The angle shifted.
Freya couldn’t help screaming.
And then they hit the water.
Hard.
Even with her restraints, she jerked forward from the force of the impact. Everything swam in her eyes for a few moments as she got oriented.
She moved her arms, her dress rustling in the ship, constraining her. She shifted back and forth, loosening some of the layers, so she had more mobility.
She couldn't see anything but sky out of the slits between the ship's wings that had wrapped around her pod. The sky wasn’t moving anymore.
The smell of the water from before was decidedly more pungent now. And it fueled her need to get out of that pod as quickly as possible.
“Hello? Are you out there?”
Hopefully, the pilot hadn’t gotten hurt. Or maybe he had, and the Terrans were coming.
Maybe this was Rhimodian’s way of assassinating the Terran Ambassadors. They systematically were killing them off, one at a time on individual moons, claiming it was an accident…
Stop it.
None of that, now.
The Terrans might have been at war against the Rhimodians. Still, as far as known records went, the Rhimodians were not ones to take prisoners or outright assassinate.
Well, except for that initial incident…
But that was something else, anyway. Or so the speculation said.
Freya pulled at her restraints, trying to loosen up.
“Hello? Are you…” Her words trailed off. Maybe he really wasn’t out there.
And now she was alone.
On an alien world.
Sinking in the water.
“Stop it, Freya,” she muttered to herself. “You can hack into the Terran Empire’s galactic data streams without any problems. You can handle this. It’s all just a computer system.”
Yeah, that was what she was telling herself.
It was only a system she had to figure out.
She banged on the metal, hoping that the Rhimodian was out there and actually wanted to help her out of this thing.
“It’s still an escape pod,” she said to herself. “It’s sealed and water-tight, right?”
Everything shifted, the tiny ship bobbing in the water until she was now reclined onto her back instead of sitting up.
Something popped.
And water filled the pod, and her dress layers soaked it up, making them feel like weights on her legs.
“Of course,” she said, a little hysterical laughter bubbling up. “A dream. This has to be a dream.”
