Knights of the Viral Moon, Chapter 1, Earthbound, we be.
Mayhem exploded off Starboard.
The Papatuanuku lurched portside.
My dad’s screens 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 tilt
of the bridge.
I tripped.
My shoulder caught the edge of a workstation, and I spun, hitting the metal floor with a
bone-jarring thud.
Ouch!
My mind caught the rest of the burst before it could turn into a swear.
Uh, sorry, dad.
I’m coming.
The words tore out in one panicked, breathless heap as I scrambled back up.
My palms skidded across a pile of crystal shards.
It caught my face crunching.
Throughout 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
as he 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 expression
in a terrifying, motionless amber.
I lunged forward, but the gravity within the bridge tripled as the anomaly fed on our
life-supports output.
Every second I spent reaching for him felt like it was being physically drained from my
own lifespan.
The pressure against my head mounted, a silent toll for every inch I gained against the thickening
air.
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 the
sound lagged behind, trapped in the delay.
His mouth moved.
The speakers spat static, something huge tore across the feed laughing, distorted, and
the image buckled under it.
The signal screamed, folded in on itself, and vanished.
Dad!
Snow flooded the wall.
I stood there with my hands 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 lunge for the manual lever.
The heavy door at the end of the bridge groaned, opening just a sliver long enough to see
the vacuum frost on the other side before the emergency bulkhead slammed shut with the
force 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.
One technician fell back, clutching a broken wrist.
The door was dead.
Permanent.
Behind me, the bridge systems reset.
Core door 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.
Now!
The word now came out wrong.
Too loud.
Too sharp.
My fists slammed into the rail before I realized I had 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 laughed flickered across the speakers.
Something in me snapped toward it.
My fists shuttered, aiming a piston of titanium glove and fury ready to shout at the console
as anger blurted.
I’ll.
