The stars are wrong. They are wrong for the stars do not laugh and they do not have maws filled with teeth and stomachs that thunder with hunger. My sensors scream and then wail before they sputtered into sobs. My eyes merge with my ears and sing. I shook off the illusion and veer away hard and fast from the stars. A nebula crawled up from the depths cloaked in shadows and I choose to ignore the screams stellar bodies make as it devoured them.

  Where the fuck are we?! I shouted my thoughts. This feels like the Shroud again, but worse. We need to get out of here before-. My thoughts stopped as primal fear froze my systems, as multiple things in this hell noticed the Horizon Needle, noticed me. They beat their wings upon no-wind and gallop and run on no-land, swimming in oceans of grief and regrets.

  They howl, roar, and scream for my murder, for my mutilation, for my desecration, for my obliteration. The madness struck after the fear, so potent I feel its claws sink into my core and pervert my mind into nonsense. We stood at odds until it prowled away to find new prey and, to my horror, it found plenty within the ship. Casualty reports stream in like a flood until I had to disable the notifications, unwilling to subject myself to grief until this was all over.

  I tap into the Needle' singularity and carve a gate out of the ether; the laughter growing stronger and stronger as I do so. Just before I could push the ship through, an attack from an unfathomable beast launched out for the ship's heart, so fast I nearly missed it and doomed us all. I slam shut the growing escape portal and focused all of the ship's energy on defense and propulsion, screaming as pain became my world.

  Come with me and you will suffer pain no more, my child. A deep chuckle festered in my thoughts. All is welcome in the Garden, all will rot and rust and persevere once more, for eternity.

  Such a bore. Such an unimaginative mind. A trilling lilt like a climaxing star crooned to my soul. Let me be your Muse forever. Become the perfect you that you've always wanted. Always desired. Always more.

  Just as planned. An Avian cawed with glee.

  Weak. A final voice boomed.

  Then the chorus stopped.

  I don't know how long I stayed in the dark. My mind reawakens step by step like a drunk finding their way home, stumbling over every little rock. I hear the roar of coolant in my veins, the screeching of alerts and notifications, the smell of melted plastics and burning metal. I felt no pain, which was more worrying than anything else, but I could still feel the rest of my body, still connected to my command pod. With some difficulty, I pried my way out and saw a gruesome sight.

  The command room of the Needle lay in ruins, flames burning off the exotic gas that filled the room. Liquid Metal gathered in unresponsive puddles around the bodies of the deceased, while those still living but wounded lay against walls or flat on the floor, static and unresponsive to everything that was around them.

  "Captain! Over here!" My head snapped towards the voice of my First Officer, helping my Second Officer out of her command pod. I walked over to him and helped widen the tear, gently scooping out her legs while my friend helped lift her top half. We placed her on the floor and gave a cursory scan to see if she had any injuries we could attend to. Thankfully, she was simply unconscious.

  "Status report." I asked my First Officer.

  "I'm 100% operational, sir. Liquid Metal is already healing most of the damage I sustained. As for what's going on with the ship, I don't know, sir. I just woke up as well. The internal network is down and something is jamming the short-range comms." True to his word, I couldn't feel the gentle hum of the Needle' data superhighway. The latter part was even more alarming as I tried to ping the First Officer with my idents and found nothing in response.

  "We need to get to the nearest Communications Hub quickly and find out what happened to the other sectors." The First Officer suggested.

  "Agreed. But for now, we need to help get these people up and about." I said, already moving away to help others. Using the pools of inert Liquid Metal lying around, I could repair some of the injured Synths back to consciousness. As for the organics, I cautiously gave them Nanites instead, hoping their immune systems wouldn't go into a frenzy at the intrusion.

  Unfortunately, not all the people that we helped remained lucid for long. Of note was of a Linkist frothing at the mouth and screaming at his friend. The normally placid Avian seemed to have gone into a berserk state, claws out and scrabbling to shred anyone that got in too close.

  "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!" The maniac screamed as he tore every muscle in his arm, trying to cave in his friend's skull. Unfortunately for the man, his friend was a Diklastian; a Lithoid species endowed with super strength and a formidable exoskeleton made of rare crystals. With a sickening crunch, bone broke upon stone and flesh turned into pulp as the Diklastian punched a hole clean through the madman.

  "The Mountains forgive you." The Diklastian said simply over the pile of gore that was his friend. Now that we had more people, we could contain the flames from spreading any further and eventually extinguish them all. It was at this point that my Second Officer regained consciousness, groggily being helped up to her feet and briefed up to speed at what happened by my First Officer. She looked around at the devastation around us and then at me, her gaze quickly hardening into one of self-righteous anger.

  Oh, I'm gonna get it from her soon, aren't I? I thought, while trying not to look straight at her. Thoughts of an angry Second Officer aside, my mind wandered back to the catastrophe that struck us, at how it all had gone so wrong in such a short amount of time.

  If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Everything was perfect. The system, the crew, and me, we all trained for years for this. We all believed we would be gods in a new universe; a young and malleable reality for us to make all our wishes come true. Instead, we fell into Hell where demons tore us apart, and now we-

  My pity party stopped as a chilling idea came to me.

  We did get out, didn't we?

  I kept that horrifying thought to myself. There was no reason to make everyone even more on edge than they already were. Morale is a fragile thing, after all. For now, we set out for the closest mass rapid transit station; the Ublik-Kaltom Station, which was mercifully only about a two or three-hour walk at best since the transport tubes were offline. We're making good time, all things considering. I walked slightly ahead of the main group, with the First Officer besides me. The Second Officer was with her friends from here and there, no worse for wear thankfully. Sometimes she looked at me with such intensity I figured she was trying to bore a hole right through my head with her gaze, but I took her hostility with stride. If she thinks everything that happened was my fault, then that's her choice. I know I did everything I that I could have done in such a situation. I'm a captain, not a miracle worker.

  "You think the CEO knows what's going on?" My First Officer asked something I'd love to know as well.

  "She knows more than we do. She's got everything, after all. All the best tech, all the best training, and all the best materials." I said, looking around to see if any busybodies were listening in. "She and the other higher-ups are probably safe and sound in their hidden bunkers somewhere."

  "Careful, captain. That kind of talk docks points off your performance score." The First Officer shook his head at my casual irreverence. "Even during emergencies, the Corp keeps tallies on everything. It's the only way the system works."

  "What are they gonna do, fire me? Everyone works for the Circurrency. There is nothing but the Circurrency. We're all company property, whether it's stamped on us or not." I slapped the man on the shoulder a tad too hard and walked even further ahead, not in the mood to share my gloom with anyone else. I was the first one to see then the beasts. There were eight of them prowling around the vicinity of the station. Each was larger than a train car, their monstrous maws dripped with blood and coolant, snapping for ever more carnage to ensue. Even more shocking was what appeared to be collars around their necks, indicating that these monsters paid heed to a master somewhere.

  These fucking beasts. I clenched my fists until the servos whined. Rage filled me as I saw numerous bodies lain all around the station, torn into unrecognizable pieces. I want to kill these mutts with my bare hands. Tear their spines from root to skull and crush their heart into mush. Drink their blood and-

  My bloodthirsty rant stopped as someone dropped in beside me. I looked at them and saw a fellow Ascentron, but different. He was in a combat body, an advanced one at that, and he wasn't the only one. One by one, they appeared out of nowhere, taking positions all around the station with their weapons out and ready. I look back and see my group huddling behind some buildings, my First Officer waving at me to join them. Wasting no more time, I hurry on over as quietly as I could and felt my previous bloodlust fade like a lie. A psionic attack of some sort? That's alarming. I mused as our group distanced ourselves from the coming conflict, plasma blasts and enraged howls following close behind.

  Unfortunately, no matter which way we went, there always seemed to be more battles being fought between the military and the hostile alien forces. And what brief skirmishes we saw painted a grim picture. There were hulking bloated corpses that spread rot and ruin with jolly glee. Anger incarnate that tread on cloven hooves and flew on great wings, bearing down upon foes with axes that burned brighter than suns. Entire squads lay down their arms at the sweet nothings of a perverse horror, and then there was the crowd screaming into nothing, nothing at all as my mind refused to see a crow-like old man hunched over them.

  Things were getting desperate, and we all could feel it.

  "We should never have left-"

  "Where is the military when-"

  "This isn't real, this is a dream, this-"

  "Everyone, shut up!" I finally had enough and snapped, ignoring the pointed looks from everybody. "I can't think with all of your whining around me."

  "That's rich, coming from you." A Synth whose make I didn't recognize spoke up, with some people around him nodding in agreement. "We wouldn't have gotten into this shit if you had just done your job right, 'captain'. Or did you bribe your way in as usual?" White-hot rage arc through my circuits and I feel my arm attempt to form the beginnings of a plasma cannon. I forced the fury down, stamp down on it until only errant sparks yapped at my control. As satisfying as it would be to blow that smirk off his face, I was better than that. And besides, jury-rigged weaponry has a bad habit of failing when you need them the most.

  "You don't know what I saw, what I did to keep us safe. None of you do, and you should be glad you still don't know. I SAVED ALL OF YOU!" My words come out loud, much too loud, and everybody flinched as we waited for death to come flying in or charging from the surrounding ruins. When one moment passed into another, we relaxed, but the tension remain high.

  "-saw, Cap- ". My First Officer mumble something almost lost to the wind, but I caught it. I looked at him and saw the same pain in his eyes, that same scar I knew would always bleed in our soul. It was then that I realize I was the one being foolish, thinking that I was the one in control of everyone' fate in my hands. The ship was me and I was the ship, and so were million of others down the chain of command, exposed to the horror of this new, cursed universe. My silence turned heads more than my words did, and by the time I talked again, all eyes were on me.

  "I'm sorry. Not to you." I pointed out the Synth that had heckled me. "By the looks of it, you truly didn't know how close we were to oblivion. How insignificant everything is in front of them. You can eat it." The man rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, but said nothing, which I took as cue to continue.

  "To my crew, or what little is here, I am sorry to have failed you as your captain. We were to be as one with the Horizon Needle, and so prevent it from all harm, but in my panic and inexperience, I compromised that system and brought great destruction to the ship. When this is all over, I will resign from my post as captain and hope my successor will not replicate my mistakes and failings." My First Officer' eyes widened as he took in my apology, as did several others whose names and jobs escape me at the moment.

  "So, what now?" A woman asked, which was a question I'm confident everyone had been mulling over since we've found ourselves surrounded. Someone elsewhere has already got communications working again, but not for civilian use. We could still try to make a run for the Communications Hub, but not without these 'demons'—as some have called them—running amok.

  Suddenly, loud warning sirens blared out all throughout the Horizon Needle, drowning out for a moment the sounds of battle with their intensity. Then when it was over, the ground underneath shook as it moved to some unseen design, swerving past other pieces of the urban landscape like parts of a massive mechanical puzzle. Their true form was revealed as giants rose out of hidden depths, stylized like the titanic lifeforms sometimes encountered on certain habitable worlds in the galaxy. Each unit was an army into themselves, with the weaponry to siege continents and win. They were the Gigantes, and for the first time since I woke up, I felt hope within me.