****
Alexis chased after Tyrok, bursting out of the house while still pulling her shirt on over her head.
"What do you mean the stars will go out?" she asked frantically.
"Where is the ship?" Tyrok asked without answering her question.
"It's on the other side of that hill," she said, pointing in the direction of the hill on the border of the village. "You didn't answer me."
Tyrok started toward the hill, his jaw set with determination.
"You thought that Star Lords were fairy tales so you probably didn't know that our ships are not the same as others."
"What do you mean?"
"My ship carries extraordinary power. It literally has within it the ability to extinguish the actual stars just as quickly as I created the little ones in your bedroom. Without the stars, everything in this universe will die."
"I still don't understand."
By this point they were cresting the hill and Tyrok was staring down at the crashed ship. Alexis followed his gaze and gasped. Ahead of them the ship looked nearly perfect, the warped, twisted mass of metal now a sleek, shimmering ship.
"Thank god it's still here," he muttered. "The creature inside that ship, the one that was controlling me, has been repairing it since the day of the crash. It knows that if it can get the ship operational again, it will have the ability to control the universe."
"But if it could do that on its own, why was it controlling you?"
"I know how to operate the ship and as long as it was controlling me, it was also controlling my capabilities. We have to stop it before it figures out how to operate the ship."
"How are we going to do that?" Alexis asked, struggling to keep up with him as he ran down the side of the hill and pushed toward the ship.
"We have to kill it."
"You don't have any weapons," Alexis said, pointing out that Tyrok had run from the house in only his pants and shoes.
"I don't need weapons. When I said that without the stars everything in the universe would die, that wasn't completely correct. Everything but those creatures. They detest sunlight and will die if exposed to it for more than a few seconds. To them, even the tiniest of stars is just a sun waiting to happen."
Alexis suddenly remembered the tentacle slithering out of the wrecked ship and then recoiling quickly into the darkness.
"How are we going to get it outside?" she asked.
"I'm going to lure it."
"No!" she protested, "It has already had control over you before. I'm not going to let that happen again. I'm going in."
"No, you aren't," he said, trying to pull her back.
"It is my sworn duty as the medic of this mission to protect everyone within the colony, and for the last week and a half now, that includes you."
"You would protect anyone in the colony this way?" he asked uncertainly.
Alexis stood on her toes to kiss him.
"Absolutely not." She took a breath and started for the repair ship door, pausing most of the way there to toss the messenger pad from her wrist back to Tyrok, "If anything happens, call my father. His name is James."
She turned back to the ship and approached the door. Her hand trembled as she rested it on the lever to the door and pushed it open. The door slid toward her a few inches and Alexis leaned forward to check inside. Everything was calm and quiet so she took a step forward. Suddenly she heard a screeching sound from within the ship and felt something thick and strong wrap around her waist. She screamed as the black tentacle dragged her inside. Behind her, Tyrok was shouting her name.
Alexis thrashed against the tentacle, pushing down on it as hard as she could, trying to free herself from its grasp. It dragged her down the main hallway, slamming her against the walls as it slithered across the floor. She managed to catch herself on a metal guide bar on one wall, slowing the tentacle enough that she could hear the faint sound of her father's voice coming into the ship.
A moment later the tentacle yanked her forward again, painfully pulling her away from the bar. It was dragging her toward the emergency control room where she found Tyrok and she felt terror building in her stomach as she thought of what it may have planned for her. Suddenly she saw a flash of movement beside her and heard a screech as the tentacle tightened around her to the point that she couldn't breathe.
Darkness was building around her and she turned her head to see Tyrok digging a large spade into the tentacle. A look of fury on his face, he withdrew the tool and slammed it back down into the creature. Alexis could hear James shouting in the background and just as everything went completely dark, her body slipped from the tentacle's grip and crumpled to the cold metal floor.