Chapter 9 – A Mad Dash for Freedom Shi heard the squeak of expanding rubber at the same time as something dark suddenly loomed behind Briar, shaped vaguely like a spacesuit.  Instinctively, Shi modified the flow of her magic in her mind, pulling the flames from her left hand.  Shi grabbed Briar’s recently cleared arm and pulled him behind her as Shi willed the remaining fire to erupt from...

Chapter 8 – Discoveries and Desperation The hammer fell, and the corridor was bathed in brilliant orange and blue light as a spiraling streak of fire erupted from the revolver’s barrel.  The fire grew, splitting into a trio of intertwined trails of flame that took on a serpentine visage, each roaring down the corridor as they spun about one another, the sound more intense than even Kaylee’s...

Chapter 7 – Escape Route “What is this stuff?” Murissa snarled, angrily throwing her helmet to the floor before starting to strip out of her suit. “Some new alien intent on consuming everything?” Hilde offered, shaking her gloves off and dropping them in with the rest of the ruined gear.  The black rubbery stuff had splattered all over their equipment, but for the moment hadn’t spread...

Chapter 6 – A Sticky Situation “Talk to me, Hilde!  What’s going on?” Shi shouted over the rising cacophony of the ship around them. Hilde was already trying the console she had been setting up on, hammering the buttons and shaking her head.  “Can’t get anything for sure until the system is fully up and running.  It looks like everything is coming online, though.  Something triggered it, I...

Chapter 5 – Awakening “Should be around here that the aliens attack,” Hilde said.  “This sealant is obviously their blood or like their secretions that liquify their food.”  She clicked a button at her wrist and swept the beam of her forearm mounted light across a particularly large section of floor covered in the dried sealant, stopping on a bundle of cables spilling from an open panel in...

Chapter 4 – Signs of Disturbance “More sealant here,” Kaylee said from the front of the line.  She had only gone about fifty feet down the corridor leading from the stairs that had led away from the corridor outside the airlock, toward the first of the bulkhead transitions into the cargo area of the ship.  “Looks like a canister of the stuff or something exploded against the blast doors...

Chapter 3 – The Bridge Kaylee stepped up to the door, setting her weapon against her hip, then slammed her fist into the button to open the passage.  She steadied herself, ready to fire the big weapon.  “Damn it!” she spat a half second later as Murissa shoved passed her, forcing the human pilot to quickly draw the weapon’s muzzle upward. Murissa didn’t seem to have cared one way or the...

Chapter 2 – Through the Airlock “Oh, I hope they’re hostile,” Murissa growled, cracking her knuckles inside the gauntlets of her armored space suit.  “It’s been way too long since I’ve got to indulge myself.” “But…why?  Why do you always want to hurt people?” asked Briar as he finished sealing his own suit, frowning as he awkwardly shifted himself to better situate the suit’s light armored...