Back cover: Monarch 3 may be the vessel, but Lieutenant James Klemin is the Monarch. On a ship now hurtling into deep space without a Captain at it's head, Lieutenant James Klemin must escape the star-crossed star-cruiser, the only problem that obstructs his resolve is that he is the murderer of Captain Long, and soon to be the rest of his doomed crew. Although with Klemin lies the power to save everyone but himself, for with him is the key to the ship's controls, but to save his crew is to save the sole witnesses to his ghastly crimes and to cast himself into the judgment of the court.
Jan 4th 6:26 pm
The two bodies scrambled across the black and white tiled floors of the banquet hall, each clutching at the other by his clothing, hair, arms, legs and shoulders. The smaller of the scrap had a decorative and rusted sword clutched tightly in his pale knuckled hand which was clasped over the dull lower half of the once noble weapon where the handle had been torn from it's blade. The other held defensively a small device, no larger than a cellular phone, dodging and maneuvering his much thicker frame with every sweat-dripping effort he could muster. His eyes were wide in animal fear as the tangled head of dark hair that clung to him, swung into his line of vision just as the he tumbled backward, eyes widening as the blade was thrust back like some terrible club and aimed over his head. In the brief instant of defenselessness the larger man fumbled with the device clutched in his hand and proved resourceful as the delicate machine responded with a reassuring sequence of flashing signals from the side of it's copper frame. The attacker responded quickly lowering the handle-less sword and slicing it into the tender flesh of the unarmed man's side, the victim writhed but only in the first moments before regaining his fleeing composer, attempting to nudge the blade from his flesh. The larger looked up from his fallen position among the half broken chairs that lined the walls, meeting the distrusting and fury filled eyes of his would-be murderer. The smaller of the men only snarled, a gesture with pulled back lips and blood splattered teeth as he struggled to catch his breath.
"Captain-." The smaller breathed the word. The larger only continued to stare, lost in disbelief and in the weight of the smaller man's betrayal. "You will receive justice." With that, the Captain no longer had time to struggle, no time to contemplate. The larger man sagged forward more onto the weapon that was plunged deeper into his side, his golden brown hair shrouding his face and his fading glance, his blue eyes. The room sunk into blackness around him, until it filled him up and removed him from himself. The sword was withdrawn; the larger body fell to the checkered tile floor.
In a flurry of aluminous white light and a sudden jolt of motion, the reddened moon like the agony filled glance of a bloodied eye was torn from it's perch in those blackened heavens, and cast down and away. The stars, like startled birds fled from their spaces and took wing into oblivion, blinking away into darkness or blending into a streak across the dark skies. The device now clutched in the smaller's bloodied hand had activated the vessel the banquet hall was housed within. The great Monarch 3, despite her comparatively diminutive size, was a mighty craft of coy tendencies, quick and evasive. Her outer shell was oval shaped, yet pointed at her ship face, the two view ports on either side of her front were like the gaping eyes of some space-bound beta, which peered into the vastness of the outer and upper heavens. Her wings were large and schooner–like, colored like air balloons that rippled like bed-sheets hung to dry in the wind, or rolling fields of wheat. Every movement of those vast sails adjusted her in minute increments, steering her through the icy vacuums' of space as delicately as a eurhythmy dancer. Now, even while hurtling toward chaos the ship hung suspended in liquid motion and eloquent beauty.
The smaller breathed in short forced breaths, more due to fear and adrenalin then actual fatigue, his dark and curly head of hair now lay submissive and heavy with sweat and grime, dark circles nearly matched the color, darkening still underneath his rust-red eyes. His mouth hung slack in awe and animal blankness, his long face sunken in under the cheek bones, his once impressive clothing representative of his high ranking now torn and splattered with crimson.
"Lieutenant." Gasped a cracked voice, the young deck engineer, the smaller man knew him, not personally but from the Monarch 3's periodic role-calls. The engineer went on babbling the various obvious facts in regard to the situation, allowing the smaller man, (the dubbed Lieutenant) time to approach him and strike him down, leaving behind him yet another body on the floor, but this one breathing. He began to run.
Lieutenant James Klemin had sealed his fate as the now doomed man whom was stranded aboard a ship now tumbling into uncharted space among thousands of unaware crew members, all of whom would react to his mutiny as the lions do to the hyenas, with bloodshed.