“Wow. It’s amazing. I can't believe that we are already halfway there” Ronada said, looking out of the control room's wide front window. There wasn’t much to see except dimmed light of far away stars but Ronada found it fascinating since it was her first time travelling out of the solar system.
“What I can’t believe is that you have never set foot on Enliven before.” second commander Odhran O’Connor said with pure disbelief on his child-like face.
“Let it go, Odhran. She never liked space ships.” Captain Nia De Vries said, rolling her black eyes, showing that she never comprehended Ronada’s dislike towards space ships. Their families have been friends since they were kids. Nia always loved hanging around the spaceship factory that belonged to Ronada’s step father. No one was surprised when she chose to become a captain when she entered the Lunar Space Academy. Since the graduation she had been working in Asahi’s spaceships as a captain and no one found it odd when Asahi picked her as the captain of his new ship but Ronada.
Ronada found it very odd that Asahi chose Nia over the far more experienced captains. Her eyes followed Nia, who was slowly walking around the control room, checking the ship's current status on various screens. She could tell that Nia was tensed by her behaviour. Ronad didn’t know whether it was because of her presence in the control room or whether there was something she didn’t know. They had been close friends for a long time but Ronad had been feeling that there was a new barrier between them for a while. When she thought about it, she could trace the feeling back to the time when they had a vacation together in Mars, at Asahi’s guest house in the spaceship factory. She remembered Nia was already there when she got to Mars and that Nia was quite nervous. Ronada also remembered that Nia and Asahi spent a lot of time together in the designing room, looking over Enliven’s blueprints. Whenever Ronada went there to find Nia, they always put away the designs and would spend time talking about different things with Ronada. Back then, Ronada didn’t find anything amiss about the act but now she felt that they always veered her away from anything that had to do with Enliven.
Nia felt worried and anxious. She didn’t know what made Ronada travel to Xnex but she knew for sure that it had nothing to do with whatever was happening on Xnex and Ronada was not someone who travelled beyond Mars for a vacation. Everyone who knew Ronada even slightly, knew her strong dislike towards spaceships but there was something most people didn’t know about Ronada. Ronada was a prodigy in theoretical physics. Nia only knew this because they had once taken the online advanced theoretical physics exam offered by Lunar Space Academy together. Within half time, Ronada had scored full marks, but she was never interested in theoretical physics. Her major was particle physics and Ronada has been one of the youngest persons to be appointed as the head of the science division in IPSA and now she was onboard Enliven, travelling to Xnex.
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Odhran felt the tension between the captain and her friend. Captain had ordered Odhran to be careful around Ronada and not to discuss anything about the ship's status around her. He wondered why the head of the science division would be interested in Enliven, still he had been careful not to pull up any reports on to large screens and discreetly checked them on his personal screen. Some of the readings that the ship's external sensors received for the last hour had been worrying him. He eyed both Captain and Ronada. Now they were sitting together and talking in hushed tones. Sitting next to Ronada, Nia looked small and less tough than usual. She kept messing with her short black hair as she talked. Odhran teared his eyes away from them as he felt the computer send a silent alert vibration to his arm band. He looked at his computer quickly and pulled up a report with a red alert. As he read the incoming data, Odhran felt blood drain from his face. He looked up as he felt Nia standing behind his chair.
“Finally, I thought she would never leave.” Nia said looking at Odhran with a relieved look on her face but when she saw odhran face, she felt a cold streak run down her spine.
“What’s wrong Odhran?” Nia asked, trying to keep her voice stern.
“It’s happening again.” Odhran said in almost an inaudible voice. Nia looked at the computer screen and she felt herself go numb as she read the reports. She knew that there was no way that she could stop what was happening. Like before, an invisible force was dragging them into a nightmare. Something that only a few members of the Enliven crew knew, and it was a secret that they had sworn to take to their graves. When it last happened, they had lost one man. And that one man could have been the only person who could explain what was happening.
“Asahi, what am I supposed to do now?” Odhran heard Nia silently talking to herself. She looked lost for a few seconds, then her usul steel look was back on her face.
“Wake up, Cal. Lock down the control room once he is here.”
“Okay, boss.” Odhran said as he started to contact Cal Cruz. Nia sat on her chair looking out of the front window. She could see the red sun on her left side and she stared at it for a few seconds. She thought that it looked more like a dying sun than ever before.
“You better be right, Asahi.” Nia mumbled to herself as she started to input commands to the ship’s control panel.