I woke up gasping heavily, eyes hazy and cloudy from the ice, my body numb from the freezing cold, and my mind foggy, as if I'd just awakened from an eternity of sleep.
Within seconds, my training kicked in, and I instinctively began to control my breathing, taking slow inhales and sharp exhales, as my eyes and mind gradually cleared up.
A beep sounded as I finally calmed down, and my senses and mind became sharp. The frosted covering of the cryopod slid sideways, opening the pod to the warm air outside in the chamber.
As the numbness of my body rapidly dissipated due to the warmth, I calmly stepped out of the pod, my feet touching the familiar cool metallic floor, and took in my surroundings.
I was in a small, warm chamber with sleek black metallic walls adorned with red highlights that ran across the walls to the high ceiling.
There was a dark door at the end of the room ahead of me, and lining the walls were four black and red cryopods, two on the left and two on the right, their red surfaces obscured by the frost generated by the pods.
"Looks like we survived," I said, sighing in relief as I stared at the pods, but then I frowned as I remembered we were not the only ones on the ship. "The rest of the pods might not have been so lucky. I have to check to make sure. If they aren't, then everything would've been for nothing."
My thoughts went back to what happened moments ago, and my frown deepened, my emotions stirring up, but I held them back, took a deep breath, and exhaled.
This wasn't the time to worry about the past. I had more important things to do. My nerves calm and my mind steady, I reached out with my mind to connect with the ship's computer system.
The red highlights in the room glowed, and the familiar guttural voice of the AI system sounded in the chamber in my head the moment I made the connection.
[Mindlink ID verified... Lord Khael Val' Thraesyn. How may I be of assistance?] it asked.
"Give me a damage report of the ship," I commanded in my head and lifted my body a few inches off the ground to hover, moving towards the door with my hands behind my back.
[Reporting... Thaleen-Class Transport Vessel Khomand has sustained considerable structural damage. Upper decks and bridge are destroyed and crashed.
Internal systems are at 70% capacity...
Hyper and sublight drives, as well as thrusters, are unoperational and damaged beyond repair...
Inertial compensators are unoperational and damaged beyond repair...
Primary power generators are unoperational and damaged beyond repair...
Secondary backup power generators are operational with no damage...
Cryopods are operational and undamaged.
Gravity generators are operational...
Air recyclers are oper...]
It went on and on as I reached the door, which opened with a hiss, and hovered out into a wide and long red and black hallway that branched into multiple other similar hallways.
[...Fuel reserves are intact and undamaged.
Damage report complete.] it finished reporting and went silent.
Nodding, I sorted out the information streamed into my mind and floated down a number of empty branching hallways until I reached a dark gate that separated where I was from another section of the ship.
Recognizing my presence, the gate slowly slid apart, hissing, as large amounts of icy gases ejected into the hallway, filling the place and my vision in white.
I waited patiently. The gate opened with a soft thud, and the gas thinned, fading into nothingness, revealing a dim room.
I moved into the room and immediately felt the chill that wrapped around my body. The gate began closing behind me, and my eyes roamed the place, taking every inch of it in.
It was a very large and wide room, more than half a kilometer long, with the same black and red walls and an abnormally high ceiling.
There were thousands of sleek black and red cryopods arrayed all over the room, from top to bottom, stacked in rows and columns.
The cryo gases that frosted the insides of the pods prevented me from seeing what was being kept in them. Nonetheless, I knew who were inside them, and a smile drew on my face as I confirmed they were all safe.
The pods held my comrades. My people. They were Sythari. They were the last surviving members of our race. All the people in this ship, including me, were the last of our kind...
As the realization of my situation finally set in, my heart burned, and the smile on my face fell.
The dam that held back the tide of my emotions broke down, and the walls of the chamber began to shake as a cold, icy river of rage coursed through my veins.
My eyes narrowed, and my fists clenched so hard the air around them cracked and popped, my fingernails digging through the fabric of my exosuit into the skin of my palms.
I felt a sharp sting as my nails bit into my skin, drawing blood that dripped from my fists onto the cold floor. The pain served to bring clarity to my mind, and immediately, I took a deep breath and exhaled sharply, calming myself down.
The room stopped trembling as my mind steadied, and I sighed, sadness welling up in my heart as memories of all the terrible things that had happened played in my mind.
My people, the Sythari, were engaged in a long, brutal war against the Ae'mar. They were an extragalactic race with a dominion stretching across countless galaxies, with technology immensely superior to anything we'd ever encountered.
We were stronger and much more powerful than them on the field, but they compensated with their advanced tech, and that allowed them to match and even surpass us in battle.
For most of the five-year war, the war was in our favour. Even when they incited our subject races to rebel and supplied them with advanced weapons, making us fight on two fronts with our supply lines and forces stretched thin, we kept on fighting.
We weren't winning, but we also weren't losing. We eventually adapted to the situation and came up with new things and ways to keep up the fight, and slowly but surely, the war was once again moving in our favour.
Unfortunately for us, the enemy finally realized how much of a threat we truly were and decided to stop being easy on us.
They brought out their weapons of mass destruction and weren't smiling anymore. We never realized just how powerful they really were until they started blasting our planets to pieces.
It was so fast, so sudden, so unimaginable that we didn't even have time to react. By the time we realized what was happening, all our colonies had been ground into space dust, millions and millions of Sythari lives lost.
They exterminated us so efficiently, so perfectly and without warning that before long, the only Sythari left were those on the homeworld—Sythar Prime.
And soon after, they came for us, and there wasn't anything we could do to stop them. We had lost, and lost completely. We had driven countless races to extinction in our quest for galactic dominance.
Now, the same was being done to us, and if we didn't act quickly, our species would end just like all those unfortunate races who crossed our path.
So, in haste, my comrades and I, being the best Sythari genetics could offer, with the highest potentials in Sythari history, were gathered up and placed in an old-model transport ship to be sent to the furthest unexplored reaches of the galaxy.
Our mission: to hide and rebuild the Sythari civilization and preserve our species from extinction.
To make sure this happened, the remaining Sythari didn't run away and stayed behind to fight and perish together with our planet, in the hopes of masking our last-minute escape.
It almost didn't work, as before the ship fully jumped into hyperspace, the shockwave of the exploding Sythar slammed into it and sent it rolling in the higher-dimensional pathway.
The impact damaged the ship's hyperdrive, forcing it to eject out of hyperspace too early. The ship came out in a neighbouring solar system, spinning out of control and heading towards the red dwarf at breakneck speeds.
I didn't know if it was because of the shockwave or by something else entirely, but I was still awake in the cryopod, and all I could feel was despair as I watched us inching towards the star.
I remembered screaming in protest, trying to connect my mind to the ship in order to take control of it and stop its descent into doom, but it didn't work.
The ship kept on spinning and spinning towards the sun, and my despair subsequently kept on growing until something extraordinary happened.
It was as if a lock in my head broke apart and something clicked at some obscure corner of my mind. All my despair vanished, and immediately, as the ship was about to reach the edge of the sun, all I could see was a red emptiness, and the next second I passed out.
The last thought I had before I blacked out was the thought of me dying for a second time. Luckily for me, it seemed that whatever that red thing was saved me and the ship.
I didn't know what it was, where it came from, or why it did what it did, but I didn't care. Because of it, my crew and I were alive, and that was all that mattered at the moment.
The Sythari civilization would live on through us, and no matter the cost, I'd complete the mission and abide by my vows, even if it would be the last thing I'd ever do...
My sadness disappeared, and my mind became clearer as I resolved myself. I unclenched my bloody fists, that had already healed, and started thinking about my next courses of action.
"Computer, where are we now?" I asked the AI via the link.
[We are on an unknown planet in an uncharted star system. Sensors indicate a breathable nitrogen-oxygen mix atmosphere, a gravity below the Sythar index, and the presence of terrestrial lower lifeforms in the vicinity.]
"Hmmm, this is interesting," I nodded as my mind processed the information rapidly and made some conjectures.
I was expecting to hear we were floating in vacuum, but apparently, the red space had somehow transported us to a habitable world in an uncharted star system.
This was very good. If it was uncharted, there was a high probability the Ae'mar didn't know of it, being the foreigners that they were, and that gave us time and security—for a while at least.
A habitable world was a resource we really needed. The food and water supplies on board this ship wouldn't suffice for the five thousand of us. I doubted it would even be enough to sustain me for even a week.
If the ship was stranded in space and the AI didn't follow standard protocol of awakening the designated captain first, awakening everyone at once, we would've been in a lot of trouble.
Now, all I had to do was perform a preliminary sweep of the planet, identify any sources of primary danger, and locate all available resources that could be utilized.
"Computer, open the dome," I commanded, looking upwards at the ceiling.
Immediately, the ship rumbled, and the ceiling creaked loudly as it began sliding apart slowly. Warm sunlight slowly trickled into the room, and before long, the entire room was bathed in the rays of the hot sun.
I smiled as I gazed at the verdant blue sky littered with drifting white, puffy clouds, and nostalgia swelled up within me.
It reminded me of Earth, my past home...
Taking a deep breath of the cold, fresh air, I willed my body upwards and flew out of the ship, halting and hovering a few meters above it.
All around me, as far as the eye could see into the horizon, was a vast and extensive forest with tall green trees reaching for the skies, situated inside a large valley surrounded by rocky mountains with frosted peaks.
There was a wide blue river cutting through the forest, snaking in from the mountains afar, and below me, extending for miles, the black and red behemoth of a ship had cut a large path of devastation across the forest, with destroyed trees and dug-up earth all around it.
As I continued examining the landscape that looked eerily similar to Earth's, I heard a twig snap in the thick vegetation surrounding the ship behind me.
Quickly, I turned and extended my left hand forward towards where I heard the sound and pulled, using my mind.
My eyes widened in shock the moment I saw the thing floating out of the woods towards me, whimpering in fright.
"...This has to be a dream," I muttered, my voice filled with surprise as I examined the creature hovering a few inches away from me in the air, four long limbs recklessly flailing about.
"Otherwise, why would I be seeing a deer on a fucking alien planet?"