Jettison

A shriek pierced the air awakening her. Despite her many years aboard the Orvlod, Emilia had never heard this sound. She’d responded to many battle stations claxons for skirmishes. Its constant middle-toned ping and flashing red lights were essentially a friend now. But this? This was new. She opened her eyes. Her quarter were hazy and dim, like the fog that rolled over the lake on a spring morning by her now distant home. She missed it and thought longingly of retirement, but…

A young voice jolted her back to the present. “Evacuate!” Leaping out of bed was her first mistake. “Fuck!” The bedside table must’ve unbolted in whatever chaos this was. Blood poured from her leg where the sharp metal edge of the table sliced into her.

That was the only sensory stimulation her body needed to send adrenaline coursing through her veins. No hesitation now. The red emergency lever clunked down with her swift pull. Milliseconds later, the room door whooshed open with pneumatic precision.

“Sir! We must evacuate,” stammered a cadet standing just outside the door . She couldn’t remember his name and couldn’t care. He was just an obstacle blocking her exit. “Then fucking evacuate already!” She hadn’t climbed to the position of lead engineer by observing pleasantries and titles, and they certainly didn’t matter now as she gasped to breathe. Why was the air so thin? Shoving past the cadet towards the escape pods, she splattered blood onto his tidy khakis and red tunic. Inky dark circles seeped into her field of view while she sprinted to the end of the hallway.

Emilia lunged into a vacant escape pod, relatively spacious and designed for three people, and slammed the eject button. The cadet reached out towards her as the pod door clamped shut. Only his severed hand in a pool of blood would make a successful escape today. Slowly standing tall, crisp oxygen rushed into her lungs. She kicked the hand aside. “Should’ve been faster, kid.”

This is the start of a story based on a playthrough of Vantage, an open-world, non-campaign adventure game.