Literary magazine

Leaving the engine room as quickly possible, Corvax

tucked himself into a corner and examined the digital

map glaring in the corner of his helmet. Despite being

closer to safety than he thought he would be, there was

still lots of ground to cover, and judging by the sounds

of voices he guessed he would have to get past a lot of

S ILENCE . C RUSHING , OMNIPRESENT SILENCE BRO- ken only by the clang of tung steel greaves on the starship’s dark floor and the clink of loose bolts colliding on the walls. Corvax Calgar swung into

people. Caught up in his thinking, Corvax almost didn’t

notice the sounds of soldiers proceeding down the cor-

ridor, checking every room in turn. Realising he was

stuck, Corvax glanced around the room and caught

the next empty corridor, pulse rifle raised and ready to

sight of a loose roof panel that must be an entrance to

fire, but it was just as much a tomb as all the others

the air pipes. Grabbing hold of the open hole, he

encountered on his journey from his personal vessel;

heaved his way up just as the door collapsed and the

the ‘Void Falcon’. Having received word of this gamma

soldiers burst in. The armed man surveyed the room

level cruiser’s destruction before any of the other loot-

with his helmet torch before turning around and report-

ers on Dentaphon, Corvax knew that to arrive first was

ing the all clear. Grinning, Corvax started crawling

to gain privileged access to the rarest items. Despite

through the ventilation shaft. Now he just had to evade

the reassuring lack of habitation as of yet, he was still

over one hundred of the best trained police this galaxy

cautious. There was no sign of why the vessel had

has ever seen and escape back

to

Dentaphon:

scuppered or the crew; not even a corpse had filled the

nothing too difficult.

emptiness of this space-borne sepulchre.

-Eli Hughes, Year 9

Pushing on through the darkness, Corvax searched

each room of bunks until he stepped into the faint blue

glow of the plasma core and felt the familiar tinny smell

in his mouth from the ionized gases escaping their

safety cages. This plasma drive was definitely busted;

leaving Corvax thanking whoever had the foresight to

make his surveyor armour radioactively sealed. Striding

toward the control panel, he unclipped his multi-

headed omni-tool and snapped off the front panel

of the metal box. Corvax leant down to ex-

amine the insides and smiled like a child on

Christmas morning. An undamaged thermo-

baric regulator! These could sell for thou-

sands if you knew the right people, now he

just needed to get off this ship and make it to

the planet. Just then the silence was shat-

tered by the treading of armoured feet and

the barks of officers commanding their troops

landing on the ship. Corvax had no illusions about

what this meant: the whole ship was just a trap to

lure scavengers in so the Galactic Arbiters could

catch them like rats.

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