L'appel du Vide

Chapter 1

Sirens filled the air around her. Paired with the flashing lights of the ship's emergency evacuation alarms, the effect it had on her head was blinding. Blind – that's what she was in the moment. She was running blindly on instinct. There were no thoughts in her brain as she ran without seeing, without thinking. Only the panic driving her physical body was keeping her from turning her head over her shoulder. Eternity seemed to stretch out around her in every direction, only stopping against the harsh metal walls of the starship. She wasn't supposed to be here, this wasn't even supposed to be her mark. Peter had bailed again, and she was the only other person with enough skill and idiocy to play the long game and sneak onto an Accuser Warship. Her inability to turn down a challenge and her inability to function with free time had landed her ass in the fire again. Finally, finally, there was the door to the shuttle bay. The doors slid open automatically before she skidded to a stop. There was a crashing behind her, but she paid it no mind as she accessed the controls to the airlock doors.

"Okay, here we go," she whispered to herself, hitting a few buttons.

A countdown sounded out with the alarms in Kree, adding another layer of noise to drive her insane. Just as she slid into the space pod, the bay doors slid open. Her eyes met the eyes of the Starforce soldier, Bron-Char. Before he could raise his weapon toward her, the airlock behind her opened and they were both swept out into space. Her body slammed around the cockpit roughly as the small ship spun and spun away from the direction of the Accuser Warship. Then, her head hit the clear windscreen, knocking her unconscious.

Hunger clawed at her stomach angrily. She had been pushing the ship as far into warp speed as it would go for nearly thirty-six hours in the direction of the Eclector. The direction was only a guess, however, with the pod navigation systems malfunctioning and no way to fix them without any tools. While the communications system was down, the distress signal was operational. She was unable to use it, though, as she had to assume the Kree were still monitoring communications to find her once her body had not been recovered. None of that would matter once she starved to death. Lucky enough for her, Kree also needed water, and there were a few containers of it on the ship. With a sigh, she double-checked the nearly empty fuel cell indicator before leaning back in the pilot's seat to nap. There was nothing else to do. It wasn't until several hours later that she woke. The pod was floating gently through space, propelled by the perpetual motion even as it had dropped out of warp speed. It would float until it was caught in a field of gravity, and she could only hope that it would be a planet and not a star. It felt like forever before she saw something moving in the distance. A jump point was at the top of her list of things she hoped it would be. It only took a few seconds for her to realize it was a ship. Hunger spurned her forward, ignoring the danger of hailing an unfamiliar spacecraft in an unfamiliar territory of the galaxy. It could be the Kree coming after her. It could be someone even worse. Either way, though, she had to decide between starvation or execution. Tinkering with the console for a few tense seconds finally had the ship emitting what she hoped was a universal distress signal. Finding the ship through the clear windscreen, she prayed to every Celestial name she knew that they would be able to give her some food and fuel. Finally, it seemed as if they were coming toward her.

It wasn't until the ship was far too close to try to hide from that she regretted ever being born. The USS Discovery was already aiming a tractor beam at her pod. There was no going back now. The Federation would take her home, or arrest her, whether she liked it or not. Yondu was going to be pissed.