Chaos Rising

3

Dray's heart nearly gave up when the medlab shook and the outer wall was blasted away. The cold, black emptiness of space appeared before him like an angry god. Dray reached out to grab something - anything - before the room depressurised. Dray squeezed his eyes shut and waited for... nothing. Nothing happened. The room stayed oxygenated and pressurised, as if some safety shield had activated as the hull was torn apart.

Dray opened his eyes to see Winter and Kiron looking equally alarmed, but Kiron caught his attention. The man had his arms outstretched and hands held up, as if to shield himself from an impact, but the most surprising thing was... Well, it was hard to describe. Kiron's eyes and his hands were enshrouded by a sort of dark red mist. Dray was awed by it. He'd never seen such a thing before. Looking around, he saw that there was a sort of shield dome around the three of them. The dome crackled with speckles of something that were about the same colour as the mist around Kiron.

"A psychic?" Dray breathed, as Winter wrapped two of her tentacles around Kiron. Dray had heard rumours of such a thing being possible, but had never really expected... "This can't be happening! The room just depressurised!"

"I," Kiron struggled. He looked a little taxed by the effort of holding the shield up. "I can hold in the air and the pressure, but we're losing heat."

"Doctor, keep it together," Winter said.

Dray felt like he was losing it. Everything was unravelling.

"Doctor. Get. The. Door." Kiron managed to say.

Dray heard the words go into his head and felt them sink in. He was alive. He had to keep thinking of that. He had to keep moving.

Stumbling on his own feet, Dray made it to the door and opened the bulkhead. Kiron's forcefield only extended to the doorway. Dray could feel it crackling in front of his face.

"Time to go," Kiron said. "Stay close." The psychic walked slowly towards the open bulkhead, hissing between clenched teeth as he did so. He looked to be under a lot of strain. "Winter, tentacles. Too tight."

"Sorry," the Cythlione monotoned. She reluctantly let go of the only thing preventing her from instant death. Taking slow steps, Dray and his two companions made it out into the corridor, where the soft carpet brushed against their shoes and tentacles. Looking left and right, they saw that the darkened space was completely deserted.

"Doctor, can you seal the bulkhead for me?" Kiron asked.

Dray felt himself move on impulse, rather than with any real thought. He keyed the wall panel and the door hissed closed.

"Decompression alarms," Winter noticed. "Don't take down the shield! The corridor isn't safe!"

Kiron groaned but held the shield together.

"Go to that bulkhead there," Winter suggested, pointing to her own room on the other side of the corridor. The group waddled over to it and Dray keyed the door. It was all he could do to not panic. He had thought his medical training had prepared him for anything, but this was too much for him to take. He just had to try not to think about the psychic and the emptiness outside and-

He had to stop thinking about it.

Winter's room was about the same size as the medlab, but only a small stretch of it was useable; the majority of the room was filled with what looked like server stacks - tall black hexagonal objects, stacked to the ceiling in 50 or so organised rows. A mess of cables tied each server node to the next, making them look like they had tentacles too. Red, green and blue lights flickered on the boxes, but Kiron had no idea what they meant. He probably didn't even have the mental conditioning to work out what they were for and hold the shield together. His head was already buzzing with the thought of discharging the shield around him. It was starting to hurt.