Horror on the Firefly

Prologue

The bright light in the darkness flickered, changing in intensity every few seconds. Every time it did so, it wobbled and shook a bit, causing the heat to flare to near-impossible levels. A small black dot could be seen near the surface, drifting along in a straight line across the sun. The Firefly had its cooling systems and heat shields on at high power, blocking out the harmful radiation of the star. Its AI remained puzzled as to how this didn't figure in its calculations. In fact, this star wasn't even on the chart! It began to power up the communications array in order to relay the location of this star to Craufees, its destination. As the information processed, an anomaly in the energy signatures was detected, causing Alfred to try to compute this new information. Suddenly, a light so blinding it would have burned the eyeballs off any human being covered the entire vessel as the sun violently shook and folded and shifted as it decreased in size. It shrank and shrank, seemingly pulling the very fabric of space into it as the background around it became fuzzy and wobbly as if it was a liquid. Just as it was about to disappear, a massive wave of light and energy blasted outwards from it, brutally pushing the ship outwards and off course by a few hundred thousand trillion kilometres. If there was any atmosphere around there, there would have been a rumbling sound so strong cliffs would crumble and mountains would cave in.

Alfred activated emergency protocols as the shield melted off nearly instantly and the coolants seemed to evaporate into nothing. The side facing the bursting star was scorched black and its outer layer quickly crumbled away. As Alfred started to reverse engines and pump coolants everywhere, a strange cloud of energy streaked across space towards the ship and struck it head on, piercing it straight to the computer core. The AI faltered for a second, its monitors flickering and lights flashing, viciously struggling to reboot itself. Then, very suddenly, as a strange cloud that the dying star released slowly spread across the area, everything went dark.

Deep down, in the bowels of the Firefly, nine stasis pods, glowing with dim blue light, remained intact, its passengers unaware of the events that had just occurred, and the horrors that would soon begin...