Running. Fear. Darkness.
Red emergency lighting. Dim, unreliable. Darkness.
Cramped, narrow access tunnel. Crawling. Running.
Blood-splattered walls. Hunger. Pain. Fear.
Mytana had been running from section to section of the enormous cruise liner for six day-periods, hunting for breathable air and ever-dwindling supplies. The monsters could be seen here and there, searching for her, but she didn't let them find her. Chinobi were good at hiding. But she was scared.
The Cosmic Explorer, an explorative cruise ship for the uber-wealthy, had been in streamspace near the edge of Council territory when the impossible occurred: it was dragged out of streamspace fifty parsecs from the nearest star. Normally, when a ship approached a high-mass object or anomalous space, the streamspace engine would sling back, removing the ship from danger of collision, and facing it—along with its astronomic momentum—away from the dangerous area. But somehow the Cosmic Explorer was dragged to a complete stop in the middle of nowhere.
Mytana had been on an education cruise, along with two other Chinobi nobles and hundreds of students from Council-funded schools in the human colonies. It had been an exciting break from leadership and diplomacy training for the young princess—and it had also helped her take her mind off the disappearance of her older sister two years prior.
She ducked into a small, round enclosure with a door to the maintenance tube. She had no idea what is purpose was, but it provided enough safety to sleep for a minute. As she slipped into a troubled slumber, the events of the past six days replayed in her mind...
137 Hours Ago
"Princess, please pay attention!"
Her mind snapped out of the daydream, refocusing on the calculation before her. She'd been assigned a streamspace navigation puzzle to solve by her Eldsen tutor and bodyguard, but she lost her focus when she got to the final calculation. The tall, handsome Eldsen rapped her forehead with his stylus, causing her to wince and blush simultaneously. She had a secret crush on him.
"My lady, if your lifeship falls into a spatial anomaly you won't have forty-five minutes to complete the jump calculation! By the end of five minutes your hull integrity will fail, and at ten you'll be dead. So do it again!" He snarled and reset the puzzle.
Mytana sighed and silently began to go through the steps of recovering a lifeship from a spatial anomaly. First, secure general quarters. Second, initiate an—
"Emergency streamspace ejection. Emergency streamspace ejection. Slingback imminent."
Before Mytana or her Eldsen tutor could react to the electronic voice, the ship shuddered and seemed to jump, sending them hurtling into the padded bulkhead. Various alarms echoed through their suite, ranging from hull rupture to power loss warnings. The Chinobi girl stood carefully and smoothed her dress. If there was going to be an emergency, she would at least maintain her dignity while being evacuated.
"Are you alright, Milady?" The Eldsen asked as he silenced the alarms.
"I am uninjured," she replied, and was surprised at the shaking in her voice. "We should evacuate," she said, gulping down a heaving breath. Okay, maybe she wouldn't be very dignified after all.
The Eldsen nodded and stepped out of sight into the adjacent room. He came back carrying a pile of heavy cases in his strong arms and set them on the floor. Mytana recognized two emergency survival backpacks and the large suitcase containing her tutor's combat armor, but she didn't know what the other bags were. The long one must have been a rifle, but there was a small duffel bag that she hadn't seen before. The Eldsen opened the case with his armor and arranged the pieces swiftly and neatly in front of him.
"Get yourself ready, my lady. The smaller pack is yours, and your sidearm is in the duffel bag. Be ready by the time I get my armor on." The Eldsen bodyguard-tutor began to strip out of his uniform, leaving his muscled frame clothed only by his form-fitting nanosuit. Mytana blushed fiercely before she turned away and grabbed her backpack. It was nondescript, with no labels or icons that would reveal her identity should the need for a covert escape be the cause of its use. She gasped at its weight as it settled about her shoulders.
"What's in this thing?" She complained, heaving it on with difficulty, and staggering. "It weighs a ton!"
"Now is the time for leaving, not talking." The Eldsen dismissed her gripe and set his helmet on his head. "Buckle on your weapon."
Opening the duffel bag, she found two synthetic webbed gunbelts neatly coiled, and two holsters each with a handgun. One of these was familiar, if distasteful to her, and she put the ensemble around her waist with annoyance. The pistol was beautifully engraved with white and golden synthetic hardware. Her name was written on the handle with elegant swirls. I must look ridiculous, she thought. My dress doesn't match this at all.
Mytana looked up at her tutor and sucked in a gasp of admiration at the sight of his white and blue combat armor, the colors designating him as a member of the Chinobi Royal Guard. It was truly a handsome sight and caused butterflies in the young girl's stomach. The butterflies went into a frenzy when he bent over to pick up his rifle.
"My lady, you've got to follow right behind me and not allow yourself to get separated," the Eldsen rumbled, ignoring the smitten look his charge was giving him. "There's likely to be a lot of chaos beyond this door." He stepped to the suite's main portal and accessed the door control. After it rejected him with a negatory blurp, he snarled and ripped it away to reveal an emergency release lever. It gave an audible click as he pulled it out, enabling him to push open the door, the two halves sliding into the wall.
Instantly, the smoke, alarms, and shouts from the corridor filled the princess' suite. As they left, she looked back at the delusory calm and comfort of her room—and to her horror saw the window explode outward, into space. She just barely pulled her skirt out of the way before the portal slammed shut.883Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7KCih2Gd07
Without sympathy, the Eldsen suggested, "You might want to take your dress off. It's bound to get caught on something."
Mytana felt her whole body turn bright red, both with anger and embarrassment. Chinobi princesses, along with most other Chinobi nobility, were anything but naked under the elegant attire they were accustomed to wearing. However, they always wore specially-designed nanosuits rather than ordinary undergarments, which were state-of-the-art protective gear. Meant to be undetectable under normal clothes, they were significantly thinner, lighter, and more form-fitting than common utility suits or even the combat nanosuit Mytana's Eldsen wore under his uniform. To her, going in just her nanosuit would be akin to walking around completely unclothed.
She put her nose in the air and ignored the suggestion. "You haven't explained where we're going. Shouldn't we help repair the ship?" She liked to believe that's what she would do if her own lifeship were in a similar situation.
The Eldsen started walking and pulled up a schematic map of their deck on his nanotool. "What would you do to help? You saw what happened back there—this ship is falling apart! You should know that because you were just studying the effects of emergency streamspace ejections." The floor shuddered to punctuate his point.
Mytana huffed, but held her tongue. There truly wasn't much she could do, unless the crew needed a boost to their morale. She was a princess, not a mechanic.
When they got halfway down the corridor, they met a crowd of students and teachers gazing into space at an observation bubble. The holoverlay projects were broken, so the overlay that normally explained what could be seen was partially obscuring the view. One of the professors was calmly explaining that these sorts of incidents were common in deep-space travel, and that the captain would have them on their way again soon. Mytana was annoyed at the falsehood and was about to interrupt the gathering when she gasped and took a step back. The observation glass was cracked, and the pressure of the ship's atmosphere was causing it to bulge out slightly.
Suddenly, a glowing streamspace bubble became visible, frighteningly close to the ship. The crowd gasped in startled excitement, but Mytana knew that their chances of avoiding collision, crippled as they were, had to be slim. Fear gripped her for the first time.
A vessel emerged from the subspace tear, and then the Chinobi girl realized why it had seemed so close: it was absolutely titanic in size. And at first glance, it was clearly far more advanced than even the latest warship in the Council fleet. Its hull was speckled with what appeared to be various gun emplacements, with four giant turrets on its upper and lower dorsal ridges. These guns appeared to be the size of escort destroyers.
Should that monstrosity engage us in battle, she thought, we're done for.
There was a breathless pause of silence as the alien dreadnought decelerated far quicker than what should have been possible. Surely the captain of the Cosmic Explorer was communicating with whom or whatever was commanding the other ship, requesting aid.
After only a few minutes, the Explorer's computer announced the results of their conversation.
"General quarters. Crew to security stations. General quarters. Seal all hatches, portals, and blast-doors. General quarters. Crew to security stations."
The message continued to repeat, along with a loud klaxon signifying red alert. Mytana watched in awe as the Explorer's puny laser cannons were brilliantly overshadowed by a hundred precise plasma volleys from the alien ship.
She let out a squawk as her Eldsen bodyguard picked her up and leaped back, just as a silver bolt of plasma instantly vaporized the observation bubble. Landing on his back, he slid a couple meters before colliding roughly with a bulkhead. His precious charge safe, he let her out of his grasp and quickly got to his feet. The princess looked back expecting to see terrible destruction, but all she saw was the blast-door that had slammed shut. It was dented inward.
"Let's go," the Eldsen barked, and dragged Mytana along. "The hangars are still intact; that's the only way out now."
The princess was about to ask what he meant when the computer spoke again. "Attention all hands. Evacuate - Evacuate - Evacuate..." It continued in a loop for several minutes.
"Who attacked us?" Mytana asked.
"Don't know, don't care," snorted her Eldsen. "All I know is they mean to kill us, and I want to get you off this ship."
They rounded a smoke-filled corner to a discouraging view: the corridor was filled with debris, as if the deck above had collapsed. They could follow that route no further.
"Massive atmosphere loss. Unauthorized access to hangars Alpha and Bravo. Reaction error. Hull compromised on decks One through Five. Power loss on all decks." The computer reported the damage with an eerily calm voice. Its own existence was threatened, but it wasn't aware.
The Eldsen looked back and spotted a vertical emergency access ladder; they needed to get to the hangars, which meant they needed to go down. He walked over to the lower hatch, still holding Mytana's hand in a strong grip, and dogged open the ladder with his free hand. The acrid smoke got denser as he worked.
Mytana tried to free herself from her bodyguard's grip, but failed in a squeak of pain as the world exploded into grinding, hissing static. Her vision turned gray, and her knees collapsed. The blue-skinned bodyguard held her up.
"Princess, are you alright?" The military man queried with stern concern. Her head pounded and she gasped for breath. The odd spell passed, and the world became clear and colorful again.
"I don't know," the girl gasped painfully. "My head hurts."
The armored Eldsen turned on a flashlight and checked her eyes. "Follow my finger this way... and this way... look over there... and over there... I think you're fine, Princess. Let me know if your head is still hurting in an hour. Now we need to go."
The bodyguard unlocked the heavy armored hatch to the vertical access tube as the air quality rapidly worsened. Mytana coughed and gasped, sucking in lungfuls of thick smoke and soot; fires burned in the pile of wreckage where the deck had collapsed. Her tutor grunted and lifted the hatch to reveal a vertical tunnel about a meter in diameter, much larger than they both had expected. Its sides were cushioned, and a thin ladder led down into the depths of the ship.
"You first, Milady. I'll get the hatch. At least we won't be too cramped in there," said the Eldsen, and gestured into the tube. Mytana hitched up her skirt and daintily stepped onto the ladder, grasping the top rung with her small hands. She looked down and gulped in dismay at the sight of the next hatch, which appeared to her to be at least fifty meters below. The Eldsen noticed her fear and snorted. "It's only two and a half meters, Highness. Even if you jumped the whole way you'd be fine. Let's go!"
Mytana carefully began to lower herself down, her synthetic leather slippers tapping softly on the cold metal rungs. Above her the Eldsen closed and locked the hatch, following with a metal ping with each step of his booted feet.
"Hurry up Milady! Time is short!"
Time is short. What eloquence from a man who, from birth, had been trained to kill! Then again, thought Mytana, perhaps his awareness of the frailty of life gives him greater perspective than even the most prolific of poets. She stopped just above the hatch to deck four and stood on the collar that surrounded it.
On the wall to the right of the ladder was a small diagnostic monitor for the atmosphere controls, but at the moment it was displaying security footage from deck five. Its blue glow reflected off Mytana's sea green dress, tinting the walls around them. She didn't know what she was seeing exactly, but was for some reason drawn to it. Her bodyguard came down and held onto the ladder, looking to see why she had stopped.
"Good idea, my lady! Let's see what we're walking into," the Eldsen said brightly, and stood in front of the screen for a moment, switching cameras. He was in his element now, and Mytana was glad at least one of them knew what they were doing. Suddenly he hissed and stepped aside for her to look.
The little monitor showed a fierce firefight between the ship's security forces and some entity off-screen. Smoke and flashes of light from the marines' chemical rifles and showers of sparks from the enemy's plasma fire obscured the camera's view, making it hard to tell what exactly was happening. The Cosmic Explorer's marines seemed to be winning, and the number of shots dwindled as they picked off the last straggling enemies. All of a sudden the Chinobi princess noticed two large spots, reminiscent of eyes, appear on a monitor in the background. The same buzzing and greyness came to her hearing and sight, and a sharp pain erupted in her head. She gasped in agony, but her eyes remained riveted to the video. The display's speaker quietly relayed the cacophony of battle.
She heard shouts and the shriek and concussion of plasma and chemical gunfire. The eyes remained, but nobody else had noticed.
"Hmm, electronic infiltration perhaps?" The Eldsen mused, too absorbed to notice his charge's discomfort.
Suddenly the gunfire ended, and marines wearing combat armor came out from cover. They assessed their victory and regrouped in a circle in the middle of the hall.
"Tsk, mercenaries," spat the princess' tutor. "They're exposing themselves too soon-"
His comment was interrupted by a scene that shocked them both. The cluster of marines abruptly fell to the deck, ripped their helmets off, and clutched their heads while screaming in agony. One of them was near enough to the camera microphone for Mytana to understand his words.
"Aah, stop! Don't- don't touch me! I won't- get out! Get out of my head!"
One by one the marines fell, and for a moment silence prevailed. Mytana watched, horrified, her breath short and quick. The eyes continued to stare, and the girl feared they would somehow see through the walls to her. All was gray and grainy.
Then at the edge of the camera's field of view was a shadow of movement. Three greenish-gray creatures, humanoid and about as tall as a male Eldsen but much thinner, stalked over to the fallen marines. A dry, crackling noise came from their throats, which somehow seemed to cause static similar to what clouded Mytana's vision appear on the monitor. It made her head hurt worse.
One of the aliens, its skin slightly more golden than the other two, raised its arms. The noise rose to a climax, so loud that Mytana was convinced she could hear it echoing through the ship. Even the Eldsen covered his ears with an expression of annoyance and confusion. There was a vibration in the padded walls around them.
Mytana thought she saw the fallen marines stand up in unison, but her vision was getting darker so she wasn't sure. She did, however, see the alien leader jerk its head around, and then look straight into the camera. The marines and other aliens also turned to stare, seemingly at her—but only when the two spots appeared on the monitor before her did she let out a shriek, and fell over onto the hatch.883Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPSJxq3VxrG
And all was dark.
Thanks for reading the first chapter of my new story, White Noise! This is a work-in-progress, but I try to work out any typos, grammatical errors, etc. before posting on Penana and Wattpad. Feel free to offer any feedback! I hope you enjoyed this chapter and enjoy the rest of the story to come!
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