The Unknown - Three Friends and the (...) Starship (23) (Patreon)

IMPORTANT NOTE: Everything that appears here, in this story, only exists in my mind, anything that resembles reality is coincidence or fortuitous. . .

( hopefully there will be many of these 💓, or not, who knows 😭 )

THREE FRIENDS AND THE (IMPERIAL) SPACE-ELF STARSHIP

Part 23 – Contingencies

The Captain pushed Daniela into a two-seater emergency capsule. She tried to resist, but the pain that shot through her body when she refused made Daniela submit to her Captain’s ’s orders.

“I won’t let that thing catch you,” the Captain said as she pressed the external buttons that sealed the capsule. “I order you to resume your human form so it can’t track you. That Thing was created to hunt Red Elves, not Earthlings.”

Daniela tried to jump up, hug the captain, and pull her inside with her, but it was too late, the hatch had already sealed almost completely. Then she looked at one of the screens showing the view outside the capsule.

Through the screen, she saw the black, inhuman eyes of the one who had recently been Susana. But when the hatch sealed completely, she lost contact with her. She couldn’t hear anything coming from outside the capsule, not even her thoughts.

In a final act, Daniela placed her hand on the display screen. The Captain did the same, toward where the camera should have been, for barely two seconds, before withdrawing her hand and looking in the direction of the corridor they had come from. Then she ran off in the opposite direction.

As she made her way to the bridge, the Captain asked the ship if it could take off. The answer was as encouraging as it was devastating. Ever since Susana became Captain, the ship had begun carrying out self-repair protocols for its basic functions.

Repairs to the takeoff and navigation systems were nearly complete. But there were still areas of the ship where the hull had been damaged by the impact. The Camouflage systems were inoperative, as were the weapons, the wormhole jump generator and, worst of all, the vital life support systems.

“It’s better than nothing…” the Captain told herself, knowing that even if humans detected the ship, they wouldn’t be able to reach it, not even with hypersonic missiles.

The Captain tried to speed up her run toward the bridge as much as she could. For the first time, she found a flaw in her suit. But she wasn’t going to be the one to order a version of that same suit without heels…

Since, on the other hand, even though they didn’t really let her run as fast as she could, the clicking of her heels might draw even more attention of that Creature, heading towards her, away from the cargo hold at the stern of the ship.

Now she regretted leaving her captain’s helmet behind. In critical or stressful situations, the real-time monitoring and scanning functions were easier to view on the helmet than through the neural connection to the ship.

She had to concentrate hard to see in her mind all the data that the ship’s AI was downloading into her mind and displaying. And seeing that the Creature hunting her had reached the emergency capsule chamber made her freeze in panic and ignore everything else.

The seconds stretched into an eternity.

The voice of the ship’s consciousness was a distant echo, drowned out by her pounding heart and rapid breathing. She prayed to the Great Red Queen and her Ancient Earth Gods.

And as the moments passed, the Captain’s ’s legs grew weak, while she watched the creature examine the capsules where she had hidden Daniela.

The holo-neuronal display showed the Captain the room in soft tones, the capsules in red, and the Creature’s ’s blue dot circling the capsules over and over again. It took her breath away.

Suddenly, the blue dot stopped. Right where she had been just moments before, the very spot from which she had thrown Daniela into the capsule. The Creature sensed where Susana had touched the capsule and began to explore it, looking for a way in.

The Captain's heart began to pound…

Why should she feel this way about a mere crew member, one who was, on top of that, a new, untrained, lower-ranking member? A remnant of her human nature, something that made her blood run cold and caused her to break out in a sweat.

Then, against all odds, the Captain realized she had made a mistake that would save Daniela’s life. Against all expectations, the Creature having sensed the Captain’s ’s presence, now followed the trail Susana had left behind while running.

Now it could smell its prey, and it wasn’t going to let it get away.

to be continued...