The Second Deimos: Unfortunate Planet

The desert air was devoid of moisture and passing breeze had become filled with sand particles that whipped across the bodies of two lonesome figures daring to walk the stretch of the barren land. The individuals continued to take one more desperate step forward toward the vision outstretched before them. It was night now, and for the past two weeks all they had seen was dunes and the glittering red sand of this desert. Crystal red sand, so finely ground so that it didn't shred at the soles of their feet but rather slowly tore away at the clothing they wore devouring thread by thread as the wind blew it into the air. The fine grains of red sands shimmered almost like water in the light of the two moons. Water the travelers were desperate to find and could not afford to let themselves think the sand was a passable substitute to quench such a thirst.

The moon illuminated the landscape before them bringing to view a change of scenery. Buildings flickered in and out between the dunes. It was the first sign of possible civilization that had been seen in weeks. Up ahead might be an oasis or worse; a mirage.

The pair couldn't afford to travel in the day which meant night was their only option. The heat of the red desert was too extreme and the lack of water around them made it even more dangerous. Water loss was the largest threat to life on this planet. Water found was the second largest threat of this planet. Each step they took across this fractured terrain was another step farther into the dangers that this planet held, and there were many more.

The tall figure looked down at the smaller one. He bent over to adjust the gas mask across the little one's head. Both were wrapped up in thick leather clothes to prevent the blown sand from tearing apart their skin. The wind could reach such ferocious speeds even the smallest grain could become a bullet traveling through the skies ready to rip flesh raw and render bones free from body. Both wore gas masks to keep the unwanted particles from invading their lungs. The sand was fine enough a person could almost drown on the crystal red after inhalation of the nano-particulate. Proper fitting of the gas mask was a must.

The tall man squinted as he peered through his dirtied lenses of the full face gas mask. The world was seen through etched glass, slightly torn, and a little bit frayed at the edges.

"It's real," he murmured to the little one. His voice husked through the thick filters of the facial coverings dulling his voice.

"How can you tell?" A small muffled voice piqued with interest and the tiny head turned up to look at the taller man.

He groaned wishing that he didn't have to keep ruining his daughter's imagination. Perhaps it would have been better if the mirage before them was left a mirage. But it wasn't. He could make out the tall bio-dome structures. There were 3 of them, so this was meant to have been a large farming community. He could see the metal scrap shanty huts, the storage units for the bio-dome tanks, and worse he could see the figures of brutalized life before him. Little blackened bodies moving with a pop-lock motion, shambling without purpose or designation. Just black specs in the distance moving with irregular motion, but he could still see them.

"The town is over run..." he muttered with a tone almost bereft of any hope. Each town they found that wasn't a figment of their imagination was like this one. Infected with the failures of mankind's technology. Infected with the most overlooked aspect of the planet.

"How many do you see father?" the little girl asked.

"Ten... maybe twenty... it's hard to tell as they move." He groaned, just ten or twenty on the outside of the town. Then this area was surely overrun.

"Well," the daughter muttered with a key of interest in her voice, "with that many wandering around just at the edge, surely... it is a good sign as much a bad sign."

The tall man looked down at his daughter tilting his head slightly to the right indicating his curiosity in her statement. He could only wonder why seeing more of these creatures, these infected life forms, would be as much a blessing as a curse. "Enlighten me dear daughter."

"With that many still wandering around, there must be other life," she spoke, "that many bodies means they have been eating something, reproducing with something... we might find others here. Others who are not infected."

The man sighed knowing what his daughter said might be true but also knowing there was a piece to this puzzle she was overlooking in her simple mind. "We may also find that the 'others' have taken this town. It might not just be the infected, but the blessed too. If it is run over by both sides... we won't be able to survive here."

The little girl's body shuddered. The blessed were stories that had spread in the time of stress. The population made up tales of monsters worse than the monster that afflicted them on a daily basis. The 'gods blessed' were the same creatures as the shambling infected, but they were smart. They were sentient beings able to reason, communicate, and lure in victims. Furthermore, the blessed had powers. They were like a child's fairy tale. Evil witches that lured in the weak and hopeless so that they could consume them once the uninfected organism after it had dropped its guard. The 'clickers', the mindless bodies occupied by the infection, they were the daily danger that life faced; but the god's blessed they were an even more terrifying monster.

If not for the encounters she and her father had made, she would have doubted this tale, but they both had seen one of these mutated life forms. It was just an alley cat. Perfectly fine except for the twisting of its tail, the flesh and fur wound about in a painful appearance. The cat paid little attention to the two, but when a small toddler from the colony came up to the strange organism the cat lashed out... its paws stretching a greater distance than what should feasibly be possible. The child recoiled at the pain from the scratch. Later that night the infection spread within the toddler and it was only moments until a small child became another 'clicker'. Infected just like that.

"We need food," the girl spoke dryly. She was no more than 10 years of age but she understood the basic functions of survival. "We don't have enough water for another journey into the desert. Furthermore, we have no way to cross the canyons..."

The man stood in a contemplative pose for the moment mulling over the pros and cons to making such a gamble his daughter proposed. How this landscape had forced his child to grow up so quickly, she never had the chances others did to be a child. Back on Earth, she might have those chances... or the air would have destroyed her lungs and she might have never even made it to this age. Pro's and con's... was one planet better than the other? Both were filled with the dangers that were a byproduct of the failures of man.

He shook himself free from the confines of his mind. "You're right, we need to go in. If we are lucky, maybe we'll be able to find more survivors... though..." he sighed. He didn't need to announce his doubt to his daughter. She should still have the right to hope.

"Though?" questioningly she turned away from her father and looked through the dingy lenses of her gas mask making out the dark click movement figures of the town.

"It's nothing but a thought, one of little impact," her father grumbled. "We'll need to travel a bit further to the west. They haven't spotted us yet, and maybe we can penetrate this village without being noticed."

The girl nodded. It would certainly help their strength if they didn't have to waste their own energies trying to mimic the movements of the beasts before them. They trailed a perimeter farther from the colony until the older man stopped to note that he had found an entrance that appeared to be free of infected. The second moon began to creep up on the horizon to join the first moon in the mid sky. There time with nights cover was limiting, a third moon would be up soon, and day would be almost perfectly mimicked as it would with sunlight; which could reveal their position.

"We must move quickly," he murmured in a voice still muffled by the gas mask to the child. Both pressed in closer and closer to the side of town the appeared virtually uninhabited by the bodies they saw at the entrance. It was clear and the two of them were free to move into the town. The father reached up to his gas mask to turn on its other features. Heat vision lenses in the right eye to help detect any overheated body that held infection. Any creature could give away their position. Any infected creature at all: a mouse, a mosquito, anything that was infected could reveal that life was not in the vicinity.

Both quickly checked to make sure the leather bound suits they wore were wrapped tight to them so that not a single bit of skin was exposed. The father raised a coded hand signal suggesting that both of them start their mimic dance of the infected to disguise themselves.

With the amount of clothing wrapped about their continence none of the infected would ever be smart enough to discern that these two new comers were any different from them. Father and daughter began the muscle precise movement of the tick-tock click pattern these monster had. There was no fluidity to their movement, it was almost completely mechanical. Their own twisted bodies would not allow for any smooth flow. Everything was a harsh elastic jerk, an uncomfortable swerve of their bodies, and the movements had to look completely unnatural to life forms. Both moved on passing through the town virtually unnoticed.

The father let out a low hiss indicating to his daughter a clicker was ahead of them. Both pressed on with the hopes their movements looked like mindless wandering that matched the infected desire to find a body that held meaning still.

A large mammal passed before them, its bones clicking as its exposed insides rubbed cruelly against other bits of its insides. The skin and flesh of it was twisted and wrapped tightly around the skeletal structure of it over and over again distorting the body into something unrecognizable. The face of the thing was twisted nearly off and it was nothing short of curious how the beast before them could even sense the bodies near it. Two large unsymmetrical horns were wrapped about that massive head. This would have been a bull, a bull to help build up a stable grazing organism for the people who lived here. It should have been in one of the bio-domes, but seeing it out in the open meant that it had escaped after the infection break out.

The infected creature turned away as the father and daughter continued their awkward shambling. As though they had no reason to pay any attention to the massive species before them. That body was already infected, it was not worth their attention, and the bull returned that sentiment by pressing forward. Its legs no longer lined up beneath it, rather the parasites that had taken that body twisted up everything. The skin was wrapped around like some sort of tightly wound dead leather, the muscle of the beast stuck out in the same twisted grotesque fashion, wrapped so tightly around the creature that a few organs had hardened to the outside, bone protruded and cracked under the heavy pressure of the wrapping caused by the parasites. It moved away, bones clicking under the heavy mass of the beast.

The father breathed a sigh of relief. That bull's body was becoming over crowded with parasites. It would hopefully soon die if it could not find another host to relieve it of the overcrowded contamination within it.

The two of them needed to get to one of the bio-domes before the light came up and revealed too much of their appearance to the other creatures. They needed to grab whatever food they could take and get out of the infected town.

The little girl was becoming tired by the forced movements that were so unnatural to her body but through the sweat and exertion she put on her body as she kept up with her father. A town this infected would not be kind to a child like her. Those infected... just one infected would probably end her very existence to the world as it chose to feast on part of her, and save the rest of her body to be used as a host for excess parasites within it.

The father took notice of the exhaustion on the girl. Her body showed fear and tiredness as the mechanical movements began to slow down turning to a more lumbering step. He gave a harsh broken grunt hoping that she could understand his encouragement in this primordial language they had to create so as not to be noticed by the parasite bodies. She heightened herself returning, for the moment, to her previous level of energy. They needed to move quickly now.

A bio-dome entrance revealed itself to the pair as they shambled on forward. It was near a central location of this town, and the number of infected was beginning to pick up as they passed the metal shanty houses that once made up a respectable town. If they could just get into the bio-dome they could find the metal bunker within. The bunker would have some make-shift weaponry that could be modified, and furthermore, it would have food. Uninfected plant life within. There would be a distillation apparatus in a lab, where they could purify the tainted water of this planet. Their means for survival lay inside that bio-dome. The man picked up his pace as eagerness to get inside filled him.

The child struggled to keep up; the leather constricting her body, confining her movements, and her exhaustion taking its toll. The way they had to move was enough energy lost, and now she needed to do it faster and without break. The child collapsed. Her body falling forward as the loss of water had become too much for her. She went down in a singular fluid heap hitting the ground.

The man stopped realizing now the silence around them. His error in pushing his daughter too far would now come to a climactic ending if he did not take action. Every infected body paused and turned searching for the body that produced such a graceful, un-infected fall. The body that could sustain them and relieve the parasites within their own bodies.

The father scooped up his daughter and ran, he began to run as quickly as he could past these disgusting figures. He knew that the twisting of the bodies slowed down his pursuers. The unnatural distortion to each organism hindered its swiftness and therefore he had an edge with speed. But his daughter was heavy and he was already tired from false dance he gone through to get to the entrance of that bio-dome.

The bio-dome began to fill up with the shambling figures and he then knew there would be no way inside on this day. He took the less crowded route, and ran down through the allies while simultaneously attracting the attention of more and more of the infected. Twisted little bugs tried to take flight, tried to crawl into his skin to spread the infection, but the insects were too far gone to act as a significant threat. He crushed the beetles and cockroaches beneath his feet as he continued out into a larger street. Before him stood a large repurposed metal structure. It had on it the decoration some of the spacing ships were once adorned with, and he knew he had found the town hall. Each town hall had been equipped with an emergency bunker in case of storm, or attack by local townships.

The man darted between the infected bodies as quick as he could realizing that some of the more recent infected were picking up speed. There were more organisms trailing him that could move quicker than their counterparts. These were bodies only recently infected so the self mutilating twisting had not yet fully gone into effect. The monsters began to catch up with the man and his daughter. He burst through the torn out doors hoping to find something, some room he could use as a barricade for himself and his child. A quick glimpse and he saw a massive cavern ripped through the wall at the far back of the great hall.

He gulped nervously, one quick glance let him think it was a natural cave in from the mountain that this structure was built next to, but the lack of light frightened him. This too could be a parasite hive he was running to. There was no time to contemplate the dangers; he had to take the chance. He bolted into the dark cavern using his right eye, the section where the heat signature camera had been turned on to aid him in his search. Off to the left he saw a heavy metal door embedded in the collapsed cavern. Without questioning it he threw his daughter's unconscious body into the foreign room and swung the door shut. The door was heavy, thick metal with a port sealing door. The kind of door one might expect to see guarding a bank, not hidden in a remote cavern in a mountain. He pulled it in, shut the door and the sound of parasitic bodies bouncing and filling that cavern, the cracking and clawing to get inside was almost silenced as he sealed the entrance.

For the time being they were safe. He glimpsed around the dark tunnel he and his daughter had entered. He could see the warm lump of his daughter on the ground floor. She would be bruised, and she would hurt when she woke up, but her body was still warm and heart beat was strong as that warmth continued to pump through her. He moved over and loosened her clothing allowing her skin to breathe in the cool air of the tunnels they had entered.

She awoke coughing, and felt her body ache everywhere. If water was not found soon, they both know she would be passing within the next day. The strain she had put on her body was too great. The father removed his cloak with one hand as the other arm propped the girl child up.

"Alia," he spoke nervously, "how does your body fare?" The question was a simple statement that carried great meaning.

"Nothing broken," she smiled weakly grateful that her father had not left her when she had collapsed. "Alive..." she rasped through the gas mask then asked, "Where are we?"

The father shifted his hand up to her gas mask and clicked the switch that would allow her to see her surroundings. Thermal vision clicked on and she peered through her right eye at the cave they had wandered into.

The father set his cloak over her body and she gazed up at the lean body of her father. He wore a similar leather like garment she had. He had on a thick strong jacket over a toughened fabric that made up the pants. Clothes that would help prevent infection if either were ever attacked; it was a second layer of protective skin. He reached back pulling off the pack he carried. It was an alternate space pack; one made to maximize the space of the pack, capable of holding up to 6.8e10g of mass. It compressed the weight of the items within making it easier to carry and easier to hold more items. Her father was one of the engineers who designed this pack, he called it a vacuum container... she never could understand the physics behind the vacuum pack.

He reached inside gazing over the shapes within until he found a flask. He picked up the purified water and handed it to his daughter. She lifted her gas mask up just a little bit before she drained the last of the water, hoping to gain back some of what she lost earlier. When she was done she resealed the mask to her face and handed the flask back to her dad.

"I don't know where we are at..." the man murmured. He stood up and looked at the cavern walls around them. The stone had been cut, this was not a natural cave, but a man made one. What had this town been doing? He pondered to himself.

"This is strange?" The girl asked observing how still her father was.

"This might have been the shelter for the town... and this may be an area still filled with infected. Keep your mask on. Once you've cooled down re-tightened those garments. We will need to inspect further ahead."

She nodded and she buttoned up the top collar of her jacket, zipped the sleeves back down to create a tight seal, and made sure that the zippers were tight between the bottom half of her pants to the top half. She nodded when she felt ready. Her father reached his hand out to her and lifted Alia up. She took a moment to breathe then wiped the dirt from her leather garb.

Her outfit was a disturbing disguise for the outside world. Where her father wore simple everyday leather brought back from earth; the leather she wore was far more disgusting. The first colony of survivors they had joined used to make these garments from the infected that they had slain. The twisted skin patterns and muscle disjoint all captured the imagery even after being made into a shirt or set of pants. Without her cloak she would have blended in with those infected parasites as she wore stacked layers of their skin. It was a clever design for camouflage, but not clever enough at times. That colony that once made these garments had still perished, but Alia had kept the skin of monsters wrapped about her, for their leather still provided protection.

Neither outfit was as effective as the insulating metal space suits that some of the colonies had. A light metal that kept in the bodies heat comfortably, and was tougher than any leather garment keeping away the stinging bite or scratch of those parasite creatures out there, and it worked better than linen or polyester.

Her father motioned to her and both of them began their descent into the downhill cavern. They walked along enjoying the blissful silence with each step. There was no sound of bones grinding or popping and neither of the two had to force their movements to act as a clicker. There was an instinctive feeling of safety in this cavern, but still, the dangers of this planet made individuals doubt instinct. The gas masks stayed on as a precaution. They walked on, until Alia was able to spy light ahead. She reached up turning off the thermal scanner attached to her gas mask realizing the light was no trick of the screens covering her face.

"Father! There is sunlight ahead!"

"Shush child," his voice rasped from behind the mask, "We don't know what may be ahead. It could still be artificial... and we could find infected, hostiles, or even the blessed ahead of us."

The girl nodded, but something in her doubted that any of these dangers would be ahead. Something in her told her that this place was safe, and the sealed tunnel that harbored no sounds of the clicking parasitic colonies aided to this belief. She pulled off her gas mask and breathed in the none-soured air. Crisp and clean.

"Alia!" her father hissed angrily and with fear in his tone.

"There are no clickers here," she muttered smiling up at her dad.

He could almost make out her features in this light. That the light just barely glimpsed off her vivid red hair, that he could see that tender round face that took so much after her mother, those brilliant green eyes, the weary freckles across the brim of her nose fading from the lack of sun exposure, and he could almost see that smile the light just barely illuminated.

He sighed reaching up to his own mask and loosening the straps that held it tight to his face. Perhaps it was time they enjoyed an air that didn't belong to the desert outside, or the gas mask chambers they frequently were left to inhale. The air held some moisture to it, and so he knew they were near a water source somewhere. A little creek maybe drizzling through to get to the rivers that lay at the base of the canyons that were everywhere on this planet.

He turned with a look of confusion to his daughter, "do you feel the moisture?"

She nodded, then muttered, "Yes," remembering he cannot see her in this dark and without the thermal vision the gas mask provided.

"I didn't think we ventured that far down... water only flows at the bases of these canyons... unless the mountain has some sort of reserve within it... allowing the water to trickle down into those infected basins..." He turned to his daughter and she caught the sound of excitement on his breathe, "What if we've found an uncontaminated reservoir?" he breathed.

The girl shrugged indifferent to the idea. Both of them knew how to properly distill the water to keep the cryptobiotic state of the parasites from infecting their systems, and while the parasites remained in cryptobiosis in the water they could not infect the humans or other life forms. The parasite was completely harmless free floating in the water, unlike its active reproducing counterparts on the surface of the planet.

"We'll have to go and investigate," she said dryly.

Both proceeded toward the light farther and farther into the cavern. The light began to grow brighter as they neared the end of the tunnel.

Alia for the first time in weeks could look at her father's grim features without the faded glass of the goggles covering her eyes. She could see with her vision guided by the natural light of the sun.

He had dirty blonde hair specked with brown and grey combed over to one side of his head. A beard made an attempt at growing on his face, but even without shaving here was a man who could never grow full facial hair; rather had thin lines of five'o'clock shadow along a masculine jaw. A long nasty scar ran down from the top of his forehead to the left side of his cheek. A scar he got from a landslide that occurred on this planet. The structure he once inhabited collapsed reminding him to never undercut proper engineering methods when building homes. His glasses were a bit crumpled and made to fit better when the gas mask was on. He had thin lips pierced together tightly as he moved through the tunnels with his daughter. He was thinking, trying to think one step ahead in order to be prepared for what the outside light may reveal to him, but no matter how much thought he put into it he could have never guessed what lay ahead.

Alia took in a long admiring gasp as they walked out of the cave tunnel and into a large cavern hall. It was a massive naturally formed room, a trickle of water came down from the ceiling of the mountain and ran across the floor out to a large opening that revealed the canyon walls beyond the mouth opening. The third moon had risen and it was like daylight outside but cooler than the heat of the true sun.

The walls of the opposing canyon walls were illuminated showing a distance of at least 32 kilometers between each structure. But the canyon and the massive lit room, the river flowing from the mountain, none of these natural features were what took Alia's breath away. Holding up the ceiling of the cavern, as a large base pillar was a massive cruise line spacing ship. She could not help but admire the extraordinary detail that went into decorating just the outside of this ship, the artisan dedication into making a regular ship look exceptional. Most likely many of the parts were attached in space to keep the beauty of the beast intact.

"I don't remember hearing of a commission like this..." her father muttered.

Before fleeing earth, her father was one of the engineers helping to designs the space craft that would get people to the new planet. He glimpsed over the ship with nervous excitement.

"Even if one of us did commission this... how did it..." He looked around his surrounding with awe and wonder, "how did it become buried within the canyon?" he muttered.

Alia ran up to the sides of the ship, touching its cool metal and ceramic exterior. She smiled feeling the familiar touch of the panels. Alia had been born on a ship, so she took comfort in finding one still intact. "Perhaps, perhaps the leader of this town tried to hide a ship? In case a need for an emergency escape arose?" She added hoping to answer her father's questions.

"It's a good thought," he replied. His focus remained on the ship, his eyes were filled of wonder, "but I don't think that is the case. Look at how the ceiling pushes down into the top of the ship. How the thrusters and engine have been buried in sand and dirt.... This ship... has been here longer than we have."

Alia gulped nervously. The idea of a ship older than them brought new worries, perhaps there was another alien species who came here before. One wiped out previously by the parasites on this planet... or maybe inside that ship lay a new threat entirely. He father marveled at the cruise-luxury make of the craft. The designs, the sculptures... just the meticulously designed sculptures on the outside of it that had begun to fade in the harshness of the climate it faced was something worth respecting.

He began to feel his way along the ship, hoping to find an opening that could take them inside. He didn't have the equipment to break into something like this... who could even begin to estimate the layers to these walls? So much careful precision stood before him, he had to glimpse at what lay within the foreign entity. Alia leaned against a piece of the ship, her body enjoying the cool metal structure.

"What if there is something hostile inside?" She asked.

"Don't be silly daughter," the man rasped, "how could anything still be alive in this thing? It's been buried her for..." he looked at the walls of the cavern, noting the rock design, the fracture lines of the faults, peered outside to guessing how far beneath the surface they were, finally took in a very excited breath. "This thing has probably been here hundreds of thousands of years before we ever arrived. Who ever owned this has long since been dead."

Alia shrugged deciding it best not to question her father's logic for the time being. She couldn't make sense of a ship being here if it was not theirs.

She took a sweeping glimpse of the thing and her eyes locked onto a large statue of what might have been a metal folded angel. This beauty of a mermaid like creature with jutting wings set not too very high above herself. Alia smiled up at the alien décor and decided that now was an opportune time for further exploration. She set her gas mask onto the ground and took a couple steps back up before running at the hull of the great metal craft. Two steps up the wall, and she leapt out grabbing onto an extended arm of the angel.

Her father paid her no attention as he continued tracing along the base looking for a sign of an entrance. She pulled herself up past the angel and continued to climb up to the top of the alien figure's head. Just above this intricate thing was exactly what her father was looking for. A thick porthole window had been smashed out (though cause unknown) and there was an opening.

"Father!" Alia cried out, "I found a way in." He turned up and glimpsed at her red hair dazzling from the top of the metal beast she had scaled.

He ran up to her, moving with easier speed and less struggle than she had faced. He proudly pat the top of her head before restoring his gas mask to his face. He switched on the thermal vision lens as well as turning on the exterior lighting device. Two flashlight devices illuminated the inside of the metal beast from the outside of the man's mask. The ship had been turned slightly onto its side, leaving the room tilted, but not uncomfortably so. Both could proceed to explore as they desired. The metal room was fairly barren with little to be seen in it, but it opened up into a hall that revealed other hallways, and more mysteries to be explored.

As they stepped from the barren room Alia gasped as she looked around her. Pieces of petrified carpet were lying in fragments against the slant end of the hall, the metal décor and furnishings left along to highlight the beauty and fresco like paintings in the walls had been aged and blurred. Everywhere red sand had found its way in, accumulating in the ancient structure. The man gulped nervously. Nothing had been in here for many many years.

"It can't be all that different from our own ships..." he spoke to his daughter looking up at the dead lightening meant to have once illuminated this hall to nowhere.

"I think... I think it would have been a luxury ship... so... the captain's quarters should be higher up. Near the front port away from the base. We'll need to climb up..." he speculated.

Alia felt a shiver run down her spine as she instantly regretted leaving her own gas mask outside, but the curiosity in her drove her to continue through the halls.

"Do you have a spare light?" she asked turning to her father.

He nodded and mindlessly reached into the vacuum pack, pulling out a small search light she could use to explore. His thoughts were occupied mostly on the ship.

Alia took it and began poking through every door. Rooms with tables, benches, chairs tossed down and away, some contained rot from trapped moisture in the ship, but the most surprising aspect was how intact everything in the ship was. Near the open windows if it wasn't metal, ceramic, or glass it had rotted away, but as they went farther in, the delicate outlines of wood, fabrics, things that should not have survived this long fluttered as they walked past. Alia found traces of rooms, kitchenettes, and cleaning stations. Signs with foreign symbols marked the walls; symbols that may have once directed the inhabitants that once resided in these sparse appearing rooms.

"These look like... like servants quarters..." her father grumbled, his voice once again partially muffled by the gas mask. He gazed around the halls, there was nothing warm, no life; only the heat signatures he and his daughter left behind.

"The ship isn't so different from something we would have designed... it's just... prettier..." he looked once again at the meticulous engraving design of just the assumed servant's quarters in wonder.

The two continued on until a heat signal began to register on the screen. He held back Alia motioning her to be quiet. The heat blob was in a room over, and it was something of low heat release, but it was moving. Flickering like a flame, though not as hot. That was a signature movement that could be something living and something dangerous. He pressed on to gaze into the room that had the energy signal and his jaw dropped.

Alia walked up and joined her still father as she gazed at an entire vicinity of cryo-pods. Most of them were empty or opened, but a few of them remained closed. The greenish pods were linked around a central pillar supporting the ceiling of the structure and going straight up. This one room could have held hundreds of humans in it.

Alia walked up to an open one, saw wires still intact and pointed them out to her father. He gasped as he looked in, "By the gods..." he murmured, "I think this ship was powered partially off the people who slept in it... these pods... are set up to act as biofuel cells..."

He glimpsed over the wiring and design that was debated so heavily back on Earth before the great retreat. Here an idea that was banned had been implemented in this design. To use the sleeping humans as a source to draw power from... it was not a popular idea. But right before him on an alien ship, those rough sketches in a meeting board room came to life. Some other race had figured first to use this method for transportation. Alia glanced around the spiral stacked pods circling upward and upward to the top of the ship wondering what could be in those closed pods. Her father pointed out how some of the pods still registered low heat signature, and that they were still on.

Alia walked around the massive pod structures until she came to something that was truly unusual. "Father," she called out nervously. He came over and his gaze followed hers.

Before them was a large purple flame glittering before them. Her father detected little actual heat being produced from this thing that danced similarly to a fire.

"What is it?" Alia asked.

"I... I don't know?" He replied.

Alia took a step forward toward reaching a hand out to touch the cold fire.

"Alia, don't," her father cautioned, but Alia ignored him as she stepped closer.

Her fingers passed through the violet colors of the small tube holding this large purple flame. She looked back at her father with a curious glimpse of excitement. Carefully she hauled herself up onto the platform of the tube structure holding the flame standing with in the foreign entity.

She turned around grinning, "There's nothing to fear..." her voice was cut off as the light began to grow more and more vibrant around her. There was a tugging pull, as if the tube she stepped into was trying to get her to move, to go somewhere else. Her vision narrowed and in a blink her father was gone.