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The old leader of the NeiChildren, Zedd, had passed away only six months ago, leaving his oldest daughter Yasmine and her young sister Zara as the figureheads of the dwindling race. They spent their days mingling with the Aiedo populace, passing for Palmans easily, trading their hunted and foraged goods for food and water. It was on one of these forays into the city when the NeiChildren’s world was turned upside down. The story Yasmine heard after the fact was that Zara and Ceena had taken a usual jaunt into Aiedo, but had done things differently… Zara, an impetous and headstrong girl, liked to go exploring the city before conducting business. This morning, she had lead Ceena to the Mayor’s residence. Finding a safe spot to spy from, both girls heard a gaggle of scientists berate the mayor about his stance on a certain “Pioneer Project”. Granted, they had a ll noticed the earthquakes and the seemingly hotter weather lately, but Yasmine and Zara simply put it down to slight malfuncitons in Climatrol and the planet’s plate system, a regular occurrence on Motavia. However, to Zara’s shock the scientist’s spoke of the planet tearing itself apart! Meaning to find out more, Zara inflitrated the scientific party as they milled around outside the Mayor’s residence. Soon after, they left in a large convoy, out of Aiedo and to the north east. Ceena followed them as far as the outskirts of the city and then rushed back to report to Yasmine. Although they knew Zara meant only to help, Yasmine still raged momentarily over her sister’s foolhardy decision to go off alone. Packing up quickly, the NeiChildren all followed the trail left by the scientist’s convoy, their rover tracks easy to follow in the desert sands. After a solid day’s walk, they reached what appeared to be a quite recently built government installation. Despite the corrosive desert sands everything shined in the hot sun and was heavily guarded. To keep these many guards alive in the harsh desert, the installation was built near an oasis, thus allowing Yasmine and a hand-picked group of NeiChildren to sneak into the base. Just as they reached the eastern fenceline, activity erupted from inside the base. Sirens were blaring, lights were flashing and Palmans and androids were running left and right as a low rumble met Yasmine’s sensitive ears. The rumble soon turned to a roar as the ground began to shake. Expecting another earthquake, Yasmine disregarded the noise as she vaulted over the fence to land nimbly on the shaking ground. What she saw next stunned her as she looked down into an incredibly large shaft that had just opened. It looked like it could swallow four Aiedo’s, and be deep enough to reach the centre of the planet! Suddenly, out of the darkness, a glowing, gigantic spaceship tore into the air. Yasmine fell back as she watched it go, the heat from its jets causing her to sweat profusely. Written on the spaceship’s main body were the words “Pioneer 1”. Suddenly, Yasmine found a rifle in her face as five army soldiers surrounded her. Casting a look over her shoulder, she saw the rest of her raiding band in a similar predicament. She turned back when a raspy voice addressed her. “Oh you shouldn’t worry about them. It’s the twenty or so more of you,” he flicked one of her ears with the barrel of his gun, “freaks that you should be worried about.” As they were marched at gunpoint into the base, the ground slowly closed again, this time much more gently. As they walked the same soldier, obviously a captain, gloated over Yasmine. “You’re obviously the leader, so I’ll tell you what trouble you’ve lead your little group into. You genetic mistakes have stumbled onto the biggest government secret this planet will ever see. Y’see, this planet is dying, slowly but surely. It has been ever since Mother Brain was destroyed all those millenia ago. Dezolis too. Both planets are in their death throes as we speak, but the ignorant populace don’t seem to notice, or care.” Yasmine winced as she recognised her own foolishness. She cursed at herself under her breath. “So we’re packing up and shipping out to a new planet we’ve discovered. However, we are only taking our best and brightest, ‘cause if we let just anyone on they’d turn our new utopian society into a joke.” “And instead you just leave them to die?” Yasmine asked acidly as they entered the first of many coldly lit metallic hallways. The loud crack echoed around the hall as the captain slapped her in the face. “Don’t talk back to me!” He roared. His face red, the captain calmed himself and began to chuckle. “Oh well, no matter. I’ll punish you enough in time.” They started marching again as the arrogant army man continued; “It will be at least 6 years until Pioneer 2 is constructed and the second colony leaves for our new home. Until then, you will be incarcerated here to ensure your silence.” They had arrived at a long line of cells, each one only big enough to accomadate two people. Despite this, and the abundance of cells, they were forced to have five in each, with the males seperated from the females. As their cell doors swung shut, the captain spoke to them one more time. “And after that? Well, you’re gonna die anyway, so it doesn’t matter what we do with you then… Or what we do with you in the meantime.” His laugh echoed off the walls, leaving the last of the NeiChildren alone, resigned to their fates. They didn’t see their gaolers again for a week, nor did they see food or water. A resilient race, the NeiChildren spent their days plotting their escape, or theorising over the fate of Zara. The most popular theory was that due to her absence from the cells, Zara must have gone back to Aiedo to tell the others, only to find no one there. No one believed that she might have gotten on board the that ship, abandoning them all. The escape plans, on the other hand, were many. The one Yasmine and her cellmates were working hardest on was magically blasting their cell doors with Foi, thus setting off numerous alarms, before blasting their way out the back walls. With the alarms already going off, they would escape long before the guards even realised they’d broken out the back, not the front. However, it would need to be a synchronised effort to be succesful. After the first ten days of imprisonment, they were finally fed bread and water regularly at noon. Mystified about the sudden change in care, Yasmine instead focussed on memorising the postion of the sun, through the small shaft in the roof, when their food arrived, so she could call out to the other cells in relative safety.
