Lunia Ayr E-Book

Lu C. Ohm

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: World without Earth
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 169

Beschreibung

Lunia Ayr / Trapped on Ulltra, World without Earth, Part 1 / Science Fiction / Space Opera (English Edition) A thrilling space adventure with pursuiter pilot Lunia Ayr! Lunia Ayr, a young woman and one of the last survivors of Earth, is forced to live on the space station Ulltra after a crash landing. How should she deal with her new troik family and what does the terrible prôlik want from her? She will soon find out... And she will meet more than one enemy. Suddenly, one of them is constantly by her side. But all she wants is to get to Opzalon...

Leseprobe

Welcome to the Morton Galaxy! Experience a fantastic journey through space with Lunia Ayr!

Lu C. Ohm

Lunia Ayr

Trapped on Ulltra

World without Earth, 1

Science fiction novel

Space opera

© 2023 Lu C. Ohm

ISBN Softcover: 978-3-347-91003-4

ISBN Hardcover: 978-3-347-91004-1

ISBN E-Book: 978-3-347-91005-8

ISBN Großschrift: 978-3-347-91006-5

Druck und Distribution im Auftrag des Autors:

tredition GmbH, An der Strusbek 10, 22926 Ahrensburg, Germany

Das Werk, einschließlich seiner Teile, ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Für die Inhalte ist der Autor verantwortlich. Jede Verwertung ist ohne seine Zustimmung unzulässig. Die Publikation und Verbreitung erfolgen im Auftrag des Autors, zu erreichen unter: tredition GmbH, Abteilung "Impressumservice", An der Strusbek 10, 22926 Ahrensburg, Deutschland.

"Even in the darkest circumstances, there is always a light - sometimes only a glimmer. Trust that light. Find a way back, no matter what it takes."

"While time cannot offer us second chances, maybe people can."

Quotes of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Sir Patrick Stewart

Inhalt

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Part 1. Trapped on Ulltra

Chapter 1

Worldless from the gutter of Gultrân

Chapter 2

In Randa’s kingdom

Chapter 3

La Traviata

Chapter 4

Takeru Title and Weltwin

Part 2. on the Run

Chapter 5

A deal with Salim

Chapter 6

The chestnut tree

Chapter 7

Not amused

Chapter 8

Altorek

World without Earth

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 8

World without Earth

Cover

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PART 1

Trapped on Ulltra

Isn't it true that even a ball gets a face and a soul when you're on a desert island?

One day you will find yourself a little homeless stray. And then you will look for a place to sleep in the shadows of the robot city. Then you will be trapped in the filthy gutter of Gultrân. If I hadn't experienced it, I wouldn't think about it the way I do now.

Lunia Ayr

The most important terms from A to Z:

Apsid – the name of the enemies

apsid - a drug

Gultrân - largest street of the space station Ulltra

prôlik - big robot, guardian, warrior

pursuiter - small spaceship, a fighter pilot

rôtma - a fighting technique

troik – a robot

Ulltra - the entire space station of the troiks and cyborgs

Chapter 1

Worldless from the gutter of Gultrân

Lunia Apocalypse. That's what Beta calls me. And he is right. It is perfect for someone like me. Because wherever I show up, there is always chaos and confusion. It's not the end of the world. As we know, the world has already ended. But where I am, there is chaos. I am curious to see what happens next. So far things are going pretty well up here. Better than down there in the gutter of the Gultrân. I've been with my new family for three days now. So far, they haven't talked to me much. Well, there's not much time for that. They have to boot up their systems early in the morning and then go to work. I start my day like a busy housewife: I dust the fans and heat the water in the old kettle in the bathroom so I can do my laundry. I call Beta to order food. This is a luxury I did not have before. And I clean up, even though nobody cares what this place looks like. The three rooms resemble grey garages where only machines could feel at home.

Although troiks could do the cleaning, I have to do it. Otherwise, I'll go crazy just sitting here. Besides, it makes me feel like I'm doing something useful. I guess it's a remnant of human civilization and my good manners. My mother used to tell me to clean up my room. Now I am far away from her. If she saw me here, she would be shocked. But at least I no longer live in mud and dirt like all the other worldless people. I can sleep in a small room against the wall. It's never dark there. But I like it. I even have my own bed. And there's a couch in the living room. But that's about it. There are no chairs to sit on, no other furniture. I don't think JM would have thought of that. But I am grateful for the new home I have.

Without JM, I would still be wandering around the Gultrân. I would not know where to sleep. Like all the other worldless people, I would be looking for a piece of cardboard or tin. And I would try to make some kind of shelter out of it.

Sinpo had always advised me against moving in with a troik family. But I had no choice. JM was right there in front of me. He was blocking my way with his sweeping Triflon plane. And then he injected a drone into my arm. I don't know what he injected me with. All I know is that I was on cloud nine for a few days.

Well, now I've made it: I am out of the Gultrân. I'm finally away from that endless street of homeless people. I am away from the canyon between the endless skyscrapers where the troiks and the cyborgs live. Ulltra is a glittering city of machines. It is a place without trees and without my language. The troiks communicate in code. They rarely speak any of the human languages. And when they do, it's to ask questions, give orders, and sometimes have a little conversation.

They keep humans the way we used to keep dogs. It is not that they walk us on a leash. People have to do a lot of other things for them. It's a very strange thing. Are we just there to work and entertain them or do they have something else in mind for us, I don't know.

I call JM that because he has "JM" written on his metal chest. It's an old sticker. This troik robot has AI built in. It seems to be very nice. I call it "he" because it has a male voice when it speaks to me in my language.

JM only spoke to me twice. The first time he approached me, he asked me politely if I “intended to accompany” him.

I thought: Wow, that still exists? I had not expected so much politeness in the Gultrân. And then I "intended to accompany" him. Well, I had no choice.

The family has four troiks: JM, another troik I call "Grandpa" because he is so old that he has a propeller on his side to cool his system, and the little "kid-troiks", two rolling robots with glowing ball eyes.

Like all the other machines and troiks, they keep the Ulltra space station running. There used to be similar robots in the science fiction movies of my old world, all networked together. But I don't know if it's the same here. I wonder if the troiks (that's what my people call all the robots here) and the cyborgs of the space station Ulltra form a unit. I doubt it, because they are so different. They live in different societies because of where they live, the height of their building, and the modernity of their individual parts.

Here on Ulltra, there are also betrayals, hacking, murder, and a kind of manslaughter. But it seems less dramatic than in our former world. When a troik dies, there is only a bang.

Silence and emptiness follow, no blood flows.

Only our human blood flows, for they make us slaves and experiment on us. Sometimes they don't even know what to do with us. After all, neither they nor we wanted it this way. No one ever wanted humans to end up on a robot space station! It happened by accident. And the war was to blame.

I call the little troiks "Alpha" and "Beta", which is not very original, of course, but they respond to it. And since Beta recently downloaded a program for my native language, he calls me "Lunia Apocalypse". At first, I thought it was a system error. It happened while memorizing vocabulary. But "Lunia" is not followed by "Apocalypse". Maybe Beta just combined them and understood that I escaped from the destroyed Earth. And then he thought that "Apocalypse" would be an appropriate name for me. It's no use telling him that my name is Lunia Ayr. He always forgets. Beta is not the latest troik model.

There is no day or night here. The artificial lights keep everything bright. And the sun when there is no other planet in front of it. I always carry my round Earth clock. It beeps to tell me when to go to my room to get my eight hours of sleep. That is enough for me. To sleep, I put a scarf over my eyes because the lights on the shuttles are way too bright.

I miss my family! My father is out there fighting the Apsids, and my mother and sister are already on Opzalon. They managed to escape from Earth. So did I, but unfortunately, I didn't end up on the space station I was aiming for, but here in this troik chaos. I only owe the crash landing to the war between the troiks and the Apsids. They must have mistaken our ship for an attacker, and so we were hit several times by both the Apsids and the troiks. Roman just managed to land. I helped him until I was thrown backwards. I don't know what happened to Roman. But it's very unlikely that he survived the crash. I still can't believe I survived!

If I hadn't given up my seat in the last pursuiter to my sister Tyra, she'd be sitting in this mess right now. About four hundred people survived the crash landing, and who knows how many have already died in the Gultrân. Tyra would never have survived.

I have to get out of here! I can't take it anymore. And what did I do my long pilot training for? I can't get out of here without a pursuiter.

I wanted to prove it to my father. He had lost two sons fighting the Apsids, and I wanted to be even better than Tom and Stevie and kill all the Apsids with my father. Of course, this was my great desire for revenge.

"The Apsids…" my father used to say, "…they are not people."

So, I was shocked when I saw one for the first time. It was in Sinpo's board shack, and I couldn't believe my eyes: this creature looked like a human!

Sinpo, the friendly Chinese who can cook anything you want, explained it to me: We call them Apsid because they take apsid. It's a special drug. It makes them different from humans. It makes them strange to us. Although this explanation made sense to me, I found it very strange. I had always thought of the Apsids as some kind of monsters. The fact that they looked like humans was hard for me to understand.

Sinpo let me sleep under his counter for a few days. But then he was too afraid of the troik inspections. Shopkeepers are not allowed to take in homeless people. So, I had to find something else. But that was fine with me, because I was tired of seeing the down-and-out Apsids coming into Sinpo's shop all the time. They will never be people to me. In my mind, they will always be the monsters I imagined them to be. That's what my father taught me. Just knowing that an Apsid pilot killed my two brothers is enough to make me hate them for the rest of my life.

I stayed at the troik shuttle sites and lingered near a water well that was more fought over than any other in Gultrân. You have to work for three hours to get a cup of water. There is always something to do in the dirty gutter. For example, you can oil the hinges of the robots, charge their batteries, clean the shuttle ships, or weld metal parts. Since I wasn't born to weld, I specialized in cleaning. But hardly any troik in this neighbourhood donates a space dollar to cleaning if you're only human. If I had at least a few machine parts on my body, things would be different. But as a simple human, I've only been paid a pittance for the hours I've spent cleaning the old machines.

Some of my kind work in the entertainment mile called "Trivi 3" here. There they dance, they dress up, and even some troiks like to take human form or imitate it in the Trivi. It's a paradise for cyborgs modeled after us humans. But most of all, it's a scary circus.

I always hurry to pass the illuminated shop windows quickly. I'm afraid to look inside. Because back there, you can't tell who's human and who's a machine. They all take apsid or a thousand other drugs. In the alleys of Trivi 3, you can get lost faster than you think. This is the end of humanity!

Even though I'm curious, I don't go near the streets of Trivi because I'm afraid I'll never get out. And I must get to Opzalon. No matter what it costs.

After their ships were shot down by the troiks' defenses, the Apsids also landed here. Thus, in the alleys of Gultrân, Apsids and humans meet. They are enemies who have to survive here, in the middle of nowhere, with nothing. Here you have to be inventive to survive.

But before I could come up with a survival strategy, JM pulled me off the road.

JM looks like a classic third-generation troik: he's basically built like a human, except he doesn't have skin yet. His eyes, his fingers, his feet, everything is made of metal, wires, cables, and connections that the last geniuses on our planet managed quite well before the meteorites hit. I don't even know if the troiks here were built by humans or if they built themselves.

I should be grateful: I survived, I finally got out of the Gultrân, and now I am living in the Upper Town. That is, in the third ring of buildings above the Gultrân. It is warm and dry here. The troiks of the third ring take good care of their people, so JM provides vitamin injections and even meals. It's not like the lower rings, Sinpo told me. The people there are treated worse than dogs. Some are even glad to escape their slavers and return to the Gultrân.

Beta beeps. He turns around.

"Lunia Apocalypse, stand up," he says.

I look at him. I think I'm still dreaming. Suddenly, Alpha appears. He rolls his red eyes. He looks at his metallic companion. Then he starts to turn around.

Alpha also says: "Get up, Lunia!"

Always copying everything! These childish robots are like kindergarten!

"Yes, Alpha and Beta! I'll get up. Don't worry." Then I do a stretch. Again, my feet hit the edge of the bed. JM has arranged a bed that is too short for me. It just goes to show: Even troiks aren't perfect!

I look outside. Four shuttles are passing by. It's never quiet on the third floor, because the "wild quarter" - Trivi 3 - starts just behind the next street. The number is a hint that there are other such entertainment districts on Ulltra. But I don't know anything about them.

Troiks and cyborgs also like to have fun. They gamble and go to the theater. Both troiks and cyborgs can giggle and laugh their heads off at jokes. Someone very humorous must have been involved in their creation.

Isn't it crazy that robots and cyborgs are having fun in Trivi 3? They play with us humans as if we were made for them and not the other way around.

Okay, I'm getting up now. Alpha and Beta are quiet again. They roll into Grandpa's room. I take a quick look into the dark room, which is filled with the sound of his propeller. The old robot did not move. He beeps a little and lets his engine cool down. If JM doesn't get him new parts, he'll be at the end of his rope soon.

I go into the bathroom. There is a mirrored wall, a sink, a toilet, and a shower. Everything is as it should be for a human being. JM is generous. I wonder if he had it all put in or if it was like this before. People used to live on Ulltra. But I'm not sure, because I've never been interested in the history of space stations. And space stations were far away. On Earth I was only interested in flying a Chaser 5 or 7. And I was always in the flight simulator. I spent most of my time aboard my fake chaser, while my father and brothers were already defending Opzalon.

Now I'm looking for a pair of scissors. But I can't find any. There are no razors or razor blades either. That's what I thought. JM doesn't want to take any chances. I guess he's afraid I'll hurt myself or cut an important wire on one of the robot kids. But why would I do that? Surely, I won't destroy the only machines I can talk to. And yet I can't. I'm only familiar with the inner workings of a Pursuiter 5. I'll probably fail at the wires of a simple mini-robot like Alpha.

"Brush your teeth," I hear from the corridor.

Beta is so smart!

Yes, I open the cabinet and drip a fluorescent liquid on my toothbrush. While brushing my teeth, I look at myself in the mirror. I look very young, younger than I am. No one thinks I'm twenty-two. Most people think I'm eighteen. I have brown hair that hangs down to my shoulders. If I had a pair of scissors, I would make order out of chaos.

I got my wild mane from my father. His father was Italian, and his mother was Spanish. My mother gave me my blue eyes.

The days in the Gultrân made me a wild stranger. The first time I looked in the mirror, I