The Martial Unity

Runark found Ria’s reaction telling, of course. She had been frosty ever since they returned from Gaia Prime, but she hadn’t been too open about how the reunion went. He immediately dropped the topic, remaining in silence as the two of them walked towards the launch hatch. Personally, he didn’t entirely understand why this topic had become so sensitive to her, nor did he fully understand what she was feeling.

Her Martial Mind was far more powerful than his, so he couldn’t even read her mind with his mind sense, making her much more inscrutable to him than most people were.

Was it because she was going through her rebellious phase?

She was technically much younger than him because he had gone through the manifold just to barely exist in the same Realm as her, but because he hadn’t physiologically aged as much. When they had returned to Gaia Prime, they had visited each other’s parents. Runark always delighted in talking to his godfather, who would often treat him like he was his own son. But when it came time for a heart-to-heart between Ria and her parents, he hadn’t been present for it, of course. All he knew was that she left Gaia Prime immediately, returning to the frontier without spending even a single extra hour at home.

She had confided in him a little, of course, since they were best friends. The most telling thing she had ever told him was a simple but heartbreaking set of words.

‘I wish my father weren’t the Emperor.’

Her tone of voice had been as heavy as the words themselves. “Drop it.”

Ria’s stern voice drew him back to the present as they reached the launch trapdoor. He broke out of his stupor of thoughts, returning to his immediate surroundings, finding Ria directing at him a pointed look. He gulped, nodding lightly.

Her mental sensitivity was off the charts, so much so that just from her mind sense alone, she could perfectly read people’s minds. VMMM

They stood over the launch hatch as the vibrations of the spacecraft passed through the floor beneath their feet, quickly activating their exo-Martial suits that quickly attached an apparatus to their throat, allowing them to breathe in space.

The projected voice of the pilot began the countdown.

“And launching in three, two, one… goodbye!” CLACK

The launch hatch opened, causing them to fall into the vacuum of space, slowly falling towards Planet Sarantel, allowing them to take a good look at the familiar planet.

Because it existed at the very frontier of human civilization with minimal residential presence, the planet was not perfectly terraformed like many of the planets deeper within the territory of human civilization. It served as a hub for all commercial activity relating to the frontier of human civilization, things like resource extraction, information gathering, exploration, and security operations against hostile indigenous alien lifeforms.

The refinement of the surface reflected that, for it was a reddish-brown barren desert with a minimal presence of flora from several elven settlements upon the planet. There were large patches of gray, marking the presence of other human establishment.

Massive mining engines covered entire tectonic plates, churning out huge amounts of raw unprocessed ore before transporting them to extensive refineries as large as mountains. Even as they free-fell towards Planet Sarantel, accelerating towards it faster and faster, they could spot thousands of skyhooks floating about in orbit around the planet. These were structures innovated by the space infrastructure industry that significantly reduced the cost of surface-to-space travel. They intercepted rockets that only traveled part of the way with a spiraling motion before flinging them into space using existing angular momentum.

There were all several minutely thin lines that stretched from the surface of the planet to outer space, with containers that slowly elevated up the tethers into outer space towards a counterweight structure that utilized centrifugal force to balance gravity and tension.

Space elevators. They were the most inexpensive method of surface-to-space transport, even if they were by far the slowest, taking half a day to complete one stretch. Neither Ria nor Runark had enough patience to get on either, especially when they could just free-fall towards the planet as they were doing so.

FWOOSH!

They soon entered the atmosphere as their speed began hitting substantial drag, causing the spandex-like meta-material of their exo-Martial attire to flutter in the air resistance.

They continued falling faster and faster, even as the resistance mounted, while the rate at which they accelerated began slowing down upon the exponentially rising resistance from a dense engineered atmosphere.

FWOOSH!!!

The meta-material composing their spandex minimized friction, allowing them to minimize the resistance, which they, in turn, needed to compensate with their Martial Art.

They activated their breathing techniques, paddling their feet as they began sky-walking to slow down their momentum as they approached the surface. The fluttering of their spandex suits relaxed as the drag also reduced each moment.

Soon enough, they reached the surface.

THUD THUD

The two of them landed on a hard bedrock, causing dust to kick up. Free-fall landing directly into a city was prohibited, forcing them to land outside human establishments in undeveloped dirt.

The sky was a dark auburn, thanks to the red sun which glowed dimly at the edge of the horizon. The air reeked of a particular odor thanks to the immense presence of iron in the bedrock of the land beneath their feet.

“This planet is as barren as always,” Runark remarked, switching off his breathing systems to preserve oxygen. “I do prefer tier-one planets over tier-three planets, not gonna lie.”

Planets were tiered based on the extent of their terraforming with Gaian Seed, a priceless technology controlled by the Gaian Alliance. Terraforming every planet into a perfect offspring of Gaia was prohibitively expensive, even for the most inexpensive way of terraforming planets.

Thus, Gaian Seed and the planets they were subsequently used on were tiered into three tiers based on their degree of terraforming. Tier three planets were planets that were just able to sustain human life without life-sustaining systems.

Tier two systems went further and created a more natural habitat for human beings.

While tier-one planets were regarded as perfect offspring of Gaia and perfect attunement for the human being. Ria sharpened her eyes. “I don’t care for tier-one planets. I actually prefer tier-three planets like this one. Come on, let’s get going.”

They quickly found themselves at the City Gates, featuring a large lighting board with the name of the city on it. [City Stormfront]