The World the Goddess Only Knows

Weiss had mixed feelings about stars. Sometimes, she hated them; they were distant, untouchable, immune to the cares of the world around her, and she envied them that.

Sometimes, particularly since Winter had left, they seemed like the closest thing to companionship she had.

She rarely had much time to look at them; the expectations placed upon her were steep, especially since Winter had left. Most often, by the time her daily schedule wound down and she returned to her bed, she was exhausted. On some nights though, particularly after her spending 'quality time' with her father, she was unable to sleep, no matter how physically and mentally exhausted she was, and she simply stared up at the stars through her window.

She had seen shooting stars before, but this night, there was something different about the streak in the night sky. Firstly, its angle and speed, secondly, its hue, tinged red around the edges, rather than a simple smear of white. Few shooting stars lasted more than a second or two, and Weiss was familiar enough with the physical principles behind why; small meteorites disintegrating due to atmospheric friction as they struck the mesosphere at the tremendous velocities celestial bodies moved at. It was rare for a meteor large enough to pass into the lower layers of the atmosphere to strike Remnant, which was why most 'shooting stars' were so short-lived.

The third difference was its endurance. This shooting star lasted not just seconds, but angled in across the sky for over a minute.

"But," Weiss murmured sleepily, "The only way that makes sense, is if it's under powered deceleration…"

***

"Plasma sheath is still making it difficult to get a hard return," the Tech Sergeant Gold reported, "But it's definitely maneuvering under thrust."

"How much is that likely to affect its touchdown point?" General Ironwood asked sharply.

"The rate of increase on thrust output has been steady since before it even hit the atmosphere," Gold replied, "Counting for atmospheric variance, I can give you a half-click radius estimate on where it'll touch down, if the profile doesn't change."

"And where is that?" Ironwood asked.

"Lake Bykal," Gold reported, "Probably trying for a splashdown."

"Good work," Ironwood said, patting the tech on the shoulder stiffly, "Notify me if the profile changes; I'll be with the intercept team."

***

Bykal gave the appearance of simply being a large lake, long and narrow. In truth, it was also an immensely deep lake, which was a part of why the one-man ship with Hope painted on its nose in a dozen different languages had targeted the lake for splashdown. The computers aboard the Hope weren't the most advanced or powerful amongst all that its world of origin had to offer, but they were more than powerful enough, and nestled within distributed compartments were the data repositories that were the ship's only real 'cargo.'

When the ship struck the lake's surface, it was well under the relativistic velocities it had traveled the stars at; it wasn't even exceeding the speed of sound, after the aerobraking it had utilized while descending through the atmosphere. There was still a great deal of speed and heat to bleed off, and a plume of steam, displaced water, and air tore down into the lake. Before the Hope's descent had even halted, a squadron of Bullheads swept in over the lake after it, tracking the new arrival's movements closely; by the time it surfaced, they were hovering directly above it.

"It's responding to hails," Lieutenant Warner, the left flanking Bullhead's copilot, said, "But all I'm getting is gibberish."

"Some form of malicious code?" Ironwood asked.

"No," Warner said, shaking his head, "It's nothing. Either complete junk, or data we have no idea how to interpret."

"If someone with no contact with any of the Four Kingdoms built their own computer systems from scratch," Ironwood asked, "Would that give the sort of feedback we're seeing?"

"… It could," Warner said with a shrug, "Sir, where did this thing come from?"

"We don't know," Ironwood said as the slightly bulbous and otherwise sleek craft bobbed to the surface, "Which is why I'm here. Slap a tow line on that thing and drag it to shore."

It was the work of just a few minutes to attach a magnetic grapple to the vessel's hull, and tow it across the lake's surface, and a few more to get a squad down onto the ground in proper covering positions. There was only one other soldier in the recon force with an activated Aura, and he was nowhere near Ironwood's strength, so the General took a combination of rank and Huntsman's prerogative, and approached the downed vessel himself.

Its canopy wasn't quite opaque, Ironwood realized as he closed to within arms reach, and after taking a minute to walk a circuit of the ship checking for other potential access points, he decided that the canopy was also likely intended to open. And further, that it was a reactive surface, slowly depolarizing since its blinding descent through the atmosphere had ended.

"Kill the lights," Ironwood ordered; a couple of the soldiers hesitated, but followed the order after a sharp glare reinforced it.

Without a source brighter than the moon, the drastically reduced amount of light reflecting off of the canopy allowed Ironwood to see inside the vessel.

Specifically, to see an emaciated girl strapped into a single seat, with a teddy bear tucked in beside her. After a moment for his eyes to adjust, and the canopy to continue depolarizing, he could see her faintly breathing, and discern that not all of the panoply arrayed around her body was a safety harness.

"Call a medevac team!" he barked, "Now!"

The senior NCO amongst the ground team activated his helmet radio immediately, and Ironwood shifted his attention back towards the girl inside, wincing as he noticed that at least one of her shoulders was broken.

***

Exit Condition met.

I blinked at the alert that had appeared in front of me. The system didn't give me unprompted alerts very often, especially since I'd stopped experimenting with trying to create various forms of AI six months past. What did…

My eyes widened as I remembered what that specific prompt indicated, something I had deliberately not thought about for a very long time, since just months after I'd first learned what it meant.

The Hope had entered an environment that could support human life.

Lifting my tablet, I furiously swept through menu options, eventually finding a readout of atmospheric conditions outside of my little ship. It was beastly cold for an earth-like environment, but atmospheric pressure was at 185.97% sea level, Oxygen 23%, Nitrogen 76%, traces of various elements suggesting an active biosphere, and the hull of the Hope was steadily warming.

I could wake up.

Part of me dearly wished that the intended cameras had been installed on the ship's exterior, but my actual physical eyes should be able to serve just fine. A few further manipulations of the menu brought me to what just might be the last virtual prompt I ever responded to.

Exit Simulation? Y/N?

I shivered; it had been most of my life…

Grow up big and strong.

I poked the 'Y.'

Part of me expected reality to slowly collapse in on me, dissolve into the sort of pseudo-data I tended to perceive things as when they were still being written into the artificial environment. Instead, my perception of what had been my world for most of my life, just faded away. Blackness and silence buried me in imperceptible depths, and other sensations began to well up within me.

My hips ached, my shoulders hurt in a way like nothing I ever remembered before, and more sensations bombarded my mind from my face than I knew what to do with. Light flared for a moment, and I realized that my eyes were closed, and I almost opened them.

Instead, I waited for the light to turn away, then just barely cracked my eyes open. The light still burned a little, and I spent a few minutes slowly opening my eyes further and further, shutting them periodically as they adjusted.

I was in the Hope's cockpit, the ship itself inside of some sort of hangar, and there were men in what looked like uniforms standing outside the glass, looking in at me. I didn't recognize the uniforms, but I'd hardly memorized all the different nations's uniforms, and besides…

"Gjs ahu qsw? Ahu qsw ontwhup?"

That didn't sound quite like any language I was familiar with, either. I couldn't even be sure what languages it might be related to after so long.

One of the men, who had a bit of metal on his forehead above one eye, tapped on the cockpit canopy, then made a lifting gesture.

Of course, they want me to open the canopy.

I tried to raise my left arm (with how much my right shoulder hurt, I certainly wasn't using that arm), and discovered that it was apparently both stuck in molasses, and strapped to my seat. A glance around showed no immediately-visible way to remove my restraints without first being freed, and also gave me a slight case of dizziness.

Verbal commands it was then. It took me a few moments to get moisture properly working around in my mouth, as well as a couple of garbled attempts, before I managed coherent speech.

"Open canopy," I ordered the ship's computer raspily.

A prompt activated on one of the multi-function displays around me, Confirm open canopy?

"Confirmed," I ordered, and with a faint hiss, the cockpit canopy unlatched and started to swing open.