Missing ship The Serendipity was discovered two weeks ago floating lifelessly 40k lightyears out of the bubble. A group of students on a research field trip found the derelict ship, presumed to be missing for the past three years. Nothing was reportedly found aboard, not even the crew, adding to the mystery. If their final logs are preserved and readable, there is no word yet, but this is a developing story.
-Colony Headline News
After contacting colony officials, Roxanne and Corina were met outside by a contingent of security forces. They had lightly padded black armor composed of bulletproof vests, thigh and knee pads, elbow pads, and gloves. They led them to an underground door that was a façade of the ground that slid away to reveal a flight of stairs. Citizens of Bubba had run down to the safety of these underground shelters; the soldiers led them to a large cavernous warehouse lined with cots and filled with people.
A lot of them milled together, mostly talking and drinking. Others huddled for warmth, companionship, and a feeling of safety. The soldiers led them through the maw. Unsurprisingly, no one noticed who they were, with their minds on the catastrophe of the moment. Roxanne looked at all the dirty faces and felt extreme pity for them. Weird-faced aliens mixed in with weird-faced humans of all shapes and sizes; one little girl caught sight of them, and recognition briefly spread across her soft, scaly features.
Lady Steel saw her and winked.
The soldiers took them up another flight of stairs that led to the catwalks above—those fed into various rooms reserved for soldiers and management. The two came to a room with olive green walls; the archway was open, and a Vaad man was waiting for them. His skin was chalk white along with his hair, and Corina reflexively twitched; Gray Grimm was a Vaad. The man held out his hand to greet them as they approached. Roxanne reached forward first.
“Thank Gresh, they sent Lady Steel,” He said. “You’re here faster than we expected; we had sent the mayday out a day ago. We all wagered on how long it was going to take for help to arrive—I lost.” The man sneered, and his tight wrinkled skin stretched grotesquely.
“Why didn’t you bleedcast it? We would have got it within hours,” Lady Steel said.
“I take it you’ve seen what’s happening out there, yes?” Roxanne and Corina nodded in a way that said: no shit.
“It’s affecting the local bleedspace in this region, and we are cut off.” The man motioned for them to follow him inside, and they did. A cylindrical holo table was at the center of the room, showcasing the planets in-system. The gravitational storm was indicated with custom UI elements such as an angry cloud and a cartoon tornado.
“Cute,” Roxanne said; she was a sucker for flair. The Vaad cleared his throat and produced a small clicking device in his left hand. He pressed it once, and the table switched to showing them a live feed of the storms raging near the planet and moon.
“Prelim investigation revealed that Traffic Control received warning of a ship entering from The Bleed incredibly close to the moon,” He said. “But according to the transcript of the operator's last moments, there was nothing there.”
“Then what?” Corina asked.
“And then he wasn’t there.” The Vaad replied. “The tower was crushed by the sheer force of a ship coming partway through bleedspace.”
“So there was a ship? You know this for certain?” Roxanne asked. The Vaad clicked the device again, and the table changed.
“We managed to capture this photo before the satellite went bye-bye,” He said. It was grainy from the zoom-in, somewhat pixelated. But at the center of the image was a ship indeed. A silver flat disk that had Corina’s eyes go wide.
“It can’t be,” she said.
“What is it?” Roxanne asked.
“That’s my old ship,” she replied, doubt and disbelief twisted around each word. “But the Urgineer destroyed it.” Roxanne looked away from Corina and back to the image. She studied it.
“Are you sure that’s your old ship?” Roxanne asked.
“What do you mean?”
Roxanne pulled up an old archive photo of Corina and set it side by side with this ship in her HUD. They were the same, except this seemed ever so slightly off. Imperceptibly so, but the differences were there.
“Looks kind of older than yours was, don’t you think?” Now Corina’s gaze went from Roxanne to the image. She tilted her head slightly and smirked casually.
“What are you thinking?” Corina asked, not taking her eyes off the image now. Roxanne continued looking at the image, then took control of the holo table via her HUD and switched the picture back to a live stream of the storm. Neurons fire and she started thinking outside the box. Calling upon all the shared experiences of those that came before her, instantly and at the speed of thought, she considered what this could be and, most importantly, how she might stop it.
“I think the ship is here from someplace it shouldn’t be,” she said finally. “Because of that…it’s causing anomalies that are severely warping spacetime. If I can pull the ship out of the gravity well, it’ll stop the storm…and everything will go back to normal?”
Corina and the Vaad looked at one another and then back to Roxanne.
“What do you need from me?” Corina asked.
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Roxanne and Corina stood alone on the surface of the moon. Miles behind them were the domes, the people who had sent them out with much fanfare. It was a lot of pressure for Roxanne, she realized. Not the being a hero and saving people thing; that was old hat at this point. No, what had her jittery was trying to stop something neither she nor her predecessors had seen before. That being said, she was confident her plan could work.
With a bit of help from a friend. The galaxy’s mightiest human. Roxanne glanced at Corina, who had looked at her simultaneously, and offered a thumbs up.
“We got this,” Corina said; her inflection was super casual and made for envious feelings. Roxanne tried to match it.
“Yeah, we do,” She offered. “Okay, stay with me until we’re close enough; my aura will protect you. Hopefully.” Corina smirked at the last caveat.
“Not even worried about it,” She said and silently counted down using her fingers.
3…
2…
1…
The two pushed off the surface, Roxanne’s protective outer light barrier expanded to include Corina, and she took point. Incoming before her eyes, the gravitational storm raged and raged. Time, space, and distance became meaningless the closer they got to their target. Momentarily spared the relativistic effects of such intense gravity by the barrier around them, Roxanne concentrated on the source of the anomaly.
The ship appeared stuck; part was in real space, the other most likely within The Bleed somehow. The area in question twisted upon itself and vomited neon auroras and gravitational beams of lightning. Roxanne swayed back and forth to dodge each one, with some coming closer than she’d have liked. Deftly, Corina mimicked her movements and dodged them expertly.
On approach, Roxanne thought back to how she explained her plan to Corina and the Vaad. She likened it to getting your head stuck in the neck of a shirt, where sometimes you had to stretch out the neckline to get your head to fit. That’s what Roxanne wanted to do essentially. She planned to stretch the space surrounding the stuck ship so that Corina, the strongest person in the universe, could pull it out.
So that was the plan. Now came the hard part: executing said plan. Roxanne wasn’t wholly concerned, not yet. The unknown was the unknown, and she found a little fear always helpful. Corina, though, had zero chill. This so-called storm wasn’t even the heaviest gravity well she’d personally been at.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
They both hovered 2000 light seconds relatively above the anomaly. Below them, the ship sat suspended in a white light that spat out millions upon billion of amps that then became rings of color and rainbow bolts of gravimetric energy.
Corina slapped errant bolts aside, either with her fists or bursts of her plasma vision. Roxanne and Azonne mapped and measured the ship and the number of gravitational forces pumping out per second. She aimed her right hand at the center point, closed one eye, and bit down softly on her tongue.
“Ready?” Roxanne shouted; Corina passed her a thumbs up. The ring on her right hand glowed, sparked, and shot out a beam of pure plasma energy. It enveloped the ship, and Roxanne closed her eyes. She envisioned that she was opening a Bleedgate right there around the vessel. The space around the cruiser stretched; inside it was the red of The Bleed, as bright as a nuclear blast. Corina shielded her eyes via a command to her visor. Roxanne felt vindicated; it was trapped halfway in The Bleed after all.
It meant her plan would work if they could move the ship. And if she could keep her focus.
Roxanne's ad-hock Bleedgate opening had turned the center of the anomaly into an eye of the storm, pushing away the intense relativistic effects to an outer perimeter, and Corina made her way to the ship. She placed both hands on the nose of the craft, and when her fingers tightened, they dug into the hull with deep grooves. She counted to three in her head and pulled.
[https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/939246405011251231/1071606980122247198/gravitystorm.png?width=670&height=670]
Her fingers cut through the hull like melted butter; Corina’s momentum almost sent her flying away from the ship. She looked at her hands and then up to Roxanne, whose entire focus was on keeping the gate open.
“Roxanne!” Corina shouted. “I don’t think I can pull this out without destroying it!”
“What if you pushed it in?!”
“No! I need to know what this is!” Corina looked around, as much as for inspiration than anything else. Beyond the ship was the area in-between space known as The Bleed. The second half of the vessel lay in there. If she couldn’t pull it out, then…
“Hang in there, Rox; I got an idea!” Roxanne watched her friend float over closer to the opening. Her eyes went wide.
“Corina!” She screamed. “You can't just dip a toe in The Bleed!”
“Oh yeah?”
“No one knows what would happen!” That this is the second time Roxanne has felt that way on this trip doesn’t escape her notice. Corina ignored Roxanne’s pleading and floated partially through and into The Bleed, up to her waist. Her skin felt weird, like she had dipped her bottom half into a viscous ocean. She pressed her palms into the back of the ship and pushed. It felt like super strong glue was holding onto the rear, but Corina didn’t care.
She was pushing this damn thing out.
Her upper thighs breached the lip of the gate covered in veiny tendrils that tore at her leggings and exposed her skin to not just the vacuum of space but the tremendous force of The Bleed. She ignored it and pushed on, screaming. Roxanne stayed focused, watching Lady Steel push this huge ship stuck partially in the membrane between universes. The last bit of Corina finally cleared the breach; Roxanne shut the gate and watched it collapse on itself, silently sending a ripple through space. The ripple's force sent Roxanne and Corina flying helplessly through the black.
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At Sam’s apartment, he and Spyda sat huddled around a small curved screen displaying a directory of the files Spyda had stolen. Anything dealing with Demarco Galactic was here, but the file directory was mainly filled with requests by ICG officials to import and export goods and services. An email here spoke of a pallet of game consoles, while another discussed how best to ship medicine off-planet.
It was a little too squeaky clean for Spyda’s liking. He knew he wouldn’t find a smoking gun; a giant neon sign that pointed out a lease with Central One’s signature was never in the cards. To him, however, this made the connection he suspected more explicit. This paper trail was for scrubbing purposes and plausible deniability. Spyda had no doubt they used this as a front, probably to launder money, and that was just for starters.
“So this is it?” Sam said, exasperated.
“Yes,” Spyda replied. “But this is everything; it confirms everything to me.”
Sam stared at Spyda, almost incredulous. For the first time, he saw the mad conspiracy theorist Central One painted him as.
“…HOW?”
“Bud,” Spyda replied as if he were explaining colors to a small child. “You see anything here about organ donation? Or maybe scientific research?”
“…No.”
“Funny that the AI said those to you,” Spyda opined. “They would make sense, but…that’s not what this company seems to do, is it?” Sam felt the point hammer into his noggin; a headache was surely coming on.
“We need more than this,” he finally said. Spydalow nodded in agreement and continued looking through the files. Buried deep in them were the access codes to the roof entrance. His eyes lit up.
“What if we went onsite?” He asked.
“You’ve already been on site; how did that work out for you?”
“Poorly,” he agreed. “But this time, we have access.” He enlarged the document on the screen so that Sam could see it. Sam leaned forward, seduced by the possibilities.
“That means…,” Sam started.
“Means no alarm,” Spyda finished for him. “No alarms, no security to worry about. As far as those bots are concerned, we belong there. We could get better footage and—”
“And who knows what else?” Sam agreed. The two immediately began scheming. To get back to Millerton Bay, to infiltrate the complex and the building itself; to gather what they could.
And maybe to live-stream it all.
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“Roxanne?”
The sound of her name made a stir. She shifted in place and groaned. Her eyes felt sticky and glued together. The ground underneath her shifted, and she opened her eyes. She was in a white expanse of nothing. Somehow she was on top of a pile of grayish rocks; she looked down, puzzled. Roxanne lifted her hand and stared at it, wondering how she got there. Was she back in the old white room?
“Roxanne.”
The voice again. Roxanne stared off into the distance, and something was walking toward her. A vague humanoid shape that shifted like it was coming out of a mirage. It took moments, but she recognized the form and figure.
“Enehva…?” She said aloud.
Roxanne squinted her eyes and shielded her face with her hand. The room was so blinding white. Enehva approached, looking almost the same as Roxanne had last seen her. She was dressed in her original armor, orange and black, covering her chest, arms, and legs. The half-circle symbol was prominent on her chest. Her white hair blended with the background, but her bluish-green skin popped. She stopped 20 feet away and pointed at her.
“Why?” Her voice was soft and ethereal.
“Wh..what?” Roxanne trembled.
“Still, the universe remains unbalanced. Still, the duplicate rings remain unused.”
“What am I supposed to do? I can’t just hand them out!”
“Or are you just scared you’d pick the wrong person?” Roxanne’s nostrils flared. She felt seen, called out, and held her chin high. Enehva stepped even closer, and she tilted her head upward briefly.
“Look at what your indecision has wrought.”
The stones underneath Roxanne shifted; her body sank slightly. She looked up at Enehva in a panic. The bug’s face was unreadable, impassioned. Roxanne looked down at the rocks…they weren’t rocks at all. They were human skulls. Her body jerked once more, and she fell further in. Roxanne clawed and kicked but only sank further. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out.
Down inside the skulls was dark, just like space. Roxanne shut her eyes and felt herself drift. She floated alone in space lifelessly until her body jerked awake. She was back in the real. Out in the distance, OGG-19-51 shined brightly.
Finally, she could scream.
I was worried you wouldn’t wake up in time.
Roxanne took a second to catch her breath. She looked around and realized just how far she was from the central star and Grayson. Roxanne was still moving; her momentum from the collapse of the anomaly must have damn near kicked her out of local space. With a thought, she slowed down. Roxanne suddenly gasped.
“What about Corina?”
That is what I was talking about—Lady Steel shot off in the opposite direction, and, by my calculations, she is running low on air.
Roxanne didn’t hesitate and hit the jets. She could travel faster than any ship if she needed to in real space, and this qualified. Roxanne aimed at OGG-19-51 because it’d make calculating and finding Corina easier. As she got closer, it became simpler to ID just where each planet was, and thus the original origin point of the storm, which—she wasn’t too proud to boast—seemed to be gone.
Azonne placed a marker on her HUD indicating where the storm had been, then animated two arrows going off in disparate directions from there. One was the ship they had pulled from the anomaly, and the other was Corina. She hadn’t traveled far, having crashed into the asteroid ring that surrounded the second planet in the system, the gas giant Hallenova.
Roxanne approached and noticed that not only had Corina collided with this belt but had become embedded in one of the extensive formations. Roxanne called out to her but got readings that she was unconscious. At least she was alive; cause enough for a little mini celebration. Roxanne pointed a ring down the hole in the asteroid and sent out a beam of light that enveloped Corina.
Carefully, Roxanne retracted the light and pulled Corina with it. After a few ticks, she floated into Roxanne’s outstretched arms. Roxanne slowly removed her hands and let Corina float upright as she steadied her by her shoulder. Within the light barrier that Roxanne shared, Corina could breathe freely. Her eyes rolled in the back of her head as she tried to open them, and her lip quivered.
“Corina…?” Roxanne looked deep into her visor. Corina’s eyes finally opened, and she nearly stumbled within deep space with all the grace of a drunken hobo. The skin on her legs burned, and her breath was short.
“…we…good?” She breathed. Roxanne held in a laughing sob and nodded happily. A tiny smile built itself on Corina’s face in response. Slowly, she held up her hand, and Roxanne laughed.
“I’ll high-five you later,” She told Corina before getting nuzzled under their arm for support. “C’mon, we should go get the ship.” Roxanne guided them both toward where Azonne had indicated the ship had gone. The silver nickel floated there dead, covered in ice due to a lack of power and life support systems.
She took them toward the front of the vehicle, where they hoped to get a glimpse inside. The view window was also iced over, but there appeared to be a shadow behind it. Someone or something was inside. Dead possibly; likely even. Roxanne pointed a ring at the ship, fired a tight beam of heat, and melted a notebook-sized patch of ice.
Both of them looked inside.
Corina slammed her fist into the outer hull, suddenly more alert and alive than just seconds ago. She pressed her face to the glass as much as she could. Her eyes dilated, and her heart skipped a beat. The figure inside the cockpit was splayed out in the pilot's seat, head back and mouth wide open. Even with a beard, this figure was unmistakable.
It was Captain Steel.