war in the stars
More accurately, planet wars.
Scort Muggins, Human Year 3270:
THOH (thoh)
We came to a completely white planet, the entire surface covered in snow and ice, in the middle of a blizzard. Before landing, we looked around but couldn’t seem to find a sign of life, which made sense with the climate. Then, I noticed a small creature running from a much, much larger monster in the snowfall. The large monster beat the smaller creature over the head and threw it over its shoulder. The smaller creature was done for no doubt, unless it possessed magical powers or something.
We continued on, and it wasn’t long until I nearly flew into another gigantic beast - this one four times the size of my ship - expertly evading it right at the last moment. Luskem cheered me on. Pleeft was unimpressed. When we looked back at what could’ve been the crash that was our immediate and anti-climactic journey’s end, we saw that it wasn’t an organic being at all, but a massive robot or vehicle. However, you’d think that the large amount of weight supported only by the skinny legs below would’ve been a waving, neon red flag to any engineer. There was absolutely no way that the design was stable, and I’m sure it would topple over quite easily if it was tripped. There was no way it would be able to get back up either. Plus, it was incredibly slow. They should’ve just used big wheels. Lots of questionable design choices.
My ship took some damage from a weapon fired below us. We looked through the blizzard white-out and saw two armies in the midst of a battle. Green and red lasers were being fired from one side to the other, and we were right in the crosshairs. I took evasive maneuvers and dodged the beams as well as other ships flying toward the oversized, grey behemoths that I’m sure would fall over if the wind picked up.
This wasn’t our fight and we had no interest in participating. Luskem and I still had some lingering flashbacks from the war on Ertaw, and we weren’t about to get involved in another one. Luskem had regrown from a leg twice already. Thrice would be thrice too many. [Note: It’s not often that “thrice” is used twice in a sentence, and not thrice in a sentence. And never has “thrice” been used twice in a sentence thrice in a row.]
MANIKO (mah-NEE-koh)
A neighboring planet not too far away was covered in clouds. We flew through the mist and laid eyes on a vast ocean being pelted by pouring rain. It was as if all of the ice and snow from Thoh had melted and traveled to this one. There was no land in sight. It must have been a planet completely covered in water.
I didn’t think the planet would be of much use to anyone other than maybe the marine life I assumed to be thriving below the waves with no dominant land species to hunt them. [Note: This thinking is too human-centric. I’m sure there’s a planet out there where a planet’s marine beings are dominant and hunt species living on the planet’s land mass. In fact, that’s a great idea for a fictional planet for an incredible science-fiction author writing stories about non existent planets. It’s a shame this blog is completely true and anyone who says otherwise is a flirkin’ liar.] And that’s when we came across another battle of green and red lasers blasting about. This time, it looked like robots, roughly the size as humans, fighting each other. Or maybe they were beings in impractical, over-the-top armour with aggressively-sized helmets that limited mobility and sight. Maybe it was a combination of both. Either way, they all looked the same. It must have gotten confusing for them. And the armor didn’t seem to help protect anything at all.
This was another battle we wanted no part in, so we took off instantly.
FARSTAMU (FAR-stah-moo)
I thought another planet close by might be worth checking out, but it really wasn’t. The whole planet was fire and lava. I’m sure there was an abundance of resources in the melted rock, but it must’ve been a pain to mine it.
We came across what looked like some kind of mining plant that was being operated by machines. I landed on a launching pad between two other ships, and below the pad, we saw two beings yelling at each other. They were seemingly very angry... or maybe it was because it was loud down there. The former turned out to be the case because the two beings started sword fighting with what looked like huge glow sticks. I thought the sulfurous fumes from the magma were getting to me - I was probably high. But Luskem and Pleeft said they were seeing the same thing, so we kept watching the light show.
The glow sticks were both the same color, which you would think meant that they were on the same team, but the way they were going at each other… definitely not friends. I couldn’t imagine the glow sticks doing much damage. I was proven wrong when one of the beings cut off all of the limbs of the other and left him by the edge of a river of lava. Damn. That was cold. Definitely the coldest thing on the fire planet.
We assumed the two other ships on the launch pad belonged to the two beings dicing each other up like vegetables for a heart-healthy meal. We didn’t want to be next and quickly dashed to the ship and blasted off.
NOOTATIE (noo-TAH-tee)
The last planet in the system that I thought might be worth checking out truly wasn’t. There was nothing but sand on a completely desert planet. Thinking back on this war-torn system, each planet only had one environment and terrain across the entire surface. They could truly use some originality. It was as if somebody was coming up with different planets and thought… uh… ice planet… uh… fire planet… uh… water planet… Come on. Mix it up a little. And the desert planet was especially boring. We had no interest in staying, especially when a grey, enormous, isosceles-triangle of a ship flew into our view above our heads. Several smaller ships came pouring out and shot at other ships launching from the surface of the planet. I again saw red and green lasers shooting at each other. It was terribly confusing to keep track of which side was using which color laser, if that mattered, and if it had any relation to the colors of the giant glow sticks. The team colors didn’t seem to have any reasonable explanation at all.
In any case, yet another battle was about to begin. The same story kept playing out across this planetary system like remakes that were disguised as sequels.
“This system really needs a working government.”
-Pleeft
And now I guess I have to relate all of this to me, because I’m just a brand and why else are we all here…
The repetitive battles and storylines were like the same arguments going in circles in my head - all trying to answer the question of why I was still going on this journey. What was I trying to prove? Part of me thought I should just go back to Mars, while the other part wanted to see what the supercomputer meant when it told me to go to Meiti in order to find where my father is. One part would win the argument just seconds before the other part won it back, always oscillating with no progress being made - much like the government of this planetary system in turmoil… and probably other governments that only have two parties taking power and losing power back and forth.
I felt like I was being taught lessons on my journey, but not really learning…
Learning is for dweebs anyway.
RATINGS
Hospitality — N/A
Food — N/A
Sights — 2/10
Activities — 0/10
Family Friendly — 0/10
Planet Wars — 5/10 (lasers and explosions were cool, but the story was a bit repetitive)