Jump 2

In a system of no renown, a star raged against the cosmos.

A trillion trillion explosions echoed through its form, churning seas of plasma in currents dwarfing planets. On its surface tides of fire roiled, electromagnetism and gravity warring as plumes of hydrogen reached for the stars.

It shone, of course – carelessly, contemptuously. A titan carving its presence upon the fabric of reality. From the star came tsunamis of light, pouring forth against the darkness. Waves of electrons lashing against the void.

And every so often, when the star's rage reached its peak – a bloom of brilliant plasma appeared, wide as a dozen planets and twice as high. A gout of starfire freed from the chains of gravity, scything outwards, and outwards, and outwards...

It clipped a comet as it breached the star's corona, unfathomable amounts of ions grinding away at pockmarked rock with a roar. Across the cold blackness of space it roiled, titanic, unstoppable.

Soon – for a given defnition of 'soon' – it would collide a gas giant, speckling its atmosphere with light. Soon, it would brush past, leaving only havoc in its wake.

Only havoc – and a stubborn radio pulse, almost imperceptible through the noise.


It was a small, sturdy thing, barely larger than a truck on the mining colony which it overlooked. A capsule of titanium and aluminium locked in orbit around one of the gas giant's moons.

Unremarkable in all aspects save for the number of dents peppered across its exterior. And on that weathered shell – a maintenance hatch and a singular antenna array jutted out into the void.

To what end? Well, a simple one.

"Ping," spoke the beacon, into the depths of space. Faintly, quietly, drowned out by the cosmic tantrum which had crashed past it.

Throughout the coronal mass ejection it had been broadcasting, pulsing its signal through the deluge of rushing ions. The energy of a small fusion core against the echoing rage of a star.

It had not been fun. Internal diagnostics were showing multiple errors in the antenna's control system and the primary signal regulation circuit had been fried. There were plenty of backup circuits and redundancies, of course, but it was the principle of the thing.

The beacon's job was rather important, after all, and it could hardly carry it out to the best of its ability if it was damaged.

"Ping," spoke the beacon, into the depths of space. A nearly unnoticeable pulse against the background of the cosmos, a mere speck against the stars.

Not that the beacon cared. Elaborate though its inner workings were, it was hardly sapient, or even sentient. It thought, but along a predetermined path, following a list of instructions millions of lines long.

If a message from ground control was received it would beam it forward at the nearest opportunity. If a request to dock for maintenance was issued it would verify and log the credentials before obediently opening the maintenance hatch on its side.

And once every standard second, as decreed by galactic law passed on a distant world, as defined by the humming atomic clock within its chassis-

"Ping," spoke the beacon, into the depths of space.

Once every second for the last 85.76 local years. An endless signal rippling through the fabric of space.

It was a long time for any sort of electronics to weather. Indeed, all but the most esoteric of the beacon's components had been replaced twice over throughout its tenure, its internals a tangled bundle of improvised fixes and technically functional parts.

Even then – its time was coming to an end. Or, it had been for the last 10 years. Only recently was the replacement request finally peeled from the gears of bureaucracy, mangled but barely alive. Soon an engineer fleet would arrive, and with it the beacon's replacement.

"Ping," spoke the beacon still, for it had no access to the records regarding itself, nor the ability to fear its own deactivation. Until its pinging apparatus was disabled, from asteroids or time or a team of engineers with a decommission notice-

"Ping," spoke the beacon, then and evermore.

But this time, a matching beep echoed back, a subspace signal faint against the cosmic background. The beacon waited attentively until the confirmation beep arrived. Then, it spun into action.

"Ping," spoke the beacon again, this time with a new purpose. Within two more pings its antenna array was realigned, a narrow-beam transmission reaching out to the stranger.

Within a millisecond it fired off a series of questions. Where was the beeper? What was their direction and velocity? Was there any emergency on board? It took in the answers and ran them through a series of mathematical processes, factoring in the location of nearby ships and asteroids, the gravity well of the nearby moons and planet, the existence or lack thereof of any hazards.

When it was done, the beacon turned its attention to the beeper once more.

"Ping, Ping, Ping," it stated plainly; an information packet containing the top few safest exit locations as well as the raw data from which it was derived.

For the next hour the beacon waited, making corrections and ensuring the beeper was still on course. Stubbornly maintaining its periodic pinging all the while, pulse after pulse.

Then-


A warp in the fabric of reality as subspace and realspace came into contact. The steady ringing of ion engines, soundless in the vacuum of space. For a moment the ship simply floated in place, as if stunned by the miracle of appearing from thin air.

Then it kicked into action, radar waves bathing the surrounding area as the weapons on its hardpoints spun up. Liquid-fuel engines replaced the ion, plumes of carbon black and brilliant white blotting out the stars. Evasive maneuvers against a target that didn't exist.

For minutes it prowled around the area, weapons charged. Then like a sigh of relief, the roar of the ship's engines throttled down.

It turned its weapons towards the nearby asteroids instead. For the next few hours it would wander the area, excising small chunks of material from the asteroids one laser burst at a time. As it passed by the shiny robotic arm mounted on its hull swivelled about, retrieving every crumb of loose material it could.

Finally the ship came to a stop, laser weapon powering down. For a moment its missile weapon powered up instead, training on the nearest asteroid. One of the largest ones, almost as big as the ship itself.

Silence. The ship rumbled under the thrust of its engines.

Then it turned away hesitantly. A beep emanated from its communications antenna.

"Ping," the beacon replied helpfully; a rough map of all the other connecting beacons and their coordinates. It maintained contact with the beeper as it moved into position. Awaited as the ion emissions of its engines grew and grew, painting a streak of colour against black void.

A burst of static – then nothing. In subspace, a beeping signal withdrew at incredible speed.

FTL entry successful; logged and noted. The beacon's distress feature would not need to be activated today.

So sat the beacon, alone in the void once again. An insignificant thing, orbiting a moon orbiting a planet orbiting a star orbiting the galaxy. A mere footnote of a legend, soon forgotten, soon replaced.

"Ping", spoke the beacon, into the depths of space.