The Shipmaster

Chapter 1 : The Woman

The woman looked around her and smiled. In front of her stood a lovely garden filled with flowers of every color – her own garden and, behind her, her own house! A single week had passed since she had moved there, in Beijing's residential sector.

Still, she was feeling a little sad: she would be alone in that lovely house. Her fiancé, who was a soldier in the Earth Federation Army, would not be coming home for a long time. He used to phone her twice a day, but it had been a month since he had not called her, even though she received a letter from him two weeks before.

She had moved there because that was where his parents lived. When he would have some free time, he would not have to choose between her and them.

She left the garden and took a few steps in the street, while remembering their first encounter.

It was in a park. People were passing by, and were seemingly not noticing the young woman crying on a bench as if the whole world had collapsed around her. She had kept on crying, again and again, until a man wearing a black military coat sat beside her. She suddenly stopped crying and waited a moment before raising her head.

Her eyes had stopped on his black eyes before she could really raise her head. He was looking at her. "Something seems to bother you," he had said. The young woman had asked him to leave her alone. "I am sorry, but I cannot ignore something so abnormal," he had answered.

"Something so abnormal?" she had wondered aloud, only for him to explain in a deadpan tone that a beautiful woman like her should not be crying. "Not just because you are beautiful," he had continued, "but also because crying means admitting defeat. No matter the situation, you should never give up."

These words, as cliché as they were, reached her and compelled her to stop crying, not only that time, but also during all the following years. Although he could not be there as often as she would have liked, she could feel her presence at all times; she never felt alone.

A loud, booming noise brutally took her away from these fond memories. It sounded like an explosion. What was happening? She looked around her. Everything looked normal.

There was probably nothing to be worried about; why was she shivering, then?

She grabbed her cellphone and tried to call him, but no one took the call. As she was about to try again, she was suddenly blinded by a bright light coming from the north of the city. She closed her eyes a moment and, when she opened them again, she was horrified to see a squid-shaped form in the sky. What was about to happen?