Skye City: The Darkness of Emmilyn

Assessing the Situation

Nelson and I stand in the boarding area, watching the captain pull down the handle to open the main door for the first time since the crash. It creaks forwards and the top barely tilts twelve inches, and then it just stops. 'Come on, men,' the captain says and the crew and a few passengers step forwards, pushing the door maybe another few inches. Nelson and I squeeze into the sides to help, but I am unsure what difference I can possibly make when brutes like Sydney Anguson cannot get the job done.

'It's no good, the branches are blocking the entrance,' the captain says. 'Emmi, you can probably squeeze through the gap, if we can make it slightly wider.'

'No chance of budging that thing another inch without the help of a droid,' Anguson says.

'Good job we have Bronson then.' The captain approaches a handle on the interior wall which he pulls and an almost seamless metal door tilts open, revealing a vast cargo hold with boxes and crates strapped down in shadow. 'Bronson, we're gonna need your help.' A large machine rises and clanks between the boxes, emerging from the darkness to reveal two huge metal claws and eight legs with three hinges each. The machine has a segmented tail with what looks like a chainsaw on the end. A robo-scorpion.

'Bronson, you think you can force that door open?' the captain says and everyone steps back as the robo-scorpion approaches the entrance door. Bronson presses its claws against the door and forces it open maybe fifteen inches, then a few others push, giving me a total of eighteen inches.

'You ready, Emmi?' the captain says.

'No way, what if there's mutants out there?' I say.

'Here, you can take my phaser. Here's the power dial, to use it, just—'

Frowning, I snatch the weapon from the captain's grasp. 'It's fine, I know how to use a damn phaser. What do you think I am, a kid?' I clip the phaser to my beltline and climb the ridges on the metal door, then squeeze through the gap, brushing leaves out my face and dropping to the forest floor.

'What can you see out there?' the captain yells as the door snaps shut.

'Leaves! Lots and lots of leaves!' I say.

'Take a quick look around, assess the situation and then report back,' the captain says and I unclip the phaser from my beltline, then swat through leaves to get a clearer view.

A fallen tree is blocking my way so I climb onto the trunk and stand up, pointing my phaser into the jungle and scanning every section. It seems completely calm, despite the many fallen trees, almost as though the local wildlife has been terrified into silence. I turn around to face the door of the airship – two thick broken branches are blocking it, both the size of small trees, explaining why Bronson could not force it open. The branches could be removed by someone strong with a big saw, if they could find a way out the vessel. Good luck to whoever gets that job.

'Branches from a fallen tree are blocking the door,' I yell, dropping down from the tree trunk. 'I'm gonna take a look around now. I won't be long.'

I walk halfway to the front of the airship but so many huge trees have been toppled, forcing a rethink. Some are trapped under the vessel and others are lying to its side, creating obstacles which force me to walk far out into the jungle to get around them. The alternative would have been a whole lot of climbing over trunks.

Walking far enough, I swat my way through the top of a fallen tree and stare up at the vast airship with my view obscured by foliage. The cockpit and living quarters are concealed by branches, but every visible part of the vessel appears unharmed, shining beautifully in the sunlight. The mystery deepens. I climb onto the trunk of a toppled tree for a closer look, jumping as I spot movement among the rustling foliage at ground level. Just as my trigger finger twitches, I pause upon recognising the emerging figure. He is lucky I did not shoot...

'Nelson, how did you get out here?'

'With Bronson's help, I managed to squeeze into the cabin and crawl through the wreckage, then out a broken window,' Nelson says.

'Oh, did you see the holoscreen?' I say.

'I didn't see anything other than tree branches and broken stuff. The place is a mangled wreck. What about you? You see anything interesting?' Nelson says.

'Nope, not yet... Hang on.' I cover my brow and stare at the airship to see a smallish hole in the gleaming balloon section, near its pointed nose. It covers four segments and the criss-crossing framework that holds those segments together appears burnt and warped but remains intact.

Nelson joins my side and focuses on the damage. 'Pretty small hole. You wouldn't think it would be big enough to bring down the entire ship.'

'Yeah, that's just what I was thinking,' I say.

'Unless something tore straight through. If most of the compartments were penetrated, that would explain why the ship couldn't stay afloat,' Nelson says.

'What could've done something like that?' I say.

'A powerful laser. Maybe we encountered a cloaked defence drone or something. It could've mistaken us for an enemy craft. I'm guessing this wasn't an officially scheduled flight,' Nelson says.

'Let's take a look around, see if we can see another hole,' I say.

Nelson and I walk around to the far side of the vessel, treading around fallen trees, staring up through the branches, and near the tail end, we spot another similar-sized hole. It only seems two or three feet across but is located so many storeys high, I am struggling to tell.

'There is your answer,' Nelson says.

We walk to the tail end of the vessel to discover an immense trail of toppled trees, dozens of them, completely uprooted, creating a long and thin clearing in the dense jungle. Given the sheer level of destruction our impact created, it seems miraculous more people were not badly injured.

'I doubt we're getting through that way,' I say and we walk back around to the entrance door, noticing movement among the trees on our way. 'You see that?'

'Yeah, looked small. I think it's gone now. No need to panic when we have phasers,' Nelson says and we climb over the fallen tree, calling, 'Hello.'

'Everything okay out there?' the captain yells.

'Yeah, kind of,' Nelson says. 'Looks like we levelled half the forest during the impact and we found the cause of the crash...'