text: A large starship drifted across the vast depths of deep space, unresponsive to any attempts by its crew to right its course. Within its sleek, futuristic interior, people were terrified. Inside the bridge, a stern-looking man in his mid forties一the commander of the ship一barked out orders to his crew. “Parker, start getting our systems back online! Hollinder, activate our emergency reactor! And Jett, figure out who the hell managed to knock us out of hyperspace!” As Hollinder ran out of the room to activate the emergency generators, and the other crewmen began their tasks, the ship’s commander ran his hand through his graying hair and looked around him, admiring the tenacity of the crew. Even after being abruptly ripped out of their hyperspace lane, even in the low visibility of the emergency lights, they had composed themselves and immediately got to work to figure out the specifics of what had just happened. After a brief moment, the ship’s main lights flickered back on, the ship began to right itself, and control systems were brought back online. The commander immediately flicked forward the throttle on his control pad to activate the engines. Luckily, there were no significant damages. That was until Hollinder reported back to his commander. He said that he had begun performing diagnostics after activating the ship’s surplus fusion reactor一a routine procedure in a situation such as theirs一but was interrupted by a warning message. Their jump drive had been disabled, likely as a result of the abrupt conclusion to their hyperspace journey. The commander was immediately unnerved upon hearing this. “What could possibly disable a Nova drive?” he asked, his steely tone masking the knot in his stomach. Hollinder only shrugged his shoulders. “I dunno....nothing?” The commander quickly turned to his right, in the direction of his main advisor and communications specialist, Thomas Jett. “Do you know anything about failures involving a Nova drive?” he asked with the same tone as before. Jett messed around with the screen in front of him for a moment before replying. “In 236 years, roughly 754 million hyperspace jumps have been made using Lightskip Corp. drives. For all of the 136 million jumps that were made in the 77 years that the Nova model has been available for military applications, there has not been a single incident of hyperdrive failure reported. Make that one.” he added the last part under his breath. The commander looked away for a moment, quickly sighed, then looked back at Jett. “Open a communications channel,” he said before turning back in front of him. Jett tapped a few buttons on his monitor and waited. After a few seconds, he turned to the commander. “...where do you want to send a message to?” he asked expectantly. “Anywhere!” the commander yelled back. Jett used his monitor to find the nearest military outpost with hyperspace capable ships, then snapped his fingers. “You’re rolling.” “This is Jameson Hoth, commander of the Valiant-class starship Invictus. An unknown assailant has managed to rip us out of our hyperlane. Our drive is busted and we don’t have enough supplies aboard to make it more than a month. If you have any ships or supplies to spare, please send them here as soon as you can.” Jett rattled off their sector, system, and coordinates at Hoth’s request so any would-be rescuers would know where exactly to search for them. Hoth continued his SOS message but stopped after only a few words. He went silent and pointed out in front of him. “Jett? What...is that?” Jett looked forward through the front window of the ship and saw what Hoth was pointing at. Some kind of octagonal craft had drifted into view in front of them. Suddenly, everyone shifted forward in the room, as the Invictus came to a complete stop in an instant. As a few of his crew got back to their feet after falling forward, Hoth let out a shallow breath. “Jett. Send the message.” “But, isn’t it incomplete?” “Just do it!” Jett finished the recording and tapped a button on his monitor. “It’s done.” Hoth then turned to the left, to his Weapons Specialist, Arin Vesper. “Get our missiles ready.” Vesper looked at him sharply. “What?! Surely you’re not planning on going to war with an...an alien spaceship when we have no way to escape?” Hoth let out a heavy sigh. “Vesper, I am your commander. And I am ordering you to ready our weapons. Now.” “Aye aye, captain,” Vesper muttered flatly. He turned to his monitor and typed a couple of words on the screen. He scrolled through a few submenus and hit a button. “Predators are hot. Just...promise me you know what you’re doing.” Vesper begged. Hoth replied with the one thing he didn’t want to hear. “Fire.” Vesper dropped his head, looked to the ceiling, then closed his eyes, sighed, and pressed a button next to his monitor. “They’re out.” A dozen warheads screamed towards the alien ship. But none of them made contact. They all collided with some kind of shield before they hit their target. The entire crew stared in silence as the craft started rotating. As it rotated, its sides started to move outwards, making it much larger than it used to be. Without warning, it stopped rotating completely and its sides shot back inward, emitting a blinding light and shooting out a massive shockwave. Three days later, a small naval fleet arrived in the system at the given coordinates, expecting a hostile presence. What they found was dust, and a starship’s nameplate, broken into several pieces. The crew of the command ship recovered the pieces and brought them back with them. When the pieces were fit together, they spelled out a single word. INVICTUS. ---------------------------------------------------- Thank you for reading. Feel free to leave your thoughts along with any suggestions or critiques below.