Chromium

Beacon

"..rning! Oxy...at...percent." A voice echoed, metallic and distorted.

Dia's eyelids flickered, but her eyes stayed closed.

"Another drill?" She mumbled. Her tongue was dry, grating on her skin like sandpaper when she moistened her lips.

"Turn it off Jenkins. I want to sleep." Dia's voice sounded bothered. 

Damn sarge. He really enjoys making us suffer. It was nothing new, the good sarge always had a sadistic streak in him.

However, it was only after they left the Arcturus belt and entered the Collective's space that the real torture started. They trained for two long months, crossing the boundary any human being should be able to withstand. That's why now that she had the chance to rest she had no intention of waking up.

A pity that voice seemed to have something else in store for her.

"Warning! Oxygen at twelve percent."

She heard it this time. It wasn't simply distorted, but synthetic.

The voice of a machine.

"W-what?" Dia slurred. Her head felt heavy, her mind clouded.

"Carbon dioxide at dangerous levels. Please evacuate immediately."

Dia's eyes flashed open, but what she saw was blurred, out of focus.

One thing was sure: this wasn't her cabin. The place was filled with wires, electrical stuff, and lights, many different lights blinking red intermittently.

Then she saw it, a drive system.

A cockpit?

However, it was too small, the gear too spartan to belong to the Siren's deck. This wasn't her ship.

And then she remembered. The Collective, three ships ambushing them and disabling their shields. She remembered the escape, the fight with the enemy troopers when they started to board their ship.

And then she just ran, she ran for her life because she knew there was just one way to get out alive...

An escape pod!

But the discovery brought her no joy. She coughed, her eyes starting to water. That synthetic voice—the pod's computer---chose that moment to talk again.

"Main power offline. Auxil...power..three per...nt" It started stuttering.

The entire system was shutting down. She had to leave. Now.

Dia attempted to free herself, her nerveless fingers fumbling on the straps of her seat. She succeeded but fell, face down on the floor, the air leaving her lungs at the impact with the hard metal floor. Then she crawled, too weak to walk. She reached the door's commands and struggled to lift her hand and push the button. The hatch made a liquid sound but didn't open. Actually, it didn't even budge. At all.

She tried again. Nothing. It was jammed.

"Open damn it!" She screamed, punching the button.

She was feeling ill, her vision dimming. She tried to force it open, her nails scraping and breaking on the hard metal.

No one was more surprised than her when she succeeded. It was narrow, just a tiny airhole, but it was enough.

She used her own fingers to drive a wedge between the hatch metal plates and jerked it. Then she was out.

Nothing felt so sweet as inhaling that hot and humid air, leaving the cockpit's claustrophobic space. For her eyes, it took some time getting used to the new light, for her mind even more to understand what she was seeing.

It was a world of bright colors, a vibrant display ranging from the deep blue of the plants and trees all around her to the pale yellow of the soil under her feet. However, that was nothing compared to what lay above her, up in the sky.

Three moons and clouds as far as she could see, filling the entire sky of a deep purple light. Beautiful but fake. It was just an illusion; the sky wasn't purple and the clouds weren't clouds.

It was a nebula, hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of miles away from the planet. She recognized that spiral shape, her ship had bumped into it two days ago.

An anomaly. It was like a glass dome, a door to look at a universe far away. And that was the problem. How far.

Dia had no clue. What she had, however, was an analyzer.

She took out the small device and started to scan the atmosphere. The information she received was weird - probably caused by the planet's anomaly - but under that flow of nonsensical data, she found what she hoped for.

An energy signature.

It was some kind of distress beacon. Even better it was imperial and close, maybe less than two miles away. Unfortunately, the transmission was corrupted, but it mattered little to her. They were allies and she was alone on a hostile planet.

The analyzer started beeping, the light blinking blue when she headed toward the beacon, going deeper into the jungle.

She was more than halfway when she started regretting her carelessness. For a world filled with life, the jungle seemed quiet. Too quiet.

It was like it knew an intruder was around. However, these irrational thoughts disappeared when she saw a column of smoke, rising from the same direction she was headed.

A campfire!

Her small, cautious steps became quicker. She started running, jumping over a log or clinging on a liana: anything to reach that place faster.

She only slowed down when she saw a clearing in the jungle. The beeping intensified. She had arrived.

There were three tents and an escape pod, same type as her own. It was burning.

"Anybody in there?" No one answered.

She got closer, but no one was in sight. Then, she looked down and saw it: blood, blood everywhere. She staggered backward, the analyzer falling from her hands. And that's when she heard them. Sounds. They were like nails, big nails tapping on the leaves all around her.

Dia turned just in time to see it; it was a big insect, six feet tall and similar to a mantis. It slammed into her and she went airborne---experiencing the thrill of flight for a moment---but then she came down, and everything went dark.