Through the steamy, sticky heat of the engine room, and over the constant rattling and whirring of the various parts of the aging EveryNook core generator, Sam heard the shipβs emergency proximity alarm sound β an interrupted, three-tone sound which increased in pitch from a dull bass sound to an extremely high screech; all of which were out of tune with each other and desperately needed work.
As is protocol in such situations, all internal lighting is reduced to preserve the ships main power, should a rapid escape be needed, and Sam found himself bathed in the familiar red glow of the emergency lighting.
The racket of the alarm continued, and was joined by a croaky klaxon, which indicated an attack was imminent; this, then, was joined by a robotic voice announcing βThis eez not a drill β S β N β shall per zone L to re-port to their stay-β; the robotic voice repeating itself before finishing its previous message.
Sam finished reattaching the board on the unit that housed the coolant canisters, after replacing two empty ones with two brand new ones, and placed his spanner into his back pants pocket; he wiped the sweat from his brow, and walked between the various panels and pipes over to one of the small portholes on the side wall and peered through.
The planet he saw outside came as a surprise β he was expecting to see the usual vast emptiness of space, with just the occasional star dotted here and there breaking up the darkness β a beautiful green and blue world covered in white fluffy clouds. He recognised the planet as Tenradar, his home world; and he hoped the ship’s alarms were merely malfunctioning β he could think of no reason why they would need to attack the Nova Luna.
Posted for Six Sentence Stories, where the prompt word this week is βBoardβ.
We last visited Nova Luna here.
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