The gentle thrum of the engines was, it was said, a sound that could lull even the most alert man into a deep slumber. The Captain of the Starseed, the massive colony ship that was ferrying some 500,000 souls to another world, was more alert than most men, and he had been sailing ships for almost thirty years. It was simple for him to tune out the more soothing aspects of the noise, and focus in on the more important ones. Which was good, especially since he was the only crewman who was active for the majority of the flight to their destination. However, even his hearing wasn’t perfect, and he missed things from time to time. Ordinarily, that would be nothing to be concerned over, since the systems that ran the ship would notice anything he might miss, but they weren’t programmed to detect human intruders. That was the job for the port systems that had loaded the ship with its supplies, and its passengers. On a normal voyage, only a handful of the passengers would be placed in stasis, and so the systems would be far more stringent on the protocols regarding stowaways, but colonization efforts like this had all the passengers, and all but one of the crew, placed into stasis in order to minimize the space they took up, allowing the planners to fit more supplies and equipment into the ship, to make the establishment of the colony easier. The downside to this was that the programs that would ordinarily have been looking for unauthorized personnel were tied up helping to sort the huge stockpiles of food, weapons, and building materials that would be used to help the colony get on its feet before the second wave arrived, bringing with it the higher-level infrastructure and support that would make it a true colony of the Star Nations. The incidence of stowaways was almost non-existent, since so few people were interested in colonization, and all those that were had been put into the colony ships already. Those who chose to be colonists were a different type than average, as was always the case, since the vast majority of the citizens of the Nations were content to live their lives in their own systems, only making long journeys on occasion, and then only to the more popular vacation spots. However, colonists were entranced by the idea of exploration and discovery, and they chose to make their dreams reality, and leave their homes with only the thought of new worlds to give them drive.

    After making his rounds, the Captain settled back into his chair and studied what little there was to know about their destination. The star was called HD 102272, a name that had been kept from the ancient times, before mankind had begun traveling the stars. The crew and passengers, however, had given it the far more relevant and less clinical nickname of “Nengan” or “Heart’s Desire” for those that weren’t from the Nippon Nations. The shorter one, Nengan, was the more commonly used one, even among those that couldn’t speak the language. The star was a giant star, with two planets orbiting it. Only one of the planets was capable of supporting life, though that fact hadn’t been discovered until about a hundred years prior to the launch. Nothing else was known about the planet, so it would be up to the colonists to serve as both the start of a new colony, and a survey team. When his screen reached the end of the data flow, the Captain closed his eyes, leaning back in his chair as he waited out the minutes till his next rounds. The thrum of the engines worked their magic now that he was no longer tuning them out, and his thoughts began to drift back to the time when, alone, he had piloted the ship out of dock, and the ceremony that had said farewell to the Starseed. Though the colonization effort was only marginally supported by the member Nations, the send-off of the Starseed had been a large deal, as it was the first of the colony ships to leave the massive docks where the modest fleet of vessels had been built, and indeed the first ship built at that particular shipyard. The Captain mused to himself whether that had been the main reason for all the pomp that the departure had received, since so little of the focus had seemed to be on the actual ship. The timer pinged for his next sweep, and he shrugged away the memories, and stood up to make his rounds. He smiled. Nearly a week of travel, and today they would finally make it. In fact, he thought, glancing at the proximity beacon, they would arrive only a few moments after his next rounds finished. He pressed a few buttons, setting up the timers on the crew sleeping quarters to start waking them up when they hit orbit, and headed out of the bridge.

The sound of the approaching footsteps of the Captain echoed louder in the minds of the five people huddled in the small storage unit that had been labeled “Assorted goods” but had only a fraction of what it should have had. The deficit had been made up by increasing some of the loads of the other crates, resulting in the same amount of supplies as if the crate had been fully loaded. But now it served as a home for the people in it, even including a small toilet facility that offered only the bare minimum in the way of privacy, but was efficient and silent. It was an uncomfortable arrangement, but, as the father was fond of joking, it “Beats being dead.” The group consisted of a four-person family, a father, a mother, an older son, and a young daughter, and the son’s best friend, who had been taken in by the family after his father had died in an accident a few years earlier. As the Captain moved past their hiding spot, the five went silent, hoping that he would move past without noticing them once again. He did, and they breathed a collective sigh of relief. After a few moments, they opened the crate so that they could stretch and get some fresh air in the recyclers. The two boys quietly amused themselves by performing an intricate fencing form together, while the parents watched, enjoying the sight of the two young men sharing their interest. As the form got more intense, and complicated, the whole group was completely focused on the two, and completely missed the fact that the daughter had wandered off, her only toy, a small, relatively old-fashioned doll, clutched tightly in her arms. As the form finished, the two youths bowed to each other, and put away the slender poles they had been using in place of swords. That was when the son, Marcel, noticed that his sister was gone. Immediately, the entire group went into a panic, splitting up to quietly and quickly search the area. They each went in a different direction, hunting through the vast maze of cargo containers, quietly calling out her name, desperately trying to find the girl before the Captain’s next rounds. After several tense moments of searching, it was the mother, Rosa, who found the child. “Theresa, you must come back now.” She whispered to the girl, who turned and smiled at her mother.

“Madre, I found the place where the humming came from.” She giggled, and pointed at the hatch she was standing in front of. The huge door bore almost a dozen warning signs, and was marked on the side “Engine room.” Rosa’s eyes widened in fear, and she beckoned Theresa away from the door.

“Theresa, come away from there. It’s dangerous!”

“But Madre, it sounds so nice. And it’s warm. I just want to see inside…” And before her mother could stop her, Theresa opened the hatch with the emergency panel. The door opened slowly, and the slight little girl slipped inside, avoiding her mother’s hands and giggling, like it was a game. When the door was open wide enough, Rosa slipped through, and finally was able to scoop her daughter up, scolding her fiercely in Latin. Suddenly, there was a flash of red light, and a blaring horn, and a massive rumbling. Rosa spun around, terror etched in her face, and she saw what happened. Somehow, Theresa had deactivated the proximity controls that would drop the ship out of FTL and into normal speeds in orbit around the planet. Rosa screamed, no longer worried about being quiet, as she saw the last flickering image of the planet they were traveling to looming ahead of the ship like a monster, reaching out to crush them. Clutching her daughter tightly to her, Rosa ran, still screaming, into the cargo area. She was soon surrounded by her family, all of them frightened, and trying to calm her down so that she could explain what happened. Before she could begin, however, the Captain loomed above the group, as they knelt around Theresa and Rosa, who had collapsed in her panic. The Captain knelt down, concern on his face, as he checked the two women for injuries. “What happened? Tell me, quickly! If there’s a chance, we need to fix it.” Rosa nodded, and blurted out the story. The Captain listened intently, and nodded. “I’ll deal with why you were stowing away later, but right now I need to save the ship. Wait here.”

    He rushed off towards the Engine room quickly, moving smoothly and gracefully in the destabilizing gravity fields. He burst into the Engine room, and moved to the panel, his fingers dancing over the consoles as he ran diagnostic after diagnostic, but the problem was eluding him, and the programs that were supposed to discover that sort of issue. “There’s no way that such a young girl would have been able to cause this much damage so quickly…” He muttered, as the programs finally locked down the problem, and reactivated the controls. As the image of the planet refocused itself, he gasped in fear, and slammed his hands onto the panel. “I was too late…” The red warning lights continued to flash, though the sirens had changed their tune, as the ship dropped out of FTL less than fifty kilometers above the planet, shaking and rocking as it encountered unexpected pressure and friction. It managed to keep itself together and level out, but by the time it did, it had entered into the troposphere of the planet, and the winds and clouds buffeted it harshly. The alarms continued blaring, but it was too late to do anything, as the ship broke up under the unexpected forces, turning into a raging inferno that blazed across the night sky of Nengan. As the vessel broke up, the Captain was punched through by a metal beam that killed him instantly, but he was able to push Rosa and Theresa out of the way in time. A huge hole was ripped through the skin of the ship, and the five stowaways were thrown free of the destruction they had inadvertently caused. As they flew into the atmosphere, screaming as they descended, they couldn’t help but notice a large number of lights scattered across the planet. Signs of habitation. This planet wasn’t as deserted as mankind had thought. Suddenly, five lights appeared in dark regions of the planet, and rose up to meet them. Each of them was engulfed by one of the lights, and then there was a flicker, and they were gone.