Alcubierre
Chapter 2: Close encounters.
Hargreave fastened the straps on his bed. As Captain, he could have had his quarters in one of the Centrifugal arms and slept in a room with some semblance of gravity in it, but that was far more important for research labs and gym equipment.
Oddly enough, Gym equipment was some of the most useful stuff on a long spaceflight. There's very little in the way of entertainment, room to move about in, and more importantly, constant gravity, on a star ship.
Keeping physically fit was the utmost importance to all crew. Hours in the gym were strictly timetabled for everyone, and mandatory.
It was worse in back in the navy or god forbid the special forces. He remembered serving on the Carthage 5 years ago. A Cruiser class vessel measuring at 300m, she had four centrifugal arms that actually simulated 2G's of gravity just to make exercise that little bit more difficult.
He stared at his holopalm. A fairly recent invention, five holographic projectors and laser sensors, one on each finger tip, with wifi access to a remote hardrive. It was essentially a small computer, like the smart hands of the late 21st century, without needing to remove parts of your body. Buyers remorse if he'd ever heard of it.
He swiped through his stored movies. Nothing really interested him. He hadn't been in Sol for 3 years now, and any of the inner systems for about a year, and his movie collection was woefully out of date.
Hargreave rolled his eyes and returned to doing what he usually did when he was bored. He open up a Porn vid. He might as well, another three months with people he was the boss of and really shouldn't "Liason" with meant three months of watching however many terabytes of full 3d porn he managed to download last time he was in a developed colony.
Data was expensive out in the outer systems. With no means of FTL communication bar data packets brought with ships, there was no internet, there was no app store on online multiplayer. On certain space stations or colonies, selling youtube vids or porn was a decent way to make some money on the side if you regularly made trips to the inner systems.
"Captain."
Hargreave gritted his teeth. It was the unmistakable southern twang of his XO. Grahm was trying to call him from outside his room.
"You better have a good reason for waking me up." Hargreave replied, muting the porn.
"Boss, I know what you're doing in there." Said Grahm.
"Well, then you should know to get me in... About ten minutes." Hargreave responded.
"Boss, the Negative mass drive has shunted the fourth ring improperly and we are losing FTL efficiency. Engineering says that we need to come to a complete stand still if we want maximum speed." Grahm explained.
"How fast are we going right now?" Asked Hargreave.
"8 LY a day. But that speed will keep decreasing until we repair the Ring." Grahm Replied.
Hargreave thought through the maths. It'd take 23 hours for the rings to stop being radioactive enough for maintenance, and it'd likely be another day until they were repaired.
They'd been travelling for 2 days at this point from Kepler 138b and before he signed off from his shift they had travelled 23 light years from Kepler 138b.
"What's the chances they can't repair it? I'd rather limp back to civilisation then be stranded in interstellar space." Asked Hargreave, undoing the straps on his bed. He didn't bother to change what he was wearing, but it wasn't unusual for him to be wearing his Pajamas on Deck mid FTL. He wore the Mag Boot though.
"Perfectly routine, we've got materials onboard. They'd estimate it'd be a two week trip back without repairs." Grahm replied.
Crouching against the wall, Arthur gently pushed off, floating towards the door to his room. The door automatically opened, and as it did so held his legs "Down" and activated the mag boot, securing him to the floor.
"All right. Where are we right now?" Asked Hargreave.
"(216, 090)" Grahm replied. "About 2 light years from the nearest Star system."
"Kepler 192?" Asked Hargreave, mostly to himself. A binary red dwarf system. No rocky planets, one brown dwarf.
"Aye."
"All right. Drop us out of warp. Make sure we keep at least two rings fully operational if need be, I don't want to be stranded here." Hargreave ordered.
Arthur stretched. He wasn't really tired anyway. No point sleeping if we aren't even moving.
He walked through the hallway towards the central ladder. Deactivating his Mag boots, he made his way down the ladder.
He barely noticed as the Ship's warp field deactivated, and kept climbing down from deck 7 to deck 43.
Deck 33 was halfway down the Pequod, and was the deck from which one could climb into the centrifugal arms.
It was 23:13 ship time, and only one third of the crew were working right now. Meaning that they'd probably be a few people in the rec room in arm-2.
Arthur looked around. Deck 33 had no rooms on it, it was a large circular room. It in was a two chairs on rails, and the quickly spinning doors leading to the climb "down" towards the Centrifual arms.
Arthur sat down in the chair, and pressed the button for arm 2. The chair began to circle around the room until it's speed matched that of arm 2. The chair moved forward until reach the access hatch, which opened. The chair continued to move forward and the restraints detached, Allowing Arthur to begin the climb down the arm.
As he climbed down, he noticed the effect of Gravity, and breathed deeply. It was a weird feeling to move from a microgravity environment to a earth standard. Arthur himself had been born on Epsilon Eridani b, which had a planetary gravity of 1.23g, but none the less the feeling took a few seconds to get used to. After seven seconds, Arthur began to climb down the ladder.
After fifteen metres, he reached the bottom of the ladder and placed his feet on solid ground. Space travel had an awful lot of ladders in it.
He looked around. The Centrifugal arms ended in an area about the size of a decent house. Arm 1 was just filled with Gym equipment and a lab, but Arm 2 had a spare quarters for dignitaries, a mess hall, and a rec room.
Arthur dumped his Mag boots by the hatch and climbed down another ladder to the rec room.
On one end was a ping pong table, which resident champ Tanya Collins was facing off against Maita Ashihei. Next to it, a empty pool table. Two guys had managed to buy a gaming computer back in Civ space and were split screening some FPS Arthur didn't recognise.
Instead of these, Arthur turned around and joined the in progress Poker game.
"Captain. Want to be dealt in?" Asked Paúl Arnal, head of the Peqoud's botany department.
"Thanks. Usual stakes?" Asked Hargreave.
When spending months at a time away from civilised space and other humans, money, whether the Sol Credits used in the inner systems or the billion other digital currencies out in the boonies, meant little on board. Instead, personal objects that couldn't be nanoforged were "appraised" and a select number of chips were given.
Hargreave handed Paúl his modified M1911A5. The pistol he slept with.
With a Marksmen trigger, no trigger guard, laser rangefinder and Picatinny rails, she was Arthur's second favourite gun after his genuine single action army, which was in a safe deposit box back in New Hong Kong.
"900 chips." Said Paúl.
Hargreave rolled his eyes. The items were just collateral if you cheated. Most everyone just played for fun and got their items back in the end. Unless someone started trading shifts, in which case things got serious.
Still, Paúl was short shafting him.
Hargreave leant back in chair, looking at his opponents from left to his right.
Frank, Engineer. Tell was blinking twice in rapid succession.
Melisandre. Engineer. Her tell was shuffling in her seat slightly, but not consistent enough to rely on.
Robert. Plumber. No obvious tell. Experienced poker player. Apparently won the deed for at 160km2 patch of land on Pilgram's Rest, a garden world 80 light years from earth.
Finally, Mary. Navigation. Raised pinkie on good hands, tight grip on bad ones.
"The blind is thirty." Said Paúl. Arthur chucked in the blind, as did the others.
The cards were dealt, and Arthur looked at his pair.
Queen of Diamonds and 7 of diamonds. Nothing yet. Arthur glanced around the table quickly. Frank was blinking normally, Mary had a tight grip on her cards, Robert was calm... but Melisandre. She had shuffled just once in her seat. Something to bear in mind.
"50." said Frank.
"Call." said Melisandre. Everyone called.
The first of three cards were shown. 7 of clubs.
No one moved erratically. No need to get hopes up yet. Arthur knew Melisandre had something, but it seemed this hadn't improved her odds.
"50." Said Melisandre. Everyone called again.
The next card was dealt.
Jack of Diamonds.
Melisandre shuffled in her seat again, and Mary's hands seemed to relax.
It was my turn. I couldn't fuck them over, I had a middling hand, Melis and Mary seemed to have good ones.
I could bluff,
but Unless I did something crazy Melis and Mary would definitely call. Best just play it safe for now and hope for the next hand.
"50." Arthur said. Robert folded, but everyone else called. Except Melisandre.
"75" She said.
Damn. Not enough to back out.
"I call." Arthur said. Everyone still playing followed suite.
Finally, the last card was drawn.
7 of Hearts.
Son of a bitch. All right. Match Mary, back out if Melisandre goes overboard.
He noticed Melisandre didn't shuffle, and Mary's grip tighten slightly.
"50" Frank said. Damn. He was going to get fucked over.
"75" said Mary. Frank grumbled but handed over the extra twenty five.
"100" Said Melis. Frank swore and threw his cards down.
3 of clubs and an ace of Diamonds. Absolutely nothing.
Call it.
"Calling." Said Arthur.
"Calling." Said Mary.
"All right, show your cards.
Mary went first. Jack and 7 pair. She was bluffing like crazy then.
Smugly, Melis went next. 7 pair and Ace pair. Fucking hell, she was acting like she had something there.
Arthur placed his cards down. 3 of a kind.
"You guys better learn how to play Poker. Captain's orders." Said Arthur smugly, collecting his winnings.
Arthur leant back in his chair. God damn, it was good to be king.
Rest assured, the rest of the night did not go like that. Robert cleaned house with a lucky bluff, and so got the opportunity to sleep in the one bedroom on the ship with gravity. Hargreave elected to just sleep on the sofa in the Rec room rather than return to his room.
At 07:00 hours ship time, his alarm went off.
He rubbed his face as he bleary opened his eyes. His stubble was coming in again annoyingly.
Rolling off the sofa and onto his feet, Hargreave stretched his arms and legs. Wash, dress, One hour of gym followed by an entire shift of nothing but waiting for decontamination of the warp drive. Lovely.
It took 36 hours of being stuck in space for the Drive core to finally be put back online. Hargreave wanted to waste no more time and ordered Max speed to (234, 091).
The Pequod had a max FTL speed of 16 LY a day, though usually the cruising speed was kept to 12 in order to limit stress on the drive core. There were faster ships in the galaxy, but you were looking at frigate weight or lower for that kind of speed.
Their first stop came only 33 hours later. In the system of Wolf-0812032.
The Pequod dropped out of FTL with minimal fuss, start popping around the system, jumping at warp to get close to believed planetary sights, dropping scanning drones to continue surveying.
In total, there were 7 planets in orbit, 1,2 and 3 were too close to the star for liquid water. 5,6 and Seven were too far, with 5 and seven being gas giants.
But 4 was an interesting one. Rocky planet well within the "Goldilocks Radius", meaning was in the orbital sweet spot for liquid water.
And so, the Peqoud was maintaining a Geosynchronous orbit above one of the Planet's Northern continent.
"Atmosphere is toxic to us. 74% Nitrogen, 12.5% Oxygen, 4% carbon dioxide, 2% misc." Said the head atmospheric scientist on board, Dr Urnst Kalen. "Surface temperature is 24 degree Celsius, water vapor content is 0.5 Earth average."
"Poles may be inhabitable with genemodded lungs, but anywhere south of that is too hot and dry to be comfortable. Still, Plenty of space." Said Urnst.
"Any signs of life?" Asked Hargreave.
"small shrubs are visible from the footage we got from the drone, perhaps some small reptile equivalents." Said Urnst. "Essentially we are looking at the equivalent of our Cambarian period."
"Human habitable?" Asked Hargreave.
"Sir, with all due..."
Hargreave sighed. He knew the scientists didn't like it. The main goal of Trailblazer was to find to world's to colonise. Terraforming a planet would take several centuries, so most of the time it was the job of people like Hargreave to find garden worlds already teaming with life, AOK it for human habitation and dump human's, their crops and lifestock on worlds that couldn't take it. After over 50 years of extrasolar colonisation, and a unending population boom that the Telomere project caused, humans couldn't let a few microbes, reptiles or mammals get in the way.
"... Yes. Again, close to the poles, would be best." Said Urnst.
"All right. I'll get the bio boys to land, gather some samples and tick that off the list. Alejandro!" Shouted Hargreave, turning away from Urnt's station in the command deck and turning towards his head of security. An ex merc from the Main belt wars, Alejandro was a calm, quiet weirdo who Hargreave was pretty sure stroked and had sexual relationships with his guns.
To be fair, he slept with a pistol, so pot calling the kettle black.
"Yes sir?" asked the Merc.
"Gather your team, One heavy gauss, rest low calibre. Shouldn't see much large hostile wildlife down there." Said Hargeave.
"Aye." Said Alejandro, walking away to gather his crew of 7 men and women.
"Sir." said Vaatia. Hargreave turned to her.
"We've found another planetoid object at the edge of the System." Said Vaatia. "About 30 AU out, no larger than 20km."
"All right, so there are 8 planets in system. So what?" Asked Hargreave.
"The fact is we've just noticed it. About 5 minutes ago, one of our drones jumping back reported it emitting massive amounts of chekenov radiation no lest then 2 hours ago." Said Vaatia.
"Chekenov? As in "Light passes through volume faster then typical speed of light through volume?" radiation?" Asked Hargreave.
"Yeah, in the Vacumm space. An object accelerating light in non-warped space faster than light." Said Vaatia.
Hargreave though on this for a few seconds.
"Give us twenty minutes to land the bioboy's, then we'll warp out there and check it out." Hargreave replied.
After the shuttles had landed, Hargreave ordered the ship to warp out to another 29.2 AU, to where this strange planetoid was located.
Hargreave looked out the Observation deck, starring at the object roughly 140km away, his mag boots keeping him stuck to the ground.
A strange metallic object, like a tuning fork with a gyroscope towards the back. The gyroscope was spinning and emmiting a dull blue light.
"What the hell are we looking at?" Asked Hargreave, mostly to himself.
He heard the door open behind him.
"So... Alien artefacts in space huh? You getting some cosmic horror vibes here?" Said Hargreave.
Hargeave vaguely heard the unsheathing of a blade, and span and ducked just in time to keep his head as a Machete flew over his head.
He looked up to see Alejandro, fully armoured bar his helmet, and looking pissed.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Shouted Hargreave, he slipped into a cqc stance, his legs no further then shoulder width apart, one foot in front of the other, both hands raised in front of his, his left behind his right, one closed fist one opened.
"Didn't want to crack the glass and kill the both of us." Instead of answering him, he stated moving forward, both hands on his machete, ready to slash as need be.
Alejandro moved first, rushing towards him and slashing the machete horizontally.
Dodging the swing, Hargreave stepped forward and slammed his palm straight into Alejandro's nose, then punched him in the throat.
As Alejandro fell back, he kicked him in the chest and used both of his hands to grab the machete from Alejandro.
Alejandro fell to the floor, Hargreave held the machete to his neck.
"What the fuck are you doing you fucking edgelord psychopath." growled Hargreave, pressing the machete into Alejandro's neck.
Alejandro's eyes began to glaze over.
"We must open the gate... We must open the gate." He began to mutter.
"Answer me!" Shouted Hargreave.
"We must open the gate, and become exalted." Said Alejandro.
Hargreave glanced out of the window and noticed that the Pequod was approaching the alien structure. He heard screams from further up the ship.
Hargreave once more turned to Alejandro, only to spot that his mouth was foaming and his eyes wide in terror and pain. Cyanide poisoning.
Keeping a hold of the Machete in one hand, Hargreave left the observation deck and made his way up to the command deck.
After 4 decks, he reached it.
Immediately a knife was plunged into his shoulder as he stepped off the ladder. Hargreave lurched forward, the blood floating in the microgravity.
He heard the whirr of a taser priming, turning around to see Mary aiming a taser at him.
"Don't move." She growled.
"The hell are you doing!" Shouted Hargreave, before grimacing at the pain in his right shoulder.
"We have our orders. If you wish to live Captain stay on the floor." Ordered Mary.
Hargreave glanced around the deck. There were four unconscious bodies on the floor. Grahm, and three navigators. Those standing and concious were all dressed in armour and manning the various control panels.
"Why the hell are we heading towards that thing." Asked Hargreave, placing one hand behind his head and another one his shoulder, knelling on the floor, a difficult feat in zero gravity.
"That "Thing" is a mass relay, and so far is the only one we've ever found outside of Arcturus." Said Vaatia.
"Arcturus? No one's ever been in Arcturus. It fucking blew up 20 years ago." Said Hargreave.
"A unfortunate accident. They were testing just how large an object the relays can transport. Turns out there is an upper limit." Said Vaatia.
"So who are you working for? INCA [1]? CIA?" Asked Hargreave.
"Tase him." Ordered Vaatia. Hargreave stood up and began to jump towards the mutineers before three prongs dug into his flesh and 10000 volts seared through his body.
Hargreave missed his target and slammed into a wall, but crawled against the floor, still clinging to conciousness. Another Ten thousand volts soon knocked him out.
When Hargreave came to, he immediately realised something had gone horribly wrong. The screens in the command deck were reporting multiple hull breaches on the lower decks, the loss of arm 2 and fires across half of the decks. The command deck itself was activating the carbon dioxide fire suppresor, and warning alarms were going off to equip oxygen masks.
Stumbling to his feet, Hargreave coughed and limped towards the ladder, and climbed up, on the next level of the Command deck, the story was mostly the same. Swiping a mask off a dead muntineer, Mary, he breathed deep.
Now he could breath properly, he looked around, and floated towards one of the control panels.
There were four heat signatures, three about 170m long almost 100km away and one...
The ship shook as the heat signature, likely a gauss round, slammed into the ship. Damage control suggested it had torn off the other centrifugal arm.
"Fucking pirates." Grumbled Hargreave. He hated being in space battles. Half of it was done by the computer, and the rest was starring at screens at timing your jumps.
Speaking of, he checked the drive core status. 100% excellent.
The Peqoud wouldn't survive long in a long range engagement, but that was what 50caliber miniguns were for. Jumping to within 40ms of one of the heat signatures.
He typed in to immediately open fire. As the miniguns span up and unleashed metallic death, he looked at the view screen. He was close enough to get visual on the ship.
It was strange. If he had to guess, the design of the ship was as if it was orientated horizontally rather then vertically. It also didn't have centrifugal arms. It looked more like an upscale short range fighter than a light cruiser.
Finally, the miniguns were doing absolutely nothing to it. Some strange blue aura was emitted each time the bullets almost collided with the ship. Hargreave's eyebrows raised. There had been poor designs for Plasma energy shields, but they usually cooked whatever they enveloped, required ungodly amounts of energy and generated so much radiation they could be seen from the other side of a soar system.
This was better than that. The ships had about an average heat signature for a ship of it's class, and yet it was tanking hits like a mother fucker.
Hargeave watched as the ships point defence guns activated, and began to launch round after round of what was likely gauss accelerated tungsten into the Peqoud.
More and more damage control lights blared as the ship made Swiss cheese of the Peqoud. But after 30 seconds it had stopped.
Hargreave ran, climbing up one more deck and as quick as he could equipping a hard space suit. It was only a matter of time before a hull breach sent him spiralling into the void. Decks 9-39 were completely devoid of oxygen, and only the drive core remained in tack, three of the four sublight EM drives destroyed.
Suddenly, one of the control screens blared up with an open data signal. In the ships damaged state, it had wrongly skipped all data protections procedures and automatically played it.
Hargreave turned to the screen to see... Something.
It was a biped, two legs, Four arms, two large with biceps and triceps with four fingers and a thumb, with two small vesitgal arms in the chest with simply one tricep and a small hand with only two fingers. The chest was barrel shaped, and it's skin was covered in very fine hairs. Luckily it wore clothes. It's face... It had a perfectly circular mouth with sharp teeth lining the side. It had four eyes, two on the side of it's head, two in front. The eyes were orange, with dual combined pupils in each. The top of it's head was bulbous, likely needing a large brain for all the extra sensory and motor skills required compared to the human form. Only had the same smattering of fine hair at the top of it's head.
It opened it's mouth, and gurgled.
It was a terrible noise, harsh and gurgling at the same time.
It spoke for roughly a minute and Hargreave had no idea what it was saying. Glancing to see that the Drive core was still online, and a location marked "Mass Relay" on the nav grid.
Hargreave leant forward and sent a open radio signal in reply.
"Fuck off." He said simply.
And with that, desperate to try and stay alive, aligned the drive core to head straight to the mass relay.
As the whirr of warped space began, Hargreave began to shake.
He, or rather, whoever was in control of the ship whilst he was unconscious, had made first contact with an alien race. An alien race with fucking energy shields and possibly artificial gravity. An Alien race which had opened fire and torn apart Hargreave's baby deck from deck. Killing likely almost everyone inside.
"Har..." Grahm grumbled.
Hargreave picked up his discarded Oxygen mask and put in on the dying body of his XO.
"Grahm... What the fuck happened?" Asked Hargreave.
"I woke up after we went though the relay. Fucking Vaatia started warping to the inner planets of this system and fucking made contact with godamn aliens. And they immediately opened fire on us." Said Grahm.
"Did they, Vaatia or whoever say why the may want to start a fucking interstellar war?" Asked Hargreave.
"No, I have no idea." replied Grahm.
"...We are barely in enough shape to limb back to Kepler 138b, and once we drop out of warp at the relay they could spring out and kill us."
"We're about to drop out. We need to jump ASAP." Said Grahm.
"Do you even know how we use that... Relay thing?" Asked Hargreave.
"I think we just move near it, the Relay does the rest." Replied Grahm.
"All right. You're on View screen, warn me if those ships are there once we drop out of warp. Pilot's dead, so I'll allign us with the relay. Ready?" Asked Hargreave.
Grahm stumbled to his feet and nodded.
Hargreave climbed the ladder up towards the pilots chair and into it. Looking around the vast array of viewscreens and keyboards necessary to pilot the ship.
"Dropping out of warp in 3, 2..." Said Grahm from below. "one!"
Immediately all view screens turned on. The others ships weren't there yet.
Blessing his luck, Hargreave put 100% of what the ship could manage into the sole remaining EM Drive. Slowly but surely the ship began to speed towards the mass relay less than 40km away.
After about a minute Suddenly, a few heat signatures appeared behind the Peqoud.
"Damn! Ships are back. They're opening fire!" Shouted Grahm.
With manoeuvring thrusters only just online, Hargreave sent the ship into a spin, but maintained full acceleration. He was now within 23km form the relay, with no idea when it will activate.
"You've got to travel alongside the relay!" Shouted Grahm. Hargreave nodded but didn't reply, far too focused on getting through it alive.
A few shots from the pursuing ships went wide, slamming into the mass relay.
They did absolutely no damage to it.
Hargreave wiped his forehead. 10KM.
Nothing was happening.
"Where the fuck are we in?" shouted Hargreave.
"Nav computer estimates about 700 LY from Human space." Grahm replied.
Hargreave swore under his breath. The relay was the only chance they had of getting back to human space, and they had no idea how to use it.
At 7km, with the ships still bearing down on them, a bolt of what appeared to be lightning struck the ship. It did no damage however.
The relay began to light up, and Hargreave fell forward as gravity began to take hold of the ship. Pulling everything to the front of the craft.
Everything on the ship hit the ceiling, and Grahm himself almost fell 3 decks, but the ship was pulled parrelel to the relay, the lightning increasing in strength. Eventually Hargreave heard a defeaning roar, and then silence.
As the gravity subsided, Hargreave pushed against the roof and floated back towards the seat.
"Holy shit, how on Earth did the ship survive that trip twice?" Asked Hargreave. He heard Grahm groan from below.
"Grahm! You alive?" Shouted Hargreave.
"Yeah... I'm alive." He replied. Hargreave began to giggle and the two of them broke out into full blown hysterics.
"We fucking made it!" Shouted Hargreave halfway through his laughter fit.
One of the few surviving screens lit up. Three nearby heat signatures.
"Fuck! They followed us through!" Shouted Hargreave. He jumped back into the pilots seat.
"Grahm, crow flies to Keplar 13b as fast as you fucking can." Ordered Hargreave, attempting to use what was left of the engines to perform evasive manoeuvres.
"36 light years, three days. Hope there's some food and water left on this tin can." Shouted Grahm. "Jumping in three...Two..."
One of the shots glanced the ship's hull again, tearing across deck 24-20.
"One. Jumping!" Shouted Grahm.
The ship entered the warp bubble and the two men fell back in exhaustion and relief.
Hargreave removed the hardsuit helmet, the carbon dioxide having already been scrubbed from the command deck, and it not being breached.
"Fuck me. Aliens." Said Hargreave.
Hargreave climbed out of the chair and jumped, floating down to join Grahm at the bottom of the command deck.
As he landed, the mag boots activated, keeping him to the floor.
Twelve hours into the flight and the sensors on the ship had finally finished. No other survivors on the lower deck, the mess hall completely torn apart.
"We're going to die of thirst at this rate. If oxygen deprivation doesn't get us first. The Life support is barely holding together and the on deck oxygen recyclers are pretty damaged." Said Hargreave, having spent the last few hours going over their resources."
"All that is contingent on the drive core staying online. We can't leave the command deck, if she drops out again we are dead, no two ways about it."
Hargreave drew his M1911A5.
"Worst comes to the worst." Hargreave replied, slumping to the floor, exhausted.
"I'll keep first watch, do what I can from up here to keep everything running. We can Donner party the muntineers if we have to."
Hargreave almost laughed at that, which turned more into throwing up halfway through.
"Always the optimist." Said Hargreave.
"We'll make it back." Said Grahm.
"And what then. Our crew turned mutineer and have started a war with a powerful alien race. We're fucking dead."
"...Yeah." said Grahm weakly.
One of the computers lit up, and the ship dropped out of warp space.
"And the fucking Negative Mass drive fucking died. Welp." Said Hargreave, cocking his gun and placing it under his chin.
"Don't. The bullet will pierce the hull and I'll have a more painful death."
"Sorry, didn't think about that." Said Hargreave, cocking the gun again to eject the bullet out of the chamber and placing it back in his holster under his shirt.
"Well, we are going to die in interstellar space, and no one will ever know where and why." Said Hargreave.
Grahm fell next to him.
"Yeah. No one but idiots head out this way."
"Where are we anyway?" Asked Hargreave.
Grahm activated his holopalm, and read the mapped out route for the Peqoud.
"Well, we are actually in a star system, astronomically small odds of that. About 5 AU from the star. Red dwarf."
"Fucking A. Any Planets?"
"dunno, uncharted system."
"Fuck. If this was Star Trek or something there'd be a garden world with blue alien women and magic powers." Said Hargreave, gritting his teeth.
"Well, at least we aren't in interstellar space."
"Small mercies. Sure you don't want the quick way?" Asked Hargreave, holding up his pistol again.
Grahm shook his head, and he holstered it again.
"I've been alive for 43 years, served in the armed forces, served in special ops even, and this is the shittiest situation I've ever found myself in." Said Hargreave.
"Hey, I'm 42, and yeah, you're right." Said Grahm.
The two of them sighed. Hargreave looking roughly Twenty five, thanks to getting to be a part of the Telomere project early, and Grahm looking in his early thirties being a poor ex Earther.
"Well, let's get some sleep. Don't want to be tired and dead." said Hargreave jokingly.
Grahm simply nodded in response, and the two began to sleep, Grahm placing his head on Hargreave's shoulder. And so, in the dead in the water ship, they too waited for death.
Hargeave felt something smack him in the face, and he jolted awake. One of the fucking terrifying Aliens was looking over him.
"Fuck." Mumbled Hargreave as he was dragged to his feet, with something that looked awfully like a pistol pointed at the back of his head. His day was just getting better and better.
Codex:
Epsilon Eridani b
Also called Freedom's Reach, the oldest extrasolar colony in human space. Over 2 billion people live on Freedom's Reach, and is one of the few Extrasolar colonies with it's own version of the Internet. In an Alliance with Tau Ceti and Procyon, which rival Sol for Economic, Political and Military power.
Main belt Wars
In 2097, conflict in the MBF started when M83 and it's allied forces declared a stake on a large Rubidium asteroid which had already had a stake on by the people of Asteroid M-98231dd2.
M83 landed it's Marines on the Asteroid and blockaded M-9823dd2. M-9823dd2's allies in the MBF declare war on M83. For six months several space and land battles occur, ultimately ending in the destruction of M83 and the dissolution of MBF.
Arcturus event
In 2104 the Arcturus system was utterly wiped off the map. Arcuturus was a quarantined system with a red giant star. With the lack of FTL communication, no cause is known, though the prevailing theory is catastrophic Helium flash.
Human Telomere Project:
In 2074, the Telomere regeneration project successfully reduced the ageing process in mice. After moving onto chimps and limited human testing, as well as extensive computer simulations and billions of coins spent, in 2091 they announced they had successfully developed Nanites that could reduce the chance of degeneration of Telomeres to 1/10, essentially meaning that the body only had a 1/10 chance in actually ageing as normal. Originally the nanites were prohibitively expensive, but over the next twenty years their price would reduce. They, along with extrasolar colonisation, are responsible for the enormous population boom that is still continuing to this day. In 2074, the human population was 12.5 billion. In 2124, forty years later, the human population is a whopping 150 billion.
It is illegal to use the Telomere nanites before the age of 20. They still cost roughly a years wage for a normal income family per person, but as people who take it can potentially live for over a thousand years, many banks are willing to lend the cash quite easily, and simply rely on compound interest to fuck the person over.