Chapter One

The dark metal floor shook and there was a rumble from the engine room
further down the hall. Red stumbled over to the water stand and downed a bottle
of re-hydrated water. Damn, guarding the engine room is… not fun. She picked
up her quarterstaff from the staff room and ignored the angry remarks of the
other staff, who had apparently run out of coffee. She stepped back to her post
and threw on her thin plate armour, sighing as the heavy plastic weighed her
down. Chris, the other guard, shuffled away from her and “hid” behind his
shield.

While most people on board Salvation were either or Teian. Red was half
human.

There was another rumble from the engine room and Red started worrying, she
peeked inside and a look of surprise was painted across her face. The engine
was shaking and throwing things around the room, and she ducked just in time
to miss being decapitated by a passing screw and heard a shout of surprise as it
zoomed past Chris’s ear. On the other side of the room, a hole had been torn
straight through the wall to the hallway. Another screw stuck itself in the door
and Red ran and called security.

Salvation’s job was to deliver the famous scientist Kcrel Galis to Earth, where
he was going to ask the council to spare the galactic kingdom a small force of
soldiers.

Ten minutes later, at 0800, the ship’s engineers had fixed up the engine and
patched up the gash in the wall. The spaceship had been dead in space for about
one minute, which would have been enough time for something, or somebody,
to find a way in. The security had sent out ten patrols of two on the lower levels
and Red was paired up with a blue skinned guy from R&D who wore a pair of
glasses that were five times too big for him.

They trudged along the halls, going round and round the gut of the ship. Every
so often the R&D guy, who was apparently called Flipper, would try to start a
conversation, and be silenced by a glare from Red.

The attempt at guarding the ship from further damage was futile. Red knew,
from her home planet, that there were creatures that could shuffle little bits of
the infinity of reality around in such a way that they could become invisible, or
in-tangible. In fact, they could even make themselves bigger or smaller and
change what they looked like.
Red heard a loud shuffling coming from the room above the engine and she
peeked in. There was nothing there. Just as she was about to catch up to Flipper,
who was walking in his own clumsy way down the hall, she heard it again. She
peered in and to her disappointment there was... nothing there. She sighed and
sidled quietly into the room, making sure only to look at the spot of the
shuffling out of the corner of her eye. Sure enough, sitting and hugging what
passed for very wrinkly legs, was a thin, scary creature.

Red’s thoughts drifted to what little she knew of her childhood. Back to when
Kcrel Galis visited her father. Kcrel had been nice enough most of the time but
there was something disturbing about his experiments on innocent animals.

It looked like a humanoid so far as most of the body was concerned. It had a
crocodile shaped(but not coloured) head that wobbled from side to side slowly.
Minus the head and the extremely long claws it looked like a shrivelled old
crone in a loincloth and an old brown cloak. Red jumped in surprise and fright
and pointed her long spear at the monster, shaking slightly. I’m not scared, she
told herself, it's just that the bobbing is contagious. Flipper appeared in the
doorway, took one look at the creature, and fell backwards into the hallway,
only to have his face half-flattened by a passing electric scooter. Red placed an
organic containment cell on the ground and it grew and lengthened until it
surrounded the crocodile-lady, who was in fact a Crolne.

She called security to take the creature away. When they arrived, dressed in odd
furs and animal skins she warned them that there could be more lurking
somewhere. They bobbed their heads in agreement, suspiciously like the
Crolne. Medics carted Flipper away in a tray and Red sighed, the poor boy, he
didn't deserve this. Run over by scooters and stuck on a spaceship that was
possibly infested with monsters.

Red took a long-delayed rest in the comfortable paradise of her room. Dreams
flitted through her head, chased by unspeakably creepy nightmares. A
whirlwind of scattered thoughts sped around. She started dreaming of the times
when her father would take her down to see Kcrel’s experiments. There were
jars with pickled animal limbs, and a strange, mutated frog pinned to a wall and
having its innards examined by a tall figure. The figure turned around and there
was Kcrel, dressed in his long white lab coat and holding a pair of tweezers.

Kcrel would always joke that Red would be the next experiment. And it always,
always, send a shiver down her spine as she imagined floating a jar, slowly
pickling.

Red woke just before the rise of the artificial sun drenched in sweat.
She sighed and got ready for another new day onboard Salvation. There was
breakfast to be had, and guarding to be done. Too much stuff to do. What to do
first? Red thought. The voice screamed through the speakers on a ship-wide
channel and disrupted Red’s chain of thought, “in-ship battle stations! Now!
This is not a drill! I repeat, this is not a drill!” Red sped into the armoury,
shaken, and started suited up. In-ship battle meant there was something in the
ship, something like, or worse than, a Crolne.

Just as Red had almost finished strapping her helmet on she saw a blur in the
doorway that disappeared almost immediately. She went back to suiting up
when another blur sped past. She picked up her quarterstaff and swung it around
experimentally, hoping to hit something.

She didn't hit anything, but something hit her. A black shape barrelled into her
and something sharp poked up against her neck. The shape fell back when Red
struck it with her staff and it turned out to be a Crolne. It was big and black,
unlike the other one, with thick groupings of spikes running down the middle of
its back. This one had longer claws and its head was more humanoid and less
crocodile.

Red yelled for help and waited, poking the Crolne every so often to keep it
down.

A guy from security entered the room with a worried look on his face. He drew
a sword and advanced slowly towards the monster. Just as Red thought he
would strike it he turned to her and lunged. She flicked his sword aside with a
touch of her staff and dodged an uppercut punch. “Who are you?” she
exclaimed. The Security hissed and changed. Not changed clothes, changed
appearances. It shifted into a Crolne bigger than a human, with long fangs and
saliva dripping from its mouth. Other than that, it had a very human face. Its
eyes were long and snake-like and the clothes shredded to leave a loincloth
covering its lower half.

It grinned, or snarled in a way that passed for a grin, and stepped back. There
was a faint thudding noise and Red backed away into the corner, fear creeping
in. a troop of security came in, shifting into giant Crolne as they went. They
swarmed towards her. Red heard a scream and it wasn't until her vision went
black that she realized it was coming from her.

A thud lurched Red from sleep and she woke, drenched in sweat. The sun beat
down on her face and she groaned. There was another thud and a tree flew over
her head. Ahem, sorry. The tree did not fly over her head on wings of light and
ascend into the heavens or anything, the trunk of a just tree flew over Red’s
head as though somebody had thrown it like a javelin.

A simply dressed young human woman appeared at the edge of Red’s vision,
holding a wet cloth and a bucket. She laid the cloth and trickled some water
down Red’s parched throat. “Where?” Red croaked, “when?”. “Hush” the
woman said quietly and Red descended back into a fitful sleep.

When she woke again it was late afternoon and the sun was setting behind a tall
mountain range. Red pushed herself upright and she collapsed back down as her
hand started burning with white-hot pain. She lifted her hand and examined it. It
was swollen and covered with bandages. Red tugged them off and blanched.
Two large, tooth-shaped holes in it.

The strange woman appeared from behind a tree and made her way down a
rocky path towards Red.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Red shook her head and asked, “how?” gesturing towards her hand.

“That would be the Crolne bite.”