Lukas Halsec was in the Atrium when it happened, being bugged by the little girl with pink hair and a big mouth. One moment he was being annoyed as he attempted to work on the grid comlink interface, the next the ground was shaking. Then the sky exploded.
Beyond the thick golden stenechoglass of the Atrium dome, The Star City Warp Gate had glittered like a ring, a shimmering loop of indestructable metal, slowly rotating in the vacuum. A marvel of ancient times, Warp Gates were the sole link between the thirteen systems, providing the foundation of the Star Alliance.
They were NOT supposed to explode.
Yet that was what it was doing, in a spectacular bloom of flame. Parts of its ten-foot thick ultrasteel hull were bending, breaking, and shattering fragments into space. Bursts of light littered its surface, shining blue from the liquid hydroneum gas that was highly flammable and currently flaming.
Piya, naturally, went nuts. �What the heck oh my goddess we�re all going to die what�s going on?!� she screamed, hopping up and down and pointing at the Warp Gate for the zero people that were watching her.
Lukas had no idea why this was happening, but he knew what was happening. Somehow, the hydroneum that circuited throughout the Warp Gate had been exposed to flame. There were hundreds of preventive systems in the Gate to make sure that never happened, and apparently they had all just failed.
With one final blinding flash, the entire Gate gave way to a expanding ball of fire, eating up the tiny starshuttles it encountered as it swooped outward and, my, isn�t that coming at us rather fast?
�Whatdowedowhatdowedowhatdowedo?!�
Lukas racked his brain for an answer, but could only come up with one. �The Warp Drive. It�s our only means of staying alive. We have to activated it.�
�You mean make it make us go poof outa here and pop otherwhere? But we don�t know where we�ll go pop!�
Okay, that sentence made no sense. Ignoring her, Lukas sprinted in the direction of the Warp Engine Room, praying to the deities he didn�t believe in that he made it in time.
Piya tailed along after him. �Lukas! How do you turn on the Warb Driver?�
�We tell the computer to activate the Warp Drive, and type in the access code!�
�What�s the access code?!�
�I don�t know!�
�Well how do we find out?!�
�I hope it�ll be written on the underside of the control panel! They usually do that!�
�Okay!� And suddenly she was off, racing down the hall and outdistancing him in seconds. Jeez, she was fast. In moments she was around a corner and out of sight. He prayed again, this time that the idiot didn�t screw something up before he could get there.
In a minute or so, he made it to the room. Whoever had decided to make the ship this big had been a complete moron. As he ran in, he saw that Piya had already typed in the codes and the drive was powering up. He made it to her side just as she was about to press a blue button� holy f- �NO! Don�t touch that!�
Piya paused with her finger millimeters from the ship-destruct button. �Huh?�
�This one!� That said, he pressed the red Warp button.
And all hell broke loose.