“If an aircraft is still in one piece, don’t cheat on it; ride the bastard down.”

Ernest K. Gann

From the storm’s perspective, everything is calm.

Captain Monique McDowell’s own personal experience of this euphemism proved to be decidedly in the ulterior as she fought to stay upright, despite the more enthusiastic attempts by the confounding crosswind that tore across the deck of the landing pad and did its damnedest to rip her like a paper doll from its fastness.

“This way Captain!” Director Delain hollered above the howl of the storm as she too bent like a crone against the sheer force of the gale and indicated to a long gantry way that led from the pad towards the towering superstructure of the Rig – proper.

All around the industrial mastery of the gargantuan oceanic – processing facility dominated, looming high over the tiny struggling figures with serried plateaus of platforms and accessways, served by a forest of stairwells, ladders and turbolifts that all ascended a vertical mountain – range of pipework, inlets, outlet valves, condensers, heat sinks, transformers and storage tanks, a technological mesa of scope and complexity.

Squinting against the sting of the driving rain and half – blinded by the profusion of exterior lighting that cast dim pools of illumination over some parts of the superstructure whist leaving others murky and indistinct in the loaming gloom, Monique was able to discern the destination that the Genodyne executive was indicating towards and in turn she tapped Lieutenant Søgaard on her shoulder as the Security Chief locked down the hatch to the type-10 shuttle.

Nat turned and Monique gestured frantically against the effects of the storm and indicated the direction they must take.

With great care, the trio crossed to the relative safety of the gantry and followed suit when Director Delaine anchored herself with a safety line to a trackway embedded in the rail and thus were afforded a slightly more assured measure of survival.

Looking down through the mesh of the grillwork beneath their feet to the thunderous crash of ocean as the planet’s endless waves tore against the impenetrable bulk of the platform, Monique wondered if the level of safety really extended beyond the hypothetical or even illusionary.

Presently they came to the end of the gantry and entered the relative calm of an overhanging porchway that led to a heavy, industrialized hatch emblazoned in garish orange with the Genodyne logo stenciled on its armored facia and studded with various safety and hazard instructions.

When she attempted to access the security panel, Director Delain was dismayed to find that it was inoperable.

“The security net is down!” Jenna called out over the eddies of wind and the lash of rain.

“Here, let me take a look!” Nat Søgaard nodded and replaced the Director at the panel. The Security Chief, well versed in the complexity of security access systems and protocols, took out her tricorder and began to run a diagnostic as the visitors huddled in the lee of the entryway.

“There’s significant power disruptions to the EPS distribution network!” Søgaard concluded after a few minutes. “The whole grid is a mess, that’s for sure, I think I may be able to re-route a feed from a nearby secondary system…..wait…..there!”

With evident relief, the trio passed in through the opening external door and into the interior of the rig itself, leaving the protestations of the storm behind.

The comparative silence inside, after the scouring fury of the winds outside, made the narrow space seem cacophonous and disorientating as their ears adjusted to the sudden change of environment.

The interior lighting state of the long, industrialized corridor was malfunctioning – casting an intermittent pattern of lighting that was more reminiscent of the punctuation of lightning flashes that illuminated the rig outside.

“This is all wrong.” The Director worried aloud as she removed the water – sodden hood of her rain – slicker. “Normally the background noise of the industrial processes of the rig would make this a mandatory zone for hearing protection.”

Apart from the muffled roar of the storm raging outside, the only sound in the darkness of the interior was the wounded crackling hum of EPS power thrumming behind the walls and the distant drip, drip, dripping of water leaking from somewhere up ahead.

Captain McDowell took out her own tricorder.

“Scanning for lifeforms.” The CO of the USS Astute reported levelly as she shook the wetness from her afro – hair, which spattered the scoured plasteen wall panels.

Her expression transformed from level to grave as she shook her head and commented.

“I’m not picking up any life signs.” Monique turned to Jenna and enquired. “How many people did you say there were aboard the rig, Director?”

Director Jenna Delain’s face looked troubled and pale in the distracting flicker of the lights.

“Rig ‘Dee – Three One’ is managed by Crew-chief Vernon Hadley and a team of four maintenance technicians.” The Director confirmed. “When not working on the platform’s systems, they are normally housed in the Administration and Accommodation Modules.”

“Which way is that?” Chief Søgaard persisted, her hand resting on the butt of her holstered phase – pistol. Entrusted to escort her CO when planetside, Nat was the only member of their party to be so armed.

“It’s only three decks down.” Delain explained and indicated to the malfunctioning lights that transformed the corridor into a nightmarish carnival sideshow. “With the uncertain state of power, I’d advise against taking the turbolift, there’s an emergency stairwell just up ahead and off to the left. I suggest we take that.”

“Agreed.” Monique acquiesced, ordering. “ Then that’s they way we are headed. Lieutenant, you have point.”

“Aye Captain.” Nat nodded her short blonde locks and, with tricorder held out in front of her scanning the way, the Security Chief led out, her lithe form wary but confident.

They made their way down the three decks to the level that the Director had directed them to.

That was when they encountered the first body.

A woman lay face down on the deck just inside the administration wing, the large, blackened hole in her back told them instantly that she was dead.

Instinctively Nat drew her sidearm and activated its inbuilt light, extending her arm and crossing it with the other that held the tricorder, so that she could still see it’s readout as she swept the space for signs of danger.

Director Delain took in a sharp hiss of breath and a let out a small cry of distress when she saw the corpse.

Monique knelt quickly by the side of the dead woman, confirming what the melted edges of polymer of the woman’s singlesuit told, as they mantled the terrible black chasm in the space between the shoulder – blades.

“She was killed by contact with a highly energetic – discharge.” The Captain used both the evidence from the sophisticated scanning device and that of her eyes to make her appraisal. “Patterning and burn – spatter is consistent with an explosive arc flash.” She gently turned the woman over and Jenna Delain made a wounded sound.

The woman, a pan-Asian somewhere in her mid – 30’s, had died with a look of abject horror frozen on her pale, bloodless face.

“Do you know this woman?” Monique asked Director Delain as she used her slim, brown fingers to gently close the woman’s eyes and lend her a more dignified cadence in death.

Momentarily unable to speak, Jenna nodded her head mutely as tears came to her eyes.

“Yes.” She managed in a strangled tone. “That’s Gloria Chan. She is….she was a Biothermal Technician, Second – class.”

Monique took off her own rain – slicked away team jacket and gently placed it over the head and shoulders of the body, enshrouding the awful wound that exited her chest and looked to her chief of security.

“Space is clear.” Nat reported shortly, still scanning the space ready and alert she began to move forward, to ensure that this state of affairs remained so.

“Director, I think I have to agree with you that something has gone seriously awry here.” Monique stood and proceeded to run a more detailed scan of the surrounding area. “Is this likely the result of an accident?”

Jenna looked around in the beginning of a state of shock.

“None of this makes sense?” Delain’s voice carried her sense of trepidation clearly. “This rig carries and 100% safety and efficiency rating. Telemetric’s received didn’t indicate any issues at all, even when we set out to come here.”

Monique pursed her lips in a thin line.

“Then what happened here happened quickly and recently?”

“Within the last few hours at least!” The Genodyne executive agreed, unable to take her gaze away from the body of Gloria Chan.

McDowell studied the readout on her tricorder.

“Well, EPS power is spiking wildly throughout. Its intermittent here, but the effect grows exponentially worse as it tracks down throughout the facility. What is this area here?” She turned the device toward Delain.

“That’s the power core in Main Engineering.” Delain confirmed.

“Then it’s logical that…”

“Captain.” Came Nat’s unhurried voice over the comm channel. “I’m in the accommodation block. There are two more deceased here, both males. Cause of death seems to be the same MOA – subject to a localised mass – energy discharge. There seems to be signs of a struggle. One of them was armed, not that it appeared to do him any good.”

Monique cursed to herself as Director Delain’s face went even more pale.

“Understood Nat. Head on a swivel. Rendezvous with us back at the stairwell, were going to head down to main engineering.”

“Copy that Ma’am, on my way back to you.”

Captain McDowell fervently wished that she had had the foresight to arm herself, but the mission to the planet’s surface was one of peace and diplomacy and the original threat evaluation had been minimal. That assessment obviously looked as if it required revision.

“One death might have been attributable to a workplace accident, but three is beyond coincidence.” Monique confirmed with all seriousness. “Director, we are going to proceed in the hopes of finding survivors, but I will need you to stay behind me and do exactly as I say, as we proceed, is that clear?”

Jenna nodded quickly and replied.

“Yes Captain.”

Nat rejoined them and together they descended lower into the rig, with the reassuringly capable presence of the security officer leading the way.

They encountered no more bodies on their trek downwards, but the signs of malfunction and damage became more obvious and frequent during the descent. The spattered whorls of carbonization, white on black, that told of lethal arc – flash discharges, damaged maintenance access panels disgorged blackened duct – work and cabling like the scorched entrails of some mortally wounded beast.

Step after tentative step, as the party neared the engineering levels, there was a palpable fission of static electricity building up in the air, a crackling – spectre that made the hairs on their necks literally rise and when Monique’s hand connected to the balustrade, a sharp pop of static made her swiftly draw back her stinging digits.

She peered at her tricorder in the near darkness of the humming stairwell, her keen brown eyes not liking what the readout was telling her.

Normally the AC – Line transfer of an EPS conduit handled energy in distinct phases. The voltage in each phase varied sinusoidally with a period of 1/60 second, and each of the phases were separated from the others by 120 degrees. Thus, the conductors in the system were designed with phase separation wholly in mind.

The tricorder told her that the period of voltage phases was fluctuating wildly – the safety of the phase – separation was equally off kilter.

Monique frowned.

“That’s damned irregular!” The CO spoke aloud in the closeness of the stairwell, her voice echoing upward.

“Ma’am?” Søgaard paused at the landing where they were to gather before entering engineering module.

“Well, maybe the chaos in the EPS energy – corridor is disrupting my tricorder, but I’m reading distinct wavelength fluctuations that indicate variations and intermittent spikes of interphasic – energy.”

Nat stopped and consulted her own tricorder.

“Interphasic? That makes no sense?” The Security Chief echoed, as she peered at her own instrument.

“Well, if your tricorder is malfunctioning, then mine is too!” Nat turned her device around, to demonstrate the correlation.

“Everything is adding up to make no damned sense at all!” Monique commented then indicated the hatchway. “We proceed with extreme caution and if there’s clear and present danger we withdraw, agreed?”

“Aye Captain.” The Lieutenant nodded and raised her sidearm once again.

“Agreed.” Jenna parroted from the relative safety from behind the Captain.

Monique nodded grimly and gripped the handle to the hatch and drew back the heavy door to step into the engineering space of the rig.

And came face – to – face with an Angel.

Blinding light streamed out from the engineering space, an eviscerating brilliant incandescence that made Monique and her party raise their arms to instinctually shield their eyes from the overwhelming glare.

As their eyes gradually adjusted to the painful detonation of light that left lurid blots on the back of their retinae, the spectacle that welcomed them was truly astonishing as it was outlandish.

There before the main reactor core a humanoid figure,  wreathed in brilliant bluish – light, seemed to hang in the air suspended several feet above the deck plates of the compartment. Long, lurid tendrils of piercing crackling energy seemed to flow from the creature like wings made of pure lightning, as the figure seemed to commune with the pure, terrible energy of the core. Whether the energy of this fantastical being flowed from within to the core, or whether this scion of light was draining power from the core, vampire – like, was entirely unclear.

What was clear was that the being was aware of their presence, as it slowly turned its featureless face to regard them.

A searing bolt of superheated plasma made the air between them sizzle as the supersonic shockwave it rode upon flashed over the short distance in an instant.

The heavy engineering hatch was torn from its hinges as it’s housing was slagged to molten metal, taking the brunt of 24,000,000-watts discharged in a matter of milliseconds. The violent concussion that followed near – instantaneously in its wake served to pick up Monique and her companions and hurl them painfully into the heavy stairs behind.

Profoundly deafened and dazed by the devastating high – energy event and confused by sheer violence of the experience, Monique lost all sense of space and time and was dimly aware of someone gripping her by the collar and physically hauling her upwards.

She had disjointed and disorientating impressions of her legs moving unsteadily underneath her as she stumbled on unseen steps, a nightmarish kaleidoscope of conflicting sensations and recollections that seemed to be tied to some other person, some other sense of self that she was dimly aware of but felt spectator to.

Nat’s face, soot streaked and urgent, close to her own. Yelling something plaintively to her that her buzzing ears could not hear.

It could have been “Run”.

Director Delain, ghost-like and terrified in the staccato madness of failing lighting, looking otherwise unhurt, but frozen in her memory as another massive discharge of Arc – blast was felt rather than heard. The colossal punch of superheated air from behind and below turning her vision into Hiroshima scarecrows.

The dizzying flight gave way to another tremendous detonation of light, but this time from above and Monique was surprised by the sensation of rain on her face until she gathered her wits sufficiently to register that, somehow, miraculously, she was back up on the deck of the landing pad, the reassuring bulk of the shuttle against her shoulder as Nat opened the hatch and was in the process of bundling the Director inside.

Breathing heavily from exertions she could only half remember, Monique began to register the salt – tang carried on the air by the howling gale that tore across the deck and though that she could smell the acrid stench of burnt hair. She thought it might be her own.

As her hearing gradually began to return, she could hear Nat shouting to her above the din of the storm.

“..aptain! We need to evac NOW!”

Monique frowned as Natalie Søgaard’s handsome Danish features seemed to light up with a pale blue glow that did not match the tear and crash of the cruel lightning overhead. She saw Nat’s eyes go wide as the bioluminescent effect seemed only to grow in intensity.

She groggily turned to register the unholy sight of the strange being of light rise out of the surface of the deck, like some infernal flame from the depths of the abyss, its painfully bright body seeming to pass upwards through the deck as the humanoid figure came to a hovering rest a few feet above the surface of the deck, seemingly wholly unconcerned and unheeding of the clamoring storm clouds or shrieking wind.

Monique looked helpless and transfixed, and the shimmering titan raised its hand towards her and the very air around her began to thrum with potential energy.

“CAPTAIN!”

Then a blur before her and Nat threw herself between her commander and the crackling discharge from the lightning – being. The force of the blast throwing the security officer back into Monique and the pair of them tumbled to the deck.

From her painful perspective on the rain – slicked deck, Monique struggled to see the dim-lit interior of the “Sounion” and a terrified Director Delain wrestling with the controls, desperately trying to bring the shuttle to life.

The mortifying image of the unearthly creature hanging in the air whilst all around the vengeful tempest raged, was sufficient motivation for Monique to find the last vestige of strength to heft the incumbent and unconscious bulk of Natalie from her own body and she somehow managed to drag the Security Chief up the slippery gangway at the rear of the shuttle and into the scant safety of its interior.

“PUNCH IT!” She thought she felt herself screaming.

A patchwork of conflicting impressions struggled for her attention, as she felt the floor lurched sickeningly and she wrestled to maintain her weak grip on the dead weight of the Lieutenant. The rain scoured deck of the landing pad outside seemed to yaw and slide away beneath her, the hatch to the type-10 closing slowly (too slowly!) as the tiny craft struggled to lift into the turbulent air.

She could see the nightmarish figure as it remained suspended in the air above the platform of the rig, its shimmering head turning to track the fleeing craft and its beleaguered occupants. The perspective slewing wildly as Jenna gunned the impulse engines, frantically trying to gain altitude and distance themselves from the destruction below.

The hatch itself was only halfway closed as they lifted into the raucous air and Monique began to entertain the notion that they were going to make it when the being of light, hundreds of meters below and to their aft, raised its arm again and called forth the terrible focus of the storm.

A jarring detonation of light slammed into the starboard impulse engine, tearing it from its housing and slamming both Monique and the unconscious Nat into the roof of the tiny cabin and the view forward canted perilously as the wounded shuttle instantly lost altitude and plunged spiraling downwards from the raging heavens.

Into the cold embrace of the uncaring sea.