Sternsucher (sci-fi, ongoing)

[Neknoh]

Der, hör ich, nachts aus dem Haus geht
und, seh ich, hoch in den Himmel schaut,
den, weiß ich, eine sehr gerne mal träfe,
doch, sagt sie, so wie es aussieht,
der, klagt sie, schaut doch immer nur hoch
und, denkt sie, niemals in mein Gesicht.
So, mein Freund, findest du nie deinen Stern.

- Uwe Kolbe

He knew it by heart by now, they both did, there was no need for the old audio phile to stay in her memory, no need for unauthorized information to lie buzzing and humming deep inside her mind. But he liked it, he would miss it, and, in a way, she would as well.

The poets in her neural threads helped him deafen the pain and drown the sound of humming coils of raw energy and that constant rattle of shelf upon shelf of self-loathing, self-loading death. She pulled him in with steely arms, with nylon straps and a chrome-shelled seat, deep inside her, in her womb of careful night. And as she turned her diode eyes toward the hangar doors, his gaze was there as well, clad in green and red and blue, with infrared and ultraviolet and radiation-resistant filtering. Reticules spunn and flickered across his mind as poets dreamed inside his soul.

"Hemera to all units, Hemera to all units, this is fleet command."

He tested his wings, he checked the impact engines, touched the sensitive articulation of the joints.

"Units three through eight prepare for launch. Squadrons fifty through sixtyfour prepare for launch. The Thalassa is en route and should arrive in time to help."

Weapon systems flared and twitched, a feeling he never quite got used to, not like Faust or Phoenix, but then again, he wasn't ever sure they told the truth.

"Units three through eight. Release.

Heavy metal clamps let go of her body, her wings, his wings, were free. The massive platform moved toward the hangar doors, lumbering and groaning like some great beast carrying a godess upon its back. The others were there as well, all glorious, standing tall. "Are we ready John?" a small voice whispered to him. With a smiling mind he answered, "Yeah, let's go."

Huge gates closed all around them, and enormous fans sucked the air from a room bigger than a Complex, and heavy doors opened with sounds he could not hear, even with the ears of Starseeker.

Total blackness faced them, the darkness between galaxies, an endless night without a star in sight. But there was something else, looking for them.

"Units three through eight. Launch."

[Neknoh]

It was not two hundred years ago that the pristine, digital sky of Earth We Knew has gone dark and fizzy, a videofeed distorted by waking dreams of something enormous, something ancient. It was that day of buzzing, white-noise skies that they came, machines, creations of an ancient people, beings and entities wrought to fight their wars for them. We oft forget what it is we leave behind once we are gone.

The machines came to our homeland to kill and burn whatever they could find rays of raw energy set the parks on fire, and searing waves of cosmic radiation boiled the manmade seas away. The continental cities melted in their gaze, and humans, clones and droids withered in their sheadow.

But this was not the first time humanity looked to the heavens and saw terror and fire take form, "Dragons" we called them once. Serpents, monsters, lizards, beasts, they were dragons all the same, with scales of plated metal and coils of steel and chrome. They did not quite look like the dragons of legend, but they stood close enough.

The colonial fleets beat them off at first, that one innitial wave, later on, however, once the dragons had learnt what to expect, the story was a different one. The dragons punched through the frontlines, tearing Cruisers and Supermassives to pieces, rampaging through the fleets like wildfire through tinder. They scorched our home, the entire system in fact, and then, just as quickly as they had come.... they were gone.

Now, still two hundred years after the year of dragons, we fight, vying for power, for resources and a better life. But we do not fight dragons, nor some form of trolls or goblins.

We fight eachother.