Butterflies of the Dark Star

17 (REVISED)

"WARNING! ANOMALOUS THREAT ACTIVE AND DANGEROUS! LOCKDOWN LEVEL Z IN EFFECT."

It rang out in an apathetic, robotic tone. Red pulsed underneath the doorway into their room as the small holomap on the wall blipped out its pain before the communications fell and reports failed to deliver to keep track of the emergencies in the space station. Metal rumbled and cracked and the emergency lights flickered.

Alarms. Voices. Neverending silence.

"If center command loses contact with the sectors..." Nova pressed her hand against the holomap to bring up the maintenance tab with her access card. "It might activate the warpdrive without the navigational data to our last safepoint..." And up our chances of throwing ourselves into a star... Another shake sent the abyss into her twitching stomach. Nova opened her communicator to click Thuni and Ulin's names, but static responded to her fervent call. One click on the south sector, it lost its light in the void. Fuck, the spaceflight terminals are down. Communications are disconnected to the south branch, fuck. This is bad. Onto the eastern sector, red clicks of activity shuddered along the corridors. "Neo, I—"

Neo sat at his desk, gaze unfocused.

"Neo."

He lifted his head.

Nova opened the protective cabinet with her card, taking a blaster meant for self-defense purposes. "I'm going to go head for security and maintenance to see if I can help with anything and to tell them there are still people in the south sector." Her communicator failed to grab Thuni and Ulin's connection on the space station, and it unsettled her nerves at their silence. "They aren't answering me and I left them in Droid Bay A." Where this all really started.

Neo tapped his hand against his terminal. "Maybe they left when they got the lockdown notice? Why would they stay at the bay?" He hauled himself out of his chair to follow her out into the dimly lit corridor. Along the halls, the Interns doors remained shut tight from the inside, but she wasn't willing to go down without answers to the problem in front of her — emergency protocol, and this was the real deal. Experience was a better teacher.

"You think Thuni was going to leave the droid if he couldn't get to the bottom of it? I wouldn't," she murmured and led him out of the Internship quarters, past the reinforced glass. The Ushavex nebula shed a rainbow of gaseous particles along their space station. Red swept in solar waves through the empty rooms they passed. Back against a corner, she checked around the side as Neo shuffled in beside her.

"We're not in a spy movie, Nova," he whispered. "You have maintenance access and I have my own access levels..."

"I'd rather be careful and take the training sessions Admiral Mythrai set seriously," she said. "Considering we don't know what's going on. I don't want to spook people." Ahead, the eastern bulkhead blocked the way onto the tram station. Half-way open, the nearby security dome with the maintenance entrance on the other side. Blue light peeked out of the frame, but no shadows whisked around to reveal the presence of trained personnel, with each one called to contain the anomaly at central command.

Neo's hand rested on her shoulder when he leaned around her. "The guards are gone."

Nova slipped to the half-open door. Cameras lined the walls with broken, glitched feed. Chairs swiveled on their pivots. A capsule of station fare coffee rested in a secured coaster attached to the desk. In the weapon cabinets, no weapons sat on the racks. Inside and at the terminal, she switched to the southern sector's feed. Glitches spread further until it was nothing but static in Droid Bay A.

"That isn't right." Nova pressed her hand against the desk, typing coordinates and signals to project it onto the security holomap in the middle of the dome.