Chapter 111: 'Old Wounds'

She'd been asleep.

Doubtlessly dreaming of family and friends left behind on Majesta prime.

Nagi remember being excited, as always, she supposed? on the prospect of seeing a New World. Wondering the same sort of things any girl of fourteen standard galactic years did.

She'd had her moment of temper of course, demanding why she should have to go?

Perhaps father would begin advising construction of a new spaceport on planet Boralis as newly appointed master architect for the imperium, But did that mean she must be dragged there as well?

Evidently so.

The attack, unprovoked had occurred approximately one standard hour 'also galactic, ' after they had cleared Jurian space. Nagi had awoken to the groaning of over stressed superstructures.

The Depths of her terror only deepening when emergency air seals had suddenly triggered, sealing her in! A prisoner, for her own good as the scream of tearing alloys briefly preceded the roar of liberating atmosphere!

She had cried, again and again over the com, demanding as befitted her station for answers!

Nothing ... Even when her demands had long turned to desperately pleading for someone, anyone! to make sense of a world suddenly gone mad!

It was then that Nagi had seen it, just a glimpse. Through the room's small crystalline porthole. Gazing with shocked morbidity at their earth toned assailant.

Thinking, it looked, more a crude untethered... 'chandelier' than any ship she had ever seen as it whirled and plunged! Again and again into and though the hull. Rending their ship's once proud lines into the most chaotic of wreckage!

Only to depart from its dance of destruction just as suddenly, leaving them derelict and bleeding.

Sixteen hours she had survived alone. Waiting, shivering in the dark till what was left of the crew finally found her.

In the brusk aftermath of her rescue, she managed to overhear that there had been no warning, nor communication. Except an inexplicable wailing returning from their desperate attempts to hail the marauding vessel.

A play back had evoked a shrieking, horribly reverberating, alien repetition of sounds 'Meyow!MEYOW! MEYOW!'

A silence fell among them as all set about the grim business of survival. With the liner wrecked, becoming more uninhabitable by the hour they were forced, using what propulsion they could coax to close with what had ultimately summoned them off course to the region.

The derelict was oppressively larger with a stylized almost fanciful appearance. Sporting numerous wounds it had apparently faired no better. Despite having both armor and armament their ship was lacking!

On board Power levels were weak, according to scans but steady. Hasty atmospheric analysis showing isolated yet stable pockets of breathable gases. In short, more haven than the hell their ship was rapidly becoming!

Boarding had been tenuous and tricky, the mutual airlocks of the two vessels refusing to cooperate. Though Nagi clearly remembered the ships engineer assuring the mammoth hulk was definitely of 'league compliant' manufacture.

They'd finally resorted to just welding an air seal. And then armed with mostly bludgeons, kitchen knives and a few side arms, they had finally entered into the dark and unknown. A band of high tech hominids, seeking food and shelter.

Most of the ship's intimidating size turned out to be deceptive. Lots of wasted internal space devoted to vast vaulted chambers. Specifically, a central almost cathedral like main deck. Yet all controls and fixtures were of definite human scale.

Something of a relief when one is forced to contemplate a thirty-foot ceiling. Or rather the speculation of who or more precisely 'what' would require one.

From there it had fallen to searching, looking for ... anything that might be of use. Most portions of the mammoth hull proved inaccessible due to exposure to hard vacuum or being congested with burnt wreckage.

With her nanny dead, amid the rigor surrounding the needs of the moment, young Nagi found herself suddenly at odds with most of the survivors. Her highborn status providing her with precious few skills which lent themselves to the current crisis.

Not that anyone in retrospect was deliberately cruel more than the situation warranted. She admittedly had been something of a late bloomer and there was simply no time and less inclination at that moment for baby-sitting. Thus most of her 'time' was spent sitting watching the dance of power hand torches lancing this way and that as the others searched in the dark and cold.

"Little girl..." The voice from the darkness had first spoken.

Though now that she thought about it, Nagi felt certain it had been speaking before 'that moment' when her mind finally decided to register it presence.

"Who?" She remembered asking Trying desperately to penetrate the darkness before her eyes.