What an incredibly dreadful sense of freedom. Not a soul onboard, except for whatever that was in the elevator. Traga chalked it up to a hallucination, the stress and shock of being the only living thing in a huge area of space is quite daunting. He instructed the computer to bring the ship about and head back in the direction they had come from, and then he saw it, it was a ship. But not a starship, it was more of a rocket. The design was both alien and familiar at the same time. He wondered if the inhabitants of this ship were the ones riding the elevators on his.
"Cut engines, drift range from fifty to seventy-five KtX per second."
The massive ship responded by shuddering, the lights dimmed momentarily and returned to normal. Traga stared intently through the viewscreen, studying the lines of this alien craft. It certainly didn't look hostile, but what does a hostile spacecraft look like. He saw the figure of a humanoid wearing a rocket pack crossing the void that seperated the two ships.
The communications grid lit up again. This time, there were several green lights, and a few yellow ones too. For the first time in his life, Traga was completely at a loss for what to do. This was all a bit overwhelming. Then something struck him as odd. He slowly looked around the room and there it was. A beautiful woman draped in a single piece of fabric was standing in the doorway looking at him and softly smiling. The woman was not Atlasian, in fact he wasn't sure what species she was, but she was beautiful nonetheless.
"Hello...?" said Traga.
"Hello" said the woman.
"What are you doing here?"
"I don't know." she said, "I've always been here."
Now Traga found that hard to believe.
"Do you know what happened to my crew?"
she seemed puzzled by his question.
"My people, do you know where they are?"
"I'm sorry, I cannot help you."
"Who are you?" said Traga.
"I'm sorry, I have to go now. I'll return soon, but they're calling me now."
The woman turned and walked away and out of sight. Traga ran to the door frame and looked down the hall. There was no sign of her anywhere.
The communications grid was lit up like the night sky, but with colors. Traga sat back down at the communications station and pressed a few buttons. A crackling voice came through on the audio channel.
"...........is Clark Calvin of........strange region .......the..........if there....aboard, please identify yoursel........peacefully.
Traga had absolutely no idea of what was going on, but as a safety measure he armed weapons systems and started pulling the ship away from the alien craft until he reached a safe distance away. He then heard several voices laughing far away in the ship. |