CHARACTERS

Note that characters will appear in the order that they were introduced. Click the character's name to go to their respective biography page. The "Gallery" button on the left-hand side will bring you to the character's reference sheets and art gallery. Some reference sheets may censored due to [artistic] nudity.

• Kina Ricado

• Gallery

W.I.P!

PREREQUISITE

Mothership is a WORK IN PROGRESS novel that updates on a per-chapter basis. It does not reflect a final draft, which means that it is not excepted from spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors. Some story elements can shift, and chapters can be edited after release.

CONTENT WARNINGS

This project is intended for mature audiences and includes themes of:• Violence
• War
• Verbal and emotional abuse
• Substance abuse
• Trauma & depictions of PTSD
• Suicidal ideation and action
• Delusions & hallucinations
• Self harm & bodily harm
• Existentialism
• Explicit sexual contentThis novel has written scenes involving sexual intimacy - please be 18 or over to interact with this content. Warnings will be issued at the beginning of a chapter involving any of the themes above.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Mothership is dedicated to my friends and family, who have provided endless support, and my Robotics teacher who encouraged me to pursue engineering despite my academic shortcomings.Thank you for reading!

CHAPTER ONE - AWAKEN, SPACE CAT

There was an origin.

Time sculpted the curves of an unremarkable feline contour—an unassuming, lone silhouette that existed nowhere in particular. Devoid of age, youth, or a point of reference, it possessed a pair of eyes that, when ajar, would create a disturbance that propagated through the Void. With its conscious gaze, things began to happen in the Universe.

”Ma’am?”

Scarred legs sat flush against the body's chest, light intertwining with its form. Wave functions collapsed, space contorted, and gravity allowed matter to attract. Some stars were birthed, some exhausted themselves out of existence, and some protested death, imploding their cores and continuing to illuminate their dust before receding from view forever. Particles collided, energy was released and reused, and massive bodies pulled themselves inward, rotating, bending, breathing. Yes, there was an origin, and it forged, witnessed, and propelled Nature from darkness.“Hello?”

The eyes abruptly shut, and the Universe vanished. Without the Observer, there was nothing.

A subdued murmur slipped from Kina’s lips as she turned away from the window, tensile forces straining the thread of dissociation. She often felt socially claustrophobic, and to subsist, the intangible often tethered her to a form of existence that was not constrained by the rudimentary laws governing Animal behavior and mannerisms, nor by time or space.

Before she could pack up for the summer, she had been ushered into the small office of her college advisor, an appointment she had been avoiding for the past couple of months. He was pure Equid—ripe in musculature and adorned with an unblemished coat; a fine, dense layer of obsidian fur. Their conversations had always been transient, and his heritage was never mentioned, but Shire Horse was her best guess. Maybe a hybrid—it took one to know one.“You never told me if you were going to transfer your credits to a four-year institution. But the last time we spoke, you didn't desire that, correct?" Christ, Kina didn’t want to talk about fucking credits. She didn’t even know if she wanted to pursue higher education. These past two years had stretched her thin, and while such mental and physical exertion wasn’t uncommon among engineering students, she found herself having to put in double—triple—the effort.

“Yeah, I think I’m going to take a gap year.” She nodded, but was unable to suppress an internal cringe. She was unsure if he would employ a judgemental eye, because the sentiment held by her family circle was simple—pursue higher education without delay, and you will be of true heritage. Her lineage was bred from labor and calloused hands; the reward of warm loaves of bread and cheese promised, but only if you worked for it.

But the advisor left no comment. “Can I show you something I think you’d like?” he inquired, his gaze fleetingly scanning his desk before he rotated in his chair to look in one of the sorting cabinets behind him. After some rummaging and quiet snorts of exasperation, he plucked out a vanilla folder, flipping it in his hands before offering it to Kina. “So, say you take a gap year because you don’t want to pursue your bachelor's right away. This would be the perfect time to find work, and I think you’d fit into an internship position for the nation’s space program.”Kina tentatively retrieved the folder, opening it to skim through the contents. It was hard not to hear about this program—it filled her online advertisements, was the subject of recommended content, and was tackily plastered on every billboard around her building. Yes, she had considered it for something to fill the gap year—multiple times—but it felt too ambitious. While engineering was a brilliant discipline, she found it difficult to relate to the rest of the population in the field. She was stubbornly resistant to logic, unable to comprehend how the Universe worked without asserting her own emotional dialogue. Some argued that good science required some subjective perspectives, but that sentiment reeked of bullshit. When her temperament was at a minimum, even she could acknowledge that all it did was muddy her optics.

She was quick to dismiss. “I’m not too sure.”The Equid inclined his head, rhythmically tapping his fingertips upon the desk's surface. “I understand that you don’t like working in the spotlight,” he gestured toward the folder, “but an assembly line won’t look as good on your resume. This is a great opportunity.”Kina shifted in her seat, looking back at the breath-kissed window. It was intentionally placed, representing a marker of her existence, because she acknowledged that things couldn’t just exist; they also had to do something. She never felt like she actually took advantage of her existence, yet her desire for importance was palpable. She was aware—very cruelly aware—that she demanded to be the center of attention, but paradoxically became reclusive and withdrawn when such recognition was proffered to her on a silver platter. If she could describe her existence, it wouldn’t be composed of a valuable work ethic, aspirations, or friends and family—but instead a striking dichotomy of thoughts, feelings, and actions. It was a continuous interplay of contradictory impulses and desires, and this—all of this—didn't make for a particularly happy existence.“Sure, but I feel like this is going to all be for nothing,” she was curt, aiming to subtly remove the idea from their dialogue. “What makes you think they’ll consider me, with my academics and all?” They were fucking subpar.

The advisor nodded, the corner of his lips teasing a subtle break from the formality. “They’re getting a bit desperate. Not all students love the commitment. Do you want to know what they—the recruiters—told me?”Kina instinctively leaned in, as if they were conspirators assembling the ingredients required to concoct a mutual secret. Of course, she wanted to know. "Yes."“They’re dealing with a sharp decline in employees as more folks are getting assigned to the stations on the other side of the Ceasus Bridge,” he explained, tracing a circle in the air with his finger to represent the passage. Sure, understandable. It was far from home.
The Ceasus Bridge was responsible for the profound shift in how the Animal race viewed space travel. It was like a portal connecting two parts of the Universe together—a naturally occurring rip in the fabric of spacetime. It was discovered sometime after the race to the moon, where accompanying lunar probes picked up an infinitesimal ripple—first thought to have been caused by radio interference.However, as soon as the details concerning the phenomenon surfaced, nations began to spiral, constructing space programs out of nothing and attempting to build devices that could offer a deeper investigation into the anomaly. Every country harbored aspirations of pioneering this frontier, because if the lunar conquest had eluded them, perhaps they could attain primacy in unraveling this new mystery. The Soviet Union took the lead, deploying a satellite that adeptly crossed the Ceasus Bridge, revealing its stability and providing initial insights into a Universe beyond. This immediately shattered the surface tension, igniting a second space race between the U.S. and the USSR, forged from the remnants of war. Now, it was a race to create something so large, so self-sufficient, and so habitable that it would sustain the life of its crew indefinitely, giving them practically unlimited access to the space beyond the Ceasus Bridge.The U.S. claimed that victory, and as space technology rapidly accelerated, other countries followed suit. Approximately thirty stations emerged, with the majority in orbit around Earth, while others formed an expanding network beyond the Ceasus Bridge. The story had been recited since Kina’s kithood—the American pride being anything but subtle, particularly in the school curriculum. Her problem with this is that their boasts rarely included the actual scientific dialogue—what exactly they discovered, and why it was important. A lot of what she knew about the scientific side of this history was a product of her own research, but without the reinforcement, her knowledge waned, as it did right now. Was there a danger factor that needed to be considered?

The advisor shook his head, as if he understood her thoughts. “It's not dangerous or anything, but for the sake of fine text, I won’t claim to be an expert. But from what I’ve been told, it's a minimum one-year stay. That would be the bottleneck.” Bottleneck. Kina fidgeted in her seat, a solitary twitch tracing along the base of her tail, which was draped neatly across her lap, its length making it impossible to keep off the dust-caked floor. The problem was that Kina didn’t do commitments, and her advisor knew this, and the fact that he did and still proposed this made something acidic boil in her belly.“I don’t want it,” Kina uttered, a sharp exhale whistling through her gritted fangs, “I’m sure it’s a good opportunity. But I don’t want that kind of commitment, as I’ve explained to you before.” It was hard to be reasonable, feeling the weight of professionalism beginning to wane as her emotional assertion sparred for dominance. She didn't feel like her desires were cared about.The Equid reclined, the chair emitting a creak as it bore the weight of his form. “It will always be a commitment, Kina. You need to rethink your game plan. If you want to work in the background, some jobs allow you to do that. But you've expressed a desire to feel more important in your role—and it is my job to acknowledge these choices and use them to propel your success.”Kina’s heart tightened, the blood rushing in her ears. Using her own words against her. She clutched the strap of her bookbag, feeling the pinpricks of energy sweep across her haunches. It was the adrenaline of flight, her eyes shifting from the Equid’s form to the exit behind him. His statement made her feel like a shameful, informal idiot—like she couldn't have an opinion without conflicting it later. It wasn’t true, and because of this, he was a threat.She snatched the folder and hurled it at him, but its trajectory was abruptly curtailed, hesitation sapping the necessary momentum required to come into contact with his body. “You’re real low for that,” she quipped, jutting out her chin defiantly. It was a maneuver of self-defense, yet her composure remained surprisingly intact—knowing she delicately teetered between the respect she held for her advisor and the conscience that rarely asserted herself in this kind of conflict. “I don’t want… any of this shit,” she gestured to the folder, which had surrendered to the floor, “and… and you should be ashamed of yourself for even asking.”"Kina," he warned, his eyelids drooping as if the shock of her outburst had already been buried beneath a fresh layer of soil. She swung her bookbag over her shoulder and rose from her seat, dismissing herself as she made her way through the door.
“I’ll call you later,” she muttered bitterly, kicking the doorstopper away before giving it a particularly emphatic slam, effectively shutting him out from the confines of her present consciousness. Immediately, she could discern that maybe she wouldn’t have reacted so strongly if the internship program hadn’t stirred a few particular thoughts—thoughts that she needed to prevent from mattering. She couldn’t afford to let it become tantalizing, heart-aching even, and she definitely didn't have the bandwidth to let it fill her daydreams with seductive illusions of fulfilled desires and time well spent.No, she appreciated her solidary work. It was all that she had.