Snippet #2822854

Somewhere in space

Motes of fire sprawled from the glittering band of the horizon as sunlight illuminated the slow, ancient rotation of a planet below. Even in the cold, silent darkness of space the heat pierced, sinuous glowing rivers of lava breaking along the surface as the dawn creeped across the world like a great incerating titan. All of space seemed to be aflame, that distant marble of fusion at the center of the system now spilling a pyre into reality.

Dreams had become a fleeting thought for the Captain, the dark blankness of space greeting him every time he opened his eyes in the bunk was even less comforting. The small, chiming noise in his ear was the only thing that inferred to him there was even a body held in the confines of the hab-cot.



It wasn’t the disorientation, or even the initial spasm of pain from the nerves refiring from cycle-sleep that affected Corporal Matson the most. It was vomiting the neutral paste that followed every extended stasis. Fortunately, he was the first one stepping out of his pod and wasn’t already stepping into a puddle of it himself.

The doors to the other pods began to decompress, and water vapor hissed in the air as Matson bent forward with a hack until the saline, goopy mixture was making its way up his esophagus. It hadn’t been that long since this had happened prior though, the Corporal realized as he wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand.

The pod chamber was bathed in red light, meaning that the droneship was still on high-automation. Practically every part of the ship was in vacuum, save for the immediate life support systems (known as ILSS) of the hab-pods and the bridge, located some twenty meters above through the sealed bulkhead.

In the blackness of the cosmos, a droneship had burned on a slow transit from Imperial space, before it had changed course almost on a whim. Orienting itself for an FTL jump, once chilled spindles along the sleek vessel charged with energy as it aligned itself with a distant star deep within the cosmic background, as if aiming an arrow for a distant shot.

That distant star was a motey red giant against the stellar tapestry painted before it. More particularly, distant telescoping and telemetry revealed lingering hulker-tonners around a star known as Glendathu. As the droneship prepared to slip-jump, needle-comm allowed the Captain to step onto the automated decks of the drone ships that had discovered a haphazard planet, and the signals of civilization ringing like a telephone from the system around it.



The MT-223 was an old ship, compared to the merchant fleet of the Local Region. As one of the first vessels to shuttle Apparatus forces planetside during the Terran Conflict, and then later invade Imperial space herself, MT-223 should have felt downright old.

Yet as the 223 and her droneship escort, DN-7199 Mable were on the outskirts of a system known only on star charts as Glendathu, the ship was vibrant like the day it had first touched vacuum. With no one to tell it no, the AI had booted the comms equipment it was expressly told to keep cold so that Imperial privateers wouldn’t target and loot it.



The AIs that ran these ships were old - some back in the Garden would say, 'even older than the metal and steel we imprisoned them in'. Perhaps something that advanced felt lonely, or adventurous. What followed from the broadcast was commonly known as the Voyager message: images, sounds and simple data transmitted between contacting civilizations. From the VR deck of the 223, Captain Jack Cooper stood before a glimmering display of the system as the powerful sensors of the autoship began to wash across the system.

He never missed the views from a ship, although the classical music that played through the bridge? Well, he wouldn't make a mention of an AI using such brevity in his report: still, it seemed a bit tacky.