Looking up, I remember seeing the blanket of space. It's a dark sheet, an empty cover that is sprinkled with endless stars that twinkle somberly in the night. I could see the different colors. Some shone blue, others a color of red, but most a distant yellow faded by the thousands, perhaps millions of light years that stand between my eyes and the fiery balls of gas. I used to spend hours just staring up into the heavens and trying to name them all, give them a story. My fathers once told me that some stars were just lonesome creatures that just burned endlessly until they died, but some stars don't just create light, they crafted life. They burned for a purpose and they great mass altered the gravity of time and space, drawing matter into their orbit and eventually planets were formed. It was these planets I gave names too, these planets constructed my stories and I dreamt of aliens species that would rise from my stories, face conflicts, and become victorious. I envision a galaxy outside of my own, a faraway place I couldn't touch or ever see.
I just never thought I would actually go there.
"Alert! Alert!" Bright red letters screamed across the screen of my cockpit in my native language. I knew what had already happened before the A.I. system turned on and the familiar voice of Sylvia's robotic tone told me; I was caught in the powerful grip of the gravity of a super massive black hole. It couldn't be helped. I had to draw off the enemies; I had to save my soldiers, my men. Our mother ship had been surrounded and I knew what they were after. As soon as they saw the sleek black metal of my one person space fighter, they stopped firing on Valismar and came after me. Three hundred small grey blurs started to race after me. Rays of light flashed around me as they fired their guns. I evaded them easily but if I turned around and tried to fight them head on, it would be a different story. My instincts were to either fight or flight and right now they were blaring run, run, run. So I did.
Until I saw it.
In truth, I didn't see it at all. Black holes are just darkness in the black of space. You can't see the hole, the tunnel, but you can see the light trapped in its palms, trying to escape and eventually it's devoured along with particles of floating space or whatever else it ensnares.
I knew this was it; it was now or never.
I lead them across the dark field of glitter; they were so occupied with trying to kill me that they never saw it. I kicked my busters on, the glowing consol in front of me read signs of the mass gravity and the diminishing fuel that was be absorbed by my jet's core but I ignored it. I raced across the flat surface of matter that was being sucked it, pulled one hell of U-turn, and fired every single missile I had. Explosions scattered across the black and within a blink of an eye, it was dragged into the spinning tunnel of the event horizon. The rest of the ships panicked, trying to slow down to stop from colliding with flying metal and sheets of glass. Bad move. As soon as they stop their thrusters, the black hole grabbed them and ate them. I figured that was it, I used the controls to turn my ship and watched the screen as all of the evidence of a perfect battle was consumed into the black, but at the last second I saw it; a single grey ship. But by the time I could react it was too late. I saw the bright flash of its guns fire. Life became slow motion, the space around me slugged, and my life flashed before my eyes.
It hit hard. I shook so violently in my cockpit that I hit my helmet on the consol and cracked it. Blood dripped down the inside of the glass and I could barely see the report reading across my screen. They destroyed my thrusters and the inside of fuel chamber was shot. I couldn't wipe away the blood because it was on the inside of my suit but I already knew that my fighter was done and there was no way I could escape. When I scanned the screen the dull jet was gone. Whether it was sucked in or had escaped, I'll never know.
Even inside the protective area of the cockpit I could feel the ship shift with the gravity. It was like it was on autopilot on a cruising speed but it wouldn't last long. I tried the controls; accessing override systems, backup drives but the entire electronic chips were fried and it barely responded to my touch.
"Fuck you!" I screamed through my suit. Years of training, fighting, building, and creating for nothing. I poured my life into technological advances, military assignments, and for the safety of a planet that wasn't even my home. And now, I would die from a piss poor fighter pilot and a space time anomaly.
My vessel began to speed up, I could feel the pressure building on top of me, and the red lettering poured over me, flashing again and again and again. I couldn't do anything. I stared down at the blood in my helmet; it glowed with the words over and over and over. This is some kind of horrible movie, I decided as sweat trickled down my brow.
"Someone is trying to hail you, Commander," Sylvia said distorted and shot.
"Put them on," I looked up the monitor. I could barely look up; the force of the black hole was tightening its hold and pulled me faster and faster into the center, into the darkness.
A Pularigan appeared on the monitor; an alien amphibian with slick blue skin and bright red tattoos. His big round eyes looked at me and glistened. "You're heading into a black hole," his distinct accent rang in my ears. He always sounded so formal, spoke with such command. I never really liked serving under him; he never really liked me but I respected him enough and I think eventually he felt the same way about me.
"Tell me something I don't know," I told him. "I don't have much power left." The screen went black for a second, static and white noise claimed the monitor but luckily, he cut through in the scatter.
"We…will...come…for…you," the image was distorted and suddenly the glass piece cracked right down the middle.
"NO!" A wave of fear rushed through my body. I wouldn't allow it; I couldn't put all of my men in danger. Their ships didn't have the power or the technology to come for me. "Do not come for me. DO YOU HEAR ME, ZERK! DO NOT COME FOR ME!" All the power in my ship failed and it went black. It was just me and the darkness.
I sat back in my chair, my eyes locked on the event horizon, the point of no return. Beams of light swirled down it in a brilliant of colors of shades, particles of matter were stretched out across long distances as it was pulled over the fabric of space and time. The metal of my fighter began to creak and bend. The whole thing was beginning it's descend. The gravity was pulling it apart as cracks breached open on the cockpit glass and I could feel the pressure, it weighed down on me like a thousand suns and oddly, it was hot. So hot.
I was being pulled; my feet stretching out beneath me. My blood vessels pressed out in my arms and legs and my head pounded so hard that the screeching around me was suddenly muffled. I could barely concentrate, my eye sight was lost in blurs of luminosities of another world, and my thoughts were of the knocking pain in the backdoor of my mind. The super massive black hole was so close the radiation flew through my body and its gravity reached out and grabbed the hands to my soul pulling it inch by inch out of me. I fought to get it back but I couldn't even hold out my hand; the pressure rained down on me and kept me balled up to myself. I thought that perhaps I was spinning and the entire universe seemed to slip from my grasp, light strains running over me and into nothingness.
The last thing I remember was the revolving core of flames, the whirling tunnel of doom, the center of destroyed particles, the event horizon, and then darkness.
DISCLAIMER! I do not own not one single thing on here. All Mass Effect characters, ideas, and scripts are property of BioWare. I do not take credit for anything. Thank you.
If you're confused, it's okay. But please refrain from leaving me questions in my reviews. All things will eventually be answered through the story. This is just the beginning to what I hope will bloom into something beautiful. If not, then it's given me a lot of practice at writing. Please leave me reviews if you liked this. If you didn't, leave me one anyway and tell me why. I'm always looking for improvement.