Page 81 of Meteor Storm

“Yes.”

“He’s Innifer’s mate?”

Her gaze quickly swept the hangar as if he would appear right there in front of us.

“You know them both, then?” I was relieved. If she was leaving with them, I was glad to know she would be in familiar hands. “You are friends with his human mate?”

“Not really. I was her boss on the Nexus,” she scoffed and looked around again. “Jesus, this place is huge.”

“The Edda’s hangars are built to house continuum ships, colony cruisers, and warships if need be. This hangar is for foreign visitors and smaller vessels.”

“Smaller vessels? This is the small hangar?”

“Yes.”

“That’s amazing.”

“The Edda is the oldest habitation vessel in the monrian fleet. Its core is powered by stored solar energy, unlike our newer designs, which use dark matter to navigate more efficiently. It has its own ecosystem and atmosphere.”

“So, when you say old, how old do you mean?”

“Parts of the Edda came from the first colony ship evacuated from our home world. I do not know how to convert that length of time into a measure you can understand, but it has been long enough to see thousands of generations live and die in space.”

“That’s hard to wrap my head around. For people on Earth, a hundred years is a lot. To think we barely made it to space and your people are living on ships like this… it’s unfathomable.”

We continued walking until we reached a transport at the very back of the hangar. It hovered over a single, magnetic track with two compartments for passengers.

“You have to take a transport to get around this place? Why didn’t I expect that?” Penny said as we boarded.

“This is for short distances. There are shuttles for longer travel.”

We did not bother sitting. The ride on the transport was smooth and fast, zipping through tunnels and speedways so quickly, Penny couldn’t get a good look at our surroundings, as much as she tried. We passed farming wings. Repair stations. Trade centers. We began a vertical climb once we’d cleared the common population areas and finally, the ship opened up into a massive central energy shield above the core where all of space could be seen from the transport highway. Many other shuttles flew by in all directions. Penny pressed her hand to the glass of the transport and peered out in utter awe at the cityscape.

“Holy shit,” she whispered.

“Twenty-three million inhabitants reside on the Edda at any given time,” I explained. “Retirees, soldiers in training, scientists, clerics, diplomats, negotiators. It’s one of the many hubs that assigns missions, discusses terms, keeps records, and votes on new laws and practices.”

“Where are the other hubs?”

“Stationed in other quadrants. We have thirteen outposts with similar habitation vessels, most of them more streamlined than this one. As I said, this is one of our oldest.”

“I never could have imagined this when I took a job on the Nexus. This is something humans couldn’t wrap their minds around. The Nexus was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen not too long ago. But this…”

“Give it a few million years,” Sunhai said, reminding us she was there.

Glancing back, I noticed she wasn’t looking too thrilled about being on a monrian ship. Not because she was nervous. Because she was bored. Being there meant she, too, was being sent away, likely somewhere safe. But she was not the type to like stagnancy. I had come to know that much since I met her.

When the transport came to a tall, silver tower at the very edge of the inner ring orbiting the core, it slowly docked at a narrow tunnel leading toward the top floor. The doors slid open and a gust of cold air instantly hit Penny, making her gasp. I took her hand again and led her on through a blue hall, toward a set of large double doors that were guarded by two monrian sentinels, retired soldiers stationed to follow the clerics everywhere they went. They wielded ancient spears, which were mostly ornamental, but lethal in the right hands.

Penny eyed them as we passed, noting their uncharacteristically archaic armor.

“Why do they look like that?” she asked.

“They dawn the uniforms as a symbolic gesture,” I explained. “Sentinels volunteer for their positions. They guard clerics and scribes. It is an honor. I had planned to be one of them one day.”

Penny squeezed my hand as we passed them because what came next was a large, open room with a high, domed ceiling and a crescent table spanning the outer edges where fourteen clerics were meant to sit on a council. Yuros held up a hand toward Sunhai, prompting her to wait in the hall, and with a roll of her eyes, she diverted.

Our steps echoed in the hollow chamber. Above us was a floating orb that shed dim, cerulean light throughout the room and at the far end stood two monrian females in ornate, white robes, their heads shaved bald to display their many toel kef markings, which, if undressed, spanned the entire length of their bodies.