The walls of the ship rattled violently accompanied by a dramatic hum, akin to that of hearing whale noises in the deep sea or the intensity of light speed travel ripping a spaceship’s hull of all sanity. More so the former. The spacecraft shot through space, creating water like ripples that would surely make its way throughout the extending universe. The lights flickered rapidly as Sirius gripped the yoke like his life depended on it. After another moment of horrifying noises and faulty lights, the hum died down and the ship was brought to a light cruise. Sirius push-and-pulled on the throttle, but the ship refused to accelerate. He quickly punched a few buttons and flicked levers up and down, but to no avail. The rest of the crew, still regaining consciousness from the shock of inhuman speeds, made note of this.

“Hey cap, why did we stop? Are they out of our hair?” Big Dipper commented. Sirius fiddled around the command board nervously before delivering the bad news.

Without turning around, he said, “Not quite…It appears we have run out of power.” The room was quiet for a minute.

“O-out of power, what do you mean out of power?” Matty spat out frantically.

“I’m not entirely sure. The fuel levels seem stable and last I checked, the diagnostic was in the green. Something must have interfered with the drive’s reactor.” Sirius pinched his lip.

“Well, what are we gonna do now, sit here like a bunch of ducks?!” Centaur exclaimed.

“Maybe we wouldn’t be stuck in this position if we hadn’t been sightseeing every star we happened to come across!” Matty shouted.

“Hey, they were a damn good sight! You were too busy complaining to even admire the damn things!” Centaur said defending himself.

“Enough! This game of pointing fingers isn’t going to get us anywhere,” Sirius explained. Another moody silence filled the room as a shared sense of doom settled in.

“There’s gotta be some way to restart the drive, right?” Big Dipper questioned. Sirius looked up to face his crew and sat lightly on the command board with his arms crossed.

“Yes, however it would need to be a manual reboot. That means going to the central deck and powering the reactor up by hand,” Sirius responded.

“Hey that’s a fantastic idea how do we do that?” Centaur said. Sirius scratched his chin.

“I’m not entirely sure, they don’t teach you this in pilot school,” Sirius said with a faint grin.

“Feeding the reactor,” Big Dipper said. The others looked at him in confusion. “We need to feed the reactor energy, like wood to a flame. Sirius, do we have scrap metal lying around?”

“The cargo room should have plenty of stuff lying around, though I’m not sure it’ll be enough. We lost most of our supplies picking up this bugger,” Sirius said pointing at Matty. He shrugged.

“It’s fine, anything will do,” Big Dipper said. “Centaur, you come with me, I’m gonna need some muscle.” Centaur clicked off his seatbelt and pumped his arms.

“He needs muscle,” he mouthed, flexing his bicep to the other two. Matty rolled his eyes.

“I’m going to shut down the reactor now, but you won’t have a lot of time. Fifteen minutes is all we can spare before it becomes unstable,” Sirius said.

“That’s more than enough time,” Big Dipper said confidently.

“Alright, we are counting on you two,” Sirius said. Big Dipper and Centaur nodded and quickly shuffled out of the room. They ran through the hollow corridors, their footsteps bouncing off the walls in an awkward cadence as they made their way to the cargo room. Big Dipper typed a code into the security panel and the cargo room door slid open revealing a small pile of miscellaneous debris. Sirius’ voice lit up the room’s speakers.

“The reactor is powering down. You guys are on the clock starting now.”

“Grab the biggest objects you can and follow me!” Big Dipper explained.

Centaur scrambled to the debris and lifted two large metal pieces onto his shoulders. They hastily marched to the central deck. The room opened up into a large cathedral-like space with four giant metal platforms 50 meters in length suspended off the ground leading to the drive’s reactor from four separate doorways around the room. Parked in the middle was a giant machine with wires and tubes sprouting out of it like a ball of yarn. Hidden in the center was the faint purple glow of a dying reactor.

“Woah, I don’t think I’ve ever been here before…” Centaur said with wonder.

“Me neither, c’mon we don’t have time to waste.” Big Dipper said. They crossed over one of the metal platforms to the reactor. The two carefully began to put down the metal pieces on the floor when Centaur began to lose his balance. He hopped in place before slamming into Big Dipper on the side, launching him onto the railing. Big Dipper slipped his hands around the metal bars as all the tiny metal pieces he had in his arms spilled off the side into the abyss that sat below them. They both looked down, waiting to hear the sound of the objects hitting the floor. It never came.

“How deep do you think that is?” Centaur asked. Big Dipper looked at him with frustration.

“You need to be more careful, we both could’ve ended up down there, falling endlessly to our death!” Big Dipper remarked. Centaur nodded in embarrassment. “Now help me get this damn reactor open so we can get this show back on the road.” Centaur nodded again silently.

…

Matty paced around the control room anxiously while Sirius sat at the command board, his hand on his forehead.

“How much longer we got?” Matty asked.

“Seven minutes remaining.” Sirius said. Matty’s face turned pale white.

“And what happens if they can’t get the reactor to start up again?” Matty questioned. Sirius said nothing, affirming all the worst fears Matty’s mind could have possibly conjured. Sirius looked up from the command board into the depth of space before them. Nothing but faint stars in the distance could be seen. Then, his eyes widened with fear. A fleet of ships floated into view and a familiar voice blew up the intercom.

“Attention to all those aboard the Big Child, we have you surrounded, I repeat we have you surrounded!” Sirius shot up from his seat, stepping back slowly. Matty looked out towards the window, his face in terror. The voice came pouring into the intercom again.

“We advise you to stay where you are or else, we will have to use force. Don’t make this any harder than it has to be! We are closing in.” Sirius and Matty froze where they stood, staring out at the fleet of spacecrafts approaching the Big Child at an alarming rate. Sirius lunged for the ship’s microphone.

…

The screeching of metal against metal echoed in the beautiful acoustics of the central deck as Centaur dragged in the two large metal pieces next to the soft purple glow of the reactor. In the center of the yarn ball structure was a small sphere of nothingness that contorted the surrounding environment into distorted shapes and colors but emitted no sound.

“We need to be very careful when we load these pieces in. one wrong move and we could set off a very terrible chain of events that I frankly do not want to witness,” Big Dipper said. Centaur took a big gulp. The two lifted the metal piece and slowly began entering it into the black mass. The reactor tugged on the metal violently as it sucked it in.

“Don’t lose your grip!” Big Dipper yelled. The two positioned their feet to oppose the sucking force and slowly began lowering the metal in. Waves of energy sprouted from the black mass shooting out violently in retaliation. “Almost there!” Another wave of energy shot out; this time much bigger. It flailed around the room like a whip and slammed into Centaur’s chest launching him backwards to the wall. Big Dipper, unable to fight the force, released the metal piece and fell backwards onto the ground. The metal was swallowed whole in a fraction of a second and the reactor lit up with a raging intensity. Energy shot out from all sides, ripping holes in the delicate surrounding wires and tubing. Big Dipper crawled backwards, looking up at the growing monstrosity before him. The black mass grew along with its perfect purple glow, no longer just a faint ember but a burning inferno. Sirius’ voice echoed the cathedral like space.

“We are surrounded! There’s no time we have to abandon ship-” Sirius’ words were cut off by a deadly silence. Then, like magic, The Big Child spacecraft disappeared from all avenues of the known universe.