The next thing we knew, we were tumbling around like those videos of the Northern sea, the crew stumbled, and rolled around in a tangle of limbs. But there was no water, just an ocean of… Stars? Vortex kaleidoscoped in the colors of a cosmic backdrop; stars, space dust, comets, and even more comets. All forms of celestial structures, big and small, but they all seemed miniature.

  They blitzed past the ship in all directions, but there was chaotic order to it, and on coalescence, they would explode, it was the chaos of the greatest ocean, the cosmos. Soon, the vortex around the ship began to expand in all directions, giving the ship room and lessening the rocking.

  “Now it feels like off-roading and not crashing a jet.” Apollus said while trying to steady himself, but nothing could ‘Steady’ us for what happened next.

  We gathered ourselves, no one had fallen overboard because of the 5-ft railings. Movement then froze as we took in the impossible. Around us, the kaleidoscopic tunnel continued to expand until it became an enormous sphere. The, ‘ocean’, below was made of black space matter mixed with white-hot glowing star dust. Said ocean began moving and forming waves, which gave the ship a steady rhythm, rocking up and down.

  But every ocean had its creatures.

  The tunnel finally reached its largest point as it exploded, revealing the Cosmic Ocean and her creatures in all their glory. Nebulae, ones that moved, breathed, lived, and dwarfed us. And dwarfed us they did, they made the Twin-knots look like a toddler crawling in front of one of those massive mining trucks. And us aboard her even smaller.

  My sailors all looked up around us in awe as all types of creatures were reimagined in divine, ethereal form. “They look like you can float right through them”. Maradac said with the same awe we all had. “And who’s to say you wouldn’t?” I replied

  Three-digit numbers in kilometers.

  That’s the units I’d use to measure them. I wouldn’t say 6 ft, I’d say 600 km, and as far as outer appearance, they look just like their Nebula counterparts. Their hides and feathers were brilliant canvases of cosmic clouds, but what seemed like neutron stars formed constellations that acted like their skeletal structure. They ignored us, too small to be worth the time.

  “Maybe we did crash? And we just missed the bus for the pearly gates?” continued Apollus, unsure. “Or Davy Jones just snatched our souls while the man upstairs wasn’t watching,” added Verzaw.

  “Tuh, No, most of you are definitely going to the hot place.” I said half seriously, “But either way it's definitely not safe out on the bow.”

  I didn't need to say more as we orderly split up into two groups, one headed for the armory and med room, the other to the kitchen and buffet rooms. I immediately went down to the bunker room to get the bunker activated, and 10 minutes later, I was joined by the rest of the crew.

  This wasn't the first time our lives had been at risk, just usually it was missiles, torpedoes, and suicidal pirates sometimes. In a few minutes, we were packed in the S.O.S Bunker. It was a room designed to command, communicate, and even save the crew in the case that the bridge was compromised.

  Torpedo and missile resistant because it was in the core of the heavily armored ship, and it was built like a heavy armor deep sea research base in case the ship sinks. It was 200,000 cubic ft with three raised platforms at the center of the room, each 2 ft different in elevation. A second bridge and a bunker that could only be taken out by a bunker buster, it was basically ol’ girls' citadel.

  “Systems check”

  I barked from my seat, raised 5 ft in front of a large semicircle control panel in the center of the room on the third level. It faced the bow, but you couldn't tell as there were no windows and only one large vault hatch at the back of the room, which was closed.

  In front of me on the second level, there were also seats and control panels, elevated over their platform by the same height as mine. Three were in a semicircle formation with the fourth panel in the center rear of the semicircle.

  Apollus had the front handling the helm and waiting for the cameras to come back online to take over the lookout. Verzaw had the right wing and navigation, as well as getting the cameras and scanners working after they were fried. Daedalus, the Chief Engineer, took the left wing, handling the twin reactors.

  His role was crucial as almost all our weapons were energy-based, and the evasive maneuvers were energy-intensive. Maradac handled the weapons themselves, targeting and deciding when our arms couldn’t handle a threat. She was also the second in command and a coordinator for the three others present, which is why she was at the center rear of the semicircle formation. My job was to give the final order and give actions the green light to the actions, but I trusted my bridge and engineer to know what to do.

  Around us, crew members sat on sleep bags that could be harnessed to the floor, the same sleeping bags we'd have to use. After all, this room was supposed to sustain us for months in case of sinking. The sailors were either talking amongst themselves or waiting attentively for the cameras to come online.

  “Helm and steering are responsive, green.” said the Third Officer and current helmsman, Apollus. Cameras online T-10, yellow, navigation operational, green, sensors operational, green, Maps are inoperable, red. ” Replied the Second Officer Verzaw. “Reactor's operational, green.” came the Chief Engineer, Daedalus. “All defense systems are operational and responsive. Green.” and that was the first Mate Maradac.

  “Ship is deemed operable, threat is unknown, I order an evasive before a retreat once cameras are online.”

  At the walls of the room, the large screens lit up in a panoramic view from the cameras,      the officers at the control panels were given visors that allowed them to see through the 360-degree cameras,    so we could essentially see through the walls, but we had to be on different cameras, for example, infrared or high-resolution regular.

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  The screens were just so the crew could see outside the ship, and honestly, this was a view you couldn't replicate. On the starboard, a pod of giant whales,  each thousands of kilometers long, living nebulae, rose from the Ocean of stars and continued rising to the sky, swimming through the air itself and releasing rattling bellows that would have killed us if we were closer.

  From the stern, a group of birds that resembled storks descended to the water, with wing spans of over 200 kilometers, before flying off. Slowly, I realized something: all the creatures we had seen were moving in the opposite direction to where we were heading. “Fuck”

  “Evasive maneuvers. Bow to Stern anti-clockwise.”

  “Bow to Stern”

  “Bow to Stern”

  Engineering Officer and Third Officer Daedalus and Apollus said in unison as the reactors pushed to turn 200,000 tonnes going 70 knots 180-degrees. But just as the bow reached 90-degrees the current began pulling the ship starboard.

  “Bow to starboard.”

  I said reversing my order, and the echo came

  “Bow to starboard.”

  “Bow to starboard.”

  But they started even before I gave the order. We had no choice but to go the way of the current as the force would flip the ship and leave us to sink, and left with no possible rescue, we would die slowly in a submarine bunker. So we continued straight, having to activate the reverse thrusters as the current carried ol’ girl like a salmon too weak to swim upstream, only we were going over 200 knots.

  The sailors held the harness points on the floor even though they didn't need to and cursed the whole time, as the Twin-knots shot through the currents, more creatures and now, entities, leaped out of the ocean. Some fish, or birds, or animals that had no business out in the ocean, a pack of wolves surfacing from the depths, for example, and after that is where the ‘entities’ began.

  Creatures that had mixed body parts, some elegant, others… “I don't know if this is Davy Jones' locker or Satan's backyard. “ I said as we passed abomination after abomination. Then came the structures, divine murals of entities and creatures. A clash of Stars vs stars. They were entities fighting entities, creatures fighting creatures, some unlikely alliances and encounters.

  A tiger and a family of rabbits jumping the hell out of a shark with two sets of wings in place of its pectoral fins. “Satan's backyard? The out back ain’t even close to this prett-“ Apollus began, but never finished.

  Because everyone felt it, a sudden pressure before dread, and then darkness, it spread from one point on the horizon until it encompassed all.

  Chaos broke out in the bunker, first the light flashing, foreboding enough to send shivers down everyone’s spines. Then the alarms, they all tripped one by one and went crazy, even the ones that contradicted each other. It created a cacophony of different flashing lights, blaring sounds, and caused automated Ship-wide P.A speakers to go off, but not in English, no, not even in a human tongue.

  Then the sensors joined them one by one malfunctioning and tripping,    proximity sensors, elevation, speed, navigation, power gauges, and compass direction, all showing numbers that were never programmed into them, and like the P.A system they warped into an Eldridge language. Then it happened, the most terrifying development.

  The camera and remaining proximity sensors outside showed abominations with humanoid shapes and sizes scratching at the sides of the hull and desperately trying and succeeding to rip into the hull, but no, that wasn’t the terrifying part. No, it was the camera inside…

  “It found us.”

  We turned to the hatch as the cameras began shutting off and the alarms slowly went quiet. The last things to go were a motion sensor outside the bunker hatch, our bunker hatch. And that was followed by the lights.

  After we were left in complete darkness, the sailors all grabbed their personal firearms from their sleeping bags, all SMGs and assault rifles.

  “Squids once and forever,” I chuckled at the development.

  I grabbed my own sniper rifle and joined the semi-circle formation that was quickly adding up to a little over 100 guns and trained killers-“Sailors, Atlas, sailors.” Picatinny lasers came online as the creature began cutting the hatch.

  “That’s supposed to resist the ocean floor pressure, what the fuck?” came the voice of one of the engineers. “Well, we all seen the cameras, lots more of them coming, survive.”

  I said that as the entity finally got through the hatch, it had black slugs swarming together to act as its skin. It was bipedal with thick legs, long skinny arms, and long sharp blades in the place of fingers. Its body had several random squirming bulges, and its face was missing eyes and had a long nose. Its jaw stretched out as it tried to enter the room and stretch out.

  It never got to reach its full size as over 100 assault rifles, SMGs, and sniper rifles opened burst fire onto its vestige. Dead, but there was more, we heard their ungodly screams from down the dark corridor before we saw their disgusting physiques.

  They crawled on the walls and ceiling to fit and screeched as they fell. It was a suicidal charge with no goal but to brutally end us. And deep down, I grew this irrational hatred for their very existence. I grew to understand their charge as I was developing the same feelings towards them that they had for us: disgust, hate, contempt, hate, loathing, hate, revulsion, hate, anger, hate, hatred, hate, hate, hate.

  None passed the hatch. Until ‘they’ did

  Grotesque abominations ripped and tore through the hill of corpses, trampling. Devouring its own living brethren. They were quadrupedal and bulky, with some patches of skin a mismatched mess with random body parts. They had humanoid heads with no noses and jaws that were slack and stitched together with small limbs. Their skin was the same slugs and sludge as their other form; they looked like disgusting, malnourished big cats. They reached inside the room, getting closer to our formation, but dying all the same.

  After thirty minutes, we were almost out of ammunition, and the unintelligent fucks were still coming, their rancid fallen’s stench a beacon to them and irritant to us. But the lights began to return, and the cameras came back online. Looking over the hatch as the panoramic screens circled the room, I saw a beacon of purple in the direction the Twin-knots were being dragged towards at 300 knots now that the reverse thrust wasn’t powered.

  We slid to the front of the room as the current pulling the Big girl got assistance from a wave of white-hot star dust. The stardust pushed the ship forward as the current pulled it in the same direction. This resulted in the stern raising 19 degrees from the waves and the water-logged bow being pulled even harder. In 5 minutes, we were almost hitting 400 knots as the dead entities clogged the hatch, and we all went slamming into walls that had railings while praying that our ‘toys’ didn’t go off.

  As we kept gaining speed, we soon lost consciousness as a foreign presence clamped down on our minds. The guts, blood, and viscera from the entities splattered on the sailors.

  And unbeknownst to the Crew of the Twin-Knots, they were heading towards a whirlpool thousands of miles in diameter, the purple beacon they had spotted before was at the very center of it. They were dragged and dragged towards the center, with the ship being held together by nothing but thoughts and prayers as she was ripped apart, losing 60 percent of her mass by the time she reached the beacon.

  The purple light fully engulfed the hull as she was pulled further onto the one-way trip. In seconds, the Juggernaut Who Dreadnought and all her scattered debris were gone, never to be seen again.

  Swallowed whole by an unknown abyss