The Ice Giant

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. For me, there is sound in silence. A sound so acute its no longer a sound, but a sight, a smell, a taste, a touch. The sound of loneliness. Space, is lonely...

The hyperdrive kicks in and the ship jumps.

Instead of the glittery black expanse I've been drifting in for days, the neon glow of Delphinium fills my vision. She's a Neptunian, an Ice Giant with a hydrogen dominated atmosphere I cannot see into, so thick are her swirling azure clouds. This planet is named after a flower native to the planet Earth, which disappeared just under a deceim-millenia ago. A lot of the Exo's in this particular solar system are named after Earthen flora. Delphinium is an electric mix of royal blue and purple, bright enough to make my eyes water. But beneath her brightness, she's all ice, and not hospitable to colonise yet. It took Imperial fifty-seven months to locate this planet, but once the coordinates were uploaded into the drive system, it took just under a week to travel to the jump location. As it stands, there is only one base station established on the planet, which monitors the mineral levels, temperature and weather patterns. This is where I've been tasked to land.

"Delphinium Command Base 1, this is Archer. Do you read? Over." I speak into my ship's comms. I repeat my sentence when I receive static back, but again there is nothing. Damn. Perhaps the planet's atmosphere doesn't reach this far out, or it might be a storm.

I change gears and begin the decent into Delphinium's atmosphere, out of the black and into the blue- glancing at the oxygen levels (safe), and brace for impact. The ship rocks as I burst through the clouds, and a world of ice unfolds below me. It's breath-taking, and it seems the snow that covers the land is soaked in blue, whether from water deep beneath the ice or a reflection of the atmosphere I cannot say. It's morning- the light from Delphinium's two small suns creating a pink and purple wash through the sky. I steady the ship gently into a horizontal position now, and glide along the mountainous landscape, which looks the same in every direction. The heat signatures light up on my control panel as the ship detects life forms at the coordinates of the Command Base Station, and within minutes, the large secular building comes into view. There's no signal light showing where to land, so I find an appropriate place to lower and land just outside. I switch off the power and the compression, and take a moment before I exit. The building is made from steel, and is raised a metre or so above the snowy ground its built upon. Nobody has exited the building to greet me. Imperial's last contact with them was almost a week before I left, so they should be expecting me regardless of damaged comms, which happens all the time on foreign planets.

"Helmet." I speak, and the shield that covers my head does not fold away.

"Helmet." I say again, and it doesn't budge. Strange. My internal suit seems not to be working either. I remove it manually, the icy wind licks my face through my balaclava. I walk up the ramp and knock on the closed door of the station. I get no response, and so I knock a little harder.

"Imperial." I say, addressing our constitutional body. Still no response. I tap a button on the panel on my suit. No heat signatures display. I hit it again.

"Detect lifeform." Nothing.

It seems that on the ground communications have also gone offline. I look around the planet. The weather isn't great, but it's not unreasonable. I think about the recorded message from the battlecruiser I was given days ago, a hasty static message of an emergency landing after it was attacked by an enemy ship. Admiral Finn Traeger is the commander of the fleet, stationed on the Celestrium, currently somewhere on this planet of snow and ice. Part of the fleet made it to their checkpoints after dispersing as a result of the attack. The remainder of the smaller ships unknown, possibly downed out in the black. I was told by my superiors when given the mission that the Celestrium was chartering precious cargo- something top secret, something called 'The Arrow'. Part of my mission is to retrieve this item from the cruiser, as well as establish coordinates for a rescue squad to repair the battleship. I push and jig the steel door- the same type of unforgiving material the rest of the building is made from. It doesn't budge. I can't kick it down. I could use the laser in my suit to etch a hole into the door, but I don't want to compromise the integrity of the inside.

"Hello!" I bang again with my fist, frustrated.

There's nobody home. I look around into the snow. A bad feeling starts to fester within my gut. Something isn't right. I go back to my ship, slip into the cockpit and restart the engines. My ship is fast- a glider, and I rise up and over the base easily, and trace the range of the mountains. I take her up higher, past the clouds until my ships communications- or some of them at least, light up. It's reading two heat signatures down at the base station. Small, and unclear from this height. I try to get the ship as low as I can before the signatures disappear.

"Oh..." I say aloud before they do- its two rabbits.

Must be native to the planet, test subjects perhaps. I take her up again until the communications reappear again, and change direction. There's nothing in sight but blue-purple cloud, and I glide for several minutes, heading South. We lost comms with the Celestrium quickly in their last bid to access help before they crashed, but we knew it was somewhere on the Southern end of Delphinium. I continue my course, dipping under the clouds every so often to see what's beneath me - more ice and more snow.

An hour passes, and my heart skips a beat as the heat signatures light up again- just the one, and I dip below the swirling planetary mists to see whats down there. Its the battlecruiser. Relief. She's there - the Celestrium, and from the looks she isn't in too bad nick. If there had been smoke upon her crash-landing, there's no evidence of it now. I descend slowly, and land. As I exit my ship, I see a body on the snow, several metres from the ship. I instinctively take out my plasma gun. I approach the body, whose face is partially burnt, blood across his uniform. An engineer. He died from the crash. I don't yell out. One heat signature. Surely there can't be only one survivor? The Celestrium is a silver behemoth that rises above me, and I find an opening to climb up into her. The grates and metal interior rattle against my boots as I jump down a hole blasted out on an upper level. There's more bodies inside. The lights are damaged, and the back up flickers with each step I take, coming and going, coming and going. I need to find my way to the control centre. I pick my way through Celestrium's bowels, not unaccustomed to the layout of war ships, which are built relatively the same. There's more bodies, but on this particular ship I expected more staff. It feels...abandoned. As the lights flicker I see a sign with the words 'Central Control' on them ahead, a yellow arrow pointing right. I follow the signs until I reach the ships centre, where cables have fallen through the roof and busted through the walls. There's nobody here.

"Imperial" I call out, gun raised. Where is everyone? The Command is absent too, all control seats empty. Perhaps they have gone down to the bunks to rest until help arrives. Its now that I hear a faint clanging sound...it echoes throughout the ship. I follow the noise.

"Is anyone out here?" I call. "This is Imperial, I'm here to get you to safety."

The clang sounds again. Its coming from below. I exit the control centre and pull a grate up from the passageway floor, jump down. It's darker down here, so I press a button on my suit and a light shines from me out in front. I find the bunks; beds are made, with no pilots, officers, engineers or any other staff in them. The clang turns into a bang, louder now, and I have the gun held in front of me. I step over another body, deceased from the crash. I follow the banging until I'm right upon it. A door, heavily barred with a 'no access' sign painted across it. There's a digi-panel to the side. I need a code to get in. Damn. Instead, I answer the bang on the other side of the door with one of my own.

"Hello?" the banging stops. Silence. "Who's there?" There's no more banging now. I'm uncertain.

"I'm going to open this door, so... if anyone's in there...stand back." I take out my explosive kit, and wire two bars to the top, two to the bottom- big enough to blow a door this sturdy out. "Ok- I'm going to blow this door." I confirm. No response. "Take cover."

I take my own, push my plugs into my ears, and the door explodes a short time after, and it seems as though the entire ship shakes. I wait for the dust to settle, then stand and put my back to the doorway. I move fast, the plasma gun aiming into the small room I've now stepped into. It's mostly empty, save for a bed, table and chairs, and what looks like a small bath chamber. My eyes sweep the room, and I instinctively bend down, a distance from the bed. A face watches me from under it. Its a girl- a woman and she pulls back, clutching a fire extinguisher. She looks frightened.

"Hi. I'm with Imperial. It's safe to come out."

I say this gently, putting my gun down on the ship's floor. I back away from it, and she comes out, stepping into the light. She's thin, like she hasn't eaten in a long time. And she's dehydrated. I take my water flask from my suit and fill it with the oxy-hydro composition I have stored in my internal pumps. She snatches it immediately as I offer it to her. She's wearing a drab industry-blue tunic dress. The garb of a prisoner. I eye her carefully, as she drinks with ravenous thirst and she does the same to me. I pass her a star bar- a rich protein source that will give her enough strength for a day. I've four of these left. She takes it and begins to eat immediately.

"What's your name?" I ask her. She doesn't respond, only looks at me as she eats.

"What happened to Admiral Traeger?" The mention of his name, elicits a sharp look, and I wonder if the survivors left the battleship, leaving her down here." She shrugs. At least she understands me.

"I see you tried to use the extinguisher to bust out of here. Its how I heard you- I followed the banging." She nods. "How long have you been in here?" She holds up one skinny finger.

"One week? Since the crash?"

She shakes her head no.

"One...month?" She nods her head yes. The fleet must have picked her up from Calendula. I ask her if this is so, and she nods her head again yes. I can see she's been through hell. I wonder if she's mute. I don't ask why she's been locked up down here, but she isn't shackled which means she is not a threat.

"We have to leave, and I'm taking you with me." I think about my mission.

"I'm going to check the other rooms- wait here." I say to her. One by one, I check the storage rooms on the floor, and the empty cells which are unlocked. There's nothing of value, and nothing that resembles an arrow down here save for signs. Imperial didn't tell me what the object looked like, only that Admiral Traeger would give it to me to secure and transport. When I return to the woman, I'm relieved to find her waiting. "Follow me, we're going to find the others."

We climb upwards, and I help her out of the ship.

"Put these on," I take the boots off the nearest body and hand them to her. She's reluctant, but I insist because we need to move. "You'll need them to cross the ice."

I also tell her there's a spare thermo-suit in my glider and that she'll be warm soon enough. I can't imagine an Admiral abandoning his ship, not to start walking in this treacherous place. Anybody would freeze to death out here. Maybe the survivors decided to make a break for the base station. The woman follows me across the snow. We're almost at the ship, when I turn around, and see she's stopped several metres behind me. There's this look on her face- she's frightened and she'd looking out across the ice. I get that bad feeling again. And then the ground beneath us starts to rumble...

Our eyes meet, and she runs to me."Get to the ship!" I yell and push her passed me, looking around with my gun pointed, almost falling into the snow. We climb in, I secure her and then I start the ship engines as quick as I can. I think it might be an earthquake, and I can hear cracking as ice is breaking close by - I can hear this even outside my ship it so loud. I've got to get the glider in the air quickly.

"Hold on!"

I fly up sharp, and the rumble can no longer be felt, but when I breach the the clouds, the heat signatures light up- and my screen is full of red dots. The woman looks down at them, and back at me- confusion and fear upon her face. I dip below the clouds, and my eyes widen as I see a great white serpent breaking through the ice and moving towards the battle cruiser -fast. I can't see where its thick body ends- somewhere behind us, and its head is almost as big as the the Celestrium. We watch on as its tongue flickers out at the human body on the snow. It devours it whole. Is it possible that thing down there has eaten everyone from the ship? I look at the terrified women beside me and notice something on her neck, which her hair had been covering before. Its a marking...a tattoo. A wheel of eight lines with pointed ends. It registers suddenly...

She's 'The Arrow'.