Sitting idly by and doing nothing was among the top few things that had made Alex uncomfortable. He sat on the cheaply made waiting room chair outside of Admiral Valso’s office waiting for his commanding officer to come out and speak with him.
He sat tall and straight with his hands firmly placed on his lap with his right knee bouncing spastically while he impatiently waited to be called in. He wore his navy-blue dress uniform that lacked any fancy gear or life support modules, a suit whose purpose only existed for official and celebratory occasions and while he despised it wearing it for the latter occasion he was filled with uncomfortable uncertainty and energy drawn from a well of anxiety at the stressful situation he had found himself in.
To make matters worse he was all alone in the hallway. One of his longest preconceived notions about STARCOM’s headquarters situated within the heart of Telon City on Mars was that at all hours of the day it was filled with humourless pencil-pushing bureaucrats bossing around a dozen assistants and secretaries while enacting poorly thought-out ideas and then making such suggestions mandatory across the fleet without any practical insight. At least the free doughnuts on the table were exquisite.
Telon city, the capital of the Arabia Terra province on Mars was among the first large-scale Terran settlements in the early days of its colonisation. Nowadays the city stands proudly for being system-wide famous for three things: having the most beautiful underground metro network in the entire solar system, STARCOM headquarters, and hosting a large number of doughnut artisans who had perfected the art of crafting the treat until they were renowned for creating the most delicious doughnuts found anywhere within any colonised world.
Alex took a bite out of one from an open box of plain doughnuts that was on a desk nearby and was surprised by the taste and texture being nothing like the ones he has had back on Terra.
In that instant he heard the door lock click and he rushed to finish the rest of the pastry in a ravenous frenzy that was unbecoming of a Captain. The door swung open, Alex shot up out of his seat brushing his sugar covered fingers against the back of his pants while he stood at attention. Admiral Valso walked out of his office and gave his uniform a tug to straighten out before looking towards Alex. The red-skinned gargoyle quickly looked over Alex’s attire as though to dress him down with his eyes, did he know about the delicacy, did he know Alex just dusted sugar on the back of his pants? If he had then Valso gave no indicator as he met with Alex’s gaze with a set of steely determined eyes.
“Come with me,” he grumbled cryptically.
Two months had gone past since he and everyone was rescued off of Savannah. Since his return, he and everyone else had been questioned thoroughly about the events regarding the Sagittarius nebula, the destruction of the Phoenix, to being rescued by the dragons and subsequently their crash landing on Savannah. Not long after giving his testimony of events as best as he could describe Alex had found himself in the unenviable position of being in judiciary limbo where he was under probation and temporarily barred from active service while the investigation was ongoing. As far as he could tell no charges had been filed against him. Not that he was ungrateful but he would much had preferred that they would get it over and done with rather than drag him through a process that seemed to serve only as a means to agitate his blood pressure to rise and his mental state to decline.
The only bit of his hushed trial that he knew the outcome of with certainty was just how hard the Draconic Adjutant-Generals had pushed for he and Capt. Hammer to be tried and found guilty for violating interstellar law and illegally entering the Satama System, and subsequently bringing a dangerous opponent to the planet Savannah.
Thankfully those charges were dropped by the steadfast determination of the Board of Admirals, of which Adm. Valso was a member of, who had come to the conclusion that their entry into the system and thereby allowing an aggressive force to enter the system as a result was merely out of self-defence with no sufficient grounds found that would warrant any punishable offence. The dragons, with no way to twist the facts to suit them were left with but one option: Drop the charges. And they did, vehemently.
Valso walked down the carpeted hallway and hooked a left turn into a clean white vestibule with a Lykan receptionist filing paperwork away. She shot Valso a sharp salute and only returned to her duties when they passed by her without a glance. The admiral pressed a button on the adjacent wall and it parted open to expose the elevator car.
He pressed the ‘down’ button and the doors closed in response. The admiral made no attempt at eye contact with him and the silence was slowly getting to him, he felt awkward hearing only the muffled creaks of metallic motors lowering the elevator down the shaft. Strangely, he began developing a craving for more of those artisanal doughnuts he ate earlier. The thought of biting into that soft, fluffy ring and feel the crunch of crystallised cinnamon on his teeth was all he could think of. Was some kind of addictive substance added to them that made him have these cravings? Alex made a mental note to go visit a shop when he left the office.
“In order to complete our understanding of events there is still some information we are lacking,” Valso sighed. “Specifically, those surrounding your escape and the destruction of the Phoenix.”
Alex faced his superior with a confused look. “I don’t understand sir, everything was included in my report and I am positive the testimonies of the others that were there at the time can back up what I said.”
Valso shrugged his wings and they stretched outwards until the appendages embedded in his wings brushed against the elevators aluminium walls. With one hand he removed his glasses while cleaning something out of his eyes with a free finger. “We have the testimonies of Warrant Office Conrad Silas and Midshipman Robert Christopher stating that after heading towards the Captain’s shuttle on your order when Cmdr. Hammer went back for you. By the time they arrived they found you on the ground concussed and Commander Hammer ordering them to carry you back. What we want to know was what happened between those few minutes.”
The elevator’s speaker let out a soft chime and the doors parted open to show the two officers a well-lit corridor that led to a lab. There were three other officers, Admirals Alex quickly realised and he snapped to a sharp salute at the three of them. A dark skinned human, a pale Satyr and another gargoyle with deep purple skin.
“Captain Rowan,” Valso said gruffly as he cleared his throat to name them individually. “This is Admiral Obae, Vice Admiral Oswin, and Admiral Godogai.” He said while each one saluted as they were named.
“Captain Rowan,” Admiral Obae spoke up, he was a lean man with an unmistakable African accent, bald and clean shaven to the point it had almost looked as though he had no hair on him whatsoever. “Allow me to be the first to thank you for your exemplary service throughout this… unique, shall we call it, situation.”
“Thank you sir.” Alex nodded. Then he turned to face Valso. “Sir, forgive me for not understanding but why are we here?”
Valso gestured with his hand to something behind Alex. He turned to see what it was and saw a metal chair with restraints and wires hooked up to it. A chair restraint, the kind used to either torture someone or subject them to certain medical practices.
Next to the chair was a series of machines that seemed a little out of place along with an EEG reader display. For a moment, his heart rate spiked at the thought that they were going to torture him for the information they wanted.
His terror was quickly alleviated when Valso spoke up. “After reading a report from Dr. Liyurch Grayich on how the Synaptic simulator can be used in the process of interrogation and information gathering we have had our technicians here look over his hypothesis and look into developing and refining methods to extract information and details a person either omits or forgets altogether.”
It was one thing when he thought they were going to torture him, but the idea of them creeping into his mind and accessing his memories with accurate clarity was good enough to give him pause. Apprehensive at the implied suggestion of being probed.
“You want me to relive those memories?” He asked.
Valso raised a hand, a gesture of assurance to calm any concerns the admiral believed his subordinate held. “We don’t need any of the private and intimate memories. We just want to see your recollection of events that led to when you were rendered unconscious.”
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Alex sighed. Then agreed, not that he actually had a choice in the matter.
While sitting down on the cold, metallic chair he began feeling as though he was about to be executed via lethal injection. A technician strapped down his legs with leather bound restraints and applied a synaptic wreathe over the crown of his head. The four admirals' eyes glanced between Alex and the displays showing his vitals. He closed his eyes at the instruction of the technician and felt the warm hum of the machine stimulating the synapses in his brain.
When he opened his eyes and looked around, he felt some brief sense of familiar relief at the sight of the engine room of the Phoenix. It had looked clean and rather devoid of personnel. He walked around the main catwalk that crossed over the primary turbines that fed plasma from the ship’s tokamak reactor to its thruster exhausts.
“Captain Rowan?” A voice echoed.
It came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time, Alex looked around struggling to find where it came from.
“Admiral Valso?” He asked uncertainly.
Indeed, the voice was unmistakable but he wasn’t certain how he was hearing him. Was there a second synaptic simulator he did not notice that was linked with his own?
“Yes,” The admiral responded. “We have set up a direct input feed directly into your neural wreathe, that’s how you are hearing my voice.”
Well that solves that question.
“Right now we can see the engine room of the Phoenix, is this correct?” Valso continued.
Alex looked around and tried his best to scrutinise as best as possible. Sure, the engine room looked as clean as the day he got her and she lacked her black scorch marks and soot stains that she would gain from many faithful years of service but it was unmistakeably her.
He walked further down the gantry and towards where the primary engineering console was situated in front of the plasma injectors.
But something wasn’t right. It had happened for only a split second, quick enough that he dismissed it as memory crossing his mind’s eye and overlapping what he was seeing. A brief shift in colour tone warped the clean white and grey tones of the engine room with black and blazing orange colours before it went to normal.
“Yeah, its correct.” He replied.
“According to the reports from your officers you were last scene at the master engineering terminal priming the self destruct mechanism while preventing an overload of your reactor.” Admiral Obae spoke. His accent far from mistakeable compared to the other admirals. “Is that correct?”
“That is correct, sir.”
Valso then came back to asking the questions. “Why not just let your reactor go into meltdown, why bother staying behind if it was already at a critical stage?”
Alex slowly traipsed over to the terminal where he had planned on going down with his ship and ran a hand over the console’s display. “The chemical composition of the Sagittarius nebula was discovered to be highly combustible. Add to the fact that we were situated within a very dense pocket of highly flammable ethanol both myself and Cmdr. Hammer realised that if the reactor went critical it would explode with an intense plasma burst that could threaten to ignite the entire nebula and destroy all escape craft.”
He glanced over to his right where the main set of doors that led in and out of the engine bay were situated and narrowed his eyes when he saw the same shift in colour once again. This time it had lasted a lot longer but not by more than a second. Long enough for Alex to recognise what he was seeing shift into. The walls were covered in burn marks and the orange colours came from roaring flames flicking from the exposed inner workings leaking out their intense fuels.
He was growing concerned with the visions and was about to ask if the admirals saw the brief flash when Valso’s voice came in before he could ask.
“Sorry, Rowan, the machinery just glitched out for a second. I’m afraid we didn’t catch the last of that, can you repeat it please?”
“Uh… Uh, yeah,” he began, slowly pushing the apparition out of his mind. “I said that the reactor explosion could risk igniting dense pockets of nebula gas and destroy the escape craft.”
Two brief fiery glimpses of the engine room on fire seemed strange, something peculiar was going on that he wasn’t certain about and with no clue as to their cause. He shook his head, albeit virtually, in the hopes that it was the last of the visions. Last thing he needed was the Admirals to see his mental faculties breaking down before their eyes.
He looked down at the screen and tried his hardest to remember the readout in case the admirals asked for that information. The screen was black and he tried to remember, to will the readout into existence and his mind complied as the screen immediately lit up with a display of the manual controls for the engine’s cooling system and fault code alerts. His reflection looked back at him through the glossy screen, he was about to go over the information in front of him when he noticed another reflection of a larger individual behind him. His heart rate jumped and he spun around to see who it was.
Except there was nothing. No larger individual, no indication there was another presence here except for himself.
Keep it together Alex, he told himself.
“Everything alright, Captain Rowan? Your monitors just spiked suddenly.” Valso asked half-concernedly.
Alex stammered his response. Just what was he supposed to say to them, that he was losing his mind being in here? That would almost certainly give them reason to have him admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
“U-uh, um, yeah! Everything is alright!.” He said in a loud voice. Louder than he had intended.
Already he was beginning to imagine that they were exchanging glances when he listened to how he responded.
When Valso moved on, Alex was grateful for not dwelling on it any further.
Yet, the intrusive thought of who that shadowy figure wouldn’t let go of his thought process. Questions like ‘who was it?’ or ‘why am I seeing them?’ continued to be as pervasive as ever but with no clear answer in sight he did his best to ignore the questions and focus simply on the questions that were being asked by his commanding officer.
“You were ready to go down with your ship, is that correct?” Valso asked. If he was concerned about the apparent ‘glitch’ that was mentioned earlier or Alex’s startled tone then he gave no indication in his voice.
“That is correct sir. The SD charges no longer seemed to function at the time and I had intended on redirecting the heat energy from the reactor throughout the ship causing them to burst and rupture in a cascade of plasma ruptures to scuttle the Phoenix.” Finally, he thought. He could feel his mind calming down.
“So what changed from going down with your ship to you ending up unconscious?”
A tough one, but he didn’t want to spoil the memory and throw his friend under the proverbial bus. How was he going to word this in a way that was both truthful and not harm the image and memory of his friend?
Just as he was about to answer he saw the engine room glitch out once again, flickering between the clean, present version and the rundown, fiery inferno version. The visions kept switching back and forth until they had almost merged. But in the end, the inferno had won and Alex found himself back in the engine room as he remembered it last.
Flames gutted the heavy machinery, alarms rang out in distress, the intense heat from a damaged reactor gutted the atmosphere with the stench of ozone strong on the olfactory senses. For a moment, Alex had begun to worry that one of the alien creatures was in here, but he seemed all alone. Surrounded by the raging inferno of the heart of the Phoenix.
“-aptain…-nals break-…” Static filled the air as Valso’s voice was chewed up by static distortions.
“Admiral? Admiral Valso, can you hear me!?” Alex called out.
Despite the heat dancing along his skin, he felt his body turn cold as a presence of malevolent intent drew itself closer. Alex looked around and shuffled his left leg behind him in a combat stance. He tightened his fists into balls and scanned the room. The platform he was on was surrounded by flames and crammed machinery that offered no room for anyone or anything to move unseen. The sound of metal clanging against each other could be heard in the background and heavy footfalls on metal grating could be heard approaching.
Alex was positive he heard the sounds coming from the main entry but when he looked, he saw nothing there but orange flames dancing along the chassis of machines. He had hoped that whatever he was witnessing was visible to the Admirals on their display inside his mind. Damned mind technology! The last thing he wanted was to relive the events of his friend’s death.
“Admiral Valso I don’t know if you can hear me or not but in the event you do you should know this is exactly what the Phoenix looked like before I was dragged onto the shuttle!” he called out.
He got his response in the form of silence. He didn’t respond, none of the admirals responded. All he was stuck with was the gentle rumbling of fire lighting the massive room laced with the crackling of small particulates and warping and twisting of metal. The sounds of someone approaching him continued to rise in volume as they drew closer. Alex still saw nothing as the flames had created a ring of fire around him. He turned back to the engineering console and thought there might have been a way for him to extinguish the flames in here, even if they weren’t real, he couldn’t take the risk of getting injured and discovering his real body damaged in some relatable fashion.
He looked down at the screen and behind his reflection was the burly shadow glaring menacingly at him with bright red eyes. His heart rate spiked at the sight of the entity with its eyes glaring at him with a determined fury and anger that matched the glow of its eyes.
This thing was more than just a cheap scare, Alex thought. This thing was glaring daggers straight into his soul.
When he spun around to face the creature behind him he was violently pushed aside by one of its arms. Alex flew back a few feet and landed on his back hard, his lungs burned as the wind was knocked out of him and struggled to reinflate with breathable air. He got up, groggy from the assault and stared at the shadow against the backdrop of roaring flames.
It had stood with its back towards him, strange it would hit him then look away. Did it think it had knocked him out entirely? The creature’s form had a small body compared to its elongated arms and legs, its clothing a torn and shredded engineer uniform covered In oil and blood stains, its tail drooped to the ground but its fur was patchy and frazzled like it hadn’t been cleaned or maintained in years.
There was something familiar with the entity and only upon narrowing his gaze he was able to get a clearer picture of the creature before him. He was about to ask it to identify itself when he heard a guttural snarl interrupt him. The figure looked over its shoulder and back at him, slowly turning around until it had faced him entirely.
It continued its growl as its muzzle peeled back to expose pearl white fangs dripping with darkened blood. Lip muscles quivered in tune with its deep rumbling resonating within its chest. Its ears flattened in an aggressive display while the eyes glowed a baleful red hue, and while its pupils were entirely absent Alex could sense that it was glaring directly at him.
The human looked on with his jaw slack in shock and horror at what he was witnessing. It was a horror to behold, this had to be some cruel psionic trick being played on him.
“Milo!?” He asked the creature before him. His voice waivered with disbelief.
Milo had lost plenty of muscle mass with some bits of his skin hanging off his bones. Though he looked no less frail by any means. He lurched forward with one step thumping into the grating below, his growl bellowing out and drowning out the roar of the fire. The sounds he made shifted its pitch and timbre until it had growled out one word with effort.
“Die…”
“What?”
“You… let… me… die.” The apparition growled threateningly.
Alex could only stand there stunned as his feet were weighed down like lead. Milo’s deathly form shambled closer, each step brought about a new wave of clarity over his threatening form. The rumbling growing louder until the sound alone had rattled his brain.
“Now… you… die.” Milo said with a strained voice.
Alex opened his mouth to protest, his feet wouldn’t obey him. He was stuck.
His heart started pounding in his chest, fear finally gripped him as his face was inches away from Milo’s rotting muzzle. His pulse picked up its pace until it was beating loudly in his ears.
Until all he could see, staring into the twisted grim apparition of his deceased friend’s face was it lunging towards him with its jaws snapped open.