Empyrean Iris Story Collection

Space Angels

Space.

The ambient glow of distant stars cut through the darkness past the thick, purple cloud of an emissions nebulae surrounded by a field of light blue wispy tendrils. Beyond that, thousands of stars blanketed the sky above, below and beside them stretching on into infinite dark, and also infinite light.

Outside his own breathing and heartbeat, space was absolutely silent. The movements of his companions were quiet on the outer hull of the ship. Even as Cannon churned slowly through space in his massive suit, his feet making no noise against the hull of the ship. Their shadows were cast long behind them haloed by the deep blue light emitting from the nebulae. Captain Vir slowly crouched down against the zero gravity to open the side ship panel pulling lightly against where he was clipped to the safety line.

Cannon slowly knelt next to him, floating strangely in the zero gravity. Two sets of arms splayed out to either side floating there without gravity to pull them down. The suit he wore glinted with the sheen of something shiny and new. Drev made up almost 1/10 of his ship's population now, most of them belonged to Cannon, some of them belonged to Sunny, all of them were part of the same clan, the clan that Vir happened to be a part of and was, now, technically clan chief. After defeating Cosma, It should technically have been Sunny, but she deferred to him making him the defacto leader of a Drev clan, and he had adopted them to the best of his abilities. He had taken Cannon to get his leg examined, and the Drev had received an exo-brace.

Now he moved without a limp.

Off to their left, another Drev knelt slowly opening one of the hatches in the near silence only to reach inwards to plug a diagnostic hose, unwound from the suit, into the main diagnostic port. Vir's suit didn't have such a device, being older, and he looked upwards to where Cannon stood unhooking the deice from his suit and handing it down to Vir. They made the exchange in near silence with nothing but the sound of his own quiet breathing and thudding heartbeat.

"Diagnostics ready, Captain." The static and distorted voice broke through the silence over his coms system

That was odd, "Run it again." He ordered taking the deice from Cannon with his ungainly gloved hands, and plugging the attached hose into the port. The thick, light up screen on the device blinked blue for a few moments with the attached loading screen. While he waited, Captain Vir lifted his helmeted head to the vastness of space open to the endless expanse. His heart began to speed up, as it always did, when viewing eternity. That same familiar thrill of complete infinity shot through his brain releasing a cascade of warmth through his body. It would have been better were he simply tethered to the ship, able to pretend that he was alone in the vastness of space.... If space could give him this much of a high, he dared not guess how he would react to real drugs.... He was sure he would be a fantastic addict.

A short beep from his coms, and he looked down at the loading screen to find diagnostics popping into life... huh, that was weird. There was nothing there.

Only a few hours ago, the ship ad stalled, all stations had gone dark, and the coms systems indicated there was some sort of interference with the electrical components of the ship. There was no way to tell where the disturbance was coming from, and with their navigations, and radar systems down, it would be dangerous to keep going, especially in this particular area. They were working their way through one of the most densely packed solar clusters in the known universe, binary star systems on top of the rare triple star system, and all amid thick nebular dust and gasses. Crewmembers had nicknamed it the Cobalt Cluster after the intense blue light created by the diffuse gasses and dust spreading from the nebula. It was an eerie feeling, and now they had no explanation for their malfunctioning ship, and with no radar, no coms, and a malfunctioning electrical system they may as well be stuck here until things can figure themselves out. Captain VIr looked up towards the vastness of space again. That would be alright from about five sides, the sky was clear for thousands of miles giving them a clear view of anything heading in their direction, but the fifth side was thick with clouded, clotted dust glowing a pale blue from the hidden star behind. Anything could approach from there, anything at all if they weren't careful.