Literary magazine
Leaving the engine room as quickly possible, Corvax
tucked himself into a corner and examined the digital
map glaring in the corner of his helmet. Despite being
closer to safety than he thought he would be, there was
still lots of ground to cover, and judging by the sounds
of voices he guessed he would have to get past a lot of
S ILENCE . C RUSHING , OMNIPRESENT SILENCE BRO- ken only by the clang of tung steel greaves on the starship’s dark floor and the clink of loose bolts colliding on the walls. Corvax Calgar swung into
people. Caught up in his thinking, Corvax almost didn’t
notice the sounds of soldiers proceeding down the cor-
ridor, checking every room in turn. Realising he was
stuck, Corvax glanced around the room and caught
the next empty corridor, pulse rifle raised and ready to
sight of a loose roof panel that must be an entrance to
fire, but it was just as much a tomb as all the others
the air pipes. Grabbing hold of the open hole, he
encountered on his journey from his personal vessel;
heaved his way up just as the door collapsed and the
the ‘Void Falcon’. Having received word of this gamma
soldiers burst in. The armed man surveyed the room
level cruiser’s destruction before any of the other loot-
with his helmet torch before turning around and report-
ers on Dentaphon, Corvax knew that to arrive first was
ing the all clear. Grinning, Corvax started crawling
to gain privileged access to the rarest items. Despite
through the ventilation shaft. Now he just had to evade
the reassuring lack of habitation as of yet, he was still
over one hundred of the best trained police this galaxy
cautious. There was no sign of why the vessel had
has ever seen and escape back
to
Dentaphon:
scuppered or the crew; not even a corpse had filled the
nothing too difficult.
emptiness of this space-borne sepulchre.
-Eli Hughes, Year 9
Pushing on through the darkness, Corvax searched
each room of bunks until he stepped into the faint blue
glow of the plasma core and felt the familiar tinny smell
in his mouth from the ionized gases escaping their
safety cages. This plasma drive was definitely busted;
leaving Corvax thanking whoever had the foresight to
make his surveyor armour radioactively sealed. Striding
toward the control panel, he unclipped his multi-
headed omni-tool and snapped off the front panel
of the metal box. Corvax leant down to ex-
amine the insides and smiled like a child on
Christmas morning. An undamaged thermo-
baric regulator! These could sell for thou-
sands if you knew the right people, now he
just needed to get off this ship and make it to
the planet. Just then the silence was shat-
tered by the treading of armoured feet and
the barks of officers commanding their troops
landing on the ship. Corvax had no illusions about
what this meant: the whole ship was just a trap to
lure scavengers in so the Galactic Arbiters could
catch them like rats.
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