We’re in space. The Earth— or some planet, though it looks like the Earth— is hundreds of miles below us. In every other direction, stars stretch out to the bounds of our perception. So, so many stars. It must be well over a million in nearly every direction. Every direction except three. Below, the Earth, a sphere of blue clouded in white and with occasional bits of green and brown landscape. About sixty degrees from that, the moon, a grayish-white marble with apparent size comparable to my thumbnail when my hand is held at arm’s length. And behind me, almost exactly ninety degrees from the Earth below, is the warm glow of the sun.

I… I can breathe just fine. I hadn’t even realized that that was abnormal until the wonder of being in outer space had worn off. By all rights, I ought to be choking on the lack of oxygen, boiling on my back from the sun’s radiation and heat, freezing in my chest, shielded from sunlight, and having the air pulled out of my lungs due to being in a vacuum. But instead, everything is as pleasant as a warm summer day, minus a lack of wind.

A real uncanny valley of sensation.

Chloe is a short distance away. I sprout my wings and approach her, taking her into my arms. We share a brief kiss before separating.

“Wait, what is going on?” she asks. “This… all of this. It… It doesn’t make any sense at all!”

“It doesn’t” I switch to my voice, mostly to confirm. “And it seems that, despite being in outer space, there’s air here and we can talk normally.”

Chloe laughs. “Best not to think too hard about it, right?”

I nod. “Something like that. I doubt we’re actually in outer space. Just looks like we are.”

Chloe slips her arm underneath my wing and around the back of my waist. “It’s beautiful. The perfect spot to have a romantic date.”

“Hopefully many more dates, not just one. Wouldn’t it be fun to sail the stars in our world, you and me? Explore the galaxy, discover new worlds, meet new people, try new foods and… And do it all alongside the love of my life?”

Chloe smiles. “I’ll hold you to that. But for now, we should meet up with Alexey and figure out where we’re supposed to go.”

The two of us find him a short distance later, floating in the endless sea of space, slowly veering off toward no direction in particular. It seems that, without the ability to fly under his own power, Alexey has no ability to move himself about. The air isn’t thick enough to swim through like water, and he hasn’t a skill like Lindsey’s [Wind Walk] to allow him to step upon it like solid ground. Instead, he’s just floating along, resigned to his fate until the two of us catch up to him and begin steering him alongside.

“Be prepared for everything,” Alexey says. “Loss of electricity, shortages of food and water. Being cut off from our fellow soldiers, forced to survive in the wilderness. First aid on the battlefield. I’ve been trained in all of it, and experienced most of it. Being flung into outer space, however, is a new one. Our men back at base will need additional training when we get done here.”

I’m not at all sure how to respond to that, except to nod slightly and purse my lips where he can’t see. After a couple of seconds of awkward silence, he continues, pointing to a glint of light in the distance, in a direction that doesn’t point toward the Earth, moon, or sun.

“That right there. That isn’t a star. I don’t know what it is, but I think it’s fairly close.”

“Maybe the spy satellite you mentioned before?” I ask.

“It could be.”

With no better leads, the three of us head toward the strange light. Alexey flies in the middle of the two of us, holding one of each of our hands as Chloe and I propel us forward. It’s more than a bit awkward, flying together as though the two of us are his daughters or… Not going to entertain any further thoughts on the matter.

We don’t get very far before more lights appear. These, in contrast to the one Alexey has pointed out, are moving. Quickly. And yet more of them appear, green beams that shoot through space at the speed of a bullet, though with a bright trail like a comet which alerts us to their presence.

That’s… exactly what they are. Laser beams… More accurately, some sort of beams of ionic plasma contained in a region of rapidly moving space. Aimed… pretty squarely at us. Though ‘pretty squarely’ is doing a lot of work; fired from a distance of several miles away, the attacks miss us by a few dozen feet each. But these bogeys are approaching quickly, and their attacks are getting more accurate, and quickly.

“Chloe, Seraphina!” Alexey calls out. “There’s no sense wasting our time with these small fry! There are probably hundreds of them, and I’m no use fighting like this. Take out only the ones you need, and let’s break through their ranks.” He grits his teeth. “Let’s fly!”

“Hang onto your breakfast, Alexey!” I say, feeling [Rally Cry] take hold of us. Chloe infuses me with [Saintess’s Blessing] through our bond, and I follow with [Angel’s Grace] upon her. Our speed doubles in an instant, and I realize as we approach just how different three-dimensional combat is compared with its ground-bound variant.

Mostly, I realize that Alexey’s assessment is absolutely correct. Even hobbled as we are, having to carry Alexey around with us, the sheer number of different directions we have to dodge means that attacking with any sort of beam- or ray- based attacks comes with a huge disadvantage. We do have to take a bit of extra time through the path, zigging and zagging before the obstacles that emerge in front of our path. Not just fighters, but also meteors the size of skyscrapers and some sort of explosive mines that detonate when struck by an outside force…

Which is apparently sensitive to include ‘flying too close to it’ and disrupting the air currents in our wake, something I learn as the three of us narrowly avoid getting charred in the butt after passing by one at a distance of a hundred feet or so. Proximity weapons?

Okay, yes, that would be a good way to defend oneself from an attack in any direction. Just like a shield. But now that we know what we’re dealing with, we can devise countermeasures.

“Sera, you form a barrier the instant I launch my attack.”

“Perfect, Chloe. You picked up on my plan even before I could send it to you.”

She smiles, letting go of Alexey’s hand. Both of her hands join, outstretched in front of her, gathering luminous energy and glowing brighter and brighter. I fire small bursts of [Gravity] energy toward the oncoming attacks, lensing the strikes off course and away from our approach.

I’m amazed how easily I can Manifest the glyph now. Just a few weeks ago, it took every bit of my willpower to do so, even with Chloe’s spells to assist me. Combining it with other glyphs like I did against the harpies brought me to the brink of consciousness. But now I can use it with as little effort as all of my other individual glyphs. I can only imagine how scary I’ll be once I get to the point where I once was, one universe ago.

Chloe’s blast launches. A single unlucky fighter was unable to get out of the way of her blast in time, suffering a clipped wing for its trouble. Not sure whether it will be able to ground safely, not sure I care, either. More importantly, the next wave of proximity bombs between us and the objective starts exploding, each triggering the next in a chain reaction. Perfect

.

Chloe takes hold of Alexey’s hand as I let go, readying myself for my part of the plan. I grin as I power up a [Fiery Reflect] glyph formation, extending it outward with an [Expansion] glyph around the outside to cover all three of us within. I hold it in my mental storage, waiting until we get just a little bit closer. This mental exertion, in turn, makes it a bit harder to dodge the oncoming attacks, which are now becoming numerous and focused enough to be a slight problem. Especially from the handful of fighters that are now trailing us from behind.

Just another second or two. Chloe dives down relative to our travel direction to avoid a blast by the barest of margins, and I avoid another with a timely barrel roll. One which sadly carries no additional energy-deflecting properties. And then, just as we hit the periphery of the explosions, I launch my spell. Fire and smoke are launched away from me with preternatural quickness, obscuring the vision of both the spacecraft chasing us and those attempting to cut us off.

That doesn’t mean their attacks cease. Far from it. They’ve become even more relentless now that we’re trapped in a nebulous cloud of dark smoke. With [Archangel’s Gaze], I’m able to peer through it all, selecting the best final approach for the three of us. The pilots, or perhaps the craft themselves— I don’t see why they can’t be autonomic— are not so fortunate, their sensory arrays causing them to fire haphazardly, sometimes in directions almost completely antipodal to our flight path. Two particularly unfortunate craft are unable to avoid a collision, the resulting explosion and debris launching us forward that much faster and more errantly.

“You two still holding on okay?” I ask, though it’s hard to hear anything through the cacophony of battle. I follow up with the same message to Chloe via telepathy, sensing that she’s physically healthy but worried about something.

“Yeah. I’m getting tired, but we’re alive and well. Alexey has been kicking away laser beams with his shins; I don’t know what kind of Skill lets him do something like that.”

“We’re almost there; shouldn’t be more than another minute or so.”

“Understood; we’ll try to hold out that long!”

The dust clears up, and the space station comes into view. It doesn’t look so dissimilar from depictions of the International Space Station at first glance, with a modular design and plenty of solar panels and other sensory arrays along the outside. However, it is much, much bigger than any spacecraft or satellites thus far built by human hands. The entire structure is the size of a small city, at least a mile from the top antennae down to the bottom substructure. A bit above the midsection of the vertical stem, there’s a slowly-spinning ring running transverse around the entire complex. Some sort of mechanism to stabilize artificial gravity onboard the station, perhaps?

A massive explosion roils from behind the three of us, nearly catching Alexey’s legs within the inferno. I fire off a simple [Repulsion] barrier at the last second, protecting both him and Chloe from the encroaching plasma cloud.

“Damn,” I mutter, wondering what caused such an explosion. A massive pileup of fighter drones? Or some outside force at work?

I don’t get more time before I spot a potential entrance. A small docking bay near the bottom of the central tower. A couple of fighters are about to take off, meaning the membranous airlock will soon deactivate. We might only get a couple of seconds, and I plan to make it count.

“Chloe, full speed ahead! See where those fighters are about to come out? That’s our way in!”

“Got it!”

In the corner of my eye, I spot a vessel the size of a small skyscraper with a massive battery aimed at us. Probably the floor boss. I decide that it’s best not to engage. Not with Alexey serving as a sitting duck in the midst of battle. I doubt they’re going to deliberately destroy their station, not when there’s a chance of subduing us without such drastic measures.

Or so they think.

We make it inside the docking bay by the literal soles of our boots, Alexey’s getting clipped by the barrier as it seals shut behind us. Dozens of humanoid battle robots await our arrival, carrying energy weapons not dissimilar from our own. And I smirk. If these hunks of junk want to challenge me to a firefight, I’ll be more than happy to oblige.