don’t break this one.”

“I don’t intend to.” Glo replied quietly, “The hell you even doing here, Izzac?”

Izzac smirked in response to his question, rather startling Glo when she walked straight through him as an apparition would.

“You’re not here.” Glo corrected himself, trying to wrest control of his pounding heart and fleeting nerves, “I thought I’d disabled the hologram emitters.”

Izzac checked her fingernails dismissively before musing to Glo, “Apparently not, try harder if you don’t want me here.”

“Don’t tempt me.” Glo growled, pointing a screwdriver at her before opening a panel on the side of the ship and sorting out some wires behind it, “You’re here though, what do you want?”

“I want to tell you to get back to Nova, though I know you ain’t likely to come back right now.”

Glo chuckled, rolling his eyes and opening the sliding door to the Pleiades. The indoors were much less military than the first one he had flown, most of the interior that had been used as storage for explosives and weapons had been torn out and replaced with spaces for a small crew to sleep alongside a shower and something that could pass for a kitchen.

“Why does Nova need me back so urgently that they’d bother you to ask me?” Glo asked her, looking at the hologram that was now relaxing in the pilot’s chair, her legs casually crossed over the arm.

“They didn’t. But since you’re asking, it is because you’re one of the few people that Quantum will talk to, and Shure thinks he knows something that might help us beat Imagination.” Izzac replied, her hologram twitching a little as Glo walked between the chair and one projector.

“Great, you want me to come back to talk to that senile asshole.” Glo growled, “Get stuffed and do it yourself.”

“He doesn’t like me, Glo.” Izzac replied, “Anyway, I’m only here because I don’t want our planet dead. You of all people know I don’t want to win this bloody war; I just want it to be over. Maybe he’ll have something we can use.”

“He doesn’t like me either, move.” Glo muttered, Izzy’s hologram didn’t move an inch before Glo sat down in the pilot’s chair. He looked down at her again, “Move.”

Izzac’s hologram rolled its eyes and moved onto the co-pilot’s chair, “Don’t you need someone else to help fly this thing with you?” She asked, her sentence being cut short when Glo flicked the switch on the console in front of him, disconnecting Izzac from the ship and making the hologram sigh and fade.

Glo muttered to himself about being disturbed by Izzac, something she frequently did to him when he had any time off Nova on his own. He gently primed the engines when the switch he’d just flicked to banish the Izzac hologram into the void, Glo rolled his eyes and lifted the Pleiades off the ground and flicked the switch to allow the hologram communication through.

A rather bedraggled looking Shure appeared in the chair next to Glo, his eyes bloodshot and his leg shaking up and down.

“What?” Glo asked rather dismissively, not particularly wanting to get involved in whatever Shure had done, receiving no answer from the probably high Noble Glo prompted him to speak again.

“Tecrav, Glo.” Shure murmured, “they have reported it on Surie.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake.” Glo growled, smacking his hand on the console, he turned to face the hologram again, “I am not dealing with that again! You hear me, done it once, nearly died. Nod doing it again.”

Shure nodded, his eyes not focused on anything in particular, “I understand, I’m not asking you to deal with it again.”

“It sounds like you are, go away Shure.” Glo furiously growled, moving to slam his fist on the switch that would cut Shure’s connection to the Pleiades “They’re your fault, you deal with them.”

“Wait, let me talk Glo.” Shure asked, a pleading done in his perpetually slurred voice.

“Ten seconds and then you’re going away.” Glo replied, his finger primed to cut the connection.

Shure shook his head and tapped his holographic fingers on the arm of the chair as he thought of what to say, “I’m sorry, I know I screwed up with… more than one weapon.”

“No shit, cut to the chase.” Glo snarled, irritated.

“I mean I decided to shut down my lab, no more weapons, no more experiments.” Shure started, “I’ll go back to making- “

Shure didn’t get to finish his sentence, Glo had cut the connection, Shure had said that before, he'd shut it down before then become bored and created another world-ending superweapon. The Noble decided he wanted no more unsolicited calls from the other Nobles, or anyone else. If the switch flashed again, Glo might just shoot something.

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                “Glad you’re back.” Izzac said, being rather forcibly ignored by Glo as he walked past her on the landing pad, she caught back up to his side and her words were ignored again, “Nice to see you too.”

The landing pad was one of thousands that stretched out for miles, the ceiling was made up of thousands of pores that opened and closed like the stomata on the underside of a leaf, large, thick double doors opened and closed to let star ships through. The actual hangar was far larger than appeared just on the upper levels, another twelve equally sized floors held up to four million personal spacecraft. It was dimly lit inside, floodlights illuminating each of the landing pads.

“Shut up Izzac, I was in a good mood.” Glo replied, picking up his pace to walk past the other Noble.

“Nice, real mature of you.” Izzac replied, hopping down from the sheet metal landing pad onto the small walkway that ran between each of the landing pads.

“I just want to talk to Quantum and get back to being left alone. Then I might punch the hell out of Shure.” Glo replied, Izzac looking over at him with a look on her face made from a mix of confusion and worry. “Tecrav’s managed to get onto Surie.”

Izzy nodded, “Wonderful, we’re going to have to deal with it, aren’t we.”

“Of course we are, Shure’s not going to do anything about it.” Glo answered solemnly, “And I’ll end up being wracked with too much guilt to just stand by while that plague tears another planet apart.”

“And then I won’t just stand by while you get yourself killed.” Izzac replied implicitly, “Then Cat’ll get involved and we’ll end up shooting our way through another city while looking for the main server.”

Glo chuckled and shook his head, “Not going to happen, Izzy.”

“It’s definitely going to happen.” The Noble of Gravity replied, stepping ahead of Glo and off the end of the catwalk.

Unlike how she would have normally acted, cancelling out her gravity and floating in place in the air, Izzac fell a few inches before vanishing from in front of Glo. He promptly followed her but with a little less grace, he stepped off the catwalk and was assaulted by a bout of mild nausea and blindness before he felt ground underneath his feet again. He blinked the stars out of his eyes and felt Izzac tapping her finger on his head. He was standing in the cylindrical glass chamber and leaning against the side while he waited for his head to clear.

“Not your usual reaction to these, Glo.” Izzac replied with a worried tone in her voice, “You alright?”

Glo raised his eyebrow at her and walked from the cylindrical chamber, muttering quietly, “I’m never alright Izzac, you should know that.”

His friend sighed, clicking her heels together and starting to float along the ground alongside Glo; her nobility gently pulsing around her wrists. She chastised him for acting so depressed all the time and was rewarded plainly by a dark look that made her back down. The pair of Nobles passed through the Novan customs quickly, the security knew better than to stop a noble for a search. By the other end of the security affair, Glo had somewhat brightened up.

Stepping outside, Glo took a moment to appreciate being back on Nova. Even though he’d taken the break on earth recreationally, he just never felt the same if he wasn’t on Nova. Just out of place and unwanted, as if there wasn’t exactly a place for him.

“You alright there?” Izzac asked her glassy-eyed friend, startling some life back into Glo. He promptly nodded and continued walking, Izzac lazily holding onto the sleeve of his jacket and being towed along like some unwanted parasite.

Within the hour the pair of Nobles found themselves in a rather secluded part of Nova, one of the rare wooded districts of the city-planet. It was a dense reservoir of green in a sea of dark blues and grey, happily home to a vast array of wildlife… and where the Nobles had first started.

The garden didn’t really have a name, definitely not one that could be translated into any of the human languages. But it was home to a number of Nobles, mostly the older ones who wanted to be left on their lonesome by the universe. Glo picked his way through the underbrush carefully, not wanting to disturb the greenery any more than he had to. Even though he was no stickler for tradition and didn’t give much respect to anything, he honoured this place immensely and didn’t wish to damage it more than he had to.

“Don’t like it here.” Izzac muttered under her breath, having stopped floating to join Glo in picking her careful way through the bushes.

“I know you’re not fond of it, but would you rather we lost the war and got slaughtered by Imagination?” Glo replied, gently pushing a hanging vine out of his face, “I’d rather not be here either, but it’s more that I don’t like the people who live here.”

Izzac muttered a rude reply that Glo calmly shrugged off, they were getting close to their goal, a small cave in the middle of the forest. It was where the first Noble had been created when they’d been unfortunate enough to be chosen by the universe to take on the role of time, followed quickly up by the Noble they were here to see.

Quantum Leap, which even he thought was a stupid and ridiculous name. He was the man who held control over all the different dimensions in his hands, Quantum was the first and only Noble of dimensions, being the same one that the universe had created to keep time company. Quantum had seen a lot in his years, from the first light to the battle that had taken place two weeks prior. Unfortunately, even though he was Noble, he had still aged and was not at all mentally sound.

Izzac and Glo carefully walked up to the cave, rather relieved that they hadn’t run into any of the other Nobles that lived in the garden. The cave wasn’t in a face of rock, rather a near-perfect circle in the ground. It was ringed by bright red stones, softly glowing in the dim canopy of the surrounding forest.

The pair of Nobles stepped out over the hole and allowed themselves to fall into the dark.