Distant Horizons/Chapter 5

Chapter 5 Nightmare

Shia woke up with a start. He listened. But the only sound was the constant scraping of the internal computer chips and the beeping of the instruments. Shia looked around. There was nobody else in the chamber. Hando, Trisha, Ghoel and Ghai were nowhere to be seen. Shia felt uneasy. Cold. Afraid. There was something awkward about the situation here. He was alert. No sound came from the other rooms. He had remembered that Hando put the engines on full thrust, but there was no sound coming from the engines of the ship. Slowly, confused, he walked down the corridor to the bridge. He entered the cockpit. Neither Hando, nor Ghai was present, and so Shia sat down in one of the pilot chairs. He felt light, almost weightless. And although he was alert and aware, he could hardly feel the cold on his skin. He peered out of the viewport, and was met with perpetual horror. Straight in front of him, a huge black sphere blocked his view. Inside there was nothing, no light, no matter, nothing. It came closer. Closer and closer each second. The space around them became blacker and blacker. Until the huge shape engulfed the Distant Horizons. At that moment, Shia felt a surge of unbearable heat and energy, as if both his body and mind were being slowly destroyed. He surged and wretched. Then he fell to the ground. He vomited all over the floor of the ship. Blaring white lights went on. The worried faces of Hando and Ghai loomed above him. And then suddenly he felt cold, he realized he had had a nightmare. Around him the rest of the crew knelt on the floor of the sleeping quarters. The long, big lipped face of Ghoel loomed on the ceiling above him. The lights were on, making a faint electric hum. Ghai Fek held a blinding white torch and waved it to and fro in Shia’s eyes. Hando knelt by him on one side, Trisha on the other. “T’sall right, I’m awake” groaned Shia. “You were thrashing around like hell man” said Ghai, his tone worried and scared. “What did you see?” asked Trisha. She sounded worried and concerned as much as Ghai did. Shia shifted a little. He had fallen out of bed and had landed on one of his Lekku. And that hurt. His head tail was probably badly bruised. When he shifted, he felt a warm wetness near his head and realized that his Lekku was bleeding. But what had he seen. He shuddered. What was that? Was that a... black hole? He tried to remember. Whatever it was, it had seemed real. Incredibly real, more than anything he had seen before. “What did you...” “Yeyea, wait” said Shia, still trying to concentrate. It had been normal. Almost like real life. He had walked down the aisle and into the cockpit of the ship. And there he had seen it. Something huge and dark and powerful, powerful enough to obliterate their ship and everybody inside. A black hole. Black holes could destroy anything. Ships, planets, perhaps even stars. Still, it was just a dream. It was by far the worst dream and the worst physical and mental experience he had ever had, but it was still not real. Every passing second, the images began to drift away from his mind. The huge black shape became less and less real, until could hardly even picture it. “Never mind, Trisha” sighed Shia, “never mind”.