- Jet Pack/thrusters

- jet pack/thrusters

- personal modular fusion reactor

- electromagnetic shield projector

- directed energy wrist mount

- exoskeletal enhancement systems

- psionic magnification array

- cleaver/sidearm

- gravitational grenades

- stealth systems (invisibility/warp)

- regenerative second skin

Evening sketch of your friendly local lizard lad, Tosk.

The Sun is setting. Insects hiss, unfamiliar birds whistle and warble, and stranger things clack their angry beaks in eerie canticle. Far away comes thunder, a haunting song from leviathans like walking mountains, behemoth and graceful. They bask in the evening glow. I walk. Step. Step. Step. My talons leave marks in the wet, softly gripping muck. Step. Step. Step.

The water whispers. Babbling and gentle. Summer air turned sickly sweet with the scent of far away volcanic ash— mountains are being born, hot with slag, magma pouring down a thousand rocky facades. A distant catastrophe. My footsteps are wet on pebbles and silt, claws sinking slightly at each step. Step. Step. Step— pause. Wait. Sounds upriver. Splashing water, the heave of heavy and muscular forms, honking notes— opportunity. My footsteps quicken.

My belly is full. Overextended. I rest in the shade as the noon Sun rides up into the sky, a blue expanse haloed by unflinching light. It warms my feathers, graces my scales. I doze near the carcass. Flies swarm in countless, singing droves, and they pick at my teeth, cling near my flaring nostrils and slitted eyes. I smell mammal scent— tiny, fragile. Hear minuscule hearts racing in pumping terror as they scuttle around my bulk. Beat. Beat. Beat.

This muck— it smells foul. Ash is failing like black, blanketing snow. It turns the world into a bizarre, dreamlike place, coats everything in suffocating bleakness. Like night coming down from the horizon in razor-sharp fragments. My breath comes in heavy, exhaustive fits. In— stutter— out. In— stutter—out. My stomach growls, furious, empty. Fire burns, close, a screaming and pulsing wall of incineration, alive with a thousand, thousand lapping tongues that turn everything into crisp death. Have to keep moving.

The volcanoes are far away now. At night, just barely on the horizon, they blister bloody and unsettling in the distance. Ash does not fall from the sky. This place smells of frost, and stone. Rocky hills rise up into the sky, stark, banded in the colors of deep time. Whiteness caps the highest, furthest peaks. Curiosity glimmers in my mind like something shiny. Interesting.

I went to a land where the Moon blazed, with no night nor day, sky glowing like blood and wine

I went to a land with black snow on the ground, and ashen trunks far away into the distance

I went to a land where water whispered and sang, and hands reached up at the unwary, pulling them into the dark

I went to a land where there were none to weep, and the dead were memories, with statues that hung from quiet nooses, and cried silent, black tears

I went to a land where the mighty had fallen, rusted and annihilated, and the red sky watched, wearied by streaking charcoal clouds

I went to a land where the ocean mourned, endless and abysmal, waves that crashed, snatched, battered; roaring in the ruined day

I went to a land where the war machines marched, bronze Goliaths stamping, steaming, and spitting, their banners flapping in howling winds, unaware their masters had perished, waiting for orders that never came

I went to a land where the churches burned, dead Gods in sullied tombs, as marsh and swamp grew in ticking time, thick sinews from hungry roots pushing up and out of the graves

I went to a land where the Moon commanded the sky, a cracked visage, bleeding down her ravaged flanks, red on ash on alabaster

I went to a land where the voice led me, familiar and beautiful, quiet with husk, drawn with intention

I went to a land where the voice sang to me, gorgeous words that could split stone with sorrow and turn lashing rain into hushed snows

I went to a land where the voice cried out to me, all love and lust, romance crimson, bright as atomic sunrises

I went to a land where the voice commanded me, righteous, furious; bringing me to my knees, shutting my eyes, concussing my thoughts

I went to a land where the voice howled at me, and shook the mountains, shattered the seas, toppled the machines into pits of wreckage

I went to a land where the voice cried out to me, begging and pleading for promises made, mercies shared, memories cracked into broken glass, scattered like so many shimmering stars, pathetic, beautiful

The woman is afraid.

Her breath is erratic and heavy, glowing eyes wide with terror like frightened moons. Blue-black hair, wild and long, whips back and forth, this way, that way, as she struggles.

The snare holds her in a contorted vice. I can just barely see dark, fresh blood against her pale skin in the moonlight. Grievous wounds for anyone ordinary.

She is anything but ordinary.

Each footstep I take is cautious. Hands spread and raised, eyes lowered, trying to maintain even breath even as my heartbeat thunders.

Slowly.

She struggles, harder, clawing at unforgiving metal and damp earth.

I have to help.

My hands pull at chains, toothy hooks. Twine sharp as a blade cuts at the skin of my hands. Metallic teeth glinting in darkness.

Pull.

Push.

Twist.

Break.

The snare gives in with a crack, collapsing into a deflated heap, and my eyes barely register impossible motion as the captive leaps past me faster than any mortal human could imagine. I’m alone in the dark under endless stars and canvas black night, warm blood on my fingers, mystery in my mind deep as the sea.

I turn, stand—

From the darkness peer eyes bright as pale moons.

A hand reaches out, gentle and ferocious at once, inviting in friendship just as much as challenge.

I take it.

“Ladies and gentlemen, as of now, you no longer exist. You are not dead, you are not ex-communicated, you are not black operations— you simply do not exist. Mountains of documents that once demonstrated your reality: erased. Relationships with family, friends, lovers, children: erased. As of now, and from now until your deaths, you are nonexistent persons. So perfectly vanished that your oblivion will and has always been the truth. Erased.

You will never set foot on the Earth again. On this day, your loyalties previous to the Mission are abolished. Your identities wiped away like dreams upon waking because that’s all that your life was prior to this undertaking, a pitiful and muted dream, tiny to the vastness before you now. Your oaths prior are void. No longer do you serve earthly nations, no longer are you submissive to it’s whims or gravities.

Today and from now onward, you have a new purpose. A new design sovereign of anything you could possibly imagine back on the Earth. You have been selected because of what you proved you could be, who, you proved you could be. Exceptional. Dedicated. Adaptable. Superiors to the people far below us. This Mission will test you beyond your limitations, however higher they may be to those from before. Some of you will not survive. The Void is harsher than any terrestrial nightmare, uncaring and cold to your survival, your every living need. It will take without mercy.

Look before you. Out into the Dark. Secrets, mysteries, and powers lie far beyond the comfort of our Sun that are inconceivable, greater than any miracle or terror our ancestors could imagine. Greater than anything the many of the Earth can handle. You will be the Vanguard of Humanity, Wardens of the Solar System traversing the stars to ensure our ascendancy.

Welcome aboard the ISV SOVEREIGN, Captain Hawthorne, out.”