Fic - Taking Flight (No Man's Sky)

[merrileemakes]

Title: Taking Flight
Fandom: No Man's Sky
Rating: G
Warnings: None

Summary: A moment on an strange world.

As soon as the roar of re-entry subsided and the last of the ionised plasma danced way, a steady rain settled, in pinging off the metal roof of the ship in a soothing patter.

Through the ship’s sensors in orbit the planet had looked lush and inviting, an almost unbroken swathe of green. But as the Traveller got closer and could observe the planet for themselves it looked more... dank. A grey-green mire of swirling heavy clouds over swampland and broken rocks.

The Traveller's excitement of exploring this new world started to ebb away, dripping off them like the rainwater off their ship's hall. But the landing approach was locked in and they were here now, so might as well go check it out. Besides, what else were they going to do? Go back to their base planet and spend another few hours (days...) spelunking through twisting underwater caves trying to find that elusive, unscanned organism? They needed a break from crawling through tight passages, half their awareness on their oxygen gauge. They needed some time under the sky, no matter how grey and grim.

The ship jolted as the landing gear made contact with the surface. It was then that the acid atmosphere alert popped up on their heads-up display. The Traveller paused. Maybe those sunken caves weren't so unappealing after all. But then their body moved on autopilot, performing the final landing checks, checking their suit seals and oxygen supply and popping open the ship’s clear canopy.

As their boots hit the mud they surveyed the scene. Drooping, twisted trees, burdened with hanging moss and strangling vines, seemed to hunch over the swampy ground rather than grow from it. The vegetation was broken by piles of sharp rocks, which fell away to steep-sided chasms that almost looked like quarries, filled with puddles of stagnant green water laced with mud.

“It looks like Louisiana... or Dagobah.” The sound bounced empty and small within the confines of their helmet, almost lost under the drone of rain. That same drone was by turn irritating and soothing, like a mother's voice.

As they started cataloguing the new fauna their unease started to mellow. A new planet offered easy wins and their wrist computer chimed with each new discovery logged. There was the usual assortment of small quadrupeds, slightly bigger quadrupeds, and a few small flitting creatures that could move almost too fast to see.

But the high of exploring a new world didn't last long, as discoveries come further and further apart their previous heaviness settled on them again. The dark, sodden planet was getting to them.

They raised their forearm to perform yet another scan and paused, their glove straying to another button, lured by its friendly glow. A single push and beside them materialised a large iridescent bubble, colours dancing across its surface. Inside the bubble were a dozen naked eyeballs of various sizes, colours and orientations. The bubble rolled towards the Traveller and all the eyes turned in their suspended psychedelic ooze to look at them.

“Hello Callisto”, the Traveller broadcast from their helmet, offing a food pellet in their gloved hand.

Callisto appeared to vibrate on the spot and the food pellet disappeared... somehow. The waist-heigh sphere appeared pleased, her eyes shining with delight, although without eyelids or muscles or any way to express emotion the Traveller was never quite sure how she managed it.

Feeling lighter and less lonely, the Traveller started their survey again. Callisto rolled around them in an excited circle, her movement marked by gentle chimes, then took off in the direction of a mossy outcrop, her creature mind attracted by a sight or smell or something beyond the Traveller's senses. This was her usual behaviour as they wanted the face of a new world, and the Traveller watched her roll gleefully away.

They continued with their survey, soothed by Callisto's melodic presence. A while later their suit's heads-up display announced that they'd catalogued 80% of the planet's life forms. And honestly, the Traveller was content with that. The planet was resource intensive to explore, the constant drain of the acid atmosphere on their suit's shielding and their need to jet pack into and out of the sodden quarry holes, meant they were spending almost as much time searching for elements to refuel than they were cataloguing new life. And nothing that they found had been remarkable, or even that unusual. Everything was slow, sodden, and kinda dull, just like the planet itself.

They'd pulled up their ship's locator beacon and were heading towards it when a huge shadow passed over them, blocking out the feeble twin suns. The Traveller froze. The moment seemed to stretch out, and their mind stuttered out of its terror into threat assessment. Ship? Equipment failure? Eclipse? Aliens? Pirates?

Then the darkness passed, trailing off into a long slender tail. The Traveller's helmet tilted up and their suit’s heads-up display outlined a truly massive grey shape above them, angular and long, lazily drifting through the sky on effortless wings. Unidentified life form, the HUD helpfully noted.

The Traveller watched the giant creature lazily wing its way through the corrosive sky, expansive wings dwarfing its four small legs, but perfectly proportioned to its craggy head and long, whip-like tail. This creature, with its dark grey scales and heavy features, so perfectly captured the planet, but took all that sodden was made it uplifted, airborne, mesmerising.

The traveller watched, enthralled, and thought back to a conversation between two Gek overhead on a base weeks ago, befriending a flying creature on a far flung world and then riding it through the air. They watched the flying shadow, starting to disappear over the horizon, and thought…

Yes.

With an apologetic thought to Callisto, they thumbed their wrist computer and sent her back to whenever it was she went when the Traveller was without them. In the same movement they checked their stockpile of creature pellets (plenty as always, as Callisto was always delighted by treats and her joy could light the darkest moon) and took off in pursuit of the flying creature.

With luck, it had not disappeared over the horizon but rather into one of the sunken quarry swamps. Crouched down in the mud and moss it looked even more imposing, all leathery wings and rough scales. The Traveller skirted the edge of the quarry to a point behind the creature and jetpacked down as unobtrusively as they could. The creature, its back to them and head down doing something close to the swampy ground, did not stir.

The Traveller circled around them at a distance, then closer, muting their suit's warning that their atmospheric shielding was getting low yet again. The acid rain could wait, the Traveller was on a mission. They edged closer still, approaching the creature’s head and, when they thought they were close enough, threw a pellet towards it.

It paused in its movements, straining moss and algae from the dark water the Traveller could now see, and pinned the Traveller with one large grey eye. The Traveller froze, mesmerised as the eye looked directly at them, and then right through them, pupil contracting and iris shifting as the creature studied them. Then it lifted its great, craggy head from the water and stretched out its long neck to sniff at the pellet.

The Traveller froze in anticipation. They could hear the creature sniffing the pellet, lungs drawing in great bellows of acrid air. Then the creature delicately picked up the pellet with is great jaw and ate it. A current of excitement thrilled through the Traveller.

They tossed another pellet, which was taken by the creature with far less trepidation than the first. And then another. Soon the creature was much closer to them, its giant head towering over them like a rocky outcrop and both eyes peering over its square snout to regard them with curiosity and... affection?

The Traveller slowly reached out a glove and rested it on the creature's snout, feeling his breath come in and out through nostrils their glove could easily disappear inside. They couldn't believe this worked. The acrid air, the endless rain, the dripping, heavy weight of this toxic world fell away as they thought of only one thing.

Ride.

It seemed as if that single thought made it happen. Within moments the Traveller was on the creature’s back, nestled safely between those great wings, as he took to the sky.

The Traveller was used to flying, used to seeing vegetation and rocks scroll beneath them as they cruised at low altitude, either with their jet pack or in their ship. But this was something else entirely. The creature moved with an organic grace, wing beats driving them through the pelting rain in a sinuous motion. He moved like he was the air, rather than cutting through it, like he born to skim the skies of this dreary planet. Because he was. This creature didn't need to survey this world's lifeforms to understand how they fit together, he was a part of it and could read this wet, wild world as easily as the Traveller could read their heads-up display.

The minutes slipped by like mere seconds, the Traveller enthralled by this new way of experiencing this planet. It was only when their suit started blaring alarms about their shielding that they regretfully jetpacked off the creature's back, watching him slip away into the cloud laden sky.

The traveller used their height to jet back towards their ship as, and its hold full of resources to power their atmospheric shield, as efficiently as possible. When they finally reached the ground they sprinted the rest of the way. No time to waste searching for elements when they knew their ship was relatively close and for certain held a carefully stockpiled stash for moments such as this.

Their shielding failed just as they caught sight of their ship in the distance. Their suit started to grow heavy as the acid rain could now touch it directly. They could see their suit's durable material start to bubble and then flake away as the corrosion set in, but could barely feel concerned after the elation of befriending and then flying with such an amazing creature. Almost as if the creature had made them more a part of this planet, less susceptible to its dangers. A foolhardy thought, but one they luckily won't suffer from far too long. They were almost there. The ship grew larger with every moment, every step. Their suit was blaring alarms and warnings, but they were going to make it.

A few final steps and they were flinging themselves up the short ladder and into the cockpit. The ship had sensed their approach and opened for them, then sealed the canopy around them with a satisfying hiss. The sound of the rain dimmed suddenly, an unexpected relief, but even more reassuring was the sudden silence from their suit as the ship's automated systems took charge, restoring their suit and recharging all their systems.

The Traveller sat back in relief, in turns thrilled and appalled at their irresponsible behaviour. And knowing, without a doubt, that they would do it again.

--

Author’s Note: I hope you enjoyed! This was my first time writing No Man’s Sky. I haven’t played it in years and never progressed far through the plot, but this story captures on of my favourite sessions with the game.

The “Louisiana or Dagoba” line is unashamedly stolen from Farscape Season 1 Episode 2 ‘I, E.T.”.