Djex Raevenraat Slaavruhl, a young woman, barely more than a girl, continued her journey. Her return home, to the place where she was born. The place where her memories would be waiting to revitalise and haunt her in equal measure. Her bittersweet return to her homeworld of Skjir's World. Let's leave it to her to put it in her own words as we see her approach her destination...

I'm approaching home. The near miss with that ship appearing out of fucking nowhere put the wind up me! It could have been the end but I pulled through. I avoided them and avoided detection, I'm sure. They'd have gone crazy and attacked me if they'd seen me.
I'm gliding along through space, and I'm making fucking sure I don't get sloppy or complacent! I don't need any more near misses like I just had, while ago with that ship...
Time to keep my wits and my attention with me. Getting close to home now. As I approach the homeworld, I see more and more space junk and ships throwing out their shit into the emptiness. This kinda pisses me off. Dirty fucks! No respect. This area is already full of shit as well as gruesome reminders of past wars and the years of oppression. But, since when did Prosperity ever give a shit about such 'irrelevant' people as us? Cunts! One day, we'll be rid of those bastards. one fucking day!
Anyway, I'm cruising on quietly as possible, trying to avoid colliding with all the crap in the area. As I get closer to Skjir's World, this gets increasingly harder to do. The closer you get, the more junk and death floats before you. If ships didn't have such things as deflector shields, there'd be even more destruction here! I suppose, deflector shields are what they use as an excuse for dumping their waste into the void. It makes life harder for the likes of me, too. I guess that's another thing they want to do, the bastards. I don't want too much attention to be drawn from any sudden movements of space junk from an unseen ship. These fuckers are always on alert, especially around planets and colonies like Skjir's World! I get some satisfaction out of knowing we make the bastards jumpy when they come here. I feel a sense of pride at this. It means resistance to colonisation is always worth the effort, however many of the liberals and peace preachers might bleat on about 'violence never being the answer', blah blah blah. Fucking collaborators, most of them.

I get closer to the planet... close enough to orbit without being seen, and close enough to try and contact Tiírna. She's the main reason I came here in the first place. I got a cybermind coded message, telling me she was here and had been sentenced to death. I couldn't work out why I'd been sent this before it got out but I knew it wasn't a trap or a fake message after I checked it and double checked it and ran it through all the usual and less usual security checks and encryptions. It was real. Sent by someone who worked as a cleaner in the prison she was being held. They had more information for me but couldn't share that with me yet. I knew it was real but I couldn't tell the rest of my friends and comrades on the Star Bastard, so I just had to sneak off and leave them a message which told them as much as I could tell. I hope they take heed to my request to not follow me here! Knowing them, they might not, but I have to make sure that only I'm risking my neck here. And I need to try and save this girl, whatever it takes. She's not just a friend and a useful fighter, a fighter who needs someone to fight with... she's also the girl I first fell in love with when we were young girls. I have to try and save her. I just have to! I can't hear her, though... those vicious bastards will probably have taken out many of her augmentations and implants, but they can't take out her cybermind chip. Those things are buried way too deep in our brains for that. I shudder at what they must have done to her, but I need to focus on other things for now.
I try to hear what's going on on the cybermind network... Lots of chattering voices. I need to find Tiírna. Where is she? I hear people sending things to each other, all encrypted, so no-one can make them out apart from the people sending them and those who they send them to. Other things sent across the network publicly... I hear that Tiírna is to be executed in less than an hour from now. Fuck! No! I need to speak to her! I need to help.

So much noise on the Cybermind Network! Like white noise. I'm trying to find her in all the racket but it's hard. Tiírna, are you there?! Tiírna! Please, hear me!! Tiírna!
Some sounds come through which might be her but I can't be sure... I'm not even sure if those bastards have pulled out her cyber implants, but it's likely that they have. They often do that, the sick motherfuckers! They'll probably have beaten her around the head, a lot, too. I hope... I almost pray that they haven't destroyed her Cybermind receptor!! I keep trying to call to her in the hope of her hearing me...
Tiírna...Tiírna!!! TIíRNA!!!!
Nothing...
I can see her in the network from all the people transmitting what's going on. The info screens can be picked up, too. I can see the whole place in my internal eye. It's horrible that I can't be there with her. I want to save her, but I don't know how...
Tirína, dammit! Are you there? Answer me, my love, please! Tiírna!!
Still nothing...
TIÍRNA!!!
TIÍÍÍÍÍRRRRNAAAA!!!
I hear her respond, I'm sure... faint but it sounds like her.
I call out again and again.
She responds again. It is her! She recognises me! For a second I feel happy...
She pleads with me to not go down there. How the fuck am I supposed to just stay here and watch these bastards murder her in cold blood?! And in public, too! Am I to just sit here and watch and listen?! I can't just sit here doing nothing!
She pleads again and again when I try to tell her that I'm trying to see if I can find a way to get her out of there.
I feel useless... one of the main reasons I cam back here was so I could save her life!
What fucking good is it if I can't even do that?!
Again she fades, then I hear faint things coming through from her...

I can hear Tiírna's cybermind voice talking directly and pretty clearly to me, now. She definitely hears me! She knows I'm here and I'm going to try and rescue her... but still I hear her saying to not even try! What the fuck?!! This isn't fair!

'Tiírna... I want to help you, my love!' I cry out to her.
More garbled noise, then I hear her faintly again.

'Djex, if... is you... not come! Please..
Things get distorted again. They're still trying to jam all cybermind connections. They are forever trying to hack it but never quite succeed.
I cry out again and she hears me. She keeps begging me to not come to save her... she's so fucked up that she's ready to die... she's given up. I feel like I just want to join her... this girl was my first real love... and I can't fucking save her!
What's the fucking point?!
She keeps saying to not try to approach. That I'll end up like her. Right now, I don't think I even care if I live on.
Then she lands this on me:- My mother... she's been found, and she's near here on this world, my homeworld...
My mother... my mother?! What the fuck?!! She's back here now?! So this is why I got this coded message saying I needed to come home! I knew it was probably not a Prosperitan trap, even before I ran it through all of those checks and re-checks, but I still wondered what it was. I decided, after thinking it over for what seemed like a long time, that it couldn't be ignored and I had to follow my instincts. But this? I never expected this!
I feel stunned! I'm overwhelmed with all of this. This is just too much, even for me. What the fuck?! My mama is here?! Tiírna forces me to promise to not try and save her. This is breaking my heart! But I have to be strong... I have to follow through. My mother needs to see me and has something important to show me. That's all I get from Tiírna. I have to tell her one last thing.
Azzogh always pined for her and I have to tell her that he loves her. I just let it out and tell her to be at peace.... it's all I can say to her and it feels so fucking useless. She accepts and just goes to her place of death with the kind of bravery I don't think I've ever seen! I can feel her. I can feel her fear but I can feel her resolve. I'm connected to her. I keep transmitting to her that I love her always and so does Azzogh. We'll always be with her... always... always..
I hear her shout out to old slogan in the Mother Tongue,
'Hruk na-magh djariog! It was shouted out by someone in the crowd, too, I think. There was a disturbance I picked up but it faded for a minute. I'm connected to her now clearly as can be...
I can hear the blade of the executioner being switched on. I tell her she's my love always...
...................................
....................................
.............................................GAAAAAGH!! She's calling her father. My love is gone.

I feel her dying...
I'm shaking. I almost felt like I was there with her dying
Now I know how it feels to die...
Now I know how it feels to die
............................................
.........................................


It was at this point that the tough young woman broke down. Unlike her as it was to crack at such an inappropriate moment, she collapsed in tears. Maybe it was the security waves which constantly try to hack into the cybermind network or maybe it was the fact that she had just vaguely experienced death, or as close to it as is possible without actually dying. Whatever the reason, Djex collapsed into a trance and was left there in her cloaked fighter craft, still undetected. How long she was there, orbiting that world, she wasn't sure. It was little short of a miracle that she had not been detected and destroyed, but somehow, she had escaped the supposedly perfect Prosperitan security systems.
Eventually, she made her way down to the surface of Skjir's World, the world of her birth and her early childhood. A world of so many memories, good and bad. She felt a strange mix of reckless desire to kill and be killed in the process and a desire to carry on carefully and discover more of her lost family life.
She proceeded into the planet's atmosphere very cautiously...

(To be continued...)