Chapter 2
No Shelter from the Storms of Life
Lily
"Although the intergalactic government, the IMPERIUM, strictly forbids the abduction of Unregistered Species from their natural environment, unscrupulous smugglers still commit this crude, barbaric act."
Statement from a Commander of the Intergalactic Legion’s Cosmic Observation and Response Division, a military umbrella organization under the IMPERIUM.
Two universal chrono-years earlier (approximately 2.5 Earth years)
Lily’s world shattered in that instant.
The ship carrying her was moving at unstoppable speed toward an unknown destination.
The alien who had torn her from her homeworld, Earth, lay collapsed on the cold metal floor, cooling in its own blood.
Lily had managed to break free of the makeshift restraints the smuggler had used on her, but the console’s shrill warnings in an alien language were an impossible puzzle.
She sucked in a long breath. Then another. Anything to fight the nausea rising with the stench of the creature’s remains. Panic clamped around her throat in an invisible, merciless grip. She needed a solution, fast, yet her mind refused to cooperate.
Like a grotesque theater reel, the events of the last hours kept looping behind her eyes.
She had been walking home when an amorphous, greenish-gray alien with stalked eyes snatched her.
At first she thought she was lying on some kind of ritual altar. Then she realized she was strapped to a surgical platform.
The nearly ten-foot-tall creature examined her with an array of tools resembling scanners and lights.
None were invasive or painful, yet the horror of it pinned her in place.
She stared at the ceiling’s reflective surface and watched her own terrified green-brown eyes, her bloodless skin, her brown hair splayed beneath her, while the alien’s grotesque form moved above her.
When the creature finally left, Lily acted.
She twisted, rubbed, and yanked at the synthetic restraints until one fastening gave way.
Guided by instinct, she freed all her limbs, then folded the restraints back into place to make it look as though nothing had happened.
Every second felt like torture, but she knew stepping off the platform would give her away.
The next minutes were the longest of her life.
When the door slid open with a soft hiss, Lily went completely still, bracing for the inevitable fight. The alien approached with measured steps and lifted a tool from the tray: a scalpel-like blade that caught the light in a cold, predatory glint.
Even then, Lily did not move.
The creature’s thin, mottled arm descended toward her skin, casting a warped shadow under the overhead lights. When the blade was about to touch her, Lily tore her hand free, burst upright, and grabbed the most lethal-looking instrument within reach.
The device, perhaps a bone cutter, connected with the alien’s head with a sickening crunch. Thick black blood exploded outward.
The creature collapsed. It tried to crawl away, panic twisting its crumbling voice into gurgling screams.
Another blow.
The floor around them turned black with blood.
Another blow.
The liquid began draining through the grate surrounding the platform.
Another blow.
The alien fell silent.
Lily did not trust chance. She kept striking the greenish-gray mass until it broke apart beneath her hands. Who knew how fast these things could regenerate? She only stopped when the once-towering creature had been reduced to a sludge-like heap of blackened pulp.
She stumbled back, careful not to let the blood touch her more than it already had. The weapon remained clenched in her fist, fingers white around the handle.
No other alien appeared. No one came to help the smuggler, despite its final, panicked commands to the ship. Maybe she had a chance. Maybe she could get home.
That was when the ship’s warning lights began flashing red, and the speakers emitted a rhythmic, mechanical alarm.
Lily had no idea what it meant, but nothing about it felt promising.
The scanners around the room reactivated, turning blinding white lights toward her until they erased everything from her vision.
Lily fainted.
When she woke, she was still on the floor, as if nothing had changed.
Yet something had.
The unintelligible noise from before now flowed into clear, melodic speech in her native language.
"Configuration of Herion-6 class cruiser has been completed. Awaiting identification of the only sapient lifeform onboard in order to assign administrative authority."
The red lights continued pulsing. Lily pushed herself to her elbows, then her knees, expecting dizziness or pain. None came.
"Configuration of Herion-6 class cruiser has been completed. Awaiting identification of the only sapient lifeform onboard in order to assign administrative authority."
The ship repeated the message again and again, leaving brief pauses between each cycle. Lily squinted through the flashing lights, trying to force meaning from the madness. But between the alarm and the voice, concentration was impossible.
She needed silence.
"Herion Six!"
The repeating message cut off at once, replaced by a new prompt.
"Beginning identification of new administrator. Please state your name for database entry."
"Lily… Bergman. Wait. Just Lily."
"Administrator Lily, the previous administrator’s life signs have ceased. According to IMPERIUM protocol, the next sapient lifeform detected is automatically designated as the new administrator. Local language encoding required preliminary scanning. Thank you for your cooperation."
The red lights shut off, and the door that had been an impenetrable barrier slid open without a sound.
Lily moved toward the exit slowly, the bloodied weapon still in her grip.
"Herion Six, is there anyone else alive onboard?"
"Negative. Standard sanitization procedures have been completed. All sub-sapient lifeforms have been removed."
Lily still did not believe she was safe. She pressed her back to the wall and peeked through the doorway.
Nothing moved.
She repeated the question and received the same answer.
No one else.
She slipped into the hallway. The next open door revealed only a storage room. She continued forward, realizing as she went that every interior door had opened during the ship’s reconfiguration. Nothing barred her path.
The ship itself was not large, but its towering ceilings and cathedral-like architecture made it feel vast. The walls curved inward above her head, the surfaces resembling marble threaded with metallic veins.
Lights in the ceiling mimicked stars so perfectly she felt as though she were walking under a night sky.
Side lighting created the illusion of gentle waves, though everything around her was perfectly still.
Every surface, every tool, every piece of furniture radiated harmony, as though crafted not for function but for an aesthetic higher than anything human ships ever aimed for.
The effect was undeniable, and under different circumstances Lily would have gladly spent hours studying every detail of the ship. But the sense of danger never fully left her, and she still had a job to do.
After a short exploration, Lily returned to the gruesome room where she had nearly been dissected.
She stayed outside the threshold.
No need to step closer than necessary.
"Herion Six, why do I understand you now?"
"My systems contain an automatic translation algorithm. Administrator Lily’s language was not in the database, so a preliminary scan was required for calibration."
"What commands can I give you?"
"The full command registry requires ten standard chrono-cycle days to recite. Please refine your query."
Lily groaned, frustration rising now that the adrenaline was ebbing.
"Can you tell me where I am? And can you take me back to where I was taken from?"
"Current location is uncharted star system fifty-six eighty-seven twenty-five B. Second request: negative."
"Why not? What is stopping you?"
"Administrator KHR issued a complete data purge of all navigational coordinates before life signs terminated."
The bone cutter slipped from Lily’s fingers and clattered across the floor.
"You are telling me his final act was making sure I could never go home?"
The ship fell silent.
Then the voice returned, steady as ever.
"A full memory purge occurred. All navigational data and related systems were erased, except for the previous administrator’s codename.
It is probable this was done to protect sensitive personal information.
However, my factory-programmed psychological and practical support systems are optimized to assist members of Unregistered Species during forced relocation and galactic acclimatization. "
She had been kidnapped. She had fought for her life. By some miracle she had taken command of a starship.
And the only solution this monumental piece of interstellar engineering had to offer her was therapy.
Yes.
Lily’s world shattered.
Irrevocably.