“You ready?” Kelly grinned. Her long, dirty-blonde hair was perfectly disheveled in a way that screamed somehow both that she’d just rolled out of bed and that she’d spent hours in front of a mirror perfecting it. It fell in such a way to perfectly hide away one of her deep, dark brown eyes making her look both all the more intense. Her deeply tanned fingers spread dramatically over the smooth panel illuminated with the controls of The Nightcutter. “This is going to be the fastest ride you’ll ever see!”

Tiana twisted up her green lips that stood out as dark surrounded by paler green skin. There was no way to interpret the whine from deep inside of her throat as anything but deeply concerned with even more uncertainty. “I’m excited about this trip. I really am! …but you said that this ship had a real Ferren engine, right? Not a knock off, not—”

“Please, Ti.” Kelly laughed, waving her hand side to side as if to bat away her friend’s worries like they were a physical thing. “She’s not ‘this ship’. I didn’t spend time calling in all of the favors I had leftover  for the registration officials to cave only for her to be called ‘this ship’.” Kelly’s grin deepened, her visible eye hooding lower. “She’s The Nightcutter.”

Tiana blinked, her red eyes absolutely blank for several long moments. The pair of green antennae that stuck out from her short, well-kept black hair twitched. “Right. The Nightcutter. I remember.”

“Not the right emphasis!” Kelly shook her head. “The Nightcutter. C’mon. Say it.”

For a long moment the ship was silent but for the background of the ship’s software proceeding through a series of friendly sounding beeps and boops to assure anyone who knew what they meant that everything was in good shape. Red eyes met the one visible brown. It may not have been a standoff, but it was still a kind of standoff.

With a deep breath, and a quiet laugh, Tiana finally relented.

Slowly drifting in orbit around the beautiful green-and-blue planet below, The Nightcutter was a sight both utilitarian and stylish. Its shape was a half-circle seemingly squished flat, utilizing Hyrokian metallurgic techniques and Seyqla-blue detailing. The signature look of Ferren-engines took up ethe entirety of the flat side of the half circle, taking up a good half of the size of the overall craft.

In the void of space that surrounded the planet of Eterna made the ship look almost quaint, but the nearly 30 square meters of ship was more than enough to feel luxurious for the two women inside.

“…The Nightcutter.”

“Better!” Kelly smiled, and gently patted her friend on the back. “Anyway, of course this has a real Ferren engine. I had to make a lot of deals for it—a lot—but I consider the fact that I can one of the perks of being a fitness model. I can spend too much influence and favor on cool things.”

“That’s reasonable.” Tiana smiled, leaning a bit towards Kelly. Her short, voluptuous form was supple against Kelly’s tall, athletic build making the two look more different for their silhouettes than the fact that one was a Human and the other a Gral. “Then yeah. I’m ready whenever you are. I’m really looking forward to getting to see a nebula up close!”

Kelly tapped a few more places across the controls, and then took a deep breath. “Then… let’s go!”

One final tap and a blue light slowly spread across the engines before The Nightcutter was slowly pulled out of orbit. It wasn’t the quickest at first, but once it was far enough from orbit, a bubble of phased space slowly wrapped around the ship. Eterna soon was barely even a blip on The Nightcutter’s instruments.

“This isn’t my first time flying through space or--we never would have met—but it’s still amazing to me that we can be going so fast and it feels like…” Tiana twisted up her face even as she rested her cheek against one of Kelly’s strong arms. “…like we’re not moving at all? I know that’s what it’s like being on a planet, but it’s still incredible to me.”

“…would it make you think I was even more of a dumbass if I said that always disappointed me a little?” Kelly let out a calm, happy smile as she wrapped an arm lazily around Tiana’s waist to pull her closer. She may have been the one sitting at the controls, but the standing Tiana was still the shorter one.

“What do you mean?” Tiana fluttered her eyes, her antennae both raising up faintly. “Of course it wouldn’t make me think that about you. You might be a little over-eager sometimes, but that doesn’t mean I think you’re unintelligent.”

Kelly quietly sighed, giving Tiana a little squeeze before drawing her arm back. “Ultraspace is just so fast. I really wish that it felt fast. I don’t want my spine to snap or anything, but if a fast vehicle on Eterna can feel so great or it can feel amazing to run as fast as I can, it’s a little disappointing that bypassing most of the laws of physics doesn’t feel like that… that it isn’t a rush. That’s all.”

“I think that makes sense.” Tiana gave Kelly another brief side hug before she pulled back and made her way over to a part of the wall, pressed her hand against a panel, and soon had a cup resting under a spigot dispensing cool water. “I’m not the thrill seeker you are, so it just makes me feel relieved. My family moved to Eterna when I was young, and I’ve visited family but I’ve always been relieved it doesn’t feel like being launched from a catapult even if all of the windows show are just a bunch of bright, colorful dots.”

Kelly tapped at the controls, watching as they left the speed of light in the dust. “My mom always thought the Kirby Effect was a sign we shouldn’t be using technology like this, but my dad was a painter. He said it made him feel better about when there was a stray drop of color that he didn’t realize until after he was satisfied with a piece.”

Both of them laughed together.

A moment later, after a long sip, Tiana sighed. “I never knew it had a name. I just remember thinking it was pretty.”

Kelly smiled, giving a nod as she stared out at the vastness of space as it looked traveling through Ultraspace. “It really is! Makes me excited that now whenever I’m not working, we’ll be able to go… basically anywhere. Being able to travel light years per hour means we can get anywhere we’d want to go!”

“Just no pushing the Ultraspace Veil, please!” Tiana laughed as she took another sip. “I don’t want to turn into a bunch of colorful dots if I can help it.”

Both of them laughed again, both of them enjoying the beautiful sights. Each trip through Ultraspace was unique, and there was never quite a pattern—at least not one that Human or Gral were able to perceive. Not unlike watching clouds, the two were captivated by a natural phenomenon that was both too complicated for either of them to understand yet too awe-inspiring for either of them to ignore.

That was when the entire ship dramatically lurched.

Tiana’s cup slipped from her hand, dropping dramatically to the floor. Internal gravity was still functioning, sending a splash of water across the smooth floor as Tiana braced herself a mere moment before her head would have slammed down.

All of the air in Kelly’s lungs was forced out of her in a single, painful sound. A feeling of sheer force slammed her into the chair, and left her panting for breath as the display panels lit up in a barrage of color as complicated as the Kirby effect before it flared out entirely.

Visible through the ships’ windows were no longer the many dots of Ultraspace. Instead, there was a field of so many distant stars looking not unlike the view of a cloudless sky light at night. The blue glow of the engines was gone, and there was nothing remotely close to the orange-and-blue half shape that now drifted through space at a much slower pace.

“What happened…?!” Tiana coughed as she slowly pushed herself up to her feet. “Did we… did we hit something? Is that what happens when there’s a collision in Ultraspace?”

“I… I don’t know…!” Kelly frantically tapped at the controls before she leaned forward and ripped open a panel and began pressing on buttons and switches that looked downright archaic compared to the rest of the ship’s systems. “We weren’t anywhere near the 4 LYPH that the ship was supposed to be able to take when everything just… cut out. We’re not about to suffocate or anything, but I’m having trouble getting the engine interface to come back online!”

Red eyes widened. Antennae made an alarmed ‘v’ shape with how they jerked up and away from the center of Tiana’s forehead.

“The engines are dead?!”

Instead of responding, Kelly stood and made her way across the room. “Maybe the panel just shorted out, but if we lost the internal atmosphere we’d be floating, have some very loud alarms, or there would have been a lot more sparks. Stay here, okay? I’m going to go take a look.”

Kelly squeezed Tiana’s shoulder as she made her way past her friend, but the moment the door closed behind her the confidence on her face all instantly drained as her tanned skin shifted several shades towards pale. I can’t believe that I got us into a mess this bad! I’m not an engineer… if the ship can’t just be shut down and turned back on I have no idea how I’m going to get us out of here… but I just had to show off…

She stopped in the next room to tap on a wall panel. Sure enough, oxygen levels were still optimal. Temperature control was perfect. Power generation was fine.

Propulsion?

Not responding.

It was much better than it could be, but that only softened the blow.

For her part, Tiana sat in the middle of the room she’d been left, staring blankly at the depths of space. In other circumstances, she might have thought it looked gorgeous. So many stars. Hardly a nebula, but still beautiful.

In these circumstances, her brain was barely functioning enough to panic.

Space is vast. Terrifyingly vast. We didn’t have to file some sort of… some sort of… flight plan. No one will know where to look for us. No one will ever find us… Tiana whimpered, her antennae sending shudders through the locks of hair that they peeked out between. No one will ever know what happened.

We’ll just be two people who disappeared after leaving Eterna. Maybe they’ll think that we drifted into Uldran space, or crashed on a Skezzak mining world, or… or… or…

Time seemed to stop for the poor woman as tears filled her eyes. So many worst-case scenarios filled her mind, only interrupted when the door Kelly disappeared through finally reopened.

Tiana didn’t turn to look.

Her terrified gaze stayed on the depths of space that surrounded her friend’s ship.

“Good news…” Kelly tried to laugh, but it came across unsteady and uneasy. “We didn’t hit anything…! I ran a complete sweep of the hull, and there’s not even a dent. So, if that’s how collisions work in Ultraspace, it doesn’t mean that we’re in any immediate danger…”

“…the bad news…?” Tiana’s words came out as more of a whimper. “What’s the bad news…?”

Kelly bit her lip.

“The bad news is that the engines are completely fried. The field generators burned themselves out, and they took out the navigational thrusters, too. The Ultraspace field burning out fried all of the systems that let us know where we are, and the feedback from the engines dying meant the computer can’t even guess how long we were going for how fast.” A heavy sigh filled the air. The many friendly beeps and boops didn’t sound nearly as reassuring as they had when they’d first set out. “So, I can’t even say where we are, or if some kind of weird Ultraspace thing means we’re across the universe from where we should be.”

Tiana choked on her breath, falling into a coughing fit before finally recovering her voice. “S-so… so we’re stuck here, with no idea of where ‘here’ even is…?”

“…Yeah.” Kelly sighed. “Yeah. I turned on the distress beacon, and they told me it’s one of the strongest distress beacons you can get, so…!”

The vastness of space wasn’t lost on Kelly any more than it was lost on Tiana.

Being found could happen, but there was no reason for them to feel confident about it.

No reason at all.

“We have plenty of food and water on board, so…” Kelly laughed again, a hand buried in her messy hair. “So… We might be able to pull through until we’re found. Things aren’t… we’re not doomed yet.”

“We’re lost somewhere in space with a ship that we can’t control with no idea of where we are…!” Tiana laughed, but it was impossible to interpret the sound as anything but anxiety. Kelly winced. “We’re not doomed…! We just have to rely on a distress beacon being picked up, and being picked up by something or someone friendly enough to help us find our way back home… I just… I just wanted to see a nebula with my own eyes, Kelly… I… I…”

Another of Kelly’s sighs filled the air. “I know, Tiana… I know…” She bit her lip, and glanced out to the impossible depths of space that filled Tiana’s gaze. “I just wanted to show off and have some fun with my best friend… but… hey, I made a big pot of pasta back on Eterna. Was going to surprise you with it when we got to the nebula, but… we’re not going to starve, okay? I’ll keep trying to get something working, I’ll keep making sure the distress signal works…

“We’re not dead yet, okay...?”

“Not dead yet…” Tiana sniffled, rubbing at her face with the back of her hands. Her antennae sunk sullenly. “Okay… okay. I’ll… I’ll try to… to pull myself together, but… you didn’t say anything about the comms… are those…?”

Kelly sucked in a sharp breath. “We only have short range. The Ultraspace bubble popping blew out everything else, and I’m not smart enough to know if you can make a distress beacon work for communications. I’m just a fashion model. If I start poking at things like that, I’ll definitely break something.”

Tiana laughed. It was a little more genuine, but also very genuinely pained. “Don’t feel too bad about that, okay? A dietitian isn’t any more qualified to try taking apart a distress beacon. I’d probably give it an eating disorder.”

Both of them laughed again, but the feeling in the air was anything but light.

After several long moments of anxious silence, Kelly dropped down to the floor behind Tiana and pulled her into a tight hug. Tiana turned to cry into her friend’s chest.

In the vast void of space, nothing reacted to their presence, or their plight at all.

The Nightcutter continued to aimlessly drift, its distress signals broadcasting unendingly for no one to hear.