The Brotherhood: Storm of the Devil Queen

Silence. In some places, its beautiful, peaceful even. In other's, its terrifying, unnerving, and stressful. As I open my eyes, its the first thing to hit me. The silence. The engines were quiet, not a single body moved, and the voice of our beautiful AI didn't chirp a word. The planet in the window is quite magnificent. Its blue waters and scattered skies felt like candy for the eyes. I look around the room, observing my surroundings. The planet in the window grows close, giving me a better view of the gorgeous waters...wait a minute.

I attempt to remove the harness on my body but to no avail, its stuck.

"H-Help!" I yell. "Help me!"

Like an angel, Clara swings in behind me, and cuts my harness open. I jump off the chair and run for the window.

"What is it?" She asks, "What's going on?"

"I think we are about to crash into that planet. Where is Angel?"

"Power is offline, she went down with it?"

"How? Isn't she suppose to run on auxiliary power?"

"Auxiliary is out too." Rom says entering through a door.

"Rom! You're ok."

"Yes I am. I am glad you are ok." He puts his hand on my shoulder. I could see the look of relief fall over him before he returns to the front of the bridge. "You were next on the list to get woken up."

"I see. Where is everyone else?"

"Oniv has the kid in the medical bay, Bern is down in engineering. Clara is helping me with my issue."

"What's going on?"

"Power is out throughout the ship. Life support is the only thing online at the moment."

"Thank goodness that's working. What do you need from me?"

Rom points out the window toward the planet growing closer.

"That's what we are solving."

"How long do we have?"

"I don't know, not enough."

"Well, fire up the engines."

"We can't, no power, remember?"

"We have life support."

"We cannot run the engines off life support!" Rom yells.

"Then we don't! We can run the heat shield, right?"

Rom thinks for a moment.

"Shit."

"It will take hours before we die for life support. It will take minute for us to burn in the atmosphere. It's the only way."

"Dammit. We'll be sacrificing The Brotherhood."

"I know."

Rom hits the ground with his hand. I can tell from his frustration that he doesn't want to do this at all, but he knows that's how we'll make it. He shakes his head and turns to me. Oniv enters the bridge along with the child. He see Rom's distressed look and runs to him.

"What's going on?" he asks.

"We don't have enough power to start the engines." I said, "So we are going to turn on the heat shield instead."

"What about the ship?

Rom shakes his head.

"I understand. When can you get it online?"

"20 minutes, at most." Rom says.

"Get it done then, can we retrieve Angel's drive?"

"We are working on that already."

"Good. Lets speed it up. I don't know if we have much time left."

Rom works on redirecting the power, so I help Clara with retrieving Angel's drive. Her system is stored in the engineering room in a disk the size of my hand. Clara and I make our way there. The tram system was down, so we run down the long hallways. Eventually we arrive in the engineering bay and head up a flight of stairs in the back. Clara opens a door in the back and we open into a large space filled with blinking lights and wires all over the floor and walls. She opens a desk on the bottom and pulls out a small drive and gives it to me.

"Why am I taking it?" I ask

"She always wants to be near you, now you can."

"What?"

"You an I both know she has taken a liking to you. If you wont admit it..."

"She does not."

Clara laughs a little and says, "Then you are a brick." Then she proceeds to start pulling wires. After she is done we leave engineering and head back for the bridge. Everything is almost set up when we arrive. I spot a large cable running along the floor and toward the bridge and rigged into a harness under the pilots seat. Some of the lights are on and it seem the center console is working again, through not enough for Angel to boot up. I observe Rom working for a moment before looking through the window again. The planet is now getting dangerously close. A sudden jolt shakes the ship. Everyone stops what they are doing for a moment wondering where it came from.

"What was that?" Oniv asks, looking into the ceiling

"I don't know." Rom says

The jolt happens again, this time stronger. Suddenly the ship begins to shake violently. Red flames build against the windows and nose of the ship. Oniv's eyes grow wide as he notices what is happening.

"Rom how much more you got?" He asks

"Almost there, I need more time."

"We don't have more time."

Oniv runs to the center console and calls the intercom.

"Attention crew. Strap in immediately! This is going to get rough."

The ship starts pushing and pulling in all directions. Everyone runs to their seats and strap in. I cannot use mine do to it being cut, so i use the seat mounted on the center table.

"Rom what is happening?"

"Annnnd, Done!"

The nose of the ship finally opens. Four folded fans open on each end of the nose. They expand then rotate like a clock until they attach to the other side and start to glow red hot. Rom jumps into the pilot's seat and starts to push on the wheel. The flaps on the end of the ship start to rotate, until the ship is pointed into a nose dive and powers through the atmosphere. The red flames cover the windows until nothing but red light is left. The pull of both the planet and the pull of the ship became taxing. I felt extremely light headed and fell in and out of consciousness. The last thing I remember was the impact. When the ship crashed, the force sends my head into the center console, then nothing, silence.