Echoes of Seraph: The Last Stand

Chapter 1

The Star Corsair erupted.

AHHHHUGH! Lyra's feverish screeching was swallowed whole by the endless dark expanse of empty space surrounding her, leaving behind nothing but deafening silence. Her last hope....She felt her alveolus flip inside out from the sheer noiseless noise she was amplifying from her rapidly weakening lungs. She was breaking every basic survival protocol. She knew this. She knew that her oxygen levels would run out soon, and that her time was limited. She knew that in the great abyss, surrounded by nothingness, no saviour would come to save them like in Ruse's storybooks. And yet Lyra instinctively couldn't help but break the one singular law that separated the indomitable survivor from those that descend into eternal oblivion.

Don't. Waste. Energy. That was drilled into her head by the age of two. Don't waste resources was a close second. Lyra was very familiar with this rule. A permanent reminder was etched into her back at the age of nine by The Keepers. Her crime; feeding ship-lice stolen donor blood. Well, the flogging was more due to her calling Overseer Keys a decaying tub of lard when he kindly asked her where she got the tracker and books they found in her cot. The bleeding lasted for 2 weeks but the wounds would fester up white puss every so often for years. Ruse promised to sneak her ointment and cake one day but was never seen again by the colony.

Get into G-Position. Hibernate. Meditate. Pray. Anything and everything was better than the invading thoughts of blame that threaten her sanity. Her eyes stung from tears that just bounced around in her headgear before getting sucked into the suit vents for liquid preservation.

Shaking the last drop of snot from her face she swung her knees forward towards her head. Before she could align herself into position, her balance was thrown off course and she started to spin upwards. Unlike in the training pods she spent hundreds of hours in, her waist was tightly wrapped with a thick space rope attaching her to Myles, her unconscious cockpit partner. His limbs were spread out as if he was imagining himself to be that ugly creature Mrs. Min had shown them in the 5th formative year about the great diversity of life on Earth long ago. She declared there was a time when Earth's sky was bright blue instead of the thick blanket of smog shown in the museum, when plants hadn't struggled to grow but covered every land, and when humans hadn't yet fled the once vibrant planet.

Of course, Lyra knew he wasn't imagining himself to be anything. His once nonstop humming heartbeat was now reduced to faint desperate bleeps on his wrist monitor. His oxygen level dipped low enough to put him under forced hibernation. No life form was anywhere near them as far as ZCH334 could detect. They had been adrift for what seemed like days but couldn't be more than hours according to her oxygen levels. The meter was slowly dwindling into the yellow zone. Her ship or what was left of it after the cosmic blast was scattered in every direction. The shattered pieces of metal illuminated the sky creating an occasional stunning display of sparks and fire from wire snatches.

A starfish! It was a starfish, She remembered. Those ugly buggers outlived most species after The Fall, Lyra thought as she zoned in on one of the larger chunks of metal drifting away to stabilize herself. But, the last one was eaten by some rich dude. She pulled on the cord and dragged Myles to her side for better balance. Curling herself into G-Position successfully she closed her eyes and prepared herself for hibernation.

Eventually, Lyra hoped, a scavenger team would detect a crash, come to check for debris to profit from and find their floating bodies wrapped in neon orange flashing suits in the vast sea of darkness. It was likely they would avoid the unidentified drifters, who more than likely got into a violent altercation and ended up in this predicament but maybe...

No, Lyra thought, snapping her eyes open. You're going to die here. It's better to accept it than to delud-what am I saying?! Me? I can not die now. I refuse to die. Don't die. Ugh! Stop saying that word! She violently smacked her helmet. Live! I will live! I will live! I wil-

A flash of light from the corner of her eye ended her endless chant.