Page 46 of My Alien Pirate

No, my best chance was still Zharrox. I had to believe he was out there, searching for me. I just had to stay alive and out of the hands of these aliens untilmyalien found me.

Another violent tremor shook the ship, nearly throwing me to the floor. The alarms, which had briefly fallen silent, began wailing again with renewed urgency.

"Warning," an emotionless computerized voice echoed through the ship. "Hull breach detected in sector seven. Emergency containment protocols activated."

My heart raced. A hull breach? Even I knew that was bad. Very bad.

As if in answer to my unspoken question, the lights in my cell flickered and died, plunging me into total darkness. For a moment, panic threatened to overwhelm me. Then I forced myself to take a deep breath, then another.

"Come on, Nova," I muttered to myself. "You've been in worse situations than this." Though at the moment, I was hard-pressed to think of any.

I renewed my efforts of to pry open my cell door. The corridor outside was suddenly chaos - shouted orders, running footsteps, the occasional crash or bang as something came loose in the turbulence.

"... losing containment!" I heard someone yell. "We need to seal off the entire section!"

"What about the alien?" Another voice, closer this time.

"Forget the alien! If we don't get this under control, we'll all be breathing vacuum in a matter of minutes!"

My blood ran cold. They wouldn't really leave me here to die, would they? But as the voices and footsteps receded, I realized that was exactly what they planned to do.

Panic bubbled up in my chest, threatening to overwhelm me. My arms strained against the door desperate to escape my cell and certain death. I was just about to give up when something popped, and the door slid open. I fell forward onto my knees into the corridor. An almost hysterical laugh escaped my lips as I looked into the dim red light and pushed myself to my feet.

I'd done it. I'd escaped! Well, almost. I'd at least escaped certain death in my tiny, black cell but now I had to figure out what to do next.

Chewing on my bottom lip, I forced myself to think. There had to be a way out of this. Something I was missing. I wracked my brain to try to remember something about the ship from when they had brought me to the cell, but it was all too hazy.

Deciding to head left, I kept my palm on the wall to guide myself in the growing dark. The alarms continued to blast in my ears, deafening me. When I was about to give up and head the other way, my fingers brushed against something on the wall - a small protrusion. I stopped and explored it more carefully, pulse quickening as I realized what it might be—some sort of emergency release panel. Could it be for an escape pod? It felt a lot like the ones we'd had back on the USS Phoenix.

I hesitated for a moment. If I activated this, there was no guarantee of survival. I had no idea if this really was an escape pod. I might be opening a hatch to free space. Another violent shudder ran through the ship, and I heard the ominous sound of tearing metal from somewhere nearby. I swallowed hard, but if I didn't take a chance, it was pretty clear that I was going to die on this ship. Decision made.

I took a deep breath, centering myself. "Zharrox," I whispered. "If you're out there... find me."

Then I slammed my palm against the emergency release panel.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then I heard a series of clicks and whirs as hidden mechanisms sprang to life. The wall swung open, revealing a small, cramped space beyond - an escape pod. A cry left my lips as I dove inside, immediately searching for something that looked anything like the launch controls I only vaguely remembered from the emergency training I had gone through before the Phoenix was launched.

The pod was tiny, barely large enough for one person, with a bewildering array of alien tech surrounding me. Panic threatened to overwhelm me again as I realized I had no idea how to operate any of it. I didn't even recognize the writing on the various controls

"Come on, Nova," I muttered to myself. "You've watched Zharrox and the others pilot the Stryker. You can figure this out."

My fingers danced over the control panel, desperately seeking anything familiar. There - a large red button that practically screamed "emergency launch." Without allowing myself to second-guess, I slammed my palm down on it.

For a heart-stopping moment, nothing happened. Then the pod shuddered to life, and I felt a sudden, violent lurch as it disengaged from the Crimson Claw. Through the small viewport, I caught a fleeting glimpse of the pirate ship - its hull scarred and blackened, with gaping wounds venting atmosphere into space.

Then I was spinning away, tumbling end over end into the swirling chaos of the Zenobia Nebula. Brilliant colors flashed past the viewport - streaks of vibrant purple, angry red, and ghostly green. It would have been beautiful if it wasn't so terrifying.

Warning klaxons blared inside the pod as the navigational systems struggled to make sense of our surroundings. I gripped the edges of my seat, knuckles white, as violent tremors wracked the tiny vessel and I was thrown against the safety harnesses again and again. My stomach lurched into my throat as I realized with growing dread, that this was what the pirates had been struggling against all along.

"Zharrox," I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut against the dizzying view outside. "I really hope you're out there somewhere."

Though it felt like hours passing in a blur of turbulence and disorientation, it might have been only minutes. I had no way to tell, no way to know if I was up or down, or whether I was going to disappear into some other anomaly and into yet another dimension.

Eventually, the pod's systems eventually managed to stabilize the trajectory somewhat, but I was still very much at the mercy of the nebula's chaotic energies. I drifted in and out of consciousness, exhaustion, stress, the strange energy of the nebula taking their toll.

During one of my lucid moments, I noticed a steady beeping coming from the control panel. A small screen displayed a message in an alien script I couldn't read, but the picture accompanying it seemed clear enough - I was running out of power. The pod's limited resources must have been severely taxed by the struggle to maintain stability in the nebula.

I slumped in my seat, a bitter laugh escaping my lips. After everything I'd been through, was this how it would end? Not captured by pirates or sold into slavery, but adrift in an escape pod, slowly losing power in an impossible-to-navigate nebula? Slowly running out of air.

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