The hills were rocky and smattered with an over-saturated green savannah. They rolled in large humps across the landscape, but their low peaks were punctuated with sharp rocks, as if the planet’s surface were spiky and jagged. Patches of crimson soil punctuated the grassy surface, and moderate gatherings of alien foliage pockmarked the distance.

Mammoth pillars of blackrock easily five or six stories high stood silently. Like broken shins of titans removed from their bodies, they littered the landscape, rising up from the ground and ending in jagged plateaus, as if they were eternal remnants of an ancient battle between cosmic entities. The planet’s star bathed the land in a tropic heat, and its light was rendered a vivid, drug-like cyan by the planet’s mildly toxic atmosphere.

The airy baritone roar of jet-fire shattered the silence. An orange glow painted a small point on the side of a rocky pillar, rising slowly along its surface. The roar stuttered and spat, going on and off in short bursts as its source continued its ascent. The pillars watched on with stiff curiosity.

A small hand grasped the edge of the cliff as the roar sputtered empty. Another hand. A leg quickly followed, swinging quickly around the edge. The hooded creature emitted gasses from vents beneath its cloak as it rolled over the edge and onto its small back, torso rising and falling in deep breaths.

After a beat it rose.

Maddie lifted her hood. Her brown eyes stared out through circular, glass apertures in her mask, but her body was otherwise obscured by a thick brown cloak. A baritone beeping noise pulsed quickly from a rigid backpack strapped behind her and over her cloak. Its flashing red light, though outside her vision, nagged at her subconscious mind. Her jetpack was empty again.

Maddie carefully skittered over to the edge of the rock, dangling her legs over the edge. Her breathing was almost mechanical in rhythm, regulated by her suit’s life-support system. Her gloved hand, the color of frosted glass, reached into her cloak and pulled out a small handheld device.

It was longer than it was thick. Her hand was wrapped around a larger, rectangular module of a white synthetic material, but an elongated pipe extended upward, off-center from its base. A copper heat sink gave the device a touch of color, but the rings and tanks that followed were of brushed metal.

Maddie brought the device to her mask. Its mouthpiece attached to a waiting receptacle with an audible click. She depressed a button on the device and inhaled deeply, drawing a torrent of warm vapor into her respirator and through to her mouth and lungs.

Strawberries and root beer. Barely-pink clouds ejected from vents on either side of her chin, coalescing and twisting in the wind.

With a slight grimace, she licked her lips within the space in the mask. The berry flavor was definitely a bit too strong in her mix. She made a mental note as she closed her eyes, relishing the light-headedness afforded by the nicotine-like Jel mixed into the juice. The alien stimulant was faster-acting but mellower and milder than human tobacco, and that suited Maddie just fine.

The girl’s legs dangled over the precipice, kicking slowly and carelessly in the toxic winds. In the distance a sister planet rose over the horizon, hanging over the landscape like a divine watcher. Maddie gazed out at it and couldn’t help but wonder what the view must be like from the other side. She took another hit of Jel and the tank spat empty, adding another higher-pitched beep asynchronous to the one from her jetpack.

Maddie’s mouth twisted inside her mask. The vapor from the empty tank was foul and reeked of burnt sugar. It was probably time to get back. She unbuckled her pack and swung it around, fishing out a small tank of a glowing, red substance. She affixed it to a small port on the side of the pack and watched the color drain from the tank, the fuel within coalescing into dark, colorless pebbles. The beeping stopped.

She unhinged the lid of the tank and emptied its contents over the edge, watching with half-apathetic, half-childish rapture as they tumbled to the planet’s surface and exploded with tiny pops, deforming the rock and singeing a minute patch of grass.

Maddie helped herself back up and paced away from the edge. She spun around to find the digital waypoint for her ship, and her heads-up display indicated that it was almost twenty minutes away at her average walking speed. She pulled her hood on over her mask and took a quick breather, checking that she still had all her gear secured to her body.

Eyes fixed on the horizon, she broke into a sprint. Pushing herself forward off of the cliff face, Maddie soared. She pulsed her jetpack economically to maintain some height while pushing herself forward and smiled inwardly as her display rewarded her expertise with a shorter ten-minute travel time back to the ship.

As she sailed over the landscape, she began to ponder a suitable name for the planet. The rocky pillars seemed to be a constant – as far as the eye could see, no matter the biome, they littered the landscape, climbing hills and mountains and entering deep valleys. The toxic atmosphere meant that the planet was devoid of fauna, but pockets of flora reflected the tenacity of life. They formed into large, vine like structures, connected to each other with a rubber-like webbing that seemed organic. Maddie had dubbed them Wifeaters. Their translucent orange membranes were veiny and seemed to breathe in the wind. There was a serenity to the scene, as if life were rising from the aftermath of some catastrophic calamity.

The ground rushed up to meet her and she padded her landing with a few quick bursts from her jet pack. Her ship was straight ahead, silhouetted by the glow of the quickly setting star. Days on the planet were short and warm, but nights were harsh and cold. Irradiated winds would soon follow, far too lethal for her suit to handle – the same winds had stranded her far from her ship the night before, mere hours ago.

Her ship loomed over her. It was a small affair, not nearly large enough for her needs, but it was all she could afford with her luck and resources. It was oblong, like an X-wing, but its nose was stubbier and the wings quite securely fixed. Sporting nothing more than personal anti-debris plasma cannons, it didn’t have nearly as much firepower either. Maddie was no stranger to christening things with names of her own fancy but found herself unable to commit to a name for her own home in the cosmos.

She pressed her gloved hand to a flat rectangular panel and after a brief moment the cockpit popped open. With a light push from her jetpack, Maddie hopped onto the ship’s hull and clambered in as the ship closed above her. She undid her cloak and padded it into a small corner by the side of the pilot’s seat. Her pack quickly nestled upon it, wisps of smoke rising from the exhaust ports in its base. The toxic air within the ship was quickly replaced with clean, Earth-like air, and a green light flashed on somewhere, indicating stability.

Naked except for her frosted-glass suit and mask, Maddie reached behind her scalp, fingers scrambling to find the seam of the membrane that clung to her head. Her gloved digits passed frictionless over the barely-existent seam a few times before they finally found purchase. Her eyes closed instinctively at the rush of air as she carefully peeled the rubbery film off of her face.

With an almost audible pop, her helmet let go of her and came free, hanging limply out of her grasp. At once, her suit relaxed. The frosted glass texture of the suit dissolved in growing patches, returning it to its original glass-clear sheen. Maddie squirmed within the suit as it relaxed its protective grip on her body. Apart from a subtle oil-like sheen, her naked skin trapped beneath the transparent latex quickly became clearly visible. She absent-mindedly tossed the mask onto the dashboard.

Her scalp tingled as the material slowly receded back to a comfortable, practical neckline, releasing her greasy, shoulder-length hair to fall over her sweat-drenched face. She craved another hit of Jel, but directed her attention instead to the setting star before her.

The planet’s twilight was a stark contrast to its days. The sky was quickly turning a brilliant crimson red, harmonious with the color of its soil. Whether it was because of some unknown chemical in its atmosphere, or because of reflected light from its sister planet, Maddie did not know. But as she gazed out into the horizon, the rocky pillars stared back, and a name crossed her mind. In a language perhaps long gone, from a planet she had no way of ever finding again, Maddie recalled a word appropriate for the land before her. One that could capture the feeling of rebirth and celebrated the tenacity of life:

“Bangkit.”

Maddie called up her console and keyed in her contribution. A few seconds of silence was interrupted by a cheerful chime, informing her that the discovery had been accepted. The display on her locator changed to reflect the new name of her whereabouts, and she received the transfer of 4,000 Okkels – a questionably useful galactic currency – before turning her attention to more pressing matters.

Reaching into the brown bundle that was her cloak, Maddie produced her Jel module. Placing it on her dash, she reached for a small bowl of some treated organic material. With its brownish hue, it looked vaguely wood-like but was decidedly alien in nature – its grain swirled and twisted in a manner not unlike Damascus steel, but it had the weight and heft of a light Earth timber.

From a jar nearby, she picked out a few acorn-like nuts – Jel nuts – and began decimating them between her fingers. They were brittle and easily pulverized, quickly reducing into a fine powder in the bowl. She reached for a small satchel by her feet, made of a similar material to her cloak. Opening the flap revealed a collection of vials and glass tubes, each labelled with its own handwritten acronym. She chose two vials labelled ‘BB’ and ‘Ging’ and applied a few drops of either to the bowl.

The liquids were thin, lightly colored, and lacked viscosity, but the Jel nut powder quickly dissolved into the mixture, thickening the fluid and lending it a neon-blue glow. Maddie could never predict the color of her Jel mixes – and she chose not to learn how. It was always fascinating to be surprised by the hue of her favorite flavors.

The bowl was mildly hydrophobic, and thus the prepared Jel poured easily into the small tank in her hand. The copper-sulfate-blue color of the juice changed the feel of the device, which was quickly reassembled and lifted to its users’ mouth. She bit on the mechanical release meant to be activated by her mask and fired it, inhaling deeply as it vaporized the juice within.

Blueberry and ginger-scented clouds filled the cockpit and a small orange light indicated that the ship had gone to work at cleaning the air within. Maddie paid it no heed.

The rocky pillars watched on in silent contemplation as the ship rose from Bangkit’s surface, unaware of the narrative and nomenclature imposed upon them. They gazed a gazeless stare as the blue trails of the ship’s propulsion drew a fast line across the blood-red sky, disappearing into the cosmos beyond.