Chromium

Chapter 2.3

Once outside, Dia was greeted by a soft glare, warm and suffused. The light of an old sun spreading around the surrounding land like a gentle halo. She looked around, her lips parted as she observed the world outside.

There was sand everywhere and dunes as far as she could see. They absorbed that dim red light making the entire landscape monochromatic; a bit flat but oddly relaxing to look at.

It would have looked close to Mars before terraforming if it wasn't for those thick clouds looming at the horizon.

They were green, iridescent and unnatural, completely out of place with the rest of the landscape. However, what lay up in the sky was the last of Dia's problems at the moment.

She looked back at the door where she came from, but no one had followed her.

Strange, they were just behind her.

Maybe they think I have nowhere to go.

No a bad bet, considering where she was. Dia could see no sign of civilization, just sand.

Still, maybe the reason was completely different, maybe they weren't following her because they couldn't.

Dia had made just a few steps when her throat started to burn. Then she coughed, feeling a stinging pain in her chest, but she wasn't wounded and even the hole in her shoulder---no matter how weird it would seem, was closing up.

She stood still, trying to breathe, but it was like inhaling acid. Not only wasn't it helping, but it was making things worse. The coughs became stronger, shaking her body so hard, it looked like she was having a seizure. They increased in intensity until she couldn't stand anymore and fell, her knees sinking in the sand.

That's when she realized she was coughing blood.

"Here she is." Someone said, his voice raspy and deeply masculine. "And still in one piece." A laugh. "See? Just like I told you." He said to someone.

Dia couldn't tell to whom he was talking. There was something bad in the air. The same thing that was corroding her throat and shutting down her respiratory system.

"Still, it wasn't a smart move to go outside without life support." The man continued, an accent of disapproval in his voice. "Don't you think, Omen?"

Omen? What kind of name is that? She tried to look up, the simple action draining her of the little energy she had left. There were two men in front of her, the black metal alloy of their high-powered space suits glistening red as she looked at them.

Space suits? Don't...don't tell me?  She wheezed and then coughed another ample dose of that blue blood up on the sand. However, her eyes still searched for those green clouds, up in the sky. She now knew why nobody had followed her.

This entire world was toxic.

"Shouldn't we help her...captain?" Someone asked, it had to be the other guy. Omen.

The captain chuckled, "We should." Yet, he made no gesture to do so.

Dia's vision started to get blurry, her eyes strangely wet when she flopped down with her face in the sand. She was beginning to lose consciousness.

"She is bleeding from her eyes." Omen said, his voice urgent, almost worried. "We should give her the respirator."

"She can last longer. My Dia can last longer." The captain answered, the possessive tone in his voice impossible to miss.

My? But it was just a passing thought in her mind. She couldn't keep this up anymore. She needed clean air to breathe.

"She has stayed out for too long" Omen rebutted, the tremor in his voice betraying his anger. "She doesn't have any auxiliary air-filtration system and her lungs are still human."

The captain said something, but Dia couldn't follow them anymore. She was slipping away, all that pain disappearing without a trace as she grew close to the soft embrace of death.

Except she couldn't, she couldn't accept to die here.

She wouldn't.

And then she felt it, an energy springing from that core buried deep inside her skull before spreading around her like an ethereal cocoon. It was a shield, another thing impossible to miniaturize. Yet, it was the only thing which was allowing her breath right now, filtering the air, purifying the toxins that were already inside.

It was something that shouldn't exist, something the best minds in the empire had tried to create and failed. Something everyone thought it was impossible.

But not her.

Because this wasn't the first time Dia witnessed something like this. She had seen it before, on the Siren when the Collective boarded her ship.

Her stomach revolted, and she retched. Just the thought that what they did to her could be someway related to the Collective, filled her with terror.

Someone drew a ragged breath. It was the captain.

"You shouldn't be able to do that." He was unable to hide the wonder in his voice.

Dia tried to stand up and answer him when she realized she couldn't, the sudden vertigo making her look like a drifting ship. She felt depleted like a battery that ran out of power. That same thing that had saved her life was draining her energy.

"She is running out of juice" Someone muttered when the shield around her started to flicker.

In the end, it disappeared for good, but this time Dia had no more strength left to put up a fight.

Luckily, she didn't have to.

Someone lifted her, very gently, and put something on her. It felt cold against her skin, covering her face from above her nose to below her chin.

A respirator.

"Breathe" The voice ordered.

"Captain?" She whispered as the air started to fill her lungs.

No one answered her. Her eyes felt heavy, starting to close down. She felt tired, oddly comfortable in his arms. She almost didn't feel it when they started moving. The spacesuit's dampers acted like a cushion, absorbing the shock coming from trudging across the sand.

It was like she was flying on a cloud. The rational part of her brain kept telling her she had to wake up, that these men were probably in league with those who put a hole in her head and tried to turn her into a puppet.

However, she was simply too tired to listen, exhausted like never before. Even the Navy's physical and mental conditioning was nothing compared to this. She was about to drift off to sleep when she heard a voice.

"...A Gauss rifle? Are you fucking kidding me?.."

It was the captain. He sounded more than angry, completely furious.

"...Yeah? And what would you have done if she had really died? What would you have said to him?" He lashed, his voice like a whip.

Dia tried to follow the rest, but she was drifting off, the captain's voice mixing with the background noise. She was half-asleep when she heard a loud sound, close to the roar of an engine, followed right after by a flash of light.

She squinted her eyes, opening them a little, just in time to see a ship starting to land, its lower thrusters lifting and sweeping the sand. Its shape was strange, different from all the ships Dia had ever seen, and she had seen a lot of them.

The body was cylindrical with conical ends and something similar to a tower in the middle. Dia was sure she had never seen anything like this before, but at the same time, it felt oddly familiar.

Where have I seen this before? She wondered as her eyes finally closed down. The last thing she saw was the name on the ship's outer hull.

It was Nostromus.