The Drellic Saga: Books One, Two and Three

by Mike Marlinski

  Chapter Twelve

  As you have learned by this point in the story, Eizenfar was the darkest corner of creation amongst the original twelve galaxies. Whenever a star was born there, it acted as a seed of hope, lighting the way for travelers; past, present and future. Just as whenever a star died there, it robbed the celestial embodiment of desolation of a potential stepping stone, once leading to comfort, purpose and knowledge.

  I have seen many wondrous things in my travels, but never before have I seen an embodiment of astonishment, in the manner Drellic Kail did when he first came face to face with the creators of his people.

  For once upon a time, in a galaxy called, “Quiet Soul”, a lonely embodiment of ambition was awestruck by the great living ships of the Architects…

  “The Narrator”

  As the Salvation traversed the haunting abyss beyond ancient man’s solar system, Drellic was doing his best to be a confident and watchful protector of his crew of several thousand. But in the more unsettled corners of his mind, he continuously drifted back to the last words his father had spoken to him before he left Siren; a warning about an unknown enemy waiting for him in the black.

  Salvation had just entered the Uin-Si Nebula; a gaseous cloud, bright purple in color, extending five hundred light years in every direction.

  While on approach to the nebula, a pebble sized meteorite traveling at nearly three quarters the speed of light, managed to penetrate Salvation’s energy shield and puncture the ship’s water tank.

  The hull breach was repaired almost instantly by automated drones, but several thousand gallons of water had been lost in mere minutes. Luckily, a giant moon just beyond the nebula, was almost completely covered in chunks of water ice.

  Drellic had already decided to use the moon as a rest stop, where Salvation’s post light engines could be rested for the duration of the trip; a trip which had already devoured six months of humanity’s time.

  But since the water needed to be replenished for the sake of the crew, what was to be a pit stop had become an unforeseen mining expedition.

  Ten hours after the tank had been punctured, Salvation appeared in open dark space on the other side of the nebula; just a few hundred kilometers from the unnamed water moon.

  The ship came to be in geosynchronous orbit around the moon moments later, after the light engines had been slowly powered down over the last few light years. The gradual shut down allowed for a smooth stop; guaranteeing the hull’s integrity would not be challenged in the slightest.

  Drellic, dressed head to toe in white for the first time in his life; a commonly worn uniform on long term space voyages, comprised of temperature sensitive fabric, climbed a tall steel ladder leading to Salvation’s observation dome.

  He gazed out at the black ocean of nothingness; spotting only a distant white dwarf star and the nearby water moon, which twinkled in the light of the dwarf, floating alone in an otherwise pitch black abyss.

  “If we fail, then my home will come to look very much like this place,” Drellic thought to himself, as he paced back and forth beneath the dome.

  “What cruel creature of divinity could have possibly been the craftsman behind so much emptiness?” he continued.

  Drellic then spotted a deep crater completely filled with ice, resembling a large bowl of water embedded in the surface. He then activated his wrist communicator, connecting him to his navigators below him, on the ship’s bridge.

  “Begin cutting into the ice atop the next largest crater,” he ordered. “We may be able to reach our quota from just this single location.”

  Salvation then came to a halt over the crater, and using the forward turret on the ship’s underbelly, fired a constant laser blast into the ice below; super heating the area, in order to make the ice more accessible.

  Minutes later, the melting process came to a stop and three shuttles were deployed to the surface, to begin the extraction process.

  While the filtering teams on the moon’s surface extracted the ice and converted it into drinkable water for the crew, Drellic descended the ladder and darted through the bridge, without acknowledging a single member of his eight man bridge detail.

  After ignoring his company’s attempts to address him, he disappeared through a dark corridor off the bridge and entered his private quarters at the other end.

  A set of sliding metal doors automatically parted ways for him, after a gleaming red laser scanned his retina to confirm his identity. Upon entering his quarters and sealing the doors behind him, he sat at a small desk alongside a porthole, revealing the vacuum of space.

  On the desk, was a small rectangular hand held monitor, designed to intercept sub space transmissions, which travelled far beyond the speed of light; much faster than even Salvation was capable of traveling.

  While on the observation desk minutes earlier, Drellic had taken note of the time and realized that he was close to receiving a prescheduled message from Moya.

  A quiet beeping sound was then emitted by the monitor, indicating that the transmission was being received. Drellic looked down at the screen in his hand and saw his wife of six months, staring back at him, with a distraught look upon her face. Her puffy red cheeks were soaked in her own tears, as she choked out the words, “We lost him. We lost him, Drellic.”

  Drellic’s eyes widened and his heart sank. “Please, no,” he said. “You can’t be telling me this right now.”

  “It’s true,” Moya replied. “We lost the baby. There was nothing they could do. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  Drellic then felt the urge to cry himself, but his rage got the better of him, first. He got to his feet and threw his chair across the room as hard as he could, shattering a crystal model of the Salvation that had been sitting on a mantle behind him.

  Sadness washed over him a moment later. He picked up the monitor, fell to his knees and wept with Moya, from light years away.

  “I need you here! I need you here, now!” Moya screamed, as she became immersed in the loneliness that outlined their tragedy.

  “What the hell is wrong with me?!” she sobbed.

  “Nothing,” Drellic assured her through his own tears. “Nothing at all. Perhaps it just wasn’t our time. Soon, when we are together, we will try again. And when that day comes, you’ll know I won’t be leaving you like this ever again.”

  “How can you promise that?” Moya asked, with a hint of bitterness. “How do I know you’re even coming back?”

  “Remember what we said,” he assured her. “We’ve come too far to believe we are at the mercy of coincidences. We will be together again because our fates have already been sealed.”

  He then took a deep breath and said, “You know I will return to you, because I love you. And that is all I will ever need to bring me home. This I swear to you, my love.”

  For a moment it seemed as though Drellic’s words were putting Moya at ease, but just as she was about to speak again, the transmission abruptly ended and a loud warning alarm echoed throughout the ship.

  Blinding red lights began flashing in every chamber and corridor on board. Then, as Drellic began running at full speed to return to the bridge, he heard the ship’s automated voice say, “Warning. Proximity Alert. Collision, imminent.”

  “We have many weapons at our disposal to take care of asteroids, people!” Drellic harshly screamed, as he reemerged onto the bridge.

  But to his surprise, not a single bridge officer had even noticed his return. The navigators, technicians and science officers in his charge, were fixated on the shimmering red holographic display in front of them, which gave a vivid three dimensional image of their immediate surroundings.

  Once Drellic came into view of the projection, he understood the crew’s silence. Coming over the horizon of the water moon, was an outstretched array of long slimy objects, resembling the tentacles of a giant black squid.

  The curious collection of extremities was undoubtedly part of a larger unseen structu
re, still eclipsed by the moon beneath them. The slithering scaly tentacles began to spread farther apart, as they crept closer to Salvation; the crew of which was still awaiting the return of the shuttles they had dispatched to the moon, to collect the water ice they desperately needed to survive.

  “What manner of evil is that?” asked a portly technician, to Drellic’s right.

  “Life readings are off the charts,” answered a male science officer, seated in front of Drellic. “I can’t get a lock on any life signs inside of it, but it’s definitely comprised of carbon based, organic technology. It shouldn’t be able to function out in space. It’s impossible,” he fearfully added.

  “We should leave!” cried a female science officer, standing behind Drellic. “We have no choice. We have to abandon the landing party and get the fuck out of here, sir!”

  Drellic then calmed himself, turned to the short fearful brunette and said, “We leave no one behind. That’s an order.”

  He then looked at all the other frightened faces that surrounded him, in an intimidating manner that communicated his desire for unwavering loyalty from his crew.

  “Is that understood?” he asked the group.

  In response, he only received deafening silence and a series of reluctant nods. But that was enough for him.