Knights of the Viral Moon, Chapter 1. Earthbound we be.Scene 1. Mayhem exploded off starboard.The Papatuanuku lurched port side.My dad’s screen surged back to life as the systems rebooted.I didn’t wait, I bolted.Yes, yes, yes, dad.I was already moving.I swerved as overhead monitors exploded.Shards crunching as I ran.Boots slammed against the deck.A chair clipped my leg and skidded away, but my feet couldn’t keep up with the tiltof the bridge.I tripped.My shoulder caught the edge of a workstation and I spun, hitting the metal floor with a bone-jarringthud.Ouch!My mind caught the rest of the burst before it could turn into a swear.Sorry dad, I’m coming.The words tore out in one panicked, breathless heap as I scrambled back up.My palm skidded across a pile of crystal shards.It caught, my face scrunching.Out the corner of my eye, I saw facets refract as sparks fizzed, shooting from my glove.I didn’t stop.I couldn’t.I grabbed the rail, vaulted it, palms burning as I hit the metal in front of the screen.The console erupted in a spray of sparks.A junior officer to my left hit the deck, hands over their head.The main alarm tone shifted from a rhythmic pulse to a high-pitched, jagged scream.I lost the room for a heartbeat.Just a blur of smoke and red light.Then I forced my eyes back to the screen.Dad?The image wavered.Too bright.Too close.Pixels crawled across his face like frost on glass.Static snapped and hissed, cutting the feed into jagged strips.Then it fractured.My father was there.Red emergency light strobed across him, breaking him into moments—shoulder, hands, eyes.He was bent over a control panel, breath fogging in the air, fingers stiff and shaking ashe worked the manual overrides.The cold had settled into everything, turning the room hard and sharp.I slammed my hand against the screen.Dad, look at me.The picture lurched, the camera swung. For a heartbeat his head lifted.His eyes came up straight to the lens.Straight to me. My chest seized.I’m here.I said, the words tripping over each other.I’m here.I love you.I’m going to…The air between us didn’t just ripple.It thickened, hardened into a pocket of frozen time.Outside the glass, a shine of light hung suspended, trapping my father’s desperate expressionin a terrifying, motionless amber.I lunged forward, but the gravity within the bridge tripled as the anomaly fed on ourlife support’s output.Every second I spent reaching for him felt like it was being physically drained from myown power coil.The pressure against my head mounted—a silent toll for every inch I gained against the thickeningair.My HUD ghosted.Fractured images of my father flickered across the display, one glitch after another.My own voice came back in my ears a half-beat late, like someone else was wearing it.I reached for the tuning knob, but the audio desynced—my father’s mouth moving while thesound lagged behind, trapped in the delay.His mouth moved.The speakers spat static. Something huge tore across the feed—laughing, distorted—andthe image buckled under it.The signal screamed, folded in on itself, and vanished.Dad— Snow flooded the wall.I stood there with my hand still pressed to the screen.Breath tearing in and out of me.Pulse hammering so hard my fingers shook.The taste of metal coated my tongue.Override! Now! I roared.Behind me, three crew members lunged for the manual lever.The heavy door at the end of the bridge groaned, opening just a sliver—long enough to seethe vacuum frost on the other side—before the emergency bulkhead slammed shut with theforce of a falling moon.Suppress her code! PsyOps bellowed, his commands frosting through the sealed door.I knew hell wanted in.Get in there and delete that whaea protocol before I erase your chip,you ingrown minions.I want his mother’s codes.Get me her magic.The lever snapped.A techtron fell back as an electrical feedback loop shorted out his cybernetic gauntlet,locking his arm in an emergency safety clamp.The door was dead.Permanent.Behind me, the bridge systems reset.Corridors snapped back into place.My father’s frozen image flickered once and vanished.He was gone.Open it!I shouted, spinning back toward the consoles.Open the door! Give me my dad now!The word “now” came out wrong.Too loud.Too sharp.My fist slammed into the rail before I realized I’d moved.Pain flared and vanished under the heat flooding my chest—hot and reckless,the part of me that wanted to break anything that refused to move.Ecocide’s laugh flickered across the speakers.Something in me snapped toward it.My fist shuttered, aiming—a piston of titanium glove and fury ready to shatter the consoleas anger blurted,I’ll…
