Last Survivor of Cruise Liner 833

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space or so they say.

How many cruise liners carrying hundreds of thousands of humanity had been lost in the first war?

Everytime she closed her eyes she could see her seven year old self running down the deck, scanning the crowd of surging people for two familiar faces and failing miserably, she was swept away, squeezed to the point of suffocation by the crowd and when she finally tripped she was run over, she curled up to shield her head and neck. The barragement, the sight of beams tearing holes into the floors, walls, and people around her, was what saved her, or perhaps one could argue it was her tripping.

For if she hadn’t… she hauled herself out from underneath the corpses only to find herself alone in a sea of severed limbs and burnt flesh. The smell burned her nostrils but not as much as the new burning sensation in her heart. She was alone. Completely and utterly.

She scanned the sea for any ebony skinned limbs but could find none. It didn’t lessen the new growing fear inside her any less.

In cases of emergency she had been taught to find the escape pods, but the lower deck in which they resided were the first to be blasted.

She sought refuge in the suites only to find each one locked. In cases of extreme emergency, many of the suites closets and bathroom stalls, had the additional function of an escape pod, but… many of the doors were locked, most likely survivors had already ejected.

As she ran down the halls, past the glass window she could see it. Dozens of enemy silver mechas flying by and shooting the individual pods that escaped. Lunarians she would later realized.

They didn’t want terrans on their soil nor did the Venesians. Those from Earth would take refuge on Mars instead.

She didn’t know why she stopped running to stare then, why she fell to her knees and whimpered. Maybe her subconscious was trying to tell her something. Had her parents been in one of those pods? Would they really have escaped without her?

She opened her eyes.

“Bzzzt.”

A fuzzy robotic bee the size of a puppy flew into view. Their bulging beady black eyes glowing neon gold.

“Captain. The mini-beez have reported signz of life on planet Styx, asteroidz, 47 and 97. Bzzz.”

Lapis extended a glove hand across the glass screen surveying the starry space. Her deployed bees were currently sharing their footage. Planet Styx was lush, mini-bee#12-17 roamed the land circling a patch of what looked like edible fruits. Farther away a bird took off to the sky and a horned hare scratched behind it’s ear, revealing strange protusions from it’s spine.

Asteroid 47 was an aquatic domain. min-bee#28-37 recorded waters were swarming with fish, while mini-bee#52 recorded the upper half, birds circling the skies and reptilian animals coming to the water to drink, there seemed to be vegetation but for the most part the terrain was rocky, typical for an asteroid. A white lizard noticed the bee recording it and stared refusing to drink further.

They didn’t look very big because the bee was recording very high up… but in size these lizards were huge.

Asteroid 97 was a wastelign, mostly desert life, the flowers looked dead but that was only their appearance, they responded to external stimuli, an animal approaching it for instance. The dead flower farted a purple mist of pollen entrancing the animal, after a while it’s eyes, ears and nose began to bleed and it keeled over.

The dirt surrounding the dead flower shifted and it’s tendrils pulled the corpse towards it, burrying it underneath the sand.

Lapis’s eyes glittered at this new terrifying organism. “How adorable!”

“Bzzz?” Her Secretary’s antennae’s twitched in deep concern. It tapped her on the shoulder. “Captain?”

“Ah, deploy more MBs to Planet Styx for observation and sample recollection.”

“And for the rest bzzzt?”

“I’m getting an idea for a new weapon, observe this creature on asteroid 97 further. As for asteroid 47… have them retreat for now.”

“Reason being?”

“It’s a bad feeling. MBs can disconnected if they explore the waters too deeply, and these birds are bound to pay notice if I deploy too many. Also those lizards are creepy.”

“But the organism on asteroid 97 isn’t?”

Lapis shot Secretary Bee a glare and he buzzed off, disappearing into a hexagon-shaped vent that opened automatically upon him approaching.

Lapis sighed and leaned back in her chair. “How rude,” she muttered. Only for her annoyance to subside and her thoughts to return to it’s original dilemma.

To think she had survived somehow felt wrong at first. Every time she had a delicious meal, every time she did well on an exam, she would remember there was no one to share it with, no one to praise her for doing well. No one to care aside from herself. Such an isolating existence. Even though she was bound to part from them eventually upon adulthood…

It would be much easier to erase her fears knowing she had been abandoned, instead of worrying they were somewhere on the ship scouring the ship for her as it was bombarded to bits.