Under Dark Wings-Prologue draft 1- edited 7/26/2025

Draft of a prologue for Under Dark Wings- New Version, edited 7/26/2025.

Prologue-2- Second Version.

The ship had stopped. In space there weren’t supposed to be obstacles, and even fewer when jumping through a wormhole. Red strobes lit the cabin making the freefall more disorientating for Mae Ryder as she rubbed the fatigue from her eyes.

“What happened?” Vaelent Dalachran, the dreki pilot, said with forced calm.

“The wormhole generator is dead.” Mae had been half asleep a moment before as the ship sped through the void on what should have been a routine run. She was trying to figure out what had gone wrong as fast as the other members of the crew.

“Did we get hit?” Vaelent called back.

“If we’d been hit, we’d be dead.” Yuri Williams, the navigator, shouted in answer.

“Let me concentrate.” Mae was trying to make sense of what she was seeing. For all their complication wormhole generators were reliable, she had never heard of a ship being kicked out during a jump. They could fail to make jumps, but that was not the issue she was seeing here. In a dozen years as an engineer on spaceships she had never heard of something like this.

They were all silent for a moment as their fingers tapped on screens and they sorted information. The command center was small enough they didn’t need to shout at each other to be heard and Mae was annoyed at Yuri for his outburst. They were supposed to be prepared for anything out here.

“I can’t see where we are.” Vaelent’s crest of stiff scales rustled showing his agitation. “Can either of you connect to the navigation system with your casters?”

Mae had been absorbed in the ship’s diagnostic screen but switched her focus to the network in her head. She had rudimentary caster functions for communication and some upgrades so she could connect with the machines she worked on. She wasn’t a frequent caster user, preferring to learn what repairs were needed through her hands and eyes. Casters and wormholes came from the same ancient civilization. They were thought to work on similar lines connecting minds, thoughts, and matter to a layer of the universe untouchable by human or dreki technology.

Casters were a network of metallic filaments that had been sequenced into the dreki, human, and skendar genetic codes for generations. The basic functions of casters were to send messages between people and connect to complex machinery. She couldn’t send a message, couldn’t receive, couldn’t even find the pathway to do so. The caster was quiet in a way it had never been. She had been so focused on the ship’s problems she hadn’t noticed until Vaelent brought it to her attention.

“Nothing.” Mae said softly trying to keep her new panic down. The caster had been part of her all her life, and now it was dead.

“Yuri?” Vaelent turned his dark grey eyes on Yuri. Dreki had evolved on a planet like earth and reached a similar technology level to humans at contact. Their body language was the rustling of their scales and shifting eye color. Mae had spent enough time with dreki she could read them as well she could most humans.

“I usually only connect with navigation and the wormhole generator; I can’t connect with anything.” Yuri’s voice was shaking. He rubbed his eyes as he flexed against the straps holding hhim at his workstation.

“Where are we exactly?” Vaelent asked as he got out of his couch and pushed towards Yuri. His long limbs gave him plenty of reach to keep himself steady in the command center of the ship. Dreki were from a different strain of evolution on a planet light years from Terra. They walked on two legs with a pair of arms in convergent evolution with humans. They were covered in scales and had a flexible crest, a little taller and longer than humans with an extra joint in their legs, supposedly from their tree climbing days.

Mae had seen vids from the first contact conflicts of them hiding and ambushing humans in the remote forests, but that was ancient history. Dreki, skendar, and humans lived in relative harmony across several hundred planets in a large swathe of space connected by a network of wormholes and a few fast ships.

Their passenger, Richard Aurnault, pulled himself into the bridge, “What’s happening?”

Mae tried to keep her face expressionless and professional. She and Yuri rarely had much to the do with passengers. She like working with ships in space, not rich strangers.

“We’re not sure.” Vaelent answered. “The wormhole stopped working.”

“Were we hit by something? Attacked?” Richard peered at the displays but Mae didn’t know if he could make much sense of the information.

“No impact.” Yuri answered. “We’re trying to figure it out, Sir.”

“I was worried about being followed here.” Richard answered. “Where are we now?”

“About five light hours from Pendragon.” Yuri answered. “Sir, do you have any connection with your caster?”

Mae held her breath and looked at their passenger. He was an important man owning a large corporation and heading home to Pendragon from a business trip. He’d kept to his cabin for most of what was supposed to be a short trip. Wormhole ships moved in bursts, crossing lightyears in seconds then emerging in real space to scan their surroundings and prepare for the next jump. The journey from Chimeran to Pendragon was only supposed to be a few days of real time, though it would traverse over a hundred light years.

“No.” Richard closed his eyes and sounded puzzled. “Can any of you?”

They all shook their heads.

Mae’s mag boots clunked against the hull while she walked on ship in a bulky space suite. They had been sitting at a relative stop for twenty hours and had exhausted all possibilities they could think of. She needed to physically look at the wormhole generator. Her breath hissed around her in the bubble helmet. She made her way to the panel outside the wormhole generator and began the slow process of opening it.

They had signaled Pendragon and gotten a reply that both planetary wormholes were also dead. They asked how far the devastation had gone and were waiting for the response. Light speed that hadn’t applied to ships traveling in wormholes limited the exchange of information. They received radio signals from another ship further out than them; they sent a reply but knew they wouldn’t hear back for another several hours.

They had enough food and air for around three weeks. At best speed with their conventional drive it would take roughly nine years to reach Pendragon.

Mae reached the bulkhead and began to take it off. She stowed each screw in a pouch on her side carefully and made sure the little magnets within held them. She was really hoping that she’d find the wormhole generator had somehow just come unplugged from its power cable. It was a slim chance to hang her life on. But unless laws they didn’t understand had fundamentally changed in this portion of space time she was at a loss as to what had happened.

Four hours later she was in a space just big enough to accommodate her beside the machine checking another internal panel. Beside her head the thick cable fed it power, but it refused to draw anything. She shifted further and continued her examination. The hunk of machinery was dead, completely inert.

The first time she had touched one of these was in her college days when she’d traveled to see the prototype ship that had first carried humans to other systems. It was a beautiful machine with sleek lines showing a sense of style that had been lacking in humanity’s first few centuries of space flight. Humans had only used chemical rockets before finding ruins with wormholes and casters on a moon not far from Terra, afterwards the stars were open to them. Wormholes and casters were thought to act on a similar principle connecting minds and machinery to a more fundamental level of the universal fabric than had been accessible before. No one knew what had happened to the civilization that had made the original wormholes and casters. The traces they had left around the galaxy were millions of years old. They had been a culture spanning the stars and terraforming planets, then they had vanished.

Mae was losing focus.

“Mae, come in. You need a rest.” Vaelent’s voice crackled in the radio by her ear.

She left the panels open and went back to the airlock. They were in space; it wasn’t like rain was likely to get in and ruin the machinery.

After she reported her findings, a whole lot of nothing, she went to her cabin to sleep. She had been awake for nearly forty hours since the emergency had begun just before her normal sleep cycle. Vaelent’s crest seemed to sag while he ran through another round of diagnostics at his panel.

Mae woke up wishing her recent memories were all just a bad dream, but her caster still got nothing.

Vaelent was strapped in at his station staring at his console. Their passenger was in Mae’s couch looking at his handheld. Mae pushed herself over to Vaelent and looked at the vectors he was plotting to show possible courses.

“We got word from the other ship again; they are 17 years at conventional speed from Pendragon. It’s a big transport and they have about 6 months of supplies. They say they’re going to try and rig up their propulsion system to see if they can improve speed.” Vaelent’s crest clicked in a pattern that showed his agitation.

“I wasted time. Maybe I could have done something yesterday.” Mae said softly. There was no gravity to make her slump into a chair, but she wanted to.

“Today is young.” Vaelent clicked his crest again, maybe a bit hopeful. “Do you know the principles?”

“I last looked at the theories in college.” Mae considered their drive. It was meant for backup in emergency situations and use for maneuvering near stations. The distances a wormhole could travel in the blink of an eye were insurmountable with a conventional drive so there hadn’t been much work on improving them. She rubbed her eyes visually some diagrams she’d seen decades ago to squeeze more power out of systems.

“Did you sleep?” She asked.

“A few hours.” Vaelent answered.

Mae was outside with Yuri changing up some connections on their drive. They had found the schematics for prototypes in the ship’s vast memory. Yuri was cursing under his breath and getting on her nerves. She opened a private channel to Vaelent.

“Can you come out here?” She tried to keep her voice steady. They were a small crew on what should have been a simple flight. Normally on a flight like this, passenger transport, they’d work their shifts, talk as needed, then get some shore leave and have real fun before going back into the depths of space. These were not people she would have chosen to spend the rest of life with, especially Yuri.

“I’m not a mechanic.” Vaelent sounded unsure.

“Neither is Yuri, bit I’ll direct you and Yuri can keep an eye on things inside.” Mae knew that no one, herself included, who signed up to work wormhole drive ships was exactly normal, but she didn’t like how Yuri was reacting to the stress. They were supposed to be better than this.

“I’m not sure our passenger likes me anyway.”

Mae got so tired of species-ism. Everyone had strengths and weaknesses, no point being an asshole about how anyone was born.

“I may have told him he could help by going outside earlier when he asked me the same question for the thousandth time. I think it pissed him off.” Vaelent said softly, “I probably should have been nicer.”

In all the frustration Mae wanted to laugh. She’d been flying with him for years and he was often a bit gruff and direct but never mean. The visualization of the space faring dreki telling off the stuck up rich man they were trapped with made her appreciate that she and Vaelent had expertise and understanding he lacked. If the lived it would be due to the excentric experts, not the cultured owner of companies. She wouldn’t really mind if Richard took a space walk and never got back in. One less biological system to maintain. No. She couldn’t think that. They were in this together. Mae blinked fast a few times to clear her head since she couldn’t rub her eyes.

“I’m turning in. Vaelent wants me to keep on the eye on the shop while he comes out.” Yuri said.

Mae spent the hour waiting for Vaelent to get his suite on and go through the airlocks looking at the distant sun. From here it was just the largest star in a black expanse to vast to swim. They were adrift in a sea beyond the dreams of their ancestors. She couldn’t see the planet that would support them with no suits or machinery, just a wide open sky and plants waving in the breeze. She’d give anything to feel a natural breath of wind on her cheek, the breath of a living planet system. On a planet she’d be as significant as the bacteria in her guts were to her now. She had never wanted to feel the pull of gravity so badly.

Vaelent made no sound but she felt the vibrations he made on the hull through her feet.

“I still love seeing this.” Mae gestured at everything around them. “If we survive this I wonder if I’ll be able go to space again.”

“If this doesn’t work we’ll at least get a funeral pyre. I’d like them to see us on Pendragon, even if our star doesn’t last long.” Vaelent had been flying longer than Mae. She knew parts of his history and felt the same wanderlust.

“Better than starving to death.” Mae caught Vaelent’s grim mood.

They worked quietly beside with the words they needed.

“I think that’s it.” Mae gestured for him to step away.

“I hope it works.” Vaelent’s obvious statement summed up her feelings.

“I’m going to stay out here when you power it up.” Mae said. “I want to see anything happen.”

“Are you sure?” His voice was concerned.

“Yes.” Mae had always liked the idea of space. Traveling through it in a ship made her feel closer to the pulse of the universe. She had no idea if their patch job would work. She decided she’d rather be blown into cosmic dust outside the ship where the view good.

Vaelent patted her shoulder with his clumsy glove. “I will shut it down the instant you tell me.”

She smiled but he probably couldn’t see through the helmet. She only saw the stars reflected from his bubble. His words were empty. With the forces they were about to unleash any failure was likely to turn catastrophic faster then either of them could react. If casters were still working they might have stood a chance.

She shifted the connection of her tether while he went inside. She double checked everything she could. It was as ready as she could make it.

“Ready?” Vaelent asked her.

“Yes.”

“Hold onto something. If this works we’ll get up to 6 G’s quickly.” They were all trained for this as part of piloting ships. Wormholes didn’t produce G force but the final maneuvering of a ship going into a dock or returning to a planet could be violent.

“Ready.” She let her tether get tight and felt the gel mold to her while the harness gripped her whole body like a hug.

“Igniting.” Vaelent said. “3,2,1”

The drive cone began to glow. The ship shuddered with force it might not have known in its whole life since it was built on an orbital platform. She felt like she weighed a ton.

She suddenly couldn’t breathe. Something was wrong that didn’t have anything to do with the drive. Darkness has closed around her for a moment.

“Down!” She gasped out. Normally they’d use casters to communicate during hi-G maneuvers.

Slowly the sensation dwindled as Vaelent throttled down the drive. They were traveling at speeds impossible in atmosphere, but it felt like a standstill when she was in freefall again.

“All systems green.” Vaelent sounded brisk and professional. “What happened?”

“Something isn’t right.” Mae kept blinking trying to clear her mind.

“Been a while since we did pulled that many G’s.” Vaelent said.

A darkness blotted out the stars to her left. She couldn’t twist her head far enough to see.

“Vaelent? What is beside us?” She shouted into her helmet.

“I don’t see anything!” He was trying to stay calm but his voice in her ear quavered in response to hers.

Another ship seemed to roll into her view and matched their course, no external lights, a design she had never seen before, almost organic. It was huge. It was black as the expanse around her.

“Go!” Mae shouted.

The other ship moved smoothly out of her vision and Mae last track of it. She had seen no flash of drives, it had to have a working wormhole to move like that.

Her breath came in short gasps. Fatigue and stress had finally gotten her to really panic.

“Vaelent?” her voice shook.

“What happened?” He asked.

“Go!” Mae felt better knowing he could still hear her.

She weighed a ton again as the drive lit up. She couldn’t move. The dark ship appeared in front of them. “Help!” Her heart wanted to burst in her chest.

A bright flash hit the dark ship like a shooting star from her right. The explosion rocked her whole world.

“Mae?” Vaelent’s voice was full of static and muffled. “Mae! Can you hear me!”

Mae opened her eyes. She was drifting alone in a space suit in the vacuum light hours from anywhere she could breath free air. Vaelent was alive somewhere in radio range. She couldn’t see anything. The stars shifted around her as she tumbled.

“Mae?” His voice crackled again in her helmet. “Please answer.”

Mae moved her hands. “Vaelent. What happened?”

“We hit something.”

“I saw it.” She found the tether line with a flailing hand and pulled it to confirm what she already knew: She was drifting along and unattached.

“Mae, I’m on a ship.” Vaelent’s voice was more calm now.

“Where?” She looked everywhere as she spun slowly among the stars.

“I see you.”

She flailed her arms trying to turn but she saw nothing.

“I’m coming to get you.” Vaelent said.

His weight hit her from behind and his arms went around her. He held her for a moment then shifted her to clip her harness to his.

Vaelent pulled them both along a tether into an airlock unlike any she had seen before. The metal closed behind them like a fast healing wound but left no scar.

She cried as she pulled off her helmet and fell onto the floor of the ship. Vaelent didn’t seem able to hold her up and slumped down with her in the silent ship. She clung to him, the only living spark, the only hint that this wasn’t a dream and wept for what seemed like a long time. There had been nothing but her alone in a space suite for an endless moment. She might never have woken up from the daze if his voice hadn’t called her name. She’d be dying in suite even now if he hadn’t pulled her into this ship.

“I thought I was dead.” She repeated until her tears ran dry. She was too numb to be embarrassed by this display in front of the cool and calm dreki.

“I thought I was too.” Vaelent’s voice was soft and tired.

“What is this ship?” Mae looked around and saw soft lights in a corridor, a display screening showing a picture of a cabin in a mountain meadow, nothing seemed normal and yet it was quiet. Nothing moved.

No one had came to them. No voices spoke.

“I don’t know.” Vaelent’s voice was not normal, softer and with more tones blending. His crest was held tight and low with deep unease. “I was drifting in my suit after our ship blew up. Something protected me. Then I was here. I think I passed out.”

“What pulled you inside?” Mae asked looked around them at a hallway that led deeper into the ship. Doors were closed, a few strips of light gave wan illumination.

The deck of the ship rocked slightly. Mae cried out and clutched the floor fearing the worst. She had enough trauma to last a lifetime.

The wall began to open just like it had closed. Mae’s helmet was out of reach on the floor. She was sure she would die in a few seconds as the air was pulled out of her lungs into the vacuum.

Sunlight streamed through the open door. The air smelled of growing things.

“Mae, we’re on a planet.” Vaelent pulled her to her feet and they scrambled out onto a dirt road with faint wheel marks. Shrubs grew around them but there was no buzz of insects. The ground under her feet felt like heaven, regular gravity holding her down and real dirt under her mag boots.

They hadn’t felt the violence of a planetary landing. It was as if the wormhole had opened a few feet from the surface of the planet but that was supposed to be impossible.

“Is this Pendragon?” Mae asked. Too many questions that she didn’t think would get answers queued up in her mind.

“Yes.” A voice behind them made them turn back to face the ship.

A figure of silver stood there. They were indistinctly bipedal with a featureless face that had a rudimentary dreki crest. They had no mouth to speak.

“Who are you?” Vaelent drew himself to his full dreki height of two meters.

The figure held a hand out, some fingers had dreki claws and the hint of scales moving slowly over the silver exterior. “I’m this one.”

“Thank you for saving us.” Vaelent said

“We should have saved more. It took too long to pull this form together. We feel it wanting to dissipate.”

“Thank you.” Mae said.

“We should go. If we don’t get lost between places I can pull other souls out of the dark.”

“Do you know what happened?” Mae asked. This being was unlike anything she had heard of. Maybe it would know what went wrong, if it could be trusted. She decided she was inclined to trust someone who had brought them to safety.

“We showed them how to go further. We gave them ourselves and let most of it go.” The person shifted where they stood to look more like a tall and broad dreki towering over even Vaelent. “We have so much to watch now. We don’t know what we need to do.”

Mae didn’t understand.

The person shifted again to look like a middle aged human woman, also tall for a human as the dreki had been for its species. “This is a good planet. Reminds me of home. Maybe I can find it again someday.”

“What happened to our ship?” Vaelent asked.

“Something else wanted you. We were following it.”

Mae remembered the shooting star. Whatever this was they had terrible weapons.

The person pointed. “You’ll find more people that way. We didn’t want to risk landing to close.”

“Did anyone else from the ship survive?”

“We couldn’t be everywhere.”

“Thank you for getting us.” Mae said.

The person was gone, no movement, just gone. The black ship vanished with a hum and a few bits of dirt shifting on the ground.