The Stratonavigator’s Resolve

Laika’s eyes snapped open to the blaring of a proximity klaxon of the Sleigh’s Avatar singing “Jingle Bells” in D minor pounding into her head like a jackhammer.

“Rudy!” the Sleigh declared. “Astral drift detected! You were sinking inward again!”

Laika gasped. The red warning light pulsed like a diseased heartbeat, blinding her. Her temples throbbed, mouth feeling dry.

“I’m up,” she croaked. “I’m up, I’m up… I’m out. Water, please.”

“It took even more effort to pull you out this time,” the Sleigh chided her with a singsong lilt gift-wrapped around mild irritation. “Shall I add a stimulant into the drink?”

“No.” Laika rubbed her face with a weary sigh, accepting the glass of water the ship dispensed. “No need to, I’m getting myself together, give me a bit. I’m fine.”

She was the opposite of fine.

Internally, the prad mutt felt completely off balance, suspended at the edge between dreaming and waking up and consisting of two versions of herself:

The ageless Herald of Festivus, Rudy who served the Sleigh without regrets, Saint Nikky’s devotee who navigated the mobile dungeon from one doomed Earth to another.

A seventeen year old Laika who died in orbit, made a pact with a Krampus and became stuck in an infinite, ever repeating nightmarish loop of her life in Moscow… only to be freed from it by an incredibly strange group of…

Laika swore internally.

The two Laikas began to come together slowly, akin to two galaxies colliding into one, the edges of her being wobbling madly.

Her Stratonavigator self processed the bewildering dream of warmth and freely offered friendship and refused to believe its validity.

Her suddenly liberated seventeen year old self, on the other hand, reached towards her chest and suddenly found a transparent, star-shaped necklace there. A ghostly, dog plushie sat on her belt too, clipped to it by a transparent, silver ring.

The taste of mango bubble tea lingered on her tongue like a promise someone had pressed into her mouth with gentle fingers.

Her heartbeat accelerated wildly.

It was really real. All of it!

Laika stared blankly at the holographic globe of Earth rotating slowly above the main console and the real Earth visible through the large square hexaglass porthole behind it.

Blue oceans. White clouds. Green continents crawling with the bio-signatures of eight billion human souls. The Seed markers blinked below large cities, dormant, starving, waiting for mana the linear dimension refused to provide. They were flanked by the runes representing the other Heralds dotted across the doomed planet.

Doomed?

The rational part of Laika’s mind flared bright, no longer silenced into blind subservience by the blood pact.

This world wasn’t doomed! There was no magic here, no dungeons, no shears in reality, no entropy waves, no gigantic monsters chewing up the continental divide mountains! This planet was alive and full of strange wonders. She couldn’t, would not be its executioner!

A few seeds along with a couple of clever Heralds were… currently outside of major population centers, in the empty wilds. This was… an issue, as the seeds they’d planted were blooming at a slightly faster rate.

An issue. I want to stop them. I have to stop them all! Can Festivus Seeds even be retracted once they were fused deep into the local terrain? She had no idea.

The Stratonavigator part of her expected the blood pact to grip her soul, to suppress her anti-seeding thoughts, to assist her in finding a reason to do her job and… there was nothing there.

Nothing at all*.She had been doing this damned job for…*

Laika suddenly realised that she had no idea how old she even was. She stared at her own hands, noticing that she barely grew since the handshake with the Krampus.

She slowly recalled that Vixen, the doc of the group, constantly used Rewind magic to de-age all of the Heralds, keeping them eternally youthful and… jolly.

“Sleigh? How many worlds have we freed from their narrative?” Laika asked the ship, struggling not to tremble.

“Classified,” the Sleigh replied.

Of course. Navigators didn’t ask questions, they obeyed the dungeon’s primary quest of endless propagation.

Laika contemplated her current situation.

She knew the job. She knew the protocols and dungeon hierarchy. Nikky at the top, Noira aka Dasher at her right hand, the other Heralds fanned beneath them like ornaments on a tree. She knew their names, their specialties, their combat ratings, their preferred snacks and meals.

She did not truly know them.

The realization flashed in her stomach like a jagged icicle.

She served beside Comet for many years. They shared watches on the bridge, traded jokes, ate meals in the galley, dived into the Astral together on joint operations. Comet talked constantly, a river of cheerful noise about nothing in particular. She called Laika “Rudy-buddy” and left festive dog treats on her console as presents after successful missions.

Dancer. Peacock Omnid. She liked to arrange sparkly snow globes and hummed to herself at times. Beyond this, nothing special.

Prancer. The hyena. Laughed at everything. Laughed when she was angry, laughed when she was scared, laughed when she was planting Seeds in the sewers below Citadel cities full of people. Was the laughter a Herald thing or a her thing? Laika couldn’t say, never bothered to sniff her companions thoroughly.

Vixen. The leech. Rewinder and healer. Clever, dangerous. Her skin was always wet and cold and she collected heartcore bones from converted worlds and strung them into necklaces she never wore, storing them in a locked compartment beneath her bunk. Laika had discovered this by accident about three years ago and never mentioned it. They never discussed anything beyond their work.

Donner. Blitzen. Cupid.

Names. Designations. Gears in the Festivus-seeding machine.

Laika could not name a single genuine conversation she’d had with any of them about anything deep. About fear. About longing. About the lives they’d led before Nikky found them broken and rebuilt into undying festive-ness servants.

The Saint or perhaps more specifically the blood pact hanging on their necks like an invisible noose didn’t encourage true bonding. This too, suddenly made sense.

Bonding… led to attachment and attachment led to hesitation and hesitation led to Seeds going unplanted and worlds remaining unconverted. The Heralds were tools. Beautiful, powerful, festive living weapons wrapped in sweaters and bells and antlers.

Laika accepted this. For countless years, she accepted this the way she had accepted the cold of Moscow’s alleys as a puppy, the way she accepted Vladimir’s hand on her head as he led her to the capsule, the way she had accepted the heat and the dark and the suffocating loneliness of orbit.

Vladimir.

The cursed name passed through her mind and she braced for the spike of terror. The familiar lurch of nausea, the phantom heat of the capsule, the screaming of metal and the smell of her own fur burning.

Nothing happened.

She waited. Prodded the memory carefully, the way you’d poke a wound to check if it still hurt.

Vladimir Yazdovsky had groomed her for ten days. Fed her nice meals. Patted her head. Called her a good girl. Told her she was a Soviet hero destined for the stars.

Laika spent her entire post-pact existence letting his ghost define her. Every time she submerged into the Astral, the hatred pulled her down. Every time she navigated the Sleigh, Vladimir’s betrayal was the compass needle pointing toward the deepest abyss, towards planetary desolation.

The hatred was gone.

She prodded again. Deeper. Reached for the familiar knot of painful fury and found a smooth, cool absence. Like pressing your tongue into the gap where a rotten tooth used to be. The space was there. The tooth was gone.

An unstoppable Wendigo girl named Starshady casually devoured it whole, like a midnight snack between sentences.

Laika once again fiercely recalled the comicon and the bubble tea cafe. The warmth of the chair. The tall, dark haired American boy with tired light brown eyes and a silly, cardboard crown covered in fox stickers, sitting across from her and telling her she… deserved a hearth.

Nobody had ever told her she deserved anything.

Vladimir told her she was chosen for the glory of the USSRA. Saint Nikky told her she was chosen to guide her sleigh across doomed worlds. The Sleigh told her she was essential to operations. Every authority figure in her life had framed her existence in terms of utility.

You are exceptionally valuable as you perform this task. You are kept by us because you serve a grand, greater purpose.

Ash… bought her a plushie because she looked at it for a bit with want.

No transaction. No contract. No blood pact.

Even before that, he simply saw a hungry stray staring through a window and asked her to join him.

Laika touched the ghostly plushie. The faintest trace of green apple bubble tea smell emanated from it.

And then the tears came.

They were quiet. She was good at crying quietly. A lifetime of practice that felt like it was yesterday and also so long ago.

She let her body shake, the sobs rolling through her like waves in a shallow sea. The Sleigh’s music chimed softly in the background and the Earth spun below and the Seed runes flickered on and off and Laika cried because she was free.

Free.

The word tasted alien. She rolled it around in her mouth like the mango boba, strange and sweet and almost too much.

She was free from Vladimir. She was free from the hatred. The engine that had powered her dives, the black gravity well at her core, had been replaced by weightlessness and warmth of a promise… A pendant. A plushie. The memories of caring friends sharing genuine stories at a cafe…. The incredibly true-smelling, utterly heart wrenching tale of Galateya, the little terraformer dragon who was locked in a dimensional prison by an uncaring family for twenty years.

“Are you alright, Rudy?” the Sleigh asked. “Why are you crying?”

“I’m fine,” Laika lied. “Had a… tough dive, that’s all. The local linearity is making things… difficult. I’m okay.”

The pendant pulsed against her collarbone and she reached it with her soul threads, caressed it mentally.

Ghostly, vulpine eyes opened in the air around her. Orange-gold, blue and green with rings of silver and amber, floating like a spiral of dancing will-o’-wisps.

[…Sage?] Laika thought at the floating eyes.

The eyes crinkled at the corners. Grins materialized beneath them, packed with sharp teeth and mischief, the Cheshire Fox from another Earth.

[Heya, space doggo,] the vulpine voice pulsed through the pendant like sound through water, soft and slightly warped. [How’s things?]

[Head hurts,] Laika admitted mentally.

[Yeah, Astral hangovers are a bitch. Pro tip: imagine drinking a glass of mana-infused bubble tea. Your brain will generate the hydration response. Fake it till you make it!]

Laika imagined downing a glass of magrad-rich mocha. Her headache eased a fraction and she smiled slightly. [You’re really here… with me?]

[As well as I can cast myself to your orbital locale. The pendant is working even better than expected, you’re a skilled diver. I can see your bridge, hear your voice, and offer unsolicited advice. I cannot, howevah, physically manifest, throw things, or eat your snacks. S’ tragic!]

The fox eyes drifted to the holographic Earth, studied the blinking Seed markers, and returned to Laika.

[M’kay.] Sage said. [Got a plan of freedomage forming in your cute pupper noggin’?]

Laika stared at the Earth. At the dormant Seeds. At the mission parameters scrolling across her console in festive red and green fonts.

[Working on it.]

[Rad. Love the enthusiasm. Also, are you doing this because a very cute certain boy bought you a plushie, or ‘cause you want to burn down the system, stop this mobile doomsday vessel from blooming my lovely planet?]

[Both. And, uhm… I don’t just like Ash. I think that all of you are all really nice… a nice pack. Friends, people who I can actually trust… I hope. I… I don’t think that this Earth is doomed at all. I don’t think that any of you are NPCs who need to be freed via… festivus bloom. Ash’s kindness, Shady’s scary teeth, your pretty Yesterweave, Nexxali’s music, Galateya’s childhood… it ALL gave me the kick I sorely needed to finally wake up.]

[Acceptable motivation! Carry on, space doggaw. What’s first on the menu of problems to solve?]

[Dasher aka Noira,] Laika said. [She’s the key to effective operations. Remove the Gatekeeper, the Sleigh won’t be able to deploy Heralds as quickly. Take her out and the entire Conversion timeline bogs down with delays.]

[Can you take her out on your own?]

[No. I can’t fight Noira. She’s strong and would fold me in half.]

[Who said anything about fighting?] The foxxy grins widened. [You’re a navigator, babe. Navigate her somewhere… berrrrry inconvenient. Some nearby place… from where she can’t open a gate back to the ship or anywhere really.]

[Oh. Right. That… Yes. That’s a good idea. Thank you. I can do that. I think. Just have to arrange… some things.] Laika reached out to her console.

Lots of calculations were required.

If she was going to commit treason against her former Saint, she wanted to do it successfully.