Graveyard of the Last Outpost

Posted on Sun Jan 3rd, 2021 @ 11:15pm by Lieutenant Kiam Aax

Mission: Planet-Killer
Location: KIC 8462852 IV
Summary:
Timeline: Mission Day 1 at 0000

[[Five Months Ago]]

The damage alert klaxon was harsh in the ear; urgent flashes of orange light diffused by acrid smoke drifted a burned ceramic and plastic flavor. The space beyond wove and spun, the small ship maneuvering in twists and dives. The comm speakers crackled.

"Surrender and return our vessel for a reduced sentence. You must comply in thirty-four seconds or your sentence is death," spoke a voice void of emotion over the comm. A female with golden yellow eyes glanced at a younger male to her right. His was a tawny gaze as well, almost coppery against caramel skin.

"They'll kill us either way," she said stoically after a moment, squaring her shoulders. She punched at several controls in ambers and greens in front of her. "They're programmed to say that. Dilithium theft is always a death sentence." The younger man seemed to agree with an incline of his head; her voice was nearly drowned out by the klaxon's low, harsh drone. "Set a course for the graveyard's star. I have a plan."

"Setting a course. 077 klick 081. Maximum output," the copper-eyed male said, casting his gaze to the thick chunks of planet remnants they'd been dodged through to try and lose their pursuers. The swooping arc-shapes of the yellow ship swung sharply and barrel-rolled, coursing over a rhomboid chunk of black and gray chthonian husk, and then spun upward. Looming large behind, another ship bore down on them. Its wedge-shape was more deliberate and less chaotic, storming straight for the small craft with only a roll to avoid the sudden lip of an asteroid terrain crest.

Short yellow-orange shots of light reached for the shuttle: one slammed the starboard arc, the other fly wide.

"It's almost through my firewalls. I'm not sure I can hold it off much longer," the younger male said, "If its drops, it'll access our systems and shut us down."

"Your time has expired. Clemency has been redacted. We regret your decision," the monotone voice returned over the comm.

The woman with golden stare focused on the looming yellow-white of the sun, gaze fixated as if it were an oasis, "No, it'll just blow the life support out the hatch," she murmured distractedly. She diverted more power to the shields- an alarm chirped on the youth's panel.

"What're you doing?!" He exclaimed, "We're slowing down!"

"I need the power for the sh-"

The small ship quaked hard and banked, throwing the woman in orange light out of her chair. Showers of sparks and the roaring blow of a compromised hull panel made her lungs ache. When she picked her head up from the floor she felt the trickle of blood on her forehead. "Sib...." she said groggily. She fumbled in the orange-flashing darkness, her voice drowned by the klaxon. She righted herself and pulled into her chair. When she looked to her side, the youth was face down and bleeding out on the console- a chunk of blackened ceiling beam went straight through one of his copper eyes.

She swayed to look at his controls, teeth gritted. "I will avenge you," she snarled at the foul-tasting air. Her targeting scanner landed on the sun's surface and with a thrust down on her console keys, she fired. "I swear on it this life and my next." She eyed the firewalls- the Justicar had just broken through and was setting the ship to slaved-status. "Too late..."

A particle beam ebbed and flowed, washing a tractor-like white wave down on the sun. Sib's panel squelched a damaged proximity chirp that sounded like an executed goose, the woman shoving his corpse aside to stab at bloody console keys. The view on her screen banked hard and away into darkness, a space devoid of the many pinpricks of light. The pricks became streaks.

Beneath her the massive ball of plasma swirled, its molten oatmeal bursting up and bathing the ship of their pursuers. When the geyser of plasma faded, there was nothing.

* * * *

"Abandon ship. Abandon ship." It was an endless drone of a computer that sounded too like the unemotive Justicar over the comm. Her consoles were red and flickering. Heat spikes. Hull fractures. Structural failure. She could feel the hiss of atmosphere seeping through minute fractures.

Gritting her teeth, golden eyes calculated in her head. The rush of a thin atmosphere, a dark blue, gray, and white jewel with rings was moving fast. What had been undifferentiated whites changed, the nuances of ice versus icy cloud cover backdropped to the ember like glow of the ship. She flinched as one of the arc-rings of her engine manifolds began to tear away.

She flailed up, the deck plates quaking like an earthquake. She at first clawed at the hull until she felt a stab of pain and drew back to see she'd torn out a nail, backward off her finger. Blood oozed from the crescent bed, jagged. She closed her eyes and she... changed. On her caramel face, feathers oozed out and blossomed, her mouth and nose elongating to a stubby, hawk-like beak. She leaped and was airborne at the feather flaps under her arms could enough draft. She dove for the escape pod hatch and with another twist of her frame, her wing-arms flexed and grew large again into her arms. Taloned hands grasped a handle, the talons shrinking to nails and fingers with one bloody wound. She pulled herself inside and pushed herself into the chair.

She strapped in. She smashed the large blue hexagon next to her head and watched the door slam. Sib was not with her. Sib was not in the chair across from her. She writhed in rage and hurt- and then groaned as the violent thrust of accelerating g-forces forced her into the chair.

In the blue-white space of a lonely ringed planet, a fiery meteor exploded, scattering red hot debris in a sprinkling over an ancient lake. A sky streak of white vapor peeled off from it, a red hot pod angling itself into a descent below.

* * * *

Golden eyes blinked through a shiver, hugging a fur coat against herself. She stood on a cold black basalt on a frozen black-blue shore. A faint beeping sound on a small emitter with a triangular antennae came from her hand. An anemic, cold-stabbing wind stung her cheek. She closed her golden eyes and from her caramel skin erupted forth a thick growth of white fur. She hulked.

I will not die here... she thought to herself, eyeing fur covered white hands and the emitter again. The now-Yeti like being trudged toward a series of angled mountains that looked to have been pushed up from a flat surface eons ago.