How did she get here? How did this happen?
The lapse from the jump was unusually abrupt, and jarring, she could have sworn that she had entered the coordinates correctly, EVE had verified them, it was an in-system jump, routine. What could have possibly gone wrong? The sudden transitional lurch from the vacuum of space, to an atmosphere provided enough stress on the hull of the Scylla, but the sudden loss of the shipboard AI, and the mysterious vanishing of the crew perplexed Marlene even more.
To those below, a loud, abrupt crack, and sonic boom reverberated through the skies, culminating into a bright flash, and a strange, dark grey, and black arrowhead shaped craft that moved without any grace through the sky above.
Granted she had little time to react. The viewscreens lit up with the light of the blue sky, and the view of some kind of expansive crystalline city that was as fascinating as it was alien. Listing abruptly to the right, Marlene leapt from the console to the forward helm. Quickly, she slid into the center seat, and flipped several switches.
"This can't be too hard." She muttered to herself. Even a ship like this had four simple controls.
Throttle, pitch, yaw, and roll.
She grabbed the control stick, and eased the throttle from it's previous setting. She pulled back to stabilize the descent, the roar of engines reverberated through the interior as she grasped for control.
"Gotta set this thing down." Marlene added.
Coursing through the skies above, the arrowhead shaped ship careened hard to the right, it was slowing it's descent, as retro-graviton thrusters engaged along the bow, and ventral sections.
The markings emblazoned on the side were that of a phoenix, with a superimposed V, and decidedly blocky, and alien writing. Would these markings be recognized? It was unlikely.
It came towards a large, open and grassy field, whipping up dust, and wind as it slowly began to touch down, landing struts emerged from it's glossy, hexagonal paneled hull, and the whole, three hundred meter long ship touched down gracefully in the open field.
Marlene wiped her brow, and breathed a sigh of relief.
"What the hell happened... where are my crew?"
There were no voices, no people clamoring, there was only the blaring sounds of alarms, and the vivid red holographic scroll of error messages that flitted across the view-screens.
Her eyes gazed upwards, there were no spatial calibrations, no stellar patterns, the subspace data-link was unresponsive. The Scylla was completely cut off from the Empire, even EVE was offline, the systems having since reverted to backups.
Taking a steady breath, Marlene climbed out from the seat, and with purpose, she started towards the main airlock.