Ultra Solar Tales 01 03

Early concept sketch for Titan by Trew2Art

Alanua turns on the ship wide warning system and speaks. Her musical voice echoes throughout the halls of the entire ship. The low notes were sort of enjoyable but the high pitch screeches always left a ringing sound in Titan’s ears. The strangeness of the sounds is probably attributed to their language having evolved underwater. “Ship Sky Heaven. Safety Warning. Projectiles inbound. Clear decks 12 through 15, sections 1 through 18.”

Titan had long grown used to hearing multiple voices out of the squid like Babaca. Only a few had learned her language well enough to speak it but they speak in three registers and each of those has its own translation voice. In a crisis situation they all used the translators, they refused to use English. Exactitude in language was a key component to keeping them all alive and they couldn’t risk a misunderstanding. Fuck, yeah.

Titan stares at the screens. “Where are they coming from?”

“I believe they are remnants from a Ga Na Ha ship,” the helmsman said. “We were communicating with it minutes ago and can no longer get a response from it.”

“What? How? Nevermind. Can we survive the debris field?”

The smallest Babaca crew member swirls his tentacles. Alanua shouts at it as Titan watches them, waiting for one of them to speak in such a way that will translate. They whistle. And whistle. And squawk. And whistle. On and on and on. Good lord they don’t stop.

Finally the helmsman chimes in, (god, chimes would be so much more pleasant than the shrieking) “The fastest moving pieces have already torn through. I do not believe the small slow pieces can breach our hull.”

The flashing emergency lights gave Titan a strange sense of control.

As she likes to say, a few decades of science fiction TV shows trained her that unless there were flashing lights, there wasn’t a real emergency. Ha ha. Am I right? . . . Humans.

Titan's favorite helmsman wiggles her tentacles and does a weird shimmy. Apparently it's a sort of nervous tic. At least, that's what Titan thought she tried to explain a few weeks ago.

The helmsman purrs, “the destruction of the ship must have happened within the last three minutes. There are two large pieces directly in front of us.”

Titan, “how big are they?”

The Babaca begin a strange noise competition, each speaking faster, louder, and in a higher pitch than the others. With Titan’s ears ringing, then bleeding they finally stop.

Alanua, turns to Titan (which is SUPER FUNNY because they have giant eyes all around their heads and their bodies have no distinguishing “back” or “front.” Why would she turn her body? Sorry, got I side tracked.)

Her one word answer is, “large.”