---[ POV: Flynn ]---

It had been almost 16 hours since Lieutenant Flynn started to work on his repair plan.

At first, he had verified if it was possible to quickly assemble a functional Stygian Predator armor, but the damage they had endured was too intense to just scramble their parts together into something operational. One of the armor was in relatively good shape but would still require a couple of hours to repair, so he had opted to go for the corvette's space suit instead.

Fortunately, the engineering bay of the corvette was equipped with a small fabricator that had survived the crash.

A fabricator was akin to an advanced 3D printing machine that could manufacture almost anything it had the template for, if fed the proper raw materials, of course. Most of the factory worlds of the Unified Stellar Empire were in fact industrial-level fabricator complexes. Every spaceship of the ISF was equipped with a small-scale one to produce repair parts and tools in case of an emergency.

With such a tool at his disposal, Flynn was confident he would be able to repair the relatively unscathed armor in due time. Restoring the ship transceiver took precedence over the armor, however.

For the moment, Flynn had simply been able to salvage one of the corvette spacesuits and had changed into it as soon as the oxygen on the life support system had run out.

On that front, only two of the corvette spacesuits had survived, which was less than optimal, but better than nothing. That amounted to about 48 hours of oxygen so the young man had felt confident in his ability to finish the reparation on the communication equipment, and then the armor, before, he ran out.

Flynn focused his attention back on the communication system. As he had guessed, the transceiver had been destroyed. It was completely crushed by a bent beam upon impact. Flynn almost had to rebuild it from scratch using the replacements parts he could find aboard, as well as a crapload of recycled parts he gathered here and there from other broken systems he deemed less important, or beyond repair.

A moment ago, he even had to use the fabricator to manufacture a small piece for which he could not find a substitute. Since it was a simple mechanical piece, it only took a couple of minutes, and basic metal scraps, easily collected amongst the wreck.

The engineering and cargo bay he had transformed into his workspace was now filled with circuitry and disassembled machinery parts. Most internal wall panels that had survived the crash had been unbolted and opened so he could access the systems behind.

Before he started his work, however, Flynn had pilled the corpses of the dead soldiers in a corner and had injected them with a preserving solution he had found in the med bay. The Empire did not particularly care about recuperating the bodies of its fallen soldiers since so many of them died in space battles, but he could not burn them, nor dispose of them through the busted waste hatch. Since he did not want the corpses to rot while he was confined with them in a closed environment, delaying the decomposition process seemed the most adequate solution. Their remaining lymphites, coupled with the preserving agent, would probably prevent degradation for a couple of weeks.

After adjusting a bolt that held a chipboard in place, and verifying he had correctly connected all the underlying circuitry, Flynn got up satisfied.

Since he had not much place anywhere else, he had built this transmitter directly in the middle of the cargo hold, right beside the huge metal crate he was supposed to deliver to Earth.

He gazed upon the shoddy mess he called a transmitter - he had only repaired the transmitter part of the transceiver, the receiver being less urgent could wait for a bit - and his satisfied grin turned sour. It should work, and was, most certainly the best that could be done within such a short time, but any true engineer with an ounce of self-respect laying eyes on his creation would probably wail in agony and ask him to burn it down on the spot.

Well, beggars can't be choosers.

Flynn walked up the interior ramp of the corvette and accessed the cockpit after passing through the operation room. He sat in the co-pilot seat while linking his neural stack to the communication computer. This time the communication sub-system was partly operational and JAX was able to interface with it without the need for a link-chip.

"Fuck yeah!"

Flynn raised his fist in the air in a victory pose for a second but quickly got a hold of himself.

The system was now able to emit a signal or a message but he could not relax yet; he still had to repair the receiver that would allow two-way communication. Nonetheless, the bare minimum was there.

The lieutenant quickly activated the emergency beacon and recorded a message to transmit in loops on all encrypted frequencies regularly used or monitored by the Empire.

Of course, he was somewhat worried this communication could be intercepted by the enemy but he had little to no choice of proceeding that way if he wanted to ever leave this planet. In addition, he had already rigged the corvette fusion core to self-destruct on a simple command from his stack AI so if anyone else than Imperial Forces tried anything funny, he would make them regret it dearly. Even the most heavily armored foe would be reduced to ashes by the nuclear explosion of a spaceship energy core.

As a member of the ISF, Flynn was well aware that any form of death was far better a fate than what awaited sapient creatures that got captured alive by the Mind Eaters.

"Lieutenant Valerian Flynn, assignation ISF Starfall, requesting emergency extraction. Currently stranded on an unidentified planet with a strategic package addressed to Central. Remaining life support autonomy is estimated at 480 hours, probably less. I repeat, requesting immediate extraction. Personal codes and registration embedded. Over."

Once it was done, Flynn leaned back in the co-pilot seat and closed his eyes for a moment. Because of the food pills, the blood pellets, and the biogel injection, he now felt a lot better than when he first woke up earlier in the day but he was nonetheless extremely tired.

Normally, his lymphites could keep him awake and fully operational for 48 hours straight, and he would barely notice a drop in his concentration for another 48 hours past that point, but the recent physical traumas and the accumulated stress had taken their toll.

Flynn absentmindedly massaged his chest where his Aegis device was located. He could feel the armoplastic plating that coated his bones through the soft fabric of the corvette spacesuit and his own skin so it was easy to locate the sub-dermal implant. The Aegis was slowly recharging after using all of its power to protect him during the crash. The force of the impact was such that it was quickly depleted and had to shut down to prevent overloading its shield generator. Flynn did not expect the device to be operational before another week.

That was to be expected from a personal day-to-day device. They were designed to protect from a falling crate, the bullet of a small-caliber kinetic riffle, or other similar hazards, not to save someone from a full-blown spaceship crash. Flynn expected the Aegis integrated into the Stygian Predator armor he was planning to restore to be much more potent.

After relaxing for a short moment, Flynn consulted his HUD to evaluate the oxygen reserve of the cell loaded in the suit he was wearing. There were about 8 hours left. It was enough to get some sleep before he had to change his oxygen cell for the one scavenged from the other spacesuit.

Before going to sleep, Flynn took a few minutes to put some order back into the cargo bay and clean the mess he had done then arranged a spot for himself in one of the small crew bunks lining the wall of the catwalk on the second deck and laid down.

"JAX, wake me up when there are 30 minutes of oxygen left in this suit."

"Affirmative."

Sleeping with the spacesuit was not particularly comfortable but Flynn had far worse experiences when he was still in training or during his years of service as an infantry sergeant.

He had closed his eyes for about one or two hours and got some light sleep in when a slight noise originating from outside got him up.

The hearing of all ISF members was sublimed through a sensory processing function of their neural stack coupled with a cyber-ear, a small implant that either enhanced or complexly replaced the inner ear depending on its model. The cyber-ear was mostly used to receive and send messages without the use of an external earpiece by the spacecraft crew but the infantry also used it to enhance their awareness on the battlefield.

Flynn had been an infantry sergeant for a time and had a good, if somewhat outdated, cyber-ear. This meant that it was possible for him to pick up on distant rattling sounds even though almost two feet of armored hull and insulating materials separated him from the outside.

Could the help be there so quickly?

Well, it was certainly possible if there was an Imperial outpost somewhere in this star system but it was unlikely.

A pearl of cold sweat appeared on the young man’s forehead as he thought that the other option was that one of his pursuers had been able to follow him all the way here.

He got up silently and went to the cargo hold, slowly walking toward the airlock while stressing his hearing prowesses to the maximum of his capacity using all the relevant functions offered by his neural stack and ear implant.

It was impossible to see anything outside because all the corvette portholes got sealed by metal shutters when they crashed so Flynn was forced to rely only on his hearing.

This anticipation feeling and total ignorance about what was waiting outside were completely nerve-wracking.

Once he got to the airlock, he pressed his ear against it and waited.

Silence. Absolute silence for more than 5 minutes.

After some time, Flynn started to question if he had really heard something. He was half-asleep after all. Maybe it had all been a dream.

He waited for another two minutes but, since he couldn't hear anything, his level of alert dropped. His tense jaw and shoulders could finally relax. The young man let out a small nervous laugh, thinking he had been all worked up for nothing.

His laugh remained stuck in his throat when his ears picked up on a new sound. This time it was a sound he could both hear and feel in his bones.

It was by no mean the sound of a rescue team busying themselves around the landing site.

It was something that started almost imperceptible, akin to a low and continuous growl but that progressively grew in pitch and intensity. It went from a vibrating and hoarse roar to a smooth and high-pitched shriek that chilled his very soul. The sound somewhat reminded of the suffocating and oppressing pulsed call of a whale mixed with the scream of a child and the screech of a banshee.

It was impossible to pinpoint its exact origin because the sound reverberated all over the corvette, but one thing was certain, it was getting closer.

The scream lasted for a good 15 seconds before it stopped, but similar shrieks echoed soon after, each time louder and closer.

In addition to their ear-splitting force, the screams made Flynn feel strangely confused as if he got disoriented and lost his balance. He had no doubt a normal human, deprived of all the enhancement and training offered by the ISF, would have a hard time staying on its feet.

Startled, he started to panic and fell back toward the inter deck ramp. This was not the sound of anything Flynn had knowledge of unless the Mind Eaters had gone ahead and mutated yet another kind of monstrosity into existence.

A long, undulating scream pierced the young man’s ear so loud that it physically hurt and shook his very bones in a particularly uncomfortable way. Fortunately, JAX automatically lowered the volume of Flynn’s brain sound input through his neural stack, which alleviated him greatly.

The scream continued until it was almost unbearable despite Flynn’s lowered sensitivity before abruptly stopping.

Flynn was about to let out a nervous sigh when a tremendous shock shook the entire corvette. The ceiling distorted as if a gigantic object had fallen on it and the young man could see some of the exposed structural beams bend in protest.

A small scream that quickly turned into a curse escaped from his mouth as he reflexively jumped on the ground to avoid being crushed, half expecting the ceiling to cave in any time now.

But instead of a collapse, everything fell silent again.

Flynn got back on his feet and started to frantically search for a weapon. He had left his personal plasma carbine on the Starfall, an oversight he now bitterly regretted because other than one of the dead Regulators' power-hammer he had kept around to use as a vulgar weight to stabilize his shoddy transceiver, there were no weapon readily available. The young lieutenant let out a frustrated “Dammit” as he realized he would be forced to defend himself with a weapon he'd have trouble to even lift. He contemplated using something else from the Regulators’ equipment he had stashed in one of the cargo bay storage compartments but quickly concluded it would not be of much use. The other options were the combat knife or laser pistol of the dead soldiers but the young man highly doubted those small weapons could accomplish much against the thing outside since it was apparently able to tackle a frigging corvette!

Flynn cursed at what had been a series of incredibly bad luck for the last two days.

Yes, power-hammers were incredibly potent weapons when wielded by the appropriate fighter. However, they were heavy and unwieldy for a regular soldier such as him, and it was without even mentioning that he also lacked the proper melee combat training a Regulator assault trooper had received.

Sure, Flynn probably boasted a strength about twice that of a normal man his build because of his basic implants and the fact that his lymphites kept his body in top physical shape at all times, but it was nothing compared to a heavily augmented and trained soldier geared in full Stygian Predator combat armor. Those guys could probably punch right through the hull of a small ship if they wanted to.

Flynn continued to chain blasphemy and vulgarity, exploring the full length of his known repertoire as he lifted the heavy hammer to throw it on his shoulder. It was the only way he could carry it with ease. The fact that it was designed as a one-handed weapon for the Regulators but that he had to use both hands and a shoulder to manipulate it was a testament to the might of the Imperial elite infantry.

It was only after Flynn was done reciting all the profanities and curses he could think of that he realized it had been eerily silent for about a minute. He shut his mouth and even reduced his respiration, keeping his ears on alert.

Maybe if I remain quiet and silent, the thing outside will simply leave? wished the young man. What is it to begin with?

As he was pondering in silence about which kind of monstrosity could mess up a corvette this much, even if it was already damaged, he suddenly lost all of his bearings.

An enraged shriek boomed all around, accompanied by a loud 'bang!' and the sound of metal tearing apart. The corvette was sent flying and the poor young man was tossed on all sides against walls, floor, and ceiling.