Lost In Space – part 1
What do mean “we can’t go back”? Tarrel asked
“Well… it seems that the wormhole has collapsed right behind us” I looked at my sensors, looking for a signature where our exit door stood a few second ago, but only the white noise of the space was here. “that’s strange… the wormhole should have not collapsed before at least a few hours…”
“…So what did it? is there someone cloaked? My scanners didn’t pick it up.” Tarrel checked again his data, heating his guns’, but the wormhole we just passed was too small to allow a ship big enough to close it to pass.
“As long as we stay cloaked we won’t be attacked, let’s use this time to explore this system, what do you think?” I asked, the answer didn’t take long to come
“yeaa, at least if there is anyone living here we will spot him…” Tarrel sighed, I tried to cheer him up “Maybe they will help us to get out of here.”
Tarrel snorted away my proposition “more likely that they’ll kill use after ransoming us. Anyway… I don’t know for you but I’m picking up a strange signal here, aura say it is some sort of “sleeper” anomaly…”
Indeed, the Uncharted space we called “Wormhole space” (or W-space) were a dangerous place, if there was a place in this universe where you could find pirates, industrialists, lone wolfs, huge corporations and small gangs, it was in these lands. Even if divided by they ways to use the W-Space, they all shared a sense of “hospitality” really aggressive.
I suppose that we can’t blame them for that, after all, a single intruder could give information on where and when kill the owner of the system. No wonder then that the common sentence for trespassing on private space was death. But from my experience, with luck, you could always buy your exit ticket, of course that mean to trust your “hosts” but when possible I was the kind to take my chances, whatever slim they were.
As I was thinking about this part of space, a strange signal indeed started to flash on my scanners. Our IA of board “Aura” started to say what she knew on them with her soft, feminine voice (despise the best efforts of Gallenteans, she still sound too “metallic” for my taste), that the sleepers were an ancient and mysterious race of the cluster New Eden, that it seemed they were master of mathematics and programming. Apparently they descended from the first human to colonize the cluster but vanished mysteriously at least 2000 years before our time, leaving only construct and so called “enclave” guarded by the mysterious “sleepers drones”. As Aura blathered her synthetic knowledge I started to wonder… maybe this sleeper complexe were responsible for the closure of the wormhole, maybe there was a new kind of device allowing to control the opening and closure of wormhole… After all, the Sanshas Slavers seemed pretty gifted in this field. Maybe they stumbled on one of these facilities… And if some cyborg zombies can reverse engineering this kind of artefact, it would be easy for us.
“Tarrel, what do you think about going inside?”?
“Yeaa, sure and next I would like Jamyl’s crown, are you insane? Even the exterior is dangerous! I’ve read reports of entire expedition wiped by a few sleeper battleships! And even the sisters almost lost an expedition exploring one of these so called ‘enclave’, have you not read the reports? radiation, high security system, drones, and more! I’m sorry Umbre, but I’m not going inside one of these things! Anyway, first, we need to see if there is someone here…”
As Tarrel started our engines and warped to the first planet I re-read the Sisters of Eve (SOE) report on their sleeper exploration. The Sisters of Eve…
It’s a “religious charicative organisation” who think that god is locked behind the EvE Gate and they seek to reopen it. And strangely enough for a group of religious devote, they are at the top of technology. Every big breakthrough in our days involve in some manner a SOE, if they were only a charicative organisation it wouldn’t bother me, but increasing rumours of experiment on refugees, or worst, coupled with their tendency to secrecy, I mean, come on, they were fucking knowing the existence of sleeper and how to communicate with them when the rest of the cluster only discovered the sleepers! And why the sleepers did communicate with them when they shoot on sight the rest of the space ships? No, I’m pretty sure the SOEs are up to something, and I’m not sure that I would like what it is…
Lost in my thoughts I didn’t noticed we had left the warp, it was the voice of Tarrel who woke me up.
“What the hell…. Umbre… You should come here.”