The Starfighter Invitation

6 opening cut-scene

Stars, swirling in a vast white disk. The Milky Way, or something like it, and that pale streamer drifting lazily into closer focus was—probably—the Orion Arm, Earth’s location.

[[[Welcome to The Synergis.]]]

The words were spoken, the voice the rich and strangely layered one that had been used by the Concierge Ryzon. As if three or four copies of the same person were speaking in unison.

The camera was hurtling toward a single mote of light that became a distant, burning ball.

We passed a planet. Not a blue gem, but dusty red, with one vivid blue-green slash like an enormous wound.

The wounded world had been left behind, and a watery paradise hurried to replace it. Strings of islands, a touch of ice at either pole, and no sign of continents.

I plummeted. The ocean filled my view and then I was swallowed by brilliant blue. Shoals of fish darted away like silver fireworks, vanishing into fractured light.

As I began to sink, a different voice spoke. Not rich and multi-layered, but a jagged growl.

The light of the surface was receding rapidly, and larger shapes seemed to be moving around me.

Something vast came so close to me that its wake sent me spinning, but it vanished into the gloom without touching me.

I sank into total blackness, the surface a memory, both voices silent, leaving me to try to make sense of what I’d heard. A galaxy ruled by non-humans…non-Bios. Enclaves outside their rule. Space travel that involved something called lan. The game’s main plotline.

Then, in the very depths, one final whisper reached me. A faint, shivering quaver, as fleeting at those vanished beams of light. Barely audible.