CXV
The assignment wasn't dramatic, not yet. It wasn't a war front or a rescue mission or a dimensional breach. It was the Interstellar Academy's version of a summer break—a first‑year crew's proving run, a gentle test wrapped in diplomatic silk.
But standing in the hangar, looking up at the ship they'd been given, it didn't feel gentle at all.
The vessel, newly named Rainbow Horizon, towered over all of us, its skin rippling with iridescent color like living oil on water. Every panel shimmered—pink to gold to blue to green—like the ship was breathing light. The hangar lights caught on its hull and scattered rainbows across the floor, across our faces, across the helmets tucked under our arms.
This was our ship. Our first ship.
Squad Seventeen—no longer cadets, but a crew.
The first assignment for my new crew started off simple—almost deceptively so. The Interstellar Academy's version of summer break. A "light" mission, they called it. A gentle proving run. Something to ease us into real operations before the harder assignments came.
The council finally handed us our crew roster, and seeing it all together made my chest tighten with something warm and proud. My crew. My people.
Me.
Daryll—the Hat‑Man, Diamond Knight, shadow‑walker extraordinaire.
Rawl, our fox Leader Twice Dark.
Atta, my tiny chaos gremlin.
Night Prowl, the fox soldier with the hunter's calm.
Stone Roar, our boulder‑skinned guard.
Emerald Coil, sleek and serpentine.
Rex and Oren running engineering and the mechanical bay.
Yoyo, Iron Frond, Glass Pulse, and the rest of Squad Seventeen.
Twenty of us in total.
We boarded our ship together for the first time.
The Rainbow Horizon waited in the hangar like a dream made real—its skin rippling with shifting rainbows, colors sliding across the hull like living light. Every step closer made my heart beat faster. This wasn't a simulator. This wasn't a classroom. This was ours.
Our ship.
Our first mission.
Our first step into the wider universe.
I ran my hand along the hull, watching the colors ripple under my touch. Daryll stood beside me, shadow curling around my ankles like a curious animal.
"Beautiful," I whispered.
He nodded. "Fitting for my Helianthus."
I elbowed him, but I couldn't stop smiling.
Our assignment was straightforward by Academy standards:
Escort the Denuvian princess of the East Continent to her wedding venue.
A beast planet, Denuv—lush, wild, full of massive fauna and ancient customs. Not dangerous, not truly. Just unpredictable. The princess was meant to marry three princes from three warring factions, uniting their territories for peace.
A political marriage.
A fragile alliance.
And we were the escort.
Rawl stood at the foot of the boarding ramp, tail flicking with pride as he read the mission brief.
"Primary objective: ensure safe transport of Princess Lethari to the Tri‑Crown Wedding Summit."
Atta bounced. "Princess escort mission! We're fancy guards!"
Night Prowl smirked. "Try not to scratch the royalty."
Rex wagged his tail. "Do we get to meet the princes? Are they big?"
Oren chirped. "I hope they have mech suits."
Daryll leaned toward me, voice low. "I hope they don't flirt with you."
I nudged him, cheeks warming. "Focus, Diamond Knight."
He grinned, eyes glowing faintly.
The boarding ramp lowered, shimmering with rainbow light. The interior glowed with soft prismatic reflections, like stepping into a dream.
Rawl turned to us, voice steady and proud.
"Squad Seventeen," he said, "welcome to the Rainbow Horizon."
My heart thudded.
This was real.
This was happening.
I was Vice Leader Helianthus, stabilizer, captain‑track.
Daryll squeezed my hand, shadow curling around my wrist.
"Ready, Sunny?" he murmured.
I nodded.
And together—my crew, my squad, my strange little family—we stepped aboard the Rainbow Horizon, heading toward Denuv and the princess whose fate would test us for the very first time.
The Rainbow Horizon was wondrous—breathtaking, shimmering, alive—but it was also… inconvenient.
At least for anyone with legs. Or a spine.
Or a need to sit in something that wasn't a writhing shadow‑cushion.
The original builders had been mostly shadow and tentacles, and it showed. Every "chair" was a floating cradle of dark matter that pulsed when touched. Every "table" was a shifting platform that adjusted height based on the emotional temperature of the room. Every hallway curved in ways that made my human inner ear file complaints.
I tried sitting in one of the shadow‑cradles.
It tried sitting on me.
I got up very quickly.
Daryll found this hilarious, of course. "The Horizon likes you," he said, as if that was comforting. "It's trying to hug you."
"It felt like a jellyfish," I muttered.
"A friendly jellyfish." I glared. He grinned.
Thankfully, we had help.
Our android assistant glided into the room with perfect posture and a voice like polished chrome. Daryll had named him Supertrooper One after an old ABBA song he'd found in the Academy archives. The android had accepted the name with solemn dignity, unaware that Daryll had chosen it because he thought it sounded "heroic and sparkly."
Supertrooper One scanned the lounge with a soft blue glow. "Crew seating is suboptimal for your biological parameters," he announced. "I recommend structural modifications."
He projected a hologram of the ship's interior, highlighting every problematic area.
Shadow‑cradles replaced with adjustable chairs for humanoids.
Tentacle‑rails swapped for standard handrails.
Gravity pockets recalibrated for species with bones.
Sleeping alcoves expanded for anyone taller than 1.5 meters.
Humidity chambers added for plant‑types.
Sound‑dampening installed for fox‑ears and avian hearing.
Rex wagged his tail so hard he nearly knocked over a console. "Can we get mech‑friendly charging ports in the engineering bay?"
"Affirmative," Supertrooper said.
Oren chirped. "And perch‑rails in the observation deck?"
"Affirmative."
Atta raised her hand. "Can we get a snack dispenser that drops food when I hit it?"
Supertrooper paused. "Affirmative… with supervision."
Daryll leaned toward me, whispering, "I like him. He listens."
"He listens because he's programmed to," I whispered back.
"Still counts."
It took hours for Supertrooper One to finish the adjustments, but when he did, the ship felt different—still alien, still shimmering with rainbow light, still full of strange curves and impossible geometry—but now it felt like ours.
I could sit without being absorbed. The rest of the crew's adaptations followed their anatomy pretty well, adjusting for comfort with the stroke of a screen. Finally, we could explore the ship at our leisure, and get updates on our assignment. After a few days of adjustment we were ready to roll.
The Rainbow Horizon was still a creature of light and shadow, still built by beings who didn't understand bones or chairs or personal space—but now it was a home.
The first departure from the hangar was… well, let's call it "character‑building."
The Rainbow Horizon shimmered like a living prism, but beneath all that beauty was a control system originally designed for beings with six to twelve tentacles, three shadow‑limbs, and a sensory organ that functioned like a mood‑activated joystick. The Academy engineers had mostly adapted it for humanoids.
Mostly.
I strapped into the captain's chair—now blessedly non‑sentient thanks to Supertrooper One—and watched my new crew take their stations. Daryll lounged beside me, shadow flicking with excitement. Rawl stood at the command rail, tail high. Rex and Oren were already arguing over calibration settings. Atta was vibrating. Night Prowl looked ready to pounce on something. Stone Roar looked like he was the ship.
And then there was our navigator.
Ricki, the Stone Golem Navigator
We'd never met him before today. He'd signed up for the crew during the final roster shuffle, and his name—his real name—sounded like gravel rolling downhill. He'd kindly offered "Ricki" as the humanoid‑friendly version.
He was enormous, carved from rose‑tinted stone, with glowing runes across his arms and a voice like tectonic plates shifting politely. When he sat at the navigation console, the entire station creaked under his weight.
"Ready for departure," he rumbled.
I nodded. "Take us out gently."
He tried. He really did.
But his fingers—each the size of a small loaf of bread—pressed three sensors at once, and the Horizon lurched sideways so hard the entire crew yelped. The ship listed toward the hangar wall, scraping it with a sound like a rainbow being sanded.
"Ah—apologies!" Ricki boomed, turning pink across his stone cheeks.
"Easy!" Rawl barked, bracing himself.
Ricki lifted his hands, trying to hover them delicately over the controls. His fingers trembled. One brushed a panel.
The ship dipped again.
Daryll grabbed the back of my chair. "Sunny, we're going to die before we even leave the hangar."
"We are NOT," I snapped, gripping the armrests.
Ricki swallowed—an impressive sound for a stone being—and tried again. This time he pressed only one sensor. The Horizon steadied, humming with relief.
We drifted forward, scraping the hangar wall one last time before clearing the bay entirely.
The hull healed itself in shimmering waves, rainbow light smoothing over the scratches like liquid silk.
Ricki sagged in relief. "We have… departed."
I exhaled. "Good job, Ricki."
He turned a deeper shade of pink. "Thank you, Vice Leader."
Daryll leaned close, whispering, "I like him. He's adorable."
I smiled despite myself.
The Rainbow Horizon was officially airborne—shaky, imperfect, but ours.
And as the stars opened before us, I felt it:
The mission had begun.
The crew was real.
The adventure was finally underway.
The navigation plotted itself after Ricki's… enthusiastic first attempt, and once the Horizon slipped into the star‑lane, we were finally free to explore her properly.
I hadn't expected the ship to feel so alive.
The builders—those shadow‑and‑tentacle beings—had designed everything with a kind of elegant minimalism that didn't care about chairs or bones or human ergonomics. But they cared deeply about texture, light, and flow.
And it showed. The corridors were long tubes of shining black, smooth as obsidian, with streaks of glowing letters running along the walls. Not written language—more like directional glyphs. Each glyph pulsed in a different color, and all we had to do was touch the wall and follow the strip of light that matched our destination.
The ship had more rooms than I expected for a vessel built for dimensional jumps:
A botany bay for the plant‑types, warm and humid, with soft soil beds and sun‑lamps that shifted color like dawn and dusk on command. Emerald Coil practically melted into one of the moss‑pits.
A gym, complete with gravity‑adjustable floors. Stone Roar tested the highest setting and cracked the mat. He apologized. The mat healed.
A running track that looped around the ship's mid‑section, glowing with soft blue lights. Night Prowl immediately claimed it as his territory.
A small cafeteria, elegant and simple, with tables that adjusted height and shape depending on who sat down. Rex discovered that if he wagged his tail too hard, the table tried to match the rhythm.
Everything was designed with economy of space and aesthetic harmony in mind. Even the walls felt good to touch—smooth, cool, with a faint hum like a heartbeat.
By the time we finished exploring, the ship felt less like an alien artifact and more like a strange, shimmering home. A place built for beings unlike us, now reshaped gently to welcome our mismatched crew.
I stood in the main corridor, watching the colored lights pulse under my fingertips.
The flight to Denuv felt almost peaceful after the chaos of our departure—just the soft hum of the Horizon's dimensional engines and the gentle ripple of rainbow light across the hull. With the navigation plotted and Ricki's massive hands safely away from the controls, we finally had time to breathe and explore.
Denuv appeared on the main command deck screen long before we arrived. A blue‑green sphere, familiar in a way that tugged at something deep in my chest. Three large continents, scattered smaller ones, swirling cloud systems. It looked like Earth's cousin—wilder, untouched, still in the early dawn of civilization.
The briefing video played automatically, projected in shimmering holographic layers.
It reminded me of those old Earth evolution documentaries—early humans transitioning from stone tools to medieval armor, except here the figures were massive beast‑folk, towering plant‑warriors, avian clans with feathered cloaks, and reptilian tribes forging metal with their bare claws. The imagery flickered between eras: primitive huts, sprawling tree‑cities, mountain fortresses carved into living rock.
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, watching the history unfold.
"Feels familiar," I murmured.
Daryll glanced at me, shadow curling lazily around his chair. "Like home?"
"Like the videos," I said. "The ones showing how humans crawled out of caves and into kingdoms."
He nodded, eyes reflecting the holographic light. "Except these kingdoms have claws."
The Horizon's interior made the whole experience surreal. The ship was built for dimensional jumps, not comfort, but the builders had cared deeply about beauty. Every surface was a pleasing texture—smooth stone, cool metal, soft shadow‑fabric. Gentle underlights glowed beneath panels, turning every corridor into a starlit tunnel.
The walls were black and glossy, streaked with glowing glyphs that pulsed in different colors. Navigation was effortless: touch the wall, follow the color strip that matched your destination. The ship responded like a living creature, guiding us with soft pulses of light.
I ran my fingers along the corridor wall, watching the lights ripple outward like bioluminescent waves.
"Convenient," I said.
Atta zipped past me, hands dragging along both walls, leaving twin trails of glowing pink and blue. "It's like a rainbow maze!"
Night Prowl padded behind her, tail swaying. "A maze that doesn't let you get lost."
Rex and Oren were already racing toward the engineering bay, arguing about who got to test the dimensional stabilizers first. Stone Roar lumbered toward the gym. Emerald Coil slithered toward the botany bay with a pleased hiss.
The Horizon felt strange, alien, and yet—after Supertrooper One's adjustments—comfortably ours.
I stood in the command deck, watching Denuv grow larger on the screen, its continents coming into sharper detail.
A beast planet. A princess to escort.
Three princes waiting to unite their warring factions.
Our first mission.
And as the Horizon glided through the star‑lane, I felt it settle into my bones: