This is what a UniteFleet starship looks like, in the moments before hundreds of people die.

People are chatting, eating, laughing in the mess hall. Food dispensers buzz, sourcing meat and vegetable and gravy and broth from the deep reserves built directly into the walls. Dragan Hadrien rolls his eyes as the man called Mazma rants in his own indecipherable way. The impound personnel, Danny and Lucia, chuckle lightly at the scene as Bruno watches, his arms folded. A drop of soup falls from the side of Danny's spoon, lifted halfway up to his mouth.

They do not notice.

In the hallways above, making their way up towards the bridge, Underman Rose walks ahead of Ruth and Skipper. Skipper's mouth is frozen mid-whistle, and Ruth is glancing at the monitors lining the walls as they pass. She has no idea what the complex graphs and figures mean, but they're more interesting than the infodump Rose is bestowing upon them. Just as Skipper is frozen mid-whistle, Rose is frozen in the middle of a lengthy lecture, her mouth open wide as if to bite down on something.

They do not notice.

In a nondescript meeting room in a completely mundane and dull part of the ship, Captain Jaime Pierrot speaks to the assassin known as The Widow. A mostly-empty glass of water lies between them, the ice-cubes in it melted by the room's heating. There is the potential for violence in this room, for murder, if discussions do not go well -- but that is not what will happen today. They have no time for something as luxurious as murder.

They do not notice.

In the security office, Overman Yaza scrolls through the script placed before her, her eyebrows knitted in concentration. The information on this script has nothing to do with the impending deaths of so many -- it is simply another concern among the many that come up on a ship this size, like a single drop of rain in a thunderstorm. Security personnel come and go behind her as she reads.

They do not notice.

Overman Langston, in his own private office, sits before a console unit, fingers dancing hurriedly across the holographic keyboard. His brow is creased in concern, confusion. His hand reaches for his script, ready to make a call -- but he won't make it in time.

He notices, but far too late.

In the central engine room of the Unite Regent is a power unit like a giant pillar, the size of a building, glowing with unearthly yellow light. The energy this unit is producing is enough to power the entire ship, to keep every system running at maximum capacity. Technicians and engineers scurry back and forth like worker ants, performing the endless dance of maintenance that is required to keep something like this running.

These people are the best at what they do -- by necessity. The slightest error could result in disaster, catastrophe. In this case, however, the horror that is about to unfold isn't down to them.

It's down to the bomb, subtly placed on the underside of the walkway encircling the engine. The size of a human fist, with a blinking red light increasing in frequency as it comes closer and closer to giving birth to fire and blood.

Here, now, is the occasion upon which this nightmare could be averted. If one of the engineers looked, saw, grabbed the explosive and deactivated it, nobody on the ship would have to die. The Regent would fly on, brushing against the border unimpeded.

But they do not notice -- and they don't live long enough to regret it.

The bomb explodes with a sound like a human scream, distorted and sharpened, and white fire belches forth from its innards. The explosion cracks open the power unit like an egg, and with the engineering staff thrown to the ground by the tremendous shockwave, there is no-one to deactivate it before things get worse. One brave man stands up, rushing for the emergency console -- but a lance of pure power like a lightning bolt spills forth out of the unit, reducing him to dust as it strikes him.

Someone shouts something -- but there's no time for anyone to process who is speaking, or what they are saying. There's no time to take a breath..There's no time to do anything but die.

The cracks in the power unit spread further, and the equipment directly connected to it explodes outwards in showers of angry sparks. Every monitor that remains shows only layers of warnings, piled atop each other -- power critical, containment breached, meltdown imminent. Everything that can go wrong is about to go wrong.

And then -- it does. The power unit explodes in a supernova of light that tears through flesh and skin, through metal and glass, though the very air itself. Nearly a quarter of the Unite Regent, the entire engineering section, is consumed by the blast.

That is how hundreds of people die.

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Dragan clenched his teeth to hold back the yelp of pain -- biting down on his tongue in the process, which didn't much help.

He'd been knocked down when the ship had rumbled and the lights had gone out, and from the agony now coursing through his left leg, he was pretty sure he'd hit something on the way. He clutched his leg, blinking rapidly as his eyes adjusted to the dark. The sounds of panicked shouting and screaming coming from around him were nearly overwhelming.

A few seconds after the initial shock, the emergency lighting in the mess switched on. An ominous red glow filled the room, light distorting their surroundings in such a way that everything seemed sharper, less friendly, more hostile. In terms of emergency measures, it wasn't much helping.

Bruno grabbed Dragan under the arms and -- with a grunt of exertion -- pulled him back up onto the bench, doing his best to stop the injured leg from hitting anything.

"You okay?" he said quietly, eyes flicking around the room -- taking everything in, trying to get a handle of what exactly this situation was.

"I've felt better," grunted Dragan, his breath shaky as pain continued to radiate from his leg. "You?"

"We're okay," mumbled Serena -- she took over from Bruno seamlessly. "But what happened? This is kinda scary."

Before Dragan could start to speculate, he was interrupted by the shouting of the man sat opposite them -- that fool Mazma, waving his arms wildly as he ranted.

"This is now going beyond the pale!" he declared. "Oh my god! What! I am this innocent man, brought aboard this ship of tricks, and now this happened? Red? Huh?!"

Dragan ignored the man -- he didn't have time to waste talking to a brick wall, nor the interest -- and turned back to Serena. "I don't know," he whispered, careful not to be overheard. "That sounded like an explosion -- and if the lights are out, there's a possibility something's happened to the ship's power."

Serena cocked her head. "Is that bad?" she said. Her voice was more of a stage-whisper than Dragon's actual whisper, but at least she was making the effort.

Surprisingly, Dragan found himself without the urge to condescend when faced with such a foolish question. It was Serena, after all -- it would've been like kicking a puppy.

"Pretty bad," Dragan coughed. "If the power goes out, there's a possibility the gravity could stop working -- hell, worse than that, the life support."

Before he could go further into it, though, he found himself interrupted by one of the impound technicians -- Danny Werner, he'd said his name was. It was hard to tell in the crimson dark, but he could've sworn the man was shooting him an annoyed glare.

"The backup power can run for days," Werner said reassuringly, helping his friend Lucia to her feet. "There's no possibility of us losing life support. Don't go starting a panic."

Dragan suspected that if he'd asked a couple of minutes ago, he'd have been told there was no possibility of the power going down at all -- but he decided to let that go.

"Hold up a sec," Werner went on, putting his wrist-bound script to his mouth. "Marco, requesting info. What just happened?"

Dragan glanced at Lucia, who was dusting herself off. "Marco?" he asked.

"Ship's auto-brain," she explained, supporting herself with one hand on the table. "It runs most of the systems -- we'll be able to get a diagnostic of what's happened through it."

Dragan was skeptical. "Will the auto-brain still be running if we're on emergency power?"

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"It should be."

Even with that said, though, Werner was frowning at the silence from his script. He shook it as if that would help, then spoke into it again: "Marco, respond. We need an emergency diagnostic right now."

After another couple seconds of silence, the synthesized voice of the auto-brain came through. "Good evening, Underman Werner," it said pleasantly. "Please confirm request for emergency diag --"

"Confirm request," Werner snapped, rubbing a hand over his temple. "Just hurry, please."

Another brief silence, and then: "Unable to run full diagnostic. Apologies. Error code 42-DHJ."

Werner furrowed his brow at that, shook his head slightly. Whatever that error code meant, Dragan guessed, it wasn't what he'd been expecting.

Lucia seemed to sense it, too. Her face was pale as she looked up at Danny. "Did that..." she forced out. "Did it say DHJ?"

Danny nodded. "DHJ," he murmured. "DHJ -- there's nothing to diagnose. The -- the power unit isn't there. Oh, god."

Their little group fell silent for a short while, an oasis of quiet in the middle of the babble that filled the rest of the mess hall. That explosion -- and the power unit gone. Something terrible had happened.

Shakily, Danny brought the script back to his mouth. "Marco," he croaked, voice hoarse. "Please -- please report last known status of power unit -- and put me through to the chief engineer once you have."

Again, the auto-brain took a little while to respond. Was that because of the emergency power, too? "Last known status of central power unit is as follows," it said through the script's tinny speaker. "Integrity of containment failing. Meltdown imminent. The chief engineer cannot currently be reached due to reasons of non-existence."

Danny took another deep breath, his hands shaking even as he tried to keep them steady. "Get me through to anyone in engineering, then. Whoever's in charge in the engineering section."

And again, the nerve-wracking delay. Then: "The engineering section cannot currently be reached due to reasons of non-existence."

Danny collapsed into his seat, hands falling limp by his side. His eyes were saucer-wide, staring somewhere very far away. "Dead," he mumbled. "All dead. Fuck. Fuck."

Surprisingly, the guy called Mazma hadn't spoken up for quite a while -- but he chose possibly the very worst time to re-enter the conversation. "Mazma calls it nonsense," he said, waving a dismissive hand with violent force. "Your robo-guy is just broked. Mazma has seen it before. All focked up, sorry! No!"

In the distance, Dragan could hear others in the room receiving the same information -- pockets of stunned silence appearing in the uproar of the crowd. Before long, the entire room had been converted to hushed horror.

He felt Bruno's hand land heavy on his arm, and as he turned the other boy spoke: "We need to get out of here."

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"The hell was that?" Ruth shouted, whirling around as if some threat was about to come out of the walls.

"I don't know," Rose mumbled, panic obvious in her tone as she tapped frantically at her script. "We've -- we've switched to reserve power, so something must've happened in engineering --"

"Yeah," Skipper said grimly. "Something exploded. We all heard it."

Skipper dusted his coat off, cautious eyes flicking around the red-tinted hallway. Just before the ship had shook, they'd been walking past one of the ship's viewing windows -- so now they had the crimson hallway on one side and the horrifying void of space on the other. Not the best view Skipper had ever had.

"An explosion?" Rose whispered, as if the very notion was preposterous. "No, no -- that can't be right. Even if there was a malfunction, we'd have had some warning, at least --"

Rose found herself interrupted once again, this time by Ruth. "Not a malfunction, then?" she asked, directing the question to Skipper. "A bomb?"

"I'd put good odds on it."

"What do we do?"

Skipper took in a deep breath. Ideally, he'd have liked to stick around, get an idea of what this Captain Pierrot was up to -- but it seemed they no longer had the luxury of patience. If they didn't extract themselves from the situation now, Skipper didn't think they'd get another chance.

"Bruno, Serena and Dragan were in the mess hall," he said after a moment's hesitation. "We double back there, grab 'em, and make a run for the ship."

"Huh?!" Rose stepped forward, clutching her script so tightly her knuckles turned white. "No, no, you can't do that! You can't just leave!"

Skipper smiled wryly -- while he felt a little bad for her, he couldn't let her interfere with their escape. "You can't stop me, kid," he said, voice cold. "So don't even try."

And with that -- not allowing her another second to protest -- Skipper turned and ran with Aetheral speed, Ruth following quickly behind him. Rose's cries to wait quickly faded into silence.

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"Finally out of that noise," Dragan muttered, leaning against the wall, rubbing his ears. They'd vacated the chaos of the mess hall and made their way into one of the adjoining hallways. Now the only noise to worry about was the distant blaring of alarms.

"We should've all stayed in the same place," Werner scolded, pointing an unkind finger. Dragan and Bruno had done their best to be subtle when leaving, but the two impound technicians had followed them. "What if we need to start an evacuation, huh?"

Oh well -- at least that idiot Mazma hadn't followed them. They'd left him ranting to himself in the middle of the crowd. It wasn't even clear if he'd realized what had happened.

Dragan rolled his eyes. "Yeah, we're starting an evacuation. This is me and him evacuating. Bye."

Werner narrowed his eyes. "No."

"No?" Dragan wasn't sure he cared for this guy's tone. Or for the guy himself, for that matter. He was poking his nose where it didn't belong.

"No," Werner repeated, shaking his head. "I don't even know who you guys are -- two strangers show up, and then suddenly there's an explosion? Suddenly there's hundreds of people dead? How do I know you're not involved, huh?"

Bruno shot Werner a glare. "If I was involved," he growled. "You'd never know about it."

"Not really helping," Dragan muttered, before turning back to Werner. "Listen -- I swear to you we didn't do this. We just got here. I mean, how would we have even done it? I'm pretty sure the engines would have had security, right? How would we have gotten past that?"

Lucia spoke up, fidgeting nervously. "Maybe we should just calm down, Danny, and wait for --"

"I am calm," Werner snapped, immediately refuting what he'd just said. "We're going to calmly watch these guys and calmly make sure they don't run for it. Right? We'll do that until Captain Pierrot passes down his orders."

Dragan scoffed. "Pierrot? That dick?"

Werner's glare intensified, his teeth bared in a split-second expression of utter fury. "Captain Pierrot is a great man," he hissed. "Watch your fucking mouth."

He went to jab his finger into Dragan's chest again -- but he was intercepted by Bruno, who reached out and grabbed Werner's hand before it could make contact. Stray sparks of angry purple Aether flitted around Bruno's gloved hand as he squeezed down, causing Werner to wince in pain.

"Please don't touch him," Bruno said, unblinking, his voice ice. A second later, he pushed Werner away, sending the young man staggering backwards. Dragan nodded gratefully at Bruno -- but the second Werner regained his balance, he marched forward again, hands balled into fists.

"Listen!" he began, shrugging off Lucia's attempt to restrain him -- only to find himself interrupted by a voice coming from the speakers. The intercom system, at least, seemed like it was still working.

"Speak of the devil," muttered Dragan, recognising those condescending tones.

Pierrot's voice came through loud and clear, amplified by the speakers throughout the ship. "This is an address to all crewmembers," he said, clearly making an effort to inject reassurance into his tone. "This is your Captain speaking. As I'm sure you are now aware, an incident has taken place within the Regent's engineering section -- specifically concerning the main power unit. Analysis suggests repair in this case is not an option."

If the engineering section really was gone, that seemed like something of an understatement.

"As a result of this," Pierrot continued, clearing his throat. "I am now ordering all crewmembers to begin evacuation procedures. Please proceed to the escape pods as quickly as possible. A distress signal has already been transmitted -- rescue is on the way. Do not panic."

The intercoms clicked off.

Dragan furrowed his brow. "Escape pods?" he asked. "Why? I thought the emergency power was supposed to keep the life support on. Why the need to evacuate?"

"Orders are orders," sighed Werner, clearly calming down quite a bit as he began to walk. "Escape pods are this way. Come on, guys."

Dragan and Bruno exchanged glances, understanding transmitted through their gazes. They'd tag along only until they met back up with Skipper and Ruth.

Still, Dragan thought as they walked past a window, this really was unbelievable. Couldn't they stay in a place for more than ten minutes without something absolutely awful happening? A Special Officer showing up on Yoslof, security capturing them on Taldan, and now they couldn't even board a ship without the engine exploding? Had they pissed off a wizard and gotten themselves cursed at some point?

Dragan sighed. "Well," he began. "At least it can't get any worse."

The moment those words left his lips, he got an awful feeling -- like nails scratching down his back -- and he couldn't help but brace himself as if for another explosion. In front of him, Bruno tensed up too -- casting a panicked glance behind himself.

After a few seconds, though, the tension naturally faded away -- and Dragan couldn't help but chuckle with relief. "Sorry," he said quietly. "Guess I kinda tempted fate there. For a second, I really thought something was about to --"

There was a distant boom -- and at the very same moment, an object like a colossal silver horseshoe appeared out in the void of space, glistening with reflected sunlight. Cannons danced over its surface -- and as Dragan swung around to face it, the object launched out several massive harpoons, trailed by steel cables, that lodged themselves into the Regent's hull, securing the two vessels together.

Dragan blinked, gaping. Even though he'd never seen one personally, that shape and those tactics were unmistakable. That was a Supremacy attack cruiser.

"Oh, fuck," he said, accurately.