《Spaceship and Dragon》Chapter 4: The Attack (Part 2)
Advertisement
"Wait, they went straight to attacking us? Have we negotiated with them?"
"Yes, Anton's Alexa told me on the speaker that she hasn't been successful in establishing contact!" Naomi cried. The girl lifted her glasses and wiped away her tears. She must have been terrified when the ship lost power.
"How are they attacking us? Heat ray?" Emma asked while thinking about something. A nod from Naomi gave her a clue about what she should do.
"You take Andrei, go to the med bay." Emma pushed Andrei to Naomi. "I'm going to go to the tool storage to fetch a dark energy infused gas tank. The ventilation system is offline, the doc will suffocate."
Naomi nodded her head. Naomi picked Andrei up in a princess carry, then ran down the dark hallway. Thankfully, Andrei was too light-headed to notice this. A 1m55 girl carrying a 2-meter man was a sight to behold.
[Many of the systems on this ship are managed by quantum computers. Fortunately, the artificial gravity is isolated and runs on dark energy. I would hate to be floating around at a time like this.]
Emma thought, averting her eyes from their silhouette and ran in a different direction.
***
"Doctor Emily! Are you in there?" Naomi pressed her face onto the laminated glass. Andrei was sitting in the hallway, breathing heavily. It seemed that he was exhausted due to the blood loss.
Instead of an answer, a pair of alien hands pressed onto the glass from the other side in response, which startled the girl.
"Please wait a bit, Officer Emma is coming!" Naomi shouted. She knew the doctor couldn't hear her, since the med bay is air-tight and soundproof. However, the act of shouting in this circumstance somehow calmed her down a bit.
Advertisement
She could feel that it was getting hotter.
As a graduating pilot, Naomi understood how heat dispersion had always been a problem for spacecrafts. After all, there is no air in space, there is nowhere for heat to go except a tiny amount of heat radiation. This reason was also why one of the most common weapons to be used in space battles was a simple concentrated infrared ray. Accurate, deadly, effective. And gruesome.
Emma arrived, cutting off her thought process. A cart was stopped behind Naomi. 3 cylindrical air tanks were on it. Emma told Naomi to open the med bay door while breathing heavily.
Naomi pulled the manual lever to release the airlock. Reddish air poured out from inside. A tall, fierce-looking alien emerged.
It took one of the tanks on the cart, strapped on its back and put the breather on its face. "Thank you." The non-human doctor said in a hoarse voice.
"I'm going to leave Andrei here with you to rest. He banged his head again, this time more serious. He lost a bit of blood, I'm going to heal him now."
Emma took out a device from the tool belt around her waist that looked like a bent TV remote. She inserted a green chip into the rectangular hole on the device. A green, pulsing light appeared, ran along the stark white device, indicating that it was ready to use.
All the while, Naomi undid the bandage around Andrei's head. The wound had stopped bleeding thanks to Emma's skilled first aid, but it still had the appearance of a ghastly deep cut wound.
Emma pointed the dark energy manipulator at Andrei's head. A few seconds later, the wound had completely disappeared, only some clotted blood remained.
"Naomi, you go back to the bridge to see if they need help." Emma commanded. "I'm going to the engineering bay." She then looked at the ceiling and shouted to the air. "Alexa, I'm going to perform manual heat rod release. How long do we have?"
Advertisement
A robotic female voice answered her from the speaker on the wall.
"Answer, hull temperature is rising at the rate of 100 degrees per minute. Estimated insulation failure in: T minus 15 minutes. Estimated life loss in: T minus 18 minutes."
"That's not enough time. Naomi, scratch that, you are coming with me!" Emma said, jumping onto the cart after rolling the remaining gas tanks out of it. "Push me!"
"Roger!"
The petite girl with a bob cut put her hands on the cart. The girl's body slightly lowered, her eyes closed. There was a quiet whirring noise for a second.
As Naomi opened her eyes, she exploded into an inhuman, rocket-like speed. The two girls and the cart seemingly disappeared from their original location. Only the chitauri psychology doctor, the human engineer, and echoes of Emma's utterly horrified shriek remained in the dark corridor.
***
"How's the negotiation? Any luck?" Emma asked the ceiling after pushing the last heat rod out of the ship. Transferring heat from the hull into heat rods and push them out into space would be the usual practice for emergency heat dumping. Emma was buying time for the bridge to figure out a solution for the predicament.
"Alexa?"
Emma gulped. An unmodified Alexa wouldn't prank people.
"Alexa?" Emma asked again in a shaky voice, while slowly taking out her neural cable. Naomi also understood the situation. She watched as Emma plugged her Alexa into a control panel.
Not long after, Emma fell on the ground, disconnecting the cable from the control panel.
"Everybody… everybody…"
Naomi collapsed on her knees as she watched Emma mumbling with her eyes widened. The look of horror on Emma's face told her everything.
Emma sprung up, grabbing Naomi shoulders as she spoke hastily.
"W-we have to get out of here. The bridge was breached. The enemy somehow concentrated their laser and punched a hole through the ship. A torpedo is heading here. It will be here in five minutes and obliterate us!"
"I'm going to go back and get the doctor and Andrei. They don't know anything. I can't inform them from here, the PA system is destroyed. You get into the escape pod." Emma tried to get up, to no avail. She turned to the ceiling.
"I, chief engineer Emma Rodriguez of the Motive, hereby grant intern student Naomi White permission to abandon ship."
Tears kept pouring out of her eyes.
[This is stupid. There is no ship recording, no control system, no bridge, no captain Jack, pilot Anton, pilot Wang… everybody I have been working with and come to love in the past 10 years is here no longer.]
Nobody noticed anything until the ceiling started melting. At that point, it was too late. Once decompression happens, the automatic airlock would drop immediately. Air in the bridge was sucked away. Everybody suffocated to death.
The direct heat from the concentrated ray melted every control in the bridge afterward.
[But this…this is not the time for that.] Emma stood up. However, a hand held her back.
"I'm going, you should leave first, Officer Emma."
Advertisement
- In Serial52 Chapters
Decay and Deception
One day you can be relaxing, the next you can be somewhere beyond reality struggling to survive. This is one such story, a story of pain, fear, and triumph. Join the main character as he conquers an alternate reality full of humanity's worst fears. Wandering through floor after floor of things from our worst nightmares, he continues downwards endlessly in search of escape. [A story heavily inspired by the backrooms, all but one of the floors are my own ideas pulling basic inspiration from various sources. A huge shoutout to my friends who helped me with a few of the floors and the motivation to write this.] Warning: this story will cover heavy themes of loneliness and horror. If you are adverse to gore, psychological horror, or general dark tones, continue at your own discretion.
8 134 - In Serial88 Chapters
The Void King.
The gods themselves have granted mankind the ability to cultivate, to gather up and unleash Qi as devastating attacks or life-saving healing powers. And yet, in the small village of Green Willows lives an abandoned child, Huang Ying, who was denied even that, forbidden from enjoying what every other living person gets to have. But is everything really as it seems with Huang Ying, is he truly doomed to live at the very bottom for all his life, or could there be a beast hidden even within this abandoned child? And what if that beast was one that saw even the universe itself as nothing more than a snack?
8 301 - In Serial34 Chapters
Ancient Blood - book 1 The fall of the Phoenix
New version https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/46370/ancient-blood-volume-one-fall-of-the-phoenix Modern Europe. It's been a year since the news of the ancient clans do exist got published. Those clans which consists of fairytale creatures such as dragons, phoenixes and many more have been living among the human society all along. Due to genetic research it is clear that those powers are the result of certain mutations in the human DNA. A hardworking veterinary student named Rhiannon is sure to be interested in those aliens that seem to stem from her favorite books. But she is certainly less interested in becoming a full-fledged member of those clans. Same goes for Mark who's a police officer recently promoted to the capital crimes department. Being the youngest to reach that goal and being partners with his stepmother and mentor he is happy. Everything is fine. If it wasn't for his curiosity which gets him involved with the woman of his dreams... And the ancient clans that seem to be the culprit of the several crimes that he is forbidden to solve. But this is the mere beginning. There will be blood, strategy and politics as well as love and friendship. To tell you more is only going to spoil the surprise. This fiction belongs to the same universe as tavern's edge. 😊 This is my first time ever publishing anything and as you might see english isn't my native language. I am translating an ongoing story I am writing in German. Have fun I hope you will like it. In case you are interested I post this story on scribble hub, too. I really don't steal from myself, though 😂
8 86 - In Serial47 Chapters
The Lost One
At 19, life has given Aislinn Nox many things, most of them she never wanted. Like dead parents at the age of six. Scars.A slaughtered pack.Nightmares. To be forced to live with humans. Thirteen years of hell. A new name.An old legacy. All of them are hers, all of them have broken her, but none of that will matter when she finally gets the one thing she desires: revenge.For five years she has been planning her revenge for the brutal murder of her parents, and the vicious slaughter of her entire pack. And for five years, it has been all that she has lived for.And nowhere, in those neat little plans did she included a pack, friends, a mate she could never deserve, or remembering everything and everyone she lost. But life is cruel. And rarely do we get what we want. ..Kaiden Salvatori is the first born son of Alpha Sergio Salvatori, who thought he had life all figured out. He was easily learning the ropes of the family business, taking over his roles both in the pack as Alpha, as well in the corporate world as a powerful CEO. It was all simple and predictable, boring even.But that all changes in a single night when he happens to stumble across a she-wolf being hunted on his territory, discovering that not only is she a rogue herself but that she also happens to be his mate...In that one fateful encounter everything changes. Lies will be uncovered. Truths revealed. Enemies exposed.When secrets and betrayals come, both Kaiden and Aislinn will be forced to choose; what are they willing to give up, and what they are prepared to fight for. Fate has destined them for each other, but sometimes even that just isn't enough.©The Lost One (2015)
8 131 - In Serial14 Chapters
The hidden truth
This Is a story about a girl who is from Arizona, but soon has to leave everything behind to go to some school in London. While in London she makes a shocking discovery about her family. What secrets have her parents be keeping from her?
8 171 - In Serial47 Chapters
Sector B
Decha is a genius high-ranking general, called back to Austell from The Outside by the council. Theodore Chen, the director of the Crime Affairs Agency requests for Decha to do some local investigation on the recent threats targeting Austell's most prestigious University, Grandell. The job is easier said than done. Decha has to go to Grandell undercover as a student again, investigate a great number of students and pick out suspicious behavior. The problem is that Grandell has few students from the opposing Sector, the Brackets. Sector B is full of people who are of the lower class. They work as much overtime as possible to make ends meet. Decha's mission entails that Sector B residents are most likely responsible for the threats directed at Grandell. While trying to solve the mystery under the radar, he gets involved with a Bracketer woman who oddly refuses to leave his side.Decha will have to uncover hidden truths. He may even go through a journey of self-discovery and have a deep understanding of how the Sector's flawed system truly works.
8 424