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25.05.2505
Zane strongly believed that these couches should not exist in any galaxy. The fake red leather reminded him of one of those small expensive tomatoes his father asked the cook to add in their salads every Saturday. The color was too bright and visible for anyone's taste. Why did they choose this terribly vibrant red? Of all the possible colors in the world they had to pick this one. But that was only the beginning of his hate for these pieces of furniture. Not only were these bulky chairs terrible to look at, but they also had to be ghastly for his ears. The friction of clothes against the shiny leather created a small symphony of embarrassing sounds. The first time he had sat down on them, the loud squeaking noise that had resulted from the action had made his face and the top of his ears take on the same red color as the sofa. From then on, he had made sure to limit his movements while sitting on these couches.
Fortunately, this small lounge room on the first floor's left wing was often completely empty during the early morning. He enjoyed coming down here after waking up and before eating breakfast. He would usually buy an overpriced cappuccino from the coffee machine in the corridor and sit down to read and catch up on some messages and the important news he had missed. He preferred reading these things alone in this room. The cafeteria had a small space where you could watch Earth, Xar and other planets' main broadcast news channels live since the connection in this traveling zone was not always stable. However, the room was often full to the brim of passengers. Especially since the war between Earth and Leph' had ended a month ago, many GAIA soldiers and citizens of the Allied Planets were following the peace negotiations quite loyally. Unlike them, he barely even looked at the main titles of the articles that appeared on his news feed. Politics had never interested him, and he had been too busy during his last years at school to really pay attention to the news on those parts of the galaxy. So, unlike the newsroom, this lounge room was quiet and deserted. Most of the passengers at this time of day were either still sleeping in the private dorms that took up the right side of the ship's three main floors, or having an early breakfast in the cafeteria on the left half of the second floor.
He had spent a semester or two during his studies at London's Engineering School studying SYLPH ships' blueprints and their innovative system. And finally seeing one in real life made those months spent locked in his studio or in the library studying for his final exams completely worth it. This trip had been a graduation present from his mother and father. Honestly, his father had not been overjoyed by the idea but he had finally understood that this year of traveling would be the price to pay if one day he wanted to see his son work in his company. These negotiations, as Zane liked to call them, had lasted two weeks and four days. As soon as he had gotten his diploma with the highest scores of his class, he had jumped on the first plane to Kenya to spend some time with his mother's family and put some distance between him and his overbearing father.
He remembered that he had done the exact same thing during his last high school winter holidays. Back then the argument had revolved around his career choices. His father had been outraged when he had found out that his perfect son would not be studying business or even law like his parents had wanted him to. No, instead the little ungrateful idiot, a nickname he had heard quite often from his father, had decided to go into engineering. This fight had lasted a bit longer; Zane had spent a month or two ignoring his father's calls and spending a lot of time at his cousins' and later at his friend's houses. Finally, the man had finally given up, but of course, he had to do it in his own prideful way. He had sent Zane one morning a list of the five best engineering schools in the United Kingdom and on the European continent. Apparently, according to his father, those were the only schools he deemed good enough for his son.
This year his father's white surrender flag had taken the form of a one year traveling subscription on the private intergalactic company SYLPH. Obviously, to remind Zane that he would need to come back in England after one year to start work he had also sent him in the same message a return ticket to Earth from the planet Xar one of the closest inhabited planets to Earth and therefore one of its biggest allies. Zane had understood the hidden message. His father would definitely not accept a late return. He would have to be on Xar a few days before the end of his subscription, to land at London's main spaceport at the exact time the ticket indicated. How typical of his father to find a way to control every aspect of his life even when they were separated by dozens of galaxies. Sometimes, Zane felt like he was just another aspect of the man's job. Perhaps, his father only saw him as a profitable endeavor that he had to utilize and invest in on the long term? Speaking of his father, after opening his small holographic wrist computer, he noticed that the man himself had sent him two messages last evening. Last night, Zane had been too busy, he was drinking with some young GAIA recruits at the cafeteria's small bar, to even spare the time to open them.
And while today he had the time, he simply did not have the motivation to open them. Thus, he swiped the unopened messages to the side of his holographic screen menu. He would find time and patience to read the messages he had received later. He turned off his wrist computer; the small lights being projected by his thin wrist band formed a few seconds the Delta logo of his father's company. He ignored the symbol rotating on itself and leaned forward to grab his half empty coffee cup from the small table in front of him. He let the mug warm his hands while he looked out the window to watch for a millionth time the silent world outside. His computer by then was off. And the sofa had finally stopped accompanying each of his movements with its usual series of squeaking and squawking.
An hour later, a holographic screen suddenly appeared at the front of the large room. A human-alien halfling woman in her mid-twenties or late twenties was sitting in front of the camera. She was wearing the commanding team uniform. She was quite attractive, Zane thought. Her honey blond locks were tied in a high ponytail leaving a few strands to hang around her heart-shaped face. The warm color of her hair contrasted nicely with her pale blue skin. He had just enough time to make note of her small slightly upturned nose and the small strange dark blue veins that lightly showed up under her eyes, near her temples and disappeared under her dark blue shirt's collar, before she started making her announcement.
"Good morning, this is your Captain speaking, I wanted to let you know that we will soon be arriving at our terminus stop. We will be broadcasting the navigational camera's live footage the rest of our flight on most of the hologram screens which are located in every common room. Therefore, you will have a perfect view of the GAIA Space Station Galilee as we approach and land in forty minutes on the Dock number 3." She smiled politely at the camera showing off her small cheek dimples before continuing her announcement. "It is 8:34 am, local time. For those of you whose trip stops here, I wish you a wonderful stay on Station Galilee. For those of you who are corresponding, Ship 322 to the GAIA Station Armstrong will leave from Dock 1 at 9 am. And Ship 65 to Mel, Planet Liaz will be leaving at 10.15 am from Dock 2."
As she recited the information, the times and the name of the ships and their destinations appeared written on the screen in five different languages, English was the first since GAIA soldiers were required to speak the language. While the other languages were probably the languages spoken by the rest of the different passengers. He had studied it in his first year, this company made sure at every flight that the announcement language setting was based on the percentage of nationalities present on the ship. It was obvious that most of the passengers were GAIA soldiers who often originated from Earth and its closest and oldest Allied planets like Xar and Namil, two planets located in a neighboring solar system.
"Thank you for traveling with SYLPH and we hope to see you again soon."
The young woman smiled one last time to the camera before ending the call. The screen was replaced for a few seconds by the company's famous logo, the small white silhouette of a fairy, and some information about the destination's local time, temperature and the time remaining before their arrival. Thirty minutes and they will have arrived. He was lucky to be already located near one of these screens that was currently showing miles and miles of stars and darkness. That meant he could enjoy the show from where he was sitting. Since it had been a week's travel, the disembarking would take a longer time. However, since he wanted to be on the station and start sight-seeing as soon as possible, he had already prepared his suitcase this morning after waking up. It was waiting for him next to his room door. As soon as they landed, he could just pop up up-stairs and grab it before making his way to the main exit. He moved to a more comfortable sitting position and finally let his temple rest against the freezing three-layered glass window that covered the wall right next to him. He kept his eyes fixated on the front wall covered in the beautiful images filmed by the ship's front navigational camera.
In a few minutes he would have a glorious view of the approaching space station. As the stars passed by around them, he watched as a small white spot in the distance progressively got bigger. He watched it slowly grow in anticipation. However, a few minutes later the spot grew and separated into two then three then four smaller dots. Zane frowned in confusion. He had studied this station before choosing it as his next destination. It was known to be the center of an intergalactic study of the numerous black holes located in the area. The research had intrigued him, but the design of the station was what won him over in the end. It had been the product of a GAIA project on peace and intergalactic scientific research. The station was supposed to be a habitat for a big universally diverse community. It was one of the few GAIA ships not built for war or intimidation. And he had wanted to see it in real life. It was reputed in all the galaxy for its approximately 65 feet high and almost 1 miles squares large atmospheric contained dome. However, the picture and the online websites clearly explained that the space station had the shape of a flat disc with the dome right in the center of the flat surface. For now, it could only accept small passenger and merchandise ships because of its four smaller than average ship docks located on levels under the dome. So why did it seem like he could see four large entities in the distance? It could not be any other station or planet since the Galilee station was at least an hour or two away from any other inhabited habitats. He stood up and walked closer to the front of the room in a desperate attempt to see a bit clearer the four blurry shapes.
He gasped in horror as the subject of his focus finally became clearer as their ship got closer. As expected, one of the four shapes was the unique disc form of the Galilee station. However, surrounding it on every side were three huge five level steel colored warships. And from the lack of writing on the sides, it was obvious that these warships were not GAIA made. He knew that GAIA had stopped producing five level warships like these fifty years ago, even during the most recent war against Leph they had chosen to generally opt for smaller and faster models like Zeus and Nyx military spacecrafts who hid in their smaller bodies some of the greatest high-tech artillery. Zane watched the three ships as they circled around the station resembling predators on the hunt for defenseless prey. He was surprised that he could not pinpoint the exact models of these ships. Their engines' shape and size seemed to be inspired by the oldest Zeus models however the rest of the spacecraft including the make of the cannons located at the front of the ship and on its side parallel to each floor levels strongly reminded him of some of the first alien ships that had been encountered by human's before even the creation of GAIA. He had been sure that these huge over weaponized spacecrafts had stopped being manufactured ages ago. What were they doing here? Zane had a hard time believing and fully comprehending what was happening in front of his eyes. He was frozen in shock and in terror in front of the terrible and improbable scene that was taking place on the giant screen.
In his shock he almost did not notice the weird shifting of the floor beneath his feet. He almost lost his balance at the suddenness of the movement. As he looked around him and at the screen in front of him, he realized that the ship's floor was slightly tilting to the left. As the image of the space station slowly moved to the right of the screen. The ship was turning left. The pilot was getting them out of there. Good idea. They needed to high tail it out of here. As he watched anxiously and slightly relieved the camera progressively point away from the space station, his fear made a sudden reappearance as he was able to discern what looked like small explosions between the station and the ships. They were shooting. They were shooting the station. Blasts and foreign missiles ricocheted against the space station's outer walls. This all felt so unreal. Could he seriously be witnessing an attack? Was this some sort of declaration of war? Or maybe was it something similar to the seven infamous terrorist attacks against Earth's first colonization stations that Grandmother Makena had once told him about?
Whatever this attack was about, their small little SYLPH passenger ship would be completely useless against those Steel Giants. He knew by heart this model's layout which he had studied at the start of his second year. He knew that all the evacuation pods and emergency supplies were all located right under him on the ship's level 0. As he watched the huge spaceships finally leave the camera's reach, he tried to remember everything he had learned on SYLPH's emergency pods in class as a way to try to calm down and keep his brain from completely panicking. When he had finished reciting his mental list of all the pod's functionalities, had gone through most of their history and had recalled most of the parts constituting its main engines; he was feeling a bit calmer and thinking more carefully about his next actions. Since they were turning, he assumed that the pilots had seen the attack and were aware of the danger of the situation. He also knew that those warships were probably ten times more powerful which consequently made them ten times faster than their small defenseless civilian ship. Well, defenseless might not be the most accurate word to use. He had learned while visiting SYLPH's base of operation with his father a few years ago on Earth that some of the ships had small canons hidden on the surface of the fuselage and could only be activated by a high-level member of staff. Let us just hope that their captain knew how to aim where it hurts.
Now the difficult part was deciding what he should do next. He could not stand frozen and watch the screen forever. Should he go join the other passengers in the more crowded common rooms upstairs? No. Crowds were not the best place to be in during an emergency. While for now they were probably distancing themselves from the warships, that did not mean they were completely out of the danger zone. Right now, the lounge room was only showing the front cameras. The only people who could see from the other navigational cameras were the captain and his commanding crew. And that did not sit well with him. It would be easier to decide if he could see the full situation. Perhaps he had inherited this eternal need to know everything from his father. He knew that is what had first gotten him interested in computers and engineering. He could not use a machine or board a plane without knowing exactly how it worked. Right now, he was grateful to have this little flaw trait because he knew now exactly where he had to go. Level 0 had navigational cameras on display twenty-four seven. From there he could assess the situation better. Furthermore, the level was the most secure place in the whole ship. The fuselage around it was thicker in that area. It had been built to be used as a sort of safety room in case of an attack. He was certain that being just a few thousands of miles from an actual terrorist attack was a good enough reason to go down there.
He looked around him one last time; he was perhaps looking for a sign. Something to confirm that his decision was the right one. He had never felt such a strong primal need for direction. He wished someone would come in the lounge room and give him a set of precise orders he could follow. He needed someone to tell him that everything would be fine, that the situation was being handled perfectly. But the automatic doors to the hallway never opened. No uniformed employee came in. He was alone. He had to decide on his own what to do to stay safe. That's why he decided to finally walk out through the automatic doors, and in a pace that could never be considered relaxed or calm, he walked down the large white empty corridor in the direction of the front of the ship. His eyes did not linger on the boring sight of the bland white walls. Instead, his attention was focused on the end of the hallway in front of him. There stood two doors with a different light sign over each of them. On the left, the grey door clearly led to the ship's main lift. The two small lit arrow symbols pointing up and down only confirmed it. But Zane's attention quickly turned to the door on the right and stayed focused on it the entire walk. This one did not seem to be automatic, as he grew closer to it, he spotted the old mechanical handle protruding from the metallic panel of the door. Each of his steps echoed throughout the empty space. they were deafening to him. Almost as loud as the thundering sound of his heart in his chest.
It seemed like hours had gone by instead of seconds before he finally pulled the handle down and the door gave in. As the simple drawing located on top of the door had warned him beforehand, he was faced with a flight of turning metallic stairs. He had known that the stairs lead to all the floors of the ship including to the commanding room and the staff's dorms. By the way, right in front of him, on the other side of the stairs, he could see a black closed and probably locked door with a card scanner discreetly encased in the wall next to it. The captain and his crew were probably in the commanding room on the other side of that door. Were they calling for help to the neighboring Gaia stations? Were they running around the room in panic yelling orders in the air, cursing and pressing random buttons? Or was the captain expertly stirring the ship while reminding his staff to stay calm? He was not sure he wanted to know the answer to those questions. He grabbed the black railing that lined the side of the steps and slid his hand down while climbing down the stairs as quickly as possible. He skipped over the three last steps and pushed open the two gray doors with Lvl-0 written on them. They had been lighter than he had expected. Then again people did not have time to push five tons weight doors during a crisis. Adrenaline or not.
As he took the first step in, his eyes were already inspecting every inch of the huge room around him. He could feel the floor under his feet was slightly uneven; the world felt like it was tilting to the right. The captain was stirring the ship through a large U turn. It was difficult to keep perfect balance while walking in a space with nothing to hold on. But he did not have a choice since the control panel hosting all the screens was in the middle of the room. While the floors above this space were separated by walls and divided in the different living areas; this floor was an open area. Lining the walls were numerous small square doors. They were organized into two levels: a small set of ladders separated each of them; it reminded him strongly of the capsule hotels he often stayed at with his friends on their holiday travels. However, he knew that if he climbed inside instead of being met by a comfy low bed, he would end up in a small standard emergency evacuation unit. Just big enough for the tallest of men or aliens to lay down and look up through the window located over them. The walls and ceiling here were not as clean and fancy looking than in the rest of the ship. Since no passenger was supposed to come here except during a crisis, the carpenters and designers had probably not spent a lot of time working on this place. They rightly assumed that panicking passengers would not take a few minutes to evaluate the décor before jumping in one of the shuttles. If Zane had to recount his story to someone when this was all over, he would not be able to remember the color of the walls or the type of floor he was walking on. No, instead, he was captivated by the small piloting station at the center of the room, a few screens, a keyboard, and a few unknown control sticks.
This was what he had been looking for. As the protocol of SYLPH demanded, the four screens were turned on and were working. He could clearly see darkness dotted with a few stars and other space entities that did not matter on three of the screens. His interest was quickly caught by the third screen from the right. Normally, this screen projected what the ship's camera located on the right engine saw. And what it saw was not pretty, it was worse than what he had thought. The ship was still in the middle of its wide turn; from the angle of the video he assumed that the ship was almost completely turned. But he could still spot the battle happening in the distance; and gaining on them was one of the three battleships. It was moving faster than them. This scene weirdly reminded him of that documentary on the extinct white shark and how they attacked. And in this situation, they were the prey the predator had chosen for his next meal. And its pointy white teeth were replaced by the two huge missile launchers on each side of its sharp head.
He looked down at the computer in front of him, with trembling fingers he fumbled on the keyboard. The center screen in front of him lit up. He tried to keep his eyes away from the terrible picture shown on the other screen. He needed to stay calm for this. And knowing that a huge warship was on their tail was not going to help him keep a cool composure. The computer offered different options. Some he had no access to since he was not a member of staff. He should have expected this outcome. He opened the file that was supposed to have all the information on the escape pods. The screen showed him in red that the shuttles were not activated. And they would not be active until a high-level member of staff would order it. Great. This was going to be a waiting game for him. But he was distracted from his negative thinking by a small link located at the bottom of the screen. When he opened it, a map of the space zone they were traveling in appeared replacing the previous message. He noticed the small spot representing the station they had been heading for. He quickly came to understand that this map showed a radius of 1000 million miles around them. And highlighted as they moved the closest inhabitable planets or stations around them. This computer was calculating every second the best trajectory for the shuttles to follow. He knew for a fact that all the shuttles would not be sent to the same location. This was a question of survival, according to the designers of these systems an evacuation is more successful this way. They did not want all the shuttles to travel together and be targeted more easily. This way allowed, in the worst cases, at least a few of the shuttles to survive instead of all of them being destroyed in one attack from the enemy. As he read the statistics appearing on by one on the screen, he saw that a third of the shuttles located on the north side of the ship were intended to reach a planet called M54 three hours away, while the shuttles located at the back of the ship would head for another planet named S27. Finally, the ships on his left were recorded to go to planet M15 which was an hour away. All were small natural wild planets that were inhabitable but had no record of civilization. Furthermore, none of them were near a signal post. No signal on a deserted planet or killed by a terrorist attack. Both options were dreadful. He opened his small wrist computer and started to download all the information available on the planets. Luckily for him the computer was not locked, and the information was not protected by any security.
As he watched the downloading bar fill up in front of him, the world around him suddenly tilted violently to the left; he fell to the floor banging his temple against the side of the station holding the screens up. The room around him was spinning and he thought he heard a loud explosion sound coming from upstairs. What the hell had happened? He cautiously patted around his head and felt on the side what seemed to be a bleeding cut. He pushed himself on his knees and looked up to catch a glimpse of the third screen; but to his disappointment it was dead. He felt like his heart was trying to jump out of his chest and his head was going to explode in pain. This could not be happening. They were shooting at them. They had shot at them. They had destroyed the right engine camera. Did that mean that the right engine was down? Then escaping was out of the question. They were going to kill them. He felt tears fill the corner of his eyes. Was he going to die? Was this the end for him? Would he breathe his last breath at 23 years old? This was not fair. He did not want to die all alone in this empty room on this cold floor. He tried to choke down a sob. He was certain a few seconds more and he would start hyperventilating.
But his panicked thoughts were interrupted by a disembodied voice filling the room around him. It took him a few seconds to understand that it was not coming from his own head. The captain was finally speaking up.
"This is your Captain and Pilot speaking. The ship is being followed and attacked by an unknown hostile warship. Part of our ship has already been damaged from an attack and locked down to keep the pressure in the rest of the spacecraft at a normal level." Her voice was hoarse and serious. It was not the calm and polite tone she had used earlier.
What did she mean locked down? Had the plug doors been activated? Did that mean part of the ship was now in space? Had there been casualties? How many? He could feel the panic attack slowly come back and take over his body. Blood was pumping in his ears. He barely made out the rest of the message. But his brain zeroed on the word "evacuate". Evacuate. That was the only important order his brain could understand and assimilate right now. Around him, the pods slowly lit up one by one. The ceiling had turned red from all the small red lights blaring up all round the room. The screens that previously had shown images of spaces were instead showing a simple instruction video on repeat on how to get in the shuttle and position yourself inside. His body was on autopilot. He barely realized that he was already opening the hatch of one of the shuttles on his left. He slid himself in and the door closed behind him. A female robotic voice was repeating commands. "lay low" "your body straight" "brace". And the last words he heard were:
"Destination Planet M15"
Finally, the small light bathing the inside of the shuttle was suddenly replaced by darkness and loud rumbling.