Dr. Creepen's Dungeon - S6 Ep315: Episode 315: Space Exploration Horror

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

Today’s phenomenal opening tale of terror is ‘Dead in Space’, an epic work by Taxi Dancer, kindly shared directly with me via my sub-reddit and narrated here for you all with the author’s express permission. https://www.reddit.com/user/Taxi_Dancer/Today’s closing offering is ‘Achilles IV’, an original story by Ryan Kinkor; shared directly with me via my sub-reddit and read here with the author’s express permission: https://www.reddit.com/user/RTKGuy/

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Welcome to Dr. Creepen's Dungeon. Space exploration scares us because it confronts us with scale, isolation and the possibility that we are profoundly insignificant. Beyond Earth, there are no familiar reference points, only vast emptiness, lethal silence, and environments where even the smallest mistake is fatal. It challenges our sense of control, reminding us that we are fragile visitors in a universe that neither notices nor cares. In horror especially, space embodied. What is the ultimate unknown? The idea that something might be out there or worse, that there's nothing at all,

and we are utterly alone in the dark. As we shall see in tonight's two tales of horror. Now, as ever before we begin, a word of caution. Tonight's stories may contain strong language as well as descriptions of violence and horrific imagery. That sounds like your kind of thing. Then let's begin. Achilles four.

Attention. This is the crew log of Anson Cole. Jordan. We're all designated as systems technician. Current assignment is to cargo acquisition vessel, Achilles 4, which is undergoing post-flight processing and containment procedures in docking port 2 of Station Alpha Centauri. Information contained in this file has not yet been verified or vetted. Level 1 analysis of file indicates 11 security breaches committed in the creation of this file. Please set your system security to Epsilon while accessing this data. But Remember your safety and the company's safety are one and the same.

Log number one. August 14th, 2074. I really have no idea how to begin this since I... Since I don't normally bother with doing logs in the first place. I always felt like a pointless exercise. Since the ship AI keeps track of everything and the Jericho Company X-X, don't give a shit what we think as long as it doesn't impact on our jobs. I had to fight dirty with the Achilles A.I.

just to get access to the logging program. So, I'll just be blunt. They're dead. Everyone else is dead. And the ship doesn't believe it. Impossible, right? Didn't the Big Wigs back on Earth create a perfect system? One that can't go wrong.

They're so trusting of our machine captains that the corporate newsletters are always spouting off about the 92% mission success rate. Jericho AI has a thousand eyes and ears, can take control of any ship system and uses cold and practical logic to get the job done. Why even send humans on missions anymore? Except us system technicians know the bit of truth. The company can't afford to fashion every ship in the fleet with a true AI, so they

slapped together a bunch of cognitive programs into one fancy package designed to mimic a true artificial intelligence. It does fine with handling ship functions, but it's not an intellect that can think and adapt. That's why cargo ships are sent out with a crew of six humans, and why the captain isn't mechanical but flesh and blood. It's also why we have implants in our chest that transmit our bioredings to the ship, because that's the only way the system knows we're alive. Now that little fact is rather important because Jericho trusts its stead of the Art Tech far more than it trusts its employees. Our rank affects which ship systems we can access without authorization from a higher rank.

The captain has full authorization, as one might expect, but only if the computer allows it. And little old me in Ensign is at the bottom rung of the ladder. I can't even make a log entry without Captain Westinghouse's approval. But if the captain is rendered dead or incapacitated, the next thing is. highest ranking crew member gets control. We don't make that determination though. The computer does. Because even though the system can't determine if we're alive or dead without help,

it decides how to dole out control. Basically, we have a chain of command dictated by our implants. Now, I should have control. I don't. Westinghouse and the others are dead, but their implants aren't. The expansion got them, but the computer still thinks they're alive. As a result, I'm locked out of most ship's systems because I need Captain Authentication to do anything. But us techs are tricky bastards.

I managed to put together a diagnostic program that forces the ship computer to go into maintenance mode for 21 minutes and three seconds every 24 hours. In that time, while the computer is distracted, I have the ability to enter the system and whittle all. way at the security firewalls and encryptions. It's been 57 hours since the crew died, and this log is my first success. I have to cut it short because I'm almost out of time. I'm going for the communication system next. I'll transmit a distress call, and this log, well, hopes someone intercepts it in time, because this ship is on its way to Alpha Centauri Station, and it cannot be allowed to dock.

Repeat. Do not allow their ship to dock under any circumstances. Log 2. August 18th, 2074. Three days attempting to send out a signal. Three days wasted. The expansion 8, the karma rate. Well, I'm a tad demoralized right now, so I'm going to waste today's access time with another log entry. Even if I can't transmit any data off ship, I can at least keep a record of what happened here

in case the ship survives, but I don't. Though, honestly, it'll be better if the ship doesn't survive either. I'm not ready to go that direction yet. We have two months before Achilles' four arrives at the station. I have time. I suppose I should talk about the others. Florin, Matt, Kindie, Lars, well, and Westinghouse.

None of them deserved what happened. They're all good workers, committed to the unofficial company slogan, the cargo comes first. I won't say that we were great, friends, since I spent more time with a computer than talking to them about their home lives or significant others.

But I'd sip a libation pack with any one of them. None of them were incompetent either. It didn't die just because one of them got greedy or did something stupid. Now I know Jericho will try to spin events so they don't have to pay through the nose to reimburse their families, but they deserve all the credits they can get. They had no idea what they were walking into. None of us did. R.H. 1129 looked like a million other planets in the Galactic Survey database, a barren rock with lots of free minerals to exploit.

All we had to do was keep the ship in orbit and sit back while the drones went down and did the work. I didn't do the survey map myself, but Lars had been practically giddy about the place after his analysis. There was a plentiful amount of anomalous material littering the surface. Some of it piled up in mounds as high as 300 metres. We didn't even need to break out the mining drones to collect samples. If the material turned out to be valuable, as the spectrographic report suggested, we'd have some serious bonuses coming our way. It was an easy job.

Too easy. The drones only took four standard days to deliver the sample payload to the Achilles for. All the drone scans checked out. No biological contaminants. No abarant energy readings. No explosive properties. The cargo wouldn't have made it into the ship had we tripped any warning barrels. The cargo shuttle went into cargo bay three without incident.

and everyone was there to greet it. Mads and Kinney were the only ones who had to be there since they were running the metallurgical test, but, well, the other three had decided to sneak a peek as well. This was a brand new substance, finding that few ship crews ever came across. Forget our bonuses. This kind of thing could get us into the history books.

Why wasn't I there? Well, that was going to be, but I received an emergency message from the computer concerning the drone task force on the planet. The drones were my territory. I confess that I got territorial about them. I don't label them or give them names. We go through too many of them for me to want to get attached.

So I diverted to my workstation on the bridge and viewed the message right as the cargo was getting offloaded back in Bay Three. I admit that I was distracted from the goings-on in Bay Three at first because the message had me to completely. loss. All five drones assigned to the surface, it just died. All energy readings and signals was zeroed out, and it had happened almost simultaneously, all of them going dark within the span of ten seconds. It didn't make any sense. Certainly wasn't the first time I'd lost a drone or even an entire squad, but they'd been on mapping missions miles apart from each other.

some kind of natural disaster a massive storm or earthquake the planet didn't even have weather the computer would have warned us about any incoming meteor impacts or tectonic shifts so what got the drums well it was this mystery that occupied my thoughts

when I first heard the screams coming from Bay 3 I don't really want to dwell on what happened right now I'm pretty low already I'm almost out of time for today let the record show that I'm no coward I'm just lucky if you can call my current state of affairs

being lucky Log 3 September 1st 274 I just noticed the date it's been a while hasn't it I've been using my access windows to try to

reprogram the system to acknowledge me as a sole survivor, but the computer's not going for it. Those damn implants. I suppose it's a good thing the computer has a directive constituting a regard for life so high that it won't declare a crew member dead unless the implant says so. The only way to kill the directive is to kill the computer, which would kill the ship and then kill me. Well, I should probably answer the million credit question you've been dying to ask me. How are the implants still? functioning if the crew's dead. Well, by the time you're reading this, it might be an answer, but right now I have no idea. My best guess is that the expansion took control of the implant

somehow is replicating the vital signs of my crew. The fact that it's sophisticated enough to do that scares the crap out of me, but then I've been scared every minute of every day since the crew died. Okay, right. Time to do that. to talk about the expansion. That's my name for it, and it does what it says on the tin. It expands. Thanks to the computer lockouts, I only have so many analysis tools at my disposal, but it appears to be composed of some kind of microscopic entity akin to a virus or a nanobot. Well, its main mass resembles Earth-based moss, only its colors change from red to blue and back at random intervals. It doesn't mean that it's main mass resembles. It doesn't mean that it's a matter of

move except when it's growing, which appears to be done by breaking down other materials and assimilating it into its structure. When it grows, it grows very quickly. In my attempts to sway the computer to my side, I've been able to access security footage from the onboard surveillance system. I was able to watch the last two and a half minutes of my crew's existence before the expansion got the cameras and the ship initiated a total lockdown around Cargo Bay 3. I've had over a month now to deal with what I saw. I'd like to think I've processed it and moved on, but

God, I get chills just thinking about it. Up until 1532 hours, the video depicts pretty standard docking procedures. The cargo shuttle comes in and latches to the floor. It takes seven minutes for decontamination and threat scans to do their business, so nothing visible is going on at all. At 1539 hours, the system gives the okay. The bay pressurises and the crew enter the zero gravity zone, using mag boots to stick

to the floor of the room. While this is going on, an automatic servo crane is removing the sample canister and locking it down. Mads goes over to it. Kindie is right behind him, and the others are hanging back. Everybody seemed real eager to uncork this vintage wine we'd found, but they were all following established procedure. Well, if I could pin a negative on them,

it was with Mads and Kindy who were definitely in a rush to study this new substance. 1542 hours, Mads opens the secured access point to the cargo canister in order to get a micro-sample for study, which is less than a millimeter in diameter, and there's a number of filters on it to help control substance spread. That was enough room to allow the stuff to breathe, reach containment. It comes out like tooth gel bursting from a tube that just got squeezed too hard. Mads had his face right up to the axis point when it happened. Obviously Mads was the first to

get broken down. His face disappeared into the substance, followed by his head and neck and then the rest of him. His arms and legs flailed helplessly around like snakes on hot coals. I suspected he was already quite dead at that point. Kendi's noble instincts got the better of him, and he grabbed one of Mad's arms and tried to pull him free. All he accomplished was to become the second victim

as the stuff worked its way onto his body too. The poor guy screaming as it took his hands and then took the rest of him. Westinghouse and the others backed off and ran for the airlock, but the computer was already one step ahead them, as was the expansion. It was spreading out all over the cargo bay, a living carpet of hungry alien cells latching onto and absorbing everything edible of the cargo containers, equipment for our shuttles and drums, lubricant for our machinery, and even the cargo shuttle itself. The computer couldn't allow a thing like that to get any further into the ship, so it trapped the captain and the others in there.

I could hear Westinghouse screaming at the computer to let him out, even used his command. land override to try to get the door open. I think you forgot about company policy involving mission priorities. We know the tales about entire crews having been lost on these missions, but the ships fly back just fine. Well, it's simple math, right? If you lose the ship, you lose the crew.

If you lose the crew, you might save the ship. Well, a ship-eating organism's too much for a threat to risk getting loose, and even a captain's authority can't just. changed that. It ate the contents of the cargo bay as easily as it took in Mads and Gindi. In some places it would bunch up and send strands of itself into other parts of the room, using zero gravity to get around quicker. In short order, the room resembled a thick spiderweb in there, strands of red and blue covering all walls and flooring, with bits of clothing and other material

hanging off it in places. For dessert, it took out all four cameras, ending the available footage at 1544 hours. I never did see what happened with the others. They'd fled to a corner of the room not covered by an operational camera. I think they were still screaming when the last camera fell. They may have still been alive. Considering that their implants still claim they are alive, I doubt there'll ever be a clear answer to their time.

times of death. Since then my ability to monitor the expansion is very limited. Surface scans can't determine if it's organic or artificial. Well, surface scans are just about useless. It gives me either false readings or no readings at all. It explains why we got the all clear to take it on board. At least the expansion can't absorb everything or this ship would have been consumed within hours. It has an appetite for all sorts of materials, but apparently it doesn't like DuraCrete, the synthetic material composing the walls of the bay, and the sample container it was in. It also can't stomach unnatural materials like polyester. The computer has locked down all three doors into the bay. All ventilation shafts and other openings shut off with DuraCrete shutters.

The ship could eject the cargo bay into space. But not with five crew members showing life signs inside, and not without captain authorization. So, yep, not an option for me. Yet despite the lockdown, it got to the comm array. I don't think it targeted it deliberately. The ship lost one of our backup power nose at the same time. I've had some time to study the damage report, and my guess is that the expansion found a power cable not adequately covered by the containment shutters. They follow the cable all the way to the power node

Before new shutters could be implemented We got to the Comeray This stuff is on the outside of the ship There are a number of ship components It could feed on out there But it's not spreading External cameras show the external bits of dormant Maybe even dead

I think it has a problem with complete vacuum That might be why it acted inert On RH1129 The planet had no atmosphere It hasn't spread further on the ship since eating the commarray. With any luck, it won't get any further. But it won't do me any good, unless I can gain control of the ship. Speaking of which, I better get back to it, or else all these logs will be for nothing.

Log 4, September 15th, 2074. It got to cargo bay too. It got the food. My fault for getting so stupidly complacent. Can't blame the computer or the company for this one. Expansion had been so quiet that I thought it had gone into a type of stasis, like what it did back on R.H. 1129. It had eaten everything it could, right?

Well, yesterday it pulled a farce one by suddenly breaching Cargo Bay 2, where we kept the lion's share of the food stop. I'd move some of it into the ship culinary section for my own convenience, so it wasn't a total loss. I still have a month's worth of food at normal consumption. I can probably ration it to last until at least I reached Station Alpha Centauri in six weeks. But that's only problem number two. Number one is that it got past containment again, and that's a bit more serious. Thanks to my constant hacking, I managed to gain access to strike.

structural scan records. It turns out that Jura Crete isn't impervious to the expansion. It just slows down the absorption rate to a crawl. There was a weak section between Bay 2 and 3. It also means that other parts of the cargo bay could go at any time.

And you know, it would be nice if I could talk to this misbegotten son of a trash compactor about it and create a new containment line in the adjacent sections to Cargo Bay 3. but, well, I can't. Still locked out. So I just have to stay out of the vulnerable sections

and trust in the computer safeguards. But it's all just a stopgap measure. My best calculation is that the expansion will infest the entire ship within five weeks. It'll hit key systems like propulsion, the antimatter power plant and life support before then. Starving to death is the least of my concerns. Alert, station authority has issued a cautionary advisement.

An accident has occurred in dockingport 2. Please avoid use of docking port 2 until further notice. Remember, your safety and the company's safety are one the same. Log 5, September 16th, 20174. Comes up with this bullshit. Which company executive decided that all us human employees were too stupid to be trusted with their own ships? You know, all us dummies with advanced degrees and years of space travel under our belts, but I guess they know better.

They know us learned folk are just rife with dysfunction. Can't possibly give us control. That'd be too much. Well, a functional mind, whether living or mechanical, would look at this situation and say, Hmm, we appear to have a biohazard contaminating our ship. Maybe we should stop the ship and purge it. Let's set off the distress beacon or retool a probe to go ahead of us and broadcast for help. Let's do anything besides dumbly flying back to our home base with a microorganism that eats practically everything.

But I get it now. Functional mines aren't company policy. They want obedient mines. They want the ship and their cargo back. The cargo comes first. Company motto and all that. where else would you have your ship computer automatically head back to the base despite knowing it has a biohazard on board?

That's why we're flying back, you know. It's what they call a non-responsive command protocol. If the designated captain is deemed alive and alert by his or her implant, then a captain who refuses to give orders is considered compromised with the rest of the crew likely in the same boat. In the case of a compromised commander, the ship automatically returns home unless his status changes. It's considered an anti-piracy tactic,

making the assumption that a compromise captain is either being coerced by pirates or is aiming to become one. Yeah, I know, I know. This is all unproductive ranting. If this gets read, it'll be by some accountant trying to tabulate the costs or a manager trying to figure out how to spin this in the media. They're all about company policy. This entry is just a distraction, because I'm about to try something dangerous.

If it works, it should buy me more time, hopefully enough to get me back to controlled space. If it doesn't, this will be my last entry. I don't want to end my record without a last word or two. I want one more thing. I guess I hadn't spurt it out clearly enough. I'm pretty convinced the Jericho leadership is made up of nothing but a moral bust. But I'm sure we all knew that already, system report. Data breach on September 18, 2074 has caused file corruption.

Hard drive damage located, unable to enact repairs. The next log entry, designated entry 6 and created on September 17, 20174, has been classified as 96% irretrievable. Continuing to next entry. Log 7 October 2nd, 274 I did it

I managed to pull off a minor miracle Let's start with the fact that I knew the ship wouldn't make it back to control space If I kept letting the computer call the shots And I admit that my deep hack stunt didn't hell matters The vacuum break I created two weeks ago Caust a lot of damage to ship systems So thankfully nothing vital but the vacuum brake is holding.

The expansion has infested the entire 12% of the ship it had access to, but it can't get any further, not with a cold vacuum of space blocking it. So I tried a different tactic with the computer. I bought a Captain Kirk, as us techs like to call it. I used some hard logic on the system, managed to convince it that the life science coming from the cargo bay couldn't be human life science any longer

because, A, they've been exposed to hard vacuum for 15 days, and B, had not moved out of the bay for weeks. Even a system as unfathomably stubborn as a cargo ship computer could figure that one out. So, I'm the designated captain now. That's my minor miracle. Unfortunately, my options are limited. I can't jettison the expansion now.

It's infected too much of the ship's structure. The expansion also took down the ship's probe launcher and all the probes with it, so I can't rig up a probe to transmit a distress call. Still, at least now I have access to navigation and propulsion, and I can use the more powerful ship scanners on the expansion, since the drone scans were unreliable. Best of all, I don't have to worry about stupid hacking windows anymore. I can do these logs any time I want,

So, if you don't mind, I've got some new toys to play with. Hopefully I have a plan of action the next time I sit down to record another one of these apocalyptic diaries, and it'll be nothing but good news from here on out. Station alert. All transit to Section Zone 3 has now been prohibited. We're experiencing a significant power fluctuation in that region, and the issue is being addressed. All non-essential personnel still in Zone Section 3 should reach.

remain at their current location until further notice. Remember, your safety and the company's safety are one and the same. Log 8, October 4th, 274. Not good news. Not at all. My mom was one of those kinds of people who never saw a doctor. She put her faith in herbal remedies and clean living and positive thinking, and she stuck to her beliefs even when she started to her beliefs even when she her pain in her chest and her breathing was growing shallower.

I used to think it was a sign of insanity but more and more I think it was actually a sign of fear. She was afraid of reality

intruding into her happiness that having someone show a picture of her chest with a tumour growing in her lungs

would forever spoil the magic in her life replacing it with cold dread and the omnipresence of mortality.

She died in ignorance of what had killed her. A blessing the rest of the family get when the coroner told us about her cancer. Right now I envy her ignorance.

I've seen the cancer that's killing this ship, and I fear it's a fatal prognosis. This stuff isn't what I call smart, not human smart, but it has a few brain cells somewhere in that mess of mycoyed cells. Yes, mycoyd as in fungus. I have no idea how to define it better than that. I'm no xenobiologist or even a regular biologist. It might be related to a mushroom, but, well, it's a smart mushroom. I did a full thermal scan of the infected areas,

since this stuff gives off a lot of heat as it grows, and the scan showed that it's tunneling through the floor, the ceiling, and even the outer hole. It's avoiding the vacuum by going inside the struts and plating, digging right up the middle. Most of the supports have a thickness of five centimeters, doesn't offer much wiggle room, but this stuff is carving out tunnels only one centimeter thick. It's slow-going, but if slow-going works for tortoises,

it will work for this stuff too. The computer projects the closest expansion mass will bypass my vacuum brake in nine days, most likely emerging in the engine room. I can depressurize the engine room, but I'll never be able to repressurize it or else the expansion would immediately infested and take out the engine.

worse, even if it can't get the engines, the stuff will just shrug its metaphorical shoulders and tunnel to the next section. Well, I can see where this is going. The expansion will keep coming and the only way I can slow it down is to keep depressurizing more and more of the ship. Eventually, I'll be stuck on the bridge, sleeping on the floor, surrounded by trash and my own waist, waiting for the expansion to reach my last sanctuary. I am the captain of a sinking ship. What an honour for me.

The rescue pod remains an option, but every space mariner knows the odds of a successful rescue outside of controlled space is next to nil. I can control the navigation system now, so I can divert our course if I wish. I suppose I could park the ship next to a quasar, so I'd have a spectacular light show to want. before the ship disintegrates. But I'm not going down with this ship. You hear me, you miserable

corporate excrement. I'm not dying for you or the company. I'm riding this ship of the damned until I find a good place to get off. I'll send it straight into Alpha Centauri myself and melt this ship into slag if it means destroying the expansion. But I'm living through this. So says I, the captain of the Achilles For. and so it shall be done. Log 9. October 18th, 274. I couldn't help but reread my last entry. I can't tell if I'm getting loony or just downright scary.

Considering I haven't talked to another sentient soul in weeks, I don't think I can be blamed for going her little nuts. The ship computer can't hold a decent conversation, these logs are just me talking to myself. I guess it's true what they say. about solitary confinement. It's the best punishment out there, though it still pales to the type of torture

when you're trapped in a prison cell with a predator that's doing everything it can to get to you. At least the astrophysics classes I took in training are paying off. The computer and I came up with an alternate course that should shave four days off the trip. So that means I have five days before we enter controlled space. That puts me inside the range of the quantum. beacons which will pick up the lower power distress signal from the rescue part you be kai you know i think i might

live through this it's going to be tight though half the ship is already depressurized i have an evax suit available to get through the vacuum but breathing isn't my biggest problem the stuff is digging through the altar hall as well and my rescue pod is right in its path the best estimate i can come up with is at the Rescue Pod will be consumed right around the point I reach controlled space. I can't get more precise than that. Whichever life-form wins this race takes the whole enchilada. Well, space mariners like to claim we're part of an ancient tradition that goes back centuries, to the times of wooden ships travelling Earth's oceans,

spending months or even years away from their homeland in search of fame, fortune, or just plain survival. I've heard lots of tales over the years of sailors meeting all manners of disasters, from freak storms to hidden shores to belligerent pirates. The tales are always stuck out in my mind, weren't the dramatic ones, but the story is about slow death. A ship that wandered into a be-calmed zone, where the wind refused to blow for days or even weeks, the crew depleting their stores and their water,

succumbing to starvation, dehydration, and infighting. Or they contract a nasty disease that spreads all through their ranks. The men dying to an enemy they can't fight or flee from. What was it like to be stuck inside a death tram like that? Praying for a strong wind, hoping for rescue, longing for a piece of dry land to escape to. I really hate those stories now. Log 10, October 21st, 2074. 12 hours before I reach controlled space.

12 lonely hours. I mean, what's 12 hours more in the scheme of things? I've been stuck on this ship for over 3,600 hours now. 12 hours is easy, easy. I'm just really bored. Also really freaked out. Is that possible being bored and freaked out at the same time? Or is my mood just taking turns going from one to the other?

I can't tell. anymore. I quarantined myself to the bridge for days now and my leisure options are limited. The company is a real problem with people using bridge hardware for entertainment purposes and while I could hack into my own stash of videos I might very well jeopardize some key systems in the process. So I've been doing a lot of reading, mostly status reports and training simulations and other fun things like that. I also decided to look over the recorded orbital scans of RH1129. Not because I was really looking for a clue or epiphany

concerning the expansion, but because, again, I'm really bored. You know what I found? A whole lot of mounds. The thing is, well, they are literally everywhere on the surface. There is a pattern to them. The biggest mounds are clustered together, in some cases, lined up symmetrically. The 3D imaging pictures show some of these clusters going on for miles miles and the more I looked at them the more they resembled the outlines of cityscapes

with the tallest one substituting for skyscrapers and numerous small mounds stepping in for apartment buildings and houses and while it got me thinking what if those mounds used to be buildings maybe this isn't a fanciful notion created by a man both on borrowed tire man with too much time on his hands i have to think that this planet wasn't always a wasteland It occupies a gold lock zone and has the right planetary spin. Gravity is comparable to Earth. It just lacks an atmosphere, and that's a big problem. Then again, maybe it did have an atmosphere once.

Maybe the expansion came to RH1129, or was created by an intelligent species that once lived there. And it just did what it does well. It ate everything it could, producing a fellow sentient species into nothing but mounds of organic refueling. Maybe it destroyed the atmosphere as well, or maybe the species destroyed the atmosphere in order to stop it from going any further. I can't prove any of it, but it makes for a pretty depressing tale. It's also a good argument for why the ship needs to fly into a sun.

Good thing I have pre-programmed the flight computer to do so once I'm off the ship. I just have to send a short-range signal from the pardon. Voila, the Achilles four becomes part of the Great Beyond. Well, I'd say I'd be sad about it, but I kind of hate this ship now. Twelve hours to go. Like I said, easy, peasy. Log 10 addendum. I...

I can't even. I'm not in the right frame of mind to do a log, but a record has to be kept. I have to find a way to get this out. Find a way to transmit this. It's all I have left now. Others must know what happened here. Others besides Jericho. Pod is gone.

No, not because the expansion ate it. That'd be unfair, but it would make sense. Self-replicating spore-like nanostructures must do what they must. The pod is gone because I decided to send the navigation system my course correction while I was still on the bridge. I didn't want to risk the POD's short-range transmitter not being up for the task. I didn't think it would matter when I did. Since the star I picked for the job, K-LO-43, it was well inside controlled space and wouldn't affect my timeline.

Oh, good thing I thought ahead, I guess. As soon as I executed the course correction, I was immediately locked out of the navigational system. At the same time, there was a rupture at the Pod Bay compartment. Damage control showed a localized hall breach, limited to the rescue pod itself. Somehow the pod's internal power cells have gone into overload. And that can't happen unless the cooling system is disabled. But the pod is gone.

My control of the ship is gone. Most of my caps in authority is gone. In terms of access, I am locked out of anything important. Yes, it turns out there was another order in play. After I cried my eyes out over the loss at the pod, I went back through the status logs, going back to when this whole horror show started two months ago, hoping to find out why this had happened.

I found out what I was looking for. One day before the commarray got eaten, Achilles 4 received a communication from Jericho, systemize only, meaning that no crew member on board had access to it. The message wasn't in the log, but, thanks to my deep hack, I could get the computer to cough it up. And I am not ashamed to say that I cried my eyes out again after reading it. The ship computer had transmitted the biohazard warning,

and what preliminary data it had on the expansion to Jericho headquarters, which is standard procedure in situations like these. What isn't standard is that the ship received a corporate order to maintain a course for Alpha Centauri Station. The ship could alter the course as long as it arrived at station within three months. External communications could only go through corporate channels. Any attempt to destroy the ship by the captain, like I had just done, would result in command lockout. At the same time the ship computer would ensure the crew didn't attempt to flee the ship, so all shuttles and pods would have mysterious problems arise if we tried to use them,

such as cooling systems abruptly breaking. Wouldn't want us warning the authorities, right? Jericho knows what they have aboard this ship, and they want to bring it home. The cargo comes first. The crew comes last. I have no more words for you, my corporate overlords. Words no longer do justice to what you've done. I can't even bother to.

I can't even... Log 11. October 24th, 274. Well, it's taken me a few days to get my shit together. I can't say that my shit is, in fact, together. I think I'm way past pulling myself into a state resembling any actual human being. But I got something.

I got me a plan. It's a bad plan, it's a fatal plan. That's the only kind of plans I have left to use. I am dead. I already. feel dead, like I'm a ghost wandering an empty ship, my corpse decomposing somewhere out of sight, or just floating in space, or just another part of that creeping mass consuming the ship. There's two days left in my trip, but there's no salvation at my destination.

Jericho is waiting for this ship to dock, no doubt itching to study, to test and dissect the expansion. They can still probably save me, but they won't. much too much of a liability now. I have all the incriminating evidence needed to bring them up on criminal charges. They'll either let the expansion finish me off, or they might help my demise along by initiating an accident. They'll alter or purge some records, and that will be that. One more lost crew added to the memorial wall back on Earth.

Well, they don't know what they're dealing with. They only have early scanning data. They'll let this thing onto the station, and it will run wild. Alpha Centauri Station has over 10,000 souls aboard, and cargo ships travel from the station to Earth every day. No matter how thoroughly Jericho has screwed me over, I can't let all those people die. I can't risk letting the expansion get to Earth.

So, right, my fatal plan. Well, since I can't deliberately fly this ship into a star, I'll settle for doing it accidentally. I can do a deep hack again, only this time I'll permanently take out the ship computer. That'll cause the engines to shut down as an automatic safety precaution. Now, the trick is when to do the shutdown, but I figured that out as well. If I time it right, the ship will do a gravity slingshot past Centauri 4, a small gas giant, which will send me right at the star itself.

Since I can't use the ship computer to help guide me this time, I have to use my own calculations. Well, this could go very badly. I don't want to sling the ship into a planet if I can help it, or out into deep space where the ship might eventually be recovered. But it's the best option from my list of fatal plans. If I succeed, then this log dies with me. Jericho will probably skate by without the authorities ever catching wind of the ship they were pulling. But hey, I'll go out saving lives. Definitely worse fates than that.

One way or another, this is my last entry. I won't waste my time thinking of famous last words, but I will say this. My crew deserved better. I deserve better. Jericho deserves a whole lot more than what they're going to get. Warning. Stationed securely raised to live. level ormega. Biohazard safeguards are now in effect. Please stay at your current location.

An evacuation team will arrive within two hours. Remember, your safety and the company's safety are one and the same. Attention. Hidden data newly discovered. Unknown log entry now available. Release of log entry appears to coincide with signal burst originating from Achilles 4. Cause of transmission on no. Log 12. Date. Oh no. Hi there, my corporate overlords.

If you're reading this entry, a few things will have transpired. For starters, I'm dead. I won't know how it happened, but I'll be dead nonetheless. I hope it was fairly payments. Next, the ship is still in one piece. You might think that means my plan was a failure, and that would be a fair assessment of things considering what data you have available.

Except that wasn't my plan, not the real one. I did try to shut down the computer, but only so the system would log my attempt. Ship computers of so many firewalls and redundant hard drive and it's almost impossible to disable it through hacking. I did it so you wouldn't look too hard

at my actual hacking effort. What I did was rig up a new transmitter. the only one I still had available was the one still attached to the wreckage of the rescue pot. I had to use my Evac suit to travel through a number of depressurized compartments and it wasn't much fun. I kept expecting the expansion to burst out of the walls and absorb me at any time, but that didn't happen.

I rigged the pods transmitter to run off the ship's power supply as well as connected to my personal digital device. That way the ship's computer doesn't even know it exists. I've downloaded the logs into my personal device and I've hidden the device somewhere it won't be found too quickly, but not before I said it to record my bio-readings from my implant. I added the condition that if my implant ever goes dark, the device will automatically transmit two signals.

One will be to send the logs through the pod's short range array. It'll only work for one good burst, but every communication array within 2,000 miles of the ship will pick up the data burst. The second signal will be to the Achilles for itself. It will activate the program I put in the life support system, the one that will pressurize every compartment on the ship. I have crunched some numbers and realized that the ship's hull is in a very tenuous state from all the expansions tunneling.

Returning the air to most of the ship would be like throwing a lit match into a bull of gasoline. The expansion will surge into all those compartments, causing hull breaches everywhere. It could even rip the ship apart. I admit it's a plan with a number of serious risks. What if my personal device runs out of power first or get smashed? What if the expansion eats me and duplicates my implant readings? What if the pods transmitter proves too damage to do the job? Yes, it's a desperate plan, but...

and I am a desperate person. I realised that even if I could destroy the ship, it wouldn't stop Jericho. The company would just send a new ship to R.H. 1129. I have to expose the company and expose the expansion. Nothing gets people's attention like a dying mariner's last log coupled with the public destruction of a cargo vessel in range of every able sensor package.

Truth be told, the one thing I'm really afraid of is that the company's retrieval team will bring the ship directly into one of the station's docking ports. If the ship comes apart inside a docking port, there'll be no way to stop it from infesting the station. But you guys wouldn't be that arrogant, right? I mean, there are protocols for this kind of thing. I mean, unless you're too busy trying to hide the ship to care about small matters like biohazard containment. I suppose no matter what happens, you corporate guys are going to be real cross with me. No death benefits for my mom, no bonus for my hard work,

which I think is a really crappy thing to do to a loyal employee like me. After all, I followed the corporate mantra. I delivered to you what you wanted. In the end, the cargo came first. Dead in space. 500 years of galactic exploration. A taxi dancer. Terran Year 2588

Even as late as 288 when the first interstellar Earth ships reached out for the first time to colonize the endless, black, frigid horrors of space the rustling derelict carcasses of long-forgotten aircraft carriers, battleships and submarines were still being unearthed

from when they came to grief during the period of Earth's history known as World War II. Now, nearly 500 years after mankind's first cramped habitation units on Mars had evolved into domed, bustling megacities and space ports, nearly five miles in radius, the rustling, derelict carcasses of long-forgotten starships, now being encountered centuries after they first came to grief in the lonely, uncharted corners of space.

The early days of interstellar travel were initiated by the one thing which had always motivated humans to strive towards the greatness of leaving their comfort zones. She agreed, and the promise of riches. Globalism had finally brought humanity out of the dark ages of believing in rugged self-reliance and individualism and into an enlightened new era of collectivism where there was no more need for individual thought, free speech or the belief in religion and worship of Ichaic mythical gods. With Earth's resources rapidly being depleted in order to sustain an unsustainable population of dozens of billions and with fully an eighth of the planet now uninhabitable because of pollution and waste,

it was the international global corporations and the newly formed United Terran government, the UTG, which ended up giving new life and new hope to humanity. Humanity had outgrown the Ten Commandments, the ten subjugations which had been handed down by a god that never existed, and instead embraced three simple laws. One. For the citizen,

give all for the government. For the government, give all for the corporations. Three, for the corporations, give some for the citizenry whom the government deems worthy. At one point in ancient human history, this might have been considered a dystopian concept, but history has been proven wrong before. Subservience to an all-powerful, all-caring, all-watchful, elite 1% had not only sustained mankind for centuries, it allowed mankind to flourish. Humanity finally achieved that which the mythical gods had feared the most.

Unity of vision, unity of language, unity of focus, unity of will, loyalty to the corporations, and devotion bordering on worship to the one-world government. The Holy Trinity of Father's Son and Holy Spirit, had long been replaced with the Holy Human Trinity of corporations, the government, and human citizenry in that order. And with this enlightenment came the wisdom that the future was out there in space, where the horrors and dangers hidden in the boundless black void also held boundless resources, boundless opportunities,

boundless breathing room away from a polluted, war-ravaged and overcrowded planet, and, above all, boundless profit. After all, it was profit which made the world go round, and it was this quest for profit which led to the development of hyperdrive systems which, in turn, launched literally thousands of colonizer and explorer ships across the unforgiving cosmos in the first decades of interstellar exploration. Humanity had outgrown its home planet by account of billions, and out of sheer necessity, billions of Earth's citizenry were piled into those first-generation starships,

though, admittedly, not necessarily by choice, and launched in its own. to space. But eventually, for a few centuries of humanity overcoming challenges, hardships, hardships, and great sacrifices, humanity went on to spread its seed with colonies on the moon, Mars, the moons of Jupiter, Alpha Centauri, Gamma Centauri, Delta Centauri, the serious system, and the mysterious proximate and olgulate systems. Outward, ever outward, had the hand of humanity stretched. In so doing, mankind had proven that mankind was its own God. If there was a real God, he had yet to show his displeasure as mankind reached towards

the heavens to take his throne. Still, to be gods also meant that sacrifices of suns had to be made. Many of those first starships which operated using first-generation hyperdrive systems, first-generation inertial propulsion systems, first-generation interstellar navigation systems, and first-generation life support systems were never heard from again. So it was inevitable that mankind would eventually run into the forgotten relics of those who came before, who had made the ultimate sacrifice for the survival of the species. Jupiter orbit, Terran year 2184. It was a relatively random event which led to the discovery of the species.

one such vessel in Terran year 2184. In fact, it was the first in a long line of derelict ships which mankind would stumble across in the subsequent decades and centuries. A long-range patrol vessel with a crew of 24 was in orbit around Jupiter on a mission to train crew members on how to operate the new orbital planetary survey equipment, which was now making its way into the fleet. On the second day of the mission, a test of the long-range scanners picked up an unusual anomaly, not on the surface of the planet, but rather on Ganymede, the largest of Jupiter's moons. The signal was extremely faint, one which could have easily been overlooked. The perceptive scanner operator recognized the feedback signal as a structure of some sort,

which should not have been there. Ganymede had been scanned before. Those early generation planetary scanners would have had little chance of picking up an anomaly that small on a moon that was nearly the size of Mars. After several diagnostic checks confirmed that the sensor arrays were running perfectly, the patrol ship's commander ordered a change of mission and set course for the giant moon. Once in orbit around Ganymede, it took another eight hours to reacquire the anomaly again. Since they were on a training mission, the patrol ship didn't deploy with its usual planetary surveillance drone,

so it had to rely on long-range visual scanners to get a look at the structure. The image that appeared on the survey monitor was a grainy, pixelated image of varying shades of black and dark grays, and it took another eight hours before the imaging computers could finally clear up the picture. The amazed crew were presented with the image of the wreckage of a starship half buried in the grey, rocky soil. What was visible above ground was roughly 60 feet of a long, broken outer hull of a vessel that was charred black by intense heat. structures which appeared to have once been giant sensor arrays and communication towers had long collapsed and the gutted interior of the vessel could be seen like ribs protruding from a long-dead animal carcass. The images were sent to UTG Fleet Command Headquarters on Mars for examination and after an extensive search of archival space exploration data and ancient starship designs,

the tragic story of how this ship came to grief on Ganymede was revealed. The ship was confirmed to be a Lieutenant Class exploration vessel whose original hull dimensions were 190 feet long by 80 feet at its widest section and a crew complement of 60. The Lieutenant Class was one of the very earliest of the exploration ships launched from Earth, his mission being to scout ahead and find habitable planets for the larger colonizer vessels to exploit. However, the Lieutenant Class ships, with their Generation 1 guidance and navigation systems, were notorious for being inaccurate, though they didn't know it at the time, and the revolutionary hyperdrive propulsion still had many bugs in the system which had yet to be worked out. Before long, a morbid whispered joke began to spread throughout the fleet.

The most dangerous thing to exist was a lieutenant class with a compass. Before the days when the role of coloniser vessel and explorer vessel were combined into one massive starship back in the 2150s, explorer and colonizer ships launched in pairs with the objective being that the explorer ship led the way using its advanced long-range sensors to locate a suitable target body in space while the colonizer ship provided the habitation hydroponics, terraform equipment and everything else needed to sustain life and exploit the planetary resources. The colonizer's ship's hyperdrive was synced with the explorer ship's hyperdrive

so that the two vessels would not get separated during jumps, to hyperspace. The mysterious vessel which the patrol ship discovered was the lieutenant-class United Terran Government ship UTGS Carbin. That had been partnered with the 600-foot-long Dahlia-class colonizer ship, UTGS-Jakata City, which had a complement of 800 colonists and ships crew. The UTGS Carbin and the Jakarta City launched from Earth sometime between 2089 and 2091, and after they passed the moon's orbital arc, the two ships jumped into hyperspace,

with the carbine's navigational systems plotting the trajectory towards a promising star cluster in the Proxima Centauri system. They were never seen or heard from again for almost a hundred years until the carcass of the UTGS carbine was inadvertently found on Ganymede. From what UTG fleet command headquarters on Mars could piece together, early space exploration vessels used to use the gravitational force of Jupiter, Saturn or Neptune to assist in flinging the ship out of the solar system while in hyperspace. Though the practice was dangerous and long made obsolete by today's advanced technology,

it was a common practice hundreds of years ago. The Carbon and the Jakarta City were the first to attempt an even more daring operation. In order to reach the far Proxima Centauri system, it would be necessary for them to slingshot from Jupiter to Saturn, then use the combined gravitational force of both planets and to hyperspace at the velocity needed to push them to their final destination. Sometime between the jump from Earth orbit to Jupiter, the guidance system of the UTGS carbon suffered a catastrophic failure.

As she attempted to use Jupiter's gravitational force to slingshot both herself and the Jakarta City beyond the boundaries of the solar system, the carbine's primitive long-range proximity computer malfunctioned, apparently indicating that Jupiter was Proxima Centauran. Near Jupiter, the Carbon's faulty long-range proximity computer caused the ship to be immediately pulled from hyperspace without the necessary deceleration time to slow to normal warp speed, which at the time was approximately a week to ten days.

It was estimated that this sudden deceleration in forward motion resulted in the crew of the carbine suffering the force of over 150,000 Gs, which violently but mercifully smashed them into atoms in less than two seconds. The forward motion of the ship, combined with the gravitational force of the planet Jupiter, flunged the doomed exploration vessel directly into Ganymede, the battered hull of the carbon gashing a ragged trail on the surface of the moon for nearly 300 miles, before she ultimately settled in her final resting place. Considering the battering that she took, it was a miracle that so much of her hull survived the crash,

and it's a testament to how sturdy, resilient, and well-constructed the early space exploration ships were. Today, the site where the UTGS Carbin came to grief is now a memorial to honor and remember those intrepid souls who literally flung themselves into space during the early days of space colonization and exploitation for the good of the government, the corporations and the citizenry. Still, one giant mystery remained. The coloniser ship, UTGS Jakarta City, with 800 souls aboard, were also linked to the carbine's navigational system, meaning that what happened to the carbine should have, theoretically, happened to the Jakarta City.

Yet no signs of the colonizer ship were found. The fate of the Jakarta City would remain a mystery for centuries. Alpha Centauri system, Terran Year 2229. At around Terran Year 2150, during the time when the United Terran government began perfecting the combination of explorer and colonizer vessels into one giant ship, simply known as a colonizer, it also became standard practice for long-range starships to drop marker boys, nuclear-powered signaling devices, which left a trail of the ship's travels through space. As mankind marked its first hundred years of space exploitation, the UTG began a new push into the Alpha Centauri system. A half dozen of the new colonizer vessels will be making this journey, among them being the new Florenski-class starship,

UTGS Florensky, the first of its class built at the Florenski ship building yards, which itself was built inside the largest impact rate on Earth's Moon, named after the planetologist who discovered it. purely Fleensky. Chi was an unusually shaped vessel, 1,200 feet long, and 400 feet at its widest section, which was the box-shaped aft section that contained the ship's two hyperdrive generators

and three warp drive engines. The middle section was considerably narrower and contained the 200-foot-long radiation buffers followed by the secondary power generators, life support systems, and cargo hold. The remainder of the Florenski was taken up by the obvious, shaped foresection which contained the main operational and habitation areas,

consisting of three decks, as well as the lower deck which housed the two hangar bays, containing the ship to shore shuttles and additional cargo holds for the cattle and livestock. Comfortable, if somewhat cramped, the Florenski held a crew and passenger complement of 900 personnel. The UTGS Florenski, along with four other colonizer vessels, successfully emerged from hyperspace at the rim of the AlphaE. Centauri system, following the same jump coordinates used by the first colonizers who pushed into the system some 70 years ago. After sending a light speed message back to UTG fleet headquarters on Mars, the five of the six colonizers had finally arrived at the initial coordinate destination.

The fleet of five colonizer ships cruised together for some two weeks, checking systems and running equipment tests, before finally wishing each other corporate blessings and government speed. as each of the coloniser starships dropped away from the fleet and changed course towards their own separate coordinates and separate fates. For the next four months, the Floresnski traveled alone in the endless black void, long-range planetary scanners searching for that ever-elusive needle in a hasteck, class one planetary body in a celestial system, capable of sustaining human life,

without the need of specialized life support systems such as external oxygen supplies or thermal survival suits. In other words, a planet not too unlike Earth. By way of comparison, both Earth's moon and Mars were considered Class 5 TL planetary bodies, inhospitable for human habitation, terraformable, limited mining possibilities. In terms of space exploration, these two celestial bodies would normally have been rejected for colonization, but out of necessity and human survival, both were transformed into Class 1 habitations, which is now home to over a billion inhabitants.

During the preceding six months, LaForensky had little success in finding a habitable celestial body, but she did discover an unusual Class 5 moon orbiting a Class 8 gas giant, incapable of sustaining carbon life. This moon, one of about 17 that orbited the gas giant, It was about two-thirds the size of Earth's moon, but whose mass was over 35% gold. Marking this moon as a possible future mining colony, the Floresnski pressed on, her warp engines propelling her from planetary system to planetary system. On the fourth month of the journey into the Alpha Centauri system,

the Florenski intercepted a subspace distress message from one of the other colonizer ships, the UTGS Abel Bay. The garbled message was voiced. only and barely readable, but contained the startling phrases. Out of nowhere, class one, under attack. Last phrase of the loop message caused considerable consternation aboard the Florenski. Distress call was just over one month old, calculating the distance it took the subspace transmission to reach them. Still, obedience had to be given to the directives put forth by the

United Terran government. Directives which did not include guidelines, for a ship captain to change course from a predetermined course in order to aid another coloniser vessel. Loyalty had to be maintained to the government and the corporations only. As would be proven decades later, two or more colonizer ships working in unison would prove problematic to the UTG. On the sixth month of exploration, the long-range scanners picked up on an unusual anomaly, a metallic cylindrical object, roughly five feet in diameter, was floating 450,000 miles from the Floresnski, and was sending out a weak signal. On closer inspection of the object, the crew of the Florenski discovered that it was one of the marker boys left behind from one of

the first colonizer expeditions into the system over three-quarters of a century earlier. The weak telemetry data, which the marker boy was transmitting, indicated that the boy was dropped by the coloniser ship UTGS Ark Harvest, one of the first starship designs which combine the colonizer and explorer class vessels. Historical data files recorded that UTG fleet headquarters received a transmission from the Ark Harvest 77 years ago with an initial report

that they'd discovered a Class 2 planet, meaning that they had located a planet which the long-range scanners indicated had between a 50 and 70% similarity with Earth. The excited crew of the Ark Harvest promised to send another transmission to the home world in six months after they'd conducted the initial reconnaissance and exploration of the planet. With any luck, the planet, named simply ACX-447C2, would be found to be completely habitable, thus changing its classification to a Class 1 planet.

That second transmission, however, never came. For the next two months, the hopeful crew of the world, of the Florenski followed in the trail of the Ark Harvest, during which time they came across an additional two more signal boys, but no signs of the Ark Harvest itself, or the mysterious Class II planet, which they supposedly found. Two more months passed with no other boys being located, and no scanner hits of any planets even remotely habitable. Crew of the Florenski were quickly losing hope, thinking this was nothing but a wild goose chase to catch a red herring when a long-range scanner alerted the crew of another anomaly,

this time a large metallic object or objects drifting around an obscure dwarf star, roughly 270 million miles distant. The Florenski changed course to investigate this new clue, hoping to get a better picture with the medium-range scanners and the short-range visuals. When they finally got into visual range, the picture presented to the crew provided far more questions than it did answers. The image that confronted the shot crew was what appeared to be a section of a much larger structure, more than likely a starship, roughly cylindrical in shape.

The metallic object was a little over 300 feet long and 200 feet in diameter, and tapered to a wedged point. It was coloured a deep yellow with a broad white stripe that bisected the object. On the white stripe were the letters, vest, written in a broad, stylistic. The discovery, no matter how startling, wasn't what shot the crew of the Florenski. Rather, it was the multiple black holes which pockmarked the object, as if it had been impacted by multiple small meteorites that penetrated the hole's outer hull, as if it had been impacted by multiple small meteorites that had penetrated the object's outer hull.

As they neared the object and senses could get improved readings, the suspicions of the crew had also been confirmed. They were indeed looking at the foresection of the lost, 950-foot-long coloniser ship, Ark Harvest. But what caused such damage to a vessel traveling in open space remained a mystery. More stunning was that the telemetry readings confirmed that the holes which had been punched into the Ark Harvest

weren't made by meteorites. The shocking report stated that the damage had been caused by something that projected a concentrated amount of very high heat. much like the military's plasma rifles, also known as flame guns, but on a much greater scale. Immediately, the memory of the Abel Bay's last transmission, where they used the phrase, under attack, haunted the crew of the Florenski. A minuscule power reading emanating from the Ark Harvest's wedge-shaped foresection was caused to send a shuttle from the Florenski to investigate. Successfully attaching tethers to the floating husk,

the shuttle's boarding team managed a spacewalk to what remained of the Ark Harvest and, utilising the maglocks on their boots, the team penetrated into the black interior of the derelict ship, making for the weak energy source at the front of the vessel. What was left of the inner hull was charred black, as if a conflagration as hot as a sun had spread rapidly through every inch of the interior. What hadn't been vaporized instantly had been blown into the void of space when the Ark Harvest blew apart.

Still, there was an energy source, minuscule as may be, and it was coming from behind a thick bulkhead, which, while damaged, wasn't breached. It took a critically long time for the team to finally gain access through the bulkhead, and their oxygen supply had become critical, but every member of the team wanted to know what was on the other side. Once again, what confronted the search team

left more questions than answers. a rectangular opening had been cut into the front of the hull. Out of this protruded a long, thin barrel-shaped cylinder. But its base, connected to the barrel, was what appeared to be a generator or an extremely large energy projection capacitor. The whole thing was mounted on a rotating base, and built into the base were two metal reclining seats upon which the long-dead bodies of two of the Ark Harvest's crew were seated.

Whatever the thing was, it was clearly alien in nature. It didn't take a hyperdrive scientist to realize that the contraption was some type of alien energy casting weapon, so powerful that it still gave off a residual energy reading long after it had been fired. Whatever destroyed the Ark Harvest, the crew of the chip did not go down without a fight. Somehow the crew managed to acquire the same example of the alien weapon, which was presumably used to destroy the Ark Harvest. The two intrepid crew members were wearing full environmental survival suits, that this small compartment was completely open to the unforgiving void of space,

hence the thick bulkhead which separated them from the rest of the ship. The right station seat mounted a primitive monitor used for target acquisition, or the left station seat mounted an energy output monitor in a sophisticated trigger mechanism. The two valiant gunners had apparently died at their posts fighting against whatever it was that killed their ship. For the first time in recorded human history, a broken arrow message was sent from a vessel in deep space

to the home world system. A risky process which required a six-hour delay while all ship's systems, including life support, were transmitted to the main communications array tower. This concentrated power would enable the ship to transmit a brief message as well as a flight. finite amount of telemetry data across the cosmos to the home world in a matter of a few days, as opposed to a few months. This was a sort of dead man switch, meant to inform the home planets

of a catastrophic event that would lead to the imminent demise of the ship. The cost of sending such a message was staggering. It would require an average of 12 days for the ship to regenerate minimal operating power once the broken arrow message was sent. In the meantime, the ship would be left drifting in space using minimal life support for just the crew compartments. This would mean that life support will be cut to all other areas of the ship, including the holding areas for cattle and livestock. Additionally, the power to send the message will be more than the communication array could handle. It was estimated that there would only be a 50% chance at best to bring them back online.

It was, however, a chance well worth taking. Not only that, it was a mandatory job. directive dictated by the corporation that any first encounter with an alien advanced species or technology or habitation, or more importantly, weapon system, was a condition to initiate a broken arrow message. As predicted, the sending of such a message completely blew out the communications array of the Florenski, set her uncontrollably adrift on absolute minimal life support power only. However, after only 11 days, the seemingly lifeless Hulk of the UTGS Floresnsky suddenly sprang back to life as minimal operating power had been

restored and the emergency batteries had generated enough power to attempt starting the war pensions. First priority, however, was to attempt to get the communication array operation again, if at all possible. Against all odds, the black monitor screens of the communication station suddenly lit up. Each monitor flashing a white and red priority 1-Al-6 message from the home planet, a direct communication from the president of the United Terran government itself. It was a brief message, one which left no doubts as to Floreski's next course of action. The commander or next senior officer, United Terran government ship Krill Florenski. As soon as it is possible or permissible, extract and secure said artifact from the UTGS arc harvest

and return to start point with all haste. Such a feat is not possible. You will expend all possible resources to secure the artifact on board your vessel and await retrieval from follow-on resources, or, barring that, Mark said artifact in such a way that follow-on resources can relocate it.

Signed, Gijin, president, United Terran Government Prime, Asian Continental Authority. With that message, It was the first time a recorded human history that the United Terran government had ever issued a recall order for a colonizer vessel to return back to the home system, and its history would later record.

It was a good thing that it had. Still, the captain of the UTGS Floresnowski had been left with a lingering feeling that the underlying reason why the Globo Corporation sent the six colonizer ships to Arfin Centauri wasn't really to find life-sustainable planets, but rather to bring back exactly what he and his crew had stumbled upon. The United Terran government had recently been receiving reports, rumors actually, that at least one of the missing colonizer ships sent to Alpha Centauri over 75 years ago had found a Class 1 planet.

But instead of sending their tiths, offerings and sacrifices to the benevolent United Terran government, they instead decided to cut more ties with the home system. This, of course, could not stand. The corporations and the government had poured a vast amount of money and research into the exploration and exploitation of the cosmos. Allowing a rogue colony in Alpha Centauri to break away would set a very dangerous and non-profitable precedent, to which a UTG naval fleet armed with powerful plasma weapons will be a very effective deterrent. Vega X, the Sirius System. Teran Year 2380.

Barely two decades into the new century, and mankind was marking several remarkable achievements in its cosmic expansion. Within the home system, the new-founded colonies on the dwarf planet series, and the giant Jupiter Moon of Ganymede had successfully struck an almost endless supply of water under the icy surfaces. The desalinization facilities on both colonies were working overtime to clean and purify the water for distribution to the home planets and earth. colonies scattered across the galaxy. On Venus, the experiment of seeding the clouds with phosphine gases with algae biorect has

resulted in an almost explosive growth of an algae-like substance which thrived in its new floating environment. Scientists studying this remarkable development were convinced that, with increased seeding of Venus's atmosphere, the resulting strain of floating algae may be a source of biofuels and a source of non-perishable feed to supply the citizenry whom the corporations have been pushing further and further out into the galaxy. Thanks to their selfless sacrifices for the good of the corporation, government and of course mankind, several new and habitable planets had been discovered. Among these discoveries was a rare class one which orbited a star three times the size of Earth's sun in the Syria's system,

known as Vega X, it was roughly 8 tenths the size of Earth, and was the ninth of 15 planets orbiting that sestim sun. The planet was 85% crystal blue water on which lush, picturesque virginal islands floated. It didn't take long for mankind's elite 1% to realize what a tropical vacation haven Vega X could become. Soon, Vega X, which was now nicknamed Vegas Triple X to the common citizenry, was deemed off-limits to all except mankind's most important 1%, including chief executives, influential politicians, corporate heads, heads of state, lobbyists, sport entertainers, celebrities, and anyone else from the elite upper tier who sacrificed and gave so much for the cause of humanity. Earth was no longer the polluted, war-ravaged, dystopian planet that it once was centuries

ago. After nearly 300 years of Earth's elites sending the rift of Earth's elites sending the rift of wrath and dregs of humanity off into space, Mother Nature slowly began to reclaim and heal the planet. By the turn of the century, however, many of Earth's elites had also left the Earth to state their claims on the first fruits of humanity's most promising interstellar conquests. Despite the fact that some friction may have existed between Earth and the governing authority of Mars, Earth was still considered the birthplace of humanity and the seat of humanity's growing galactic influence. It was, for lack of a better term, the home of where the old money resided. For those who held the purse strings of that old money, one of the most favorite places

for the Earth's elites to vacation was the pleasure planet of Vega X. In Terran year 2320, the regional chancellor of the North American Continental Authority may be in a bold, a powerful and loyal sycophant of the corporations, won another re-election by a landslide 81 million votes. By way of celebration, hundreds of the North American continent's most important ruling class and influential citizens, including politicians, corporate executives, entertainers, the propaganda ministry, and of course, Chancellor Mabian Abode and her entourage, boarded the elegant, scruplesome, a sleek, luxury star cruiser with a red and silver mirrored finish.

It was considered to be one of the most opulent liners on the continent, if not the world. Normally, the journey to Vega X would take an agonizingly long four weeks, the trip would by no means be an unpleasant one for the very important elite guests of the 400-foot-long luxury liner. On the scruple sum, if you weren't one of the VIP elites, then you were a servant of the VIP elites, on call all day, every day to serve, and service those elites, made the galaxy go round. Still, once the Scripplesome reached Vega X,

elites would still have to wait for as long as a day or even a week before they could get to the surface. Because of the very strict restrictions imposed on the planetary government protect the fragile, pristine environment, absolutely no starship will be allowed to perform a water landing on the planet, not even a luxury cruiser like the Scripalsam and her mega-elite passengers. Instead, an orbital port.

Port was constructed over Vega X, where luxury cruise liners would dock and transfer their passengers to the awaiting shuttles that were waiting obediently to take their wealthy, powerful, and influential guests to the planet's surface, a myriad of pleasures that awaited them. Fortunately, and by design, the orbital port of Vega X was a relatively small facility, capable of servicing only a limited number of starliners, supposed to limit the number of guests wishing to flood the planet. To avoid the inevitable scheduling headaches of the galaxy's elite citizens crowding into the space dock, the planetary authority hit upon a simple solution. First come, first served. Once a liner announced its intention to dock, they were more than welcome to drop into orbit and wait their turn in line behind the liners already ahead of it. While this was a fair and equitable scheduling arrangement,

would not do for the Chancellor of the second most power. of Earth's continental governing authorities, and a highly powerful and influential guests. They were, after all, the elite one percent of the elite one percent. Chancellor Abode's benefactors had spent a considerable amount of money to influence the election in her favor, and it wouldn't do to have them waiting above Vega X behind elites who weren't as elite as they were. Unfortunately, the captain of the scruplesome had come into possession of hyperspace jump coordinates, would bring the ship to a point that would put it ahead of any other starliner, thus ensuring that the scruplesome would have a prime spot on the Vega orbital port. Chancellor abodes, personal

aides, eagerly agreed to the captain's scheme, eager to impress the leader of the North American Continental Authority, and, perhaps be rewarded by a bump to second-class citizen. Right on schedule, the scruplesome departed Earth's orbit headed to the playground of the galaxy's rich and famous, Four weeks later, the Scruplesome arrived in the Vega X system and, as promised, the hyperspace jump coordinates had put the luxury liner far ahead of any other liner that was cruising under warp power towards the planet. Curiously, however, when the Vega orbital spaceport attempted to raise the Scrupleson to inform her that the United Terran government had reserved a special dock for them so that they would not have to wait for an empty port, there was no reply in return. The attempt to raise the scruplesome continued for several minutes with no response, and soon the situation became critical when the scruplesome's forward inertia had it on a collision course with the vaguer orbital facility. A tug was immediately dispatched to the errant starliner to tow it back to the port. The shock of the crew of the tug, the once beautiful luxury liner with her distinctive red and silver mirrored finish appeared like it had been abandoned in the Mongolian desert for half a single.

century. Much of the reflective red and silver coating that once covered the ship had now been worn away, revealing the dull metal beneath. The hull of the ship had ripples and showed signs of extreme metal fatigue. All of the small protrusions had been bent or worn away, and a myriad of wires and components hung from the openings in the panelling which had broken away from the hull. Absolutely no power emanated from the ship, including propulsion and life. support. As soon as the scruplesome was carefully secured into the dock reserved for it, the main entrance hatch was forcefully pried open. Horror awaited those who entered, as they found no living person inside. Not only was the newly re-elected Chancellor Mabin Abode,

her entourage, and all of the very important elites who came with her dead, their mummified remains indicated that they'd passed away a very long time ago. More horrifyingly, many of the bodies show signs that they'd been systematically butchered and eaten. Almost immediately, the United Terran government launched what would become the most intensive cover-up of an interstellar tragedy in recorded history. This wasn't just some missing coloniser ship holding thousands of common citizenry. Passengers aboard this particular luxury vessel were actually important.

The data recorders recovered from the scrupleesome revealed the tragic and grotesque fate of those who were aboard her. They revealed that the ship's captain did indeed utilize a previously unknown coordinate to initiate the jump into hyperspace towards Vega X. However, those coordinates put the scruplesome into what could only be described as a wormhole. What was once a subject of theory and conjecture was now proven to be a reality. It is unknown when or at what point the scruplesome entered this wormhole, but when the concern crew entered the captain's stateroom to alert him of the situation,

as he was the one who personally entered the jump coordinates. They were shocked to find him sitting in a chair facing one of the wide viewports, which showed only a brilliant white light, the effect of the stars passing the viewport at such a fast rate. The captain was dead, a cup of Earl Grey tea laced with poison sitting on a table next to him

whether he was poisoned or he poisoned himself is still up for debate but regardless the passengers and crew of the scruplesome found themselves in a situation and they were now trapped

inside of a wormhole where the exit point had yet to be determined Alman navigation stations attempted to adjust co-ordinates to bring the liner out of the wormhole but to no avail

as the override codes were in the captain's personal log. Beside the captain, only the first officer and chief engineer had access to this log. Suspiciously, however, when they tried to access those codes, the first office had found that they'd been completely erased. Again, whether this was sabotage or whether it was the captain that erased his own logs before committing suicide, was beyond the point of concern as the crew's first priority was to safeguard the VIPs. and get out of the wormhole.

Six hours later, with the VIP's panicking and the first officer considering the possibilities and consequences of manually adjusting course, the proximity alert was sounded, indicating that they were approaching the Vega X system. That, of course, was impossible since the system was four weeks away, and they were only 12 hours into the journey.

Almost as instantly as the proximity alarm sounded, it shut off, meaning that they had passed the Vega-X system. At this point, Chancellor Abode demanded that the first officer bring them out of the wormhole by manually adjusting course. When the first officer tried to explain the dangers of doing so, at the extreme speeds they were attaining, Chancellor Abode loudly overruled him. She was seconded by her entourage, the VIP politicians,

the VIP chief executives, the VIP entertainers, and all of the lesser elites that she brought with her. Reluctantly, the first officer instructed the helm to change course, one half degree at a time. However, no sooner had the ship moved to half degree did she start to buckle and shake. Warning alarms began to blare as the passengers lost their footing, diamond chandeliers began rattling violently.

Priceless paintings fell from the walls, and the exotic foods began vibrating and falling from the buffet table. Immediately, the first officer ordered the ship back onto its original trajectory, the ship obediently corrected itself before it shook itself to pieces. It was immediately obvious that a course correction of as much as one degree would rip the ship apart. With a white pantsuit, now stained burgundy from spilled champagne, Chancellor abode through the rest of the drink from her glass into the first officer's face. accusing him of misconduct and incompetence

She again ordered him and the crew To find a way out of this predicament As elites from across the galaxy Were waiting at Vega X to celebrate her well-deserved And well-paid for victory Several questions plagued the first officer and chief engineer The most concerning was the death of the captain And the erasure of his files

The captain was relatively new to the ship Having taken over after the previous captain retired after achieving the status of second-class citizen. The new captain was Martian born and raised, and, curiously, the UTGMA had recently done away with the citizen-class system. In addition, the UTGMA, or United Terran government, Mars Authority, had been opposed to Earth mounting plasma-based weapons capable of vaporizing off-world colonies on her naval vessels.

Something Chancellor Abbe promised she would push for once she wanted. on re-election. But was this reason for the captain to sabotage his ship and commit suicide? It seemed unlikely, as he appeared in every way to be loyal and steadfast to the Terran authority. theories, hypotheses and conjectures were input into the ship's computers and tested, a process which took some time and patience. The ship's navigational system still recorded that the scrupousum was still on track to

drop out of hyperspace in less than four weeks. So, most this ordeal would be over in a few weeks. However, the ship's chronological trackers seemed to have been damaged earlier, as it stopped counting time, but personal watches and timepieces continued working normally. The crew was busily researching whether or not this would affect the time they were scheduled to drop out of hyperspace in the wormhole, or if this was simply a technical glitch in the system. 12 hours later, with the VAPs again threatening the ship's officers with imprisonment and demotion to fourth-class citizens, the proximity alert sounded, indicating that they were approaching Vega X again. As this happened, the ship's chronology recorder advanced one second. The first officer made note of this, and sure enough, after another 24 hours had passed, the proximity alert sounded that they were approaching the Vega-X system again.

and once again the ship's chronological tracker advanced one second. It was then, the horrified crew realized the terrifying situation they were facing. The captain had input coordinates into an extremely rare circular wormhole. This type of wormhole was one which wound into itself, much like the tracks of a magna rail system that started at one point and passed through several other points in a circular route until reaching its own starting point again. The Scruplesome was indeed scheduled to drop out of hyperspace in four weeks in real time,

but within the wormhole, where 24 hours equaled one second, but the passengers and crew of the scruple sum, the actual time they would be spending inside the wormhole before they finally dropped out of hyperspace will be a little over 6,600 years. What happened next was the unthinkable. after the initial stores of food had been consumed, it's known that the ship's first officer,

who'd been demoted to fourth-class citizen, was the first to offer himself the sacrifice for food. It's not known who the next person was who was butchered for food, or if the order was drawn by citizen-class, elitist status, importance for the ship's functions, age, or if the next to be butchered was simply chosen by lot. Did alliances form between Chancellor Abode and the elites against the lower-class crew,

Did the crew do away with the class system, and did the situation devolve to the strong preying on the week? Such gruesome details were deemed classified from the data files which the government recovered and never released. Also classified from public release was whether or not the captain was actually an insurgent working for some radical wing of the Mars authority to jeopardize the ties between Mars and Earth. Some even speculated in secret whispers that the captain was actually acting under UTG. orders, capitalizing on an assassination of Chancellor Abode as a pretext for arming UTG naval fleet ships with powerful plasma cannons, moves soundly opposed by Mars authority, and many of the off-world governing authorities. What ended up being released by the UTG Cosmic Intelligence Agency, the CIA, was that an unidentified operative from the Alpha Centauri colonize had bribed the

scruplesome's captain into inputting those errant coordinates in order to assassinate the Chancellor as a warning to the UTG. In any event, the horrific fate of Chancellor Abode and the elite 1% of the North American Continental Authority was the impetus which the UTG needed to begin arming her naval fleets, now called war fleets, with a new plasma weapons. The rogue colonies of Alpha Centauri, which now numbered 13 and were collectively known, as the constitutional republics of New Columbia were going to pay for their revolutionary treachery.

Hyboria major system, Proxima Centaur. Terran year 2587. In 2476, after a ceasefire was agreed upon with the now independent 13 colonies of the constitutional republics of New Columbia, took the United Terran government nearly a century to rebuild and re-establish her colonies. The UTG had suffered a contract.

action in galactic influence after the war as several of the near-rim colonies chose to ally themselves with the constitutional republics, which, by 2587, now numbered 50 states. Once again, the search for Class 1 planets with a ready water supply took precedence, and the push to discover new worlds began again in earnest at a pace not seen for hundreds of years. During this time, ship designs grew even larger, the corporations finding it to be more profitable. to build one massive multi-roll ship rather than smaller ships which specialized in one or two operations. One such vessel was the UTGS Collidercope, a massive ship nearly 4,000 feet long and 500 feet wide.

She was specifically to operate on a newly discovered Class 2 planet in Proxima Centauri known as Hiboria Major, a planet roughly three times the size of Earth whose elliptical orbit around the system's sun took approximately 37 Earth months. Iboria Major was a very fortuitous discovery. She was 90 to 95% water,

though during 14 months out of its year, most of the seas were nearly frozen over as the average planetary temperature dropped to minus 90 degrees Celsius. However, during the spring and summer, which usually lasted for 15 months, the temperatures range from a balmy 26 degrees Celsius to a sweltering 60 degrees, during which time aqua-harvesting operations could be conducted.

The UTGS Collidercope was unique in that, after she made splashdown to Iboria Major, a crew of 3,800 will then get to work assembling the prefabricated components stored within the vessel, which would turn the kaleoscope into 140-square-acre floating aqua-port to service the corporation's freighters, which would be expected to conduct water harvesting operations, soon after the kaleidoscope's conversion.

In addition, the kaleidoscope also carried several small submersible vehicles, as well as one 200-foot-long research submarine to begin initial exploration of the ocean depths. Eventually, if all went well, the UTG had plans to expand the port facility by a few square miles, effectively turning it into a small city dedicated to exploiting the planet's untapped resources. Government politicians were acutely open. aware of the potential profits of this venture and hardly had to be forced to accept any money

from corporate lobbyists to authorize funding for the global corporations to begin this bold new project. In 2581, the kaleidoscope reported that it made a successful splashdown on Hiboria Major several hundred miles south of the planet's equator. It was the height of the summer in this hemisphere, and the seas proved to be rougher than expected. Using the ship's atmospheric drive, something which was done infrequently with large vessels such as the kaleidoscope because of the amount of power was needed, she finally set down hundreds of miles further south where the seas were calmer. The plan was to begin initial construction through the summer and four months while the scientific teams initiated the preliminary research into the water

samples, biological life forms, aquatic vegetation, mineral deposits and everything else which may be exploited by the Corporation for the Good of Humanity and the profit of the elites. The actual heavy construction would take place during the winter months, when the oceans froze over to a depth of roughly one mile, and the heavy equipment could safely traverse over the ice to complete the rest of the construction. The first Heborian year was a difficult one for the construction crews. Despite sometimes working 24-hour shifts when the seas and weather permitted, they were still 12 months behind schedule,

owing to the sometimes uncooperative seas which could conjure monster waves, which, fortunately, only claim the lives of a few hundred workers. This, coupled with the high winds, incessant rains, and the occasional attack by one of the biological species native to the planet which lurked under the waves, conspired to put the final construction well behind schedule, and, by the end of the first 37-month year, the port facility was only 70% completed. The chief executive in charge of completing instruction of the facility was reduced from a first-class citizen to a third-class citizen by the corporation,

though he was still in charge of the whole operation. This meant that a third-class citizen would be giving orders to second-class citizens who were foremen in charge of hundreds of workers. The corporation hoped that this humiliation would inspire and motivate the thousands of third-class citizen workers to work harder and faster to produce the results and the profits which would benefit galactic humanity, no matter the personal sacrifices. In contrast to the scientific research teams

had been amassing data in leaps and bounds. The seas abounded with biological life forms, which resembled the aquatic life forms of creatures over 400 million years ago during Earth's Ordovician period, though these armored, tentacled, mollusk, squid, octopus, and crab-shaped creatures could grow to hundreds of feet in length. Additionally, there were sea creatures which had followed the evolutionary process,

which produced gargantuan creatures resembling Earth's prehistoric reptiles, like the Mozosaurus, as well as a shark-like species resembling the dreaded megalodon. Though these species were over twice the size of their Earth counterparts, and the occasional encounters with these predatory species resulted in tragic losses to crews operating the small two-and-three-man-submersibles. In fact, losses were so great that it became for the same. to utilize the small submersibles anymore. Still, the corporation demanded more data regarding potential subsurface life forms and resources

which could be exploited for future profit, especially from a form of deep-sea seaweed, which was discovered that had shown to be higher nutrients and which could possibly be processed into feed for human consumption. The seeding of Venus's clouds had resulted in the creation of some stunning floating gardens, The tests on human consumption of the algae-like vegetation showed that it interacted with human biochemistry in such a way that it turned the person consuming it into a type of grotesque and mindless plant-human hybrid that sought to consume human flesh in a deranged attempt to revert back into a human again.

This unfortunate side effect was discovered when UTG Fleet Marines responded to a distress call from the scientific research station orbiting above Venus. Upon infiltrating into the station, the Marines found that the 500 scientists and technicians assigned there had either been devoured or transformed into one of those humanoid vegetable creatures. After fighting their way back to the ship, the Marines detonated the explosives that they planted on the station's orbital gravimetric stabilizers, which sent the facility plummeting into Venus. Wisely, the corporation and the UTG blamed the loss of the facility on sabotage by fiftage. fascist terrorists from the Constitutional Republic of New Columbia.

And so doing, the corporation avoided any harmful litigation from the families of the lost scientists, while at the same time pushing the anti-constitutional Republic political rhetoric of the benevolent United Terran government. Still, that left the UTG with a problem of feeding the billions of outer system colonists did not have a local means of sustained food production, which was why the corporation insisted that research into exploiting the aquatic plant life on Hiborium Major for food production must continue, no matter how dangerous. At this end, the 200-foot-long submarine which they brought with them, was modified to emit

a 50,000 volt of electricity from its outer hole, which, in the water, was effective out to about 1,000 feet from the submarine. She was named Deep Dive 6, and required a crew of 28. Her mission was to descend nearly two and a half miles down to where an expansive bed of the seaweed was located and collect enough samples to study and determine if it could be converted into a nutritious, non-perishable food source for the masses of billions struggling so valiantly

for the good of the corporations. Early in Terran year 2585, the kaleidoscope sent a message to the UTG on Earth that the submarine Deep Dive 6 would be departing shortly for the seabed and a second transmission will be sent in another 24 hours to report on the success of the mission. 24 hours later, UTG fleet command received a second transmission, saying that the Deep Dive 6 had encountered an unknown biological animal, was now at the bottom of the seafloor, and the rescue operations were underway.

As it turned out, that was the last message ever received by the kaleidoscope. It was two terran years before another UTG ship. arrived to Hiborium Major in Terran year 2587, fearing that the loss of communication with the kaleidoscope may have been a result of an attack by the rogue constitutional republics. The UTG naval fleet dispatched the heavy frigate UTGS Kosovo to the planet, a 700-foot-long warship armed with several kinetic energy weapons, missile-launch tubes, and one medium-range plasma gun. After scans confirmed that no other vessels were in the same.

the area, UTG or otherwise, the Kosovo made a successful splashdown on the planet's surface during the latter part of the hemisphere spring season when the seas were at their calmest and sailed to within a mile of the kaleidoscope. The entire kaleidoscope was listing to one side at a 15-degree angle and fully a quarter of the facility was underwater. Half of what was visible above water was tinged green with moss and algae and signs of rust was forming along the entire facility. There was only minimal power emanating from her, meaning that her nuclear reactors were offline, she was running on fading backup generator power only. Shockingly, the part of the kaleidoscope which submerged underwater was covered with a thick bed of some kind of seaweed

several feet deep, but like the kaleidoscope seemed to be dead. A platoon of a dozen marine raiders boarded one of the Kosovo's aerospace assault ships, known as a helioscope. gunship and headed for the wreckage of the kaleidoscope. Because she was listing at an extreme angle, the gunship had to land facing up slope, the maglocks on her landing skid securing her to the slippery landing deck. Once the rear ramp was lowered, the Marines quickly scampered out, the magloks on their boots keeping them from slipping on the slimy moss-covered deck, although the going was still awkward due to the listing of the facility. Unfortunately, the two large yellow radiation-proof cases which the Marines have brought with them also tumbled out of the back, clanging noisily down

the landing ramp before tumbling over the side to crash 30 feet to the metal deck below. The Marines encountered no signs of life as they secured the area around the gunship, though in reality theirs wasn't a rescue mission. They weren't here to find survivors. They were here to gather all of the data record as they could find, destroy the station and get out. By this time the UTG had developed a new design for a platform where the entire structure would be constructed in orbit. Once the fully completed two-mile-square functional station was assembled, it would be landed on Hiborium Major's surface as one massive structure.

In the two years since contact had been lost with the kaleidoscope, the corporation and the UTG considered the kaleidoscope and her crew obsolete and consequently expendable. The move to the Central Command Bridge was relatively simple, despite the awkward angle in which the Marines had to climb. The dead vines of seaweed seemed to be everywhere, creating a carpet of the dead aquatic vegetation which crunched under the Marines' boots. The individual strands of seaweed were about an inch thick and wrapped with numerous leaves that resembled little green mushrooms, which were concave rather than convex, and within each of these leaves were small spikes, allowing the seaweed to grasp and cling like the tentacle of an earth octopus. In some places the remains of the weird vegetation completely covered corridors

and entire passageways and an impassable quagmire of rotting seaweed, which, if not for the oxygen masks the Marines wore, would have overcome them with a putrid smell like that of decaying fish. The seaweed was so prevalent in the northeast section of the facility, section that was listing into the ocean, that access to the main communications network array had been completely blocked, which is possibly why the station never sent out a distress signal.

Not that it would have worked, as so much of the fetid-smelling seaweed had wrapped itself around the antennae arrays that they'd been bent and damaged to such a degree that a message would never have reached the home world. The question was, for that to have happened, the seaweed would have had to have overcome the station

in a matter of minutes. How could that have happened? and why? There was no secret to the Marines that the northeast section of the facility was also where the nuclear reactors were located, nor that their path suddenly became clear once they took the metal stairs up to the access corridor, which turned west towards the central command bridge, while the jungle of rotting seaweed clog the corridors leading east towards the nuclear reactors. Though all of the Marines made the unspoken correlation between the path that the seed we took

and the location of the nuclear reactors, the Marines, the Marines made the... said nothing. Theirs was not to reason why. Theirs was to do the latter part. Irradiated seaweed had nothing to do with mission completion. The thick gun-metal titanium doors

to the command center had been sealed shut and it took a while for the petite female marine with the flame gun to cut through the three locking bars. Once the door slid open, the marines found only one body

in the massive circular-shaped command bridge the body was slumped down in front of the main visual communication monitor. The head, left arm and upper torso looking to have been completely blown apart. An expended flare gun was still gripped in the hand with the right arm, which was still attached to what was left at the body. The main visual communication station was also a charred wreck due to the extremely close self-inflicted discharge of the flare gun. But fortunately, the last message that the person had recorded

was stored in the main memory drive located in a separate section of the command bridge. In fact, all of the kaleidoscope's memory files were located at the station. Once again, it was an easy matter to reject the three, half-inch by two-inch memory drives which contained all of the kaleidoscope's memory from the day she launched

until the day Earth lost contact with her. Taking possession of the files, the raid of platoon leader, a lieutenant named Gabriel, must have thought that this mission was Cakewalk until the UTGS Kosovo alerted the team of a massive, unidentified biological creature headed directly towards the kaleidoscope. Almost immediately, the entire facility was struck suddenly with enough force to knock several Marines off their feet, even with their maglocks engaged.

Whatever had hit the kaleidoscope was massive enough to make it list even more towards the ocean. The gunship pilot outside, a female warrant officer named Nasri, transmitted. a panicked warning to the Marines to hurry up as a monstrous tentacled thing was pulling itself out of the ocean and was crawling up onto the facility. As the Marines exited in the main superstructure and made they wear outside on the landing deck, they were confronted with a prehistoric-looking aquatic horror of horrendous size. It resembled an animal from Earth's Ordovician period from over 400 million years ago, a sickly pale, greenish-orange, squid-like animal, which had a human.

a conical shell, much like a hermit crab. However, this beast was well over 200 feet long, and it had a tangled, greedy, groping tentacles over 50 feet long, extending from around a moor, surrounded by hooked feelers and a large beak. But this wasn't what had shocked the Marines, nor the fact that the beast's multitude of eyes, each roughly ten feet in diameter,

were glassy and appeared dead. All the fact that the creature smelled of rot and decay and showed signs of advanced decomposition. No. What startled the Marines was that what was supposed to be the creature's head just above the milky pale and glassy dead eyes. It was a giant hole

out of which protruded a ten-foot-thick branch of seaweed which gave off a pallid, sickly yellow glow. The beast moved sluggishly, like a puppet being manipulated by strings as it clamoured aboard the kaleidoscope, cutting off the path between the Marines and their awaiting gunship. The beast's hungry tentacles grasped and flailed clumsily around, looking for something to feed into its grotesque beak

and immediately snatched up Lieutenant Gabriel and several other Marines, the fire from their rifles having absolutely no effect on the aquatic nightmare. That was when the plucky little female Marine flame gunner, who would one day become famous throughout the galaxy for saving her platoon multiple times from the clutches of certain doom, while simultaneously losing her flame gun, sprang into action. Opening the aperture to her flame gun

to its widest setting, she fired upon the beast with a filled charge from her weapons capacitor at the point where the glowing seaweed entered the brain cavity of the Leviathan which was attacking them. The beast reared up its head, tentacles outstretched,

and dropping the Marines unceremoniously before it slammed forcefully down on the armored deck. The resulting impact shook the entire facility and knocked the young Marine off her feet. A flame gun fell from her hands and, cursing bitterly at how much she would cost her to replace yet another flame gun, the young Marine watched dejectedly as the weapon tumbled down the deck and disappeared over the side and into the ocean. The giant stinking beast, who now seemed officially dead, lay motionless on the deck, sheer weight slowly dragging it back down below the waves.

The seaweed, which only moments ago was glowing, now resembled a dead, mottled green-grey tangle of vegetation which the Marines were slogging through earlier. As the beast sank below the waves, left behind thick, gelatinous pools of glowing, yellowish-green liquid that poured out of its open wound. This substance emitted radiation, though at a level which was not immediately harmful,

humans. The Marines carefully scooped the slightly glowing, yellowish-green ooze into a compassy plastic container that they found, as their radiation-proof containers had been previously damaged. Now safely aboard their Helius gunship, the Marine Raiders brought back the sample to the UTGS Kosovo, where it was secured inside the small hydroponics facility that was shielded against radiation. The kaleidoscope's data files were sent to UTG fleet headquarters on Mars, priority one message is no longer having to take months to reach the home system after the discovery of the circular wormhole, which, unfortunately, trapped and killed Chancellor Abode 200 years ago. Since then, messages from deep space could be transmitted into the circular wormhole,

which could then be beamed out through the Neptune relay station and carried directly to UTG fleet headquarters. The entire process only took a few hours, and thanks to advancements in technology, the sending station did not have to suffer the consequences of massive system shutdowns or the need to survive on minimal life support, like the UTGS Florenski had to endure hundreds of years earlier. UTGS Kosovo remained on station over Hiboria Major for the next 36 hours, awaiting orders from UTG fleet command after they'd reviewed the files taken from the kaleidoscope. During this time, Marine Lieutenant Gabriel demanded to know why it took the Kosovo so long to alert his team that the presence of a living biological creature so large was

approaching. Their answer was simple. The beast wasn't alive. Thirty-six hours later, the UTGS Kosovo received a priority one message from UTG fleet command, ordering her to sanitize the area, then return to the home system with all haste. Targeting the wreckage of the kaleidoscope, the Kosovo struck the facility with two volleys from her plasma gun in low orbit, which was more than enough to send the kaleidoscope to the bottom of the ocean. That done, the Kosovo warped into hyperspace for the journey back to Earth. Three weeks later, the UTG Kosovo dropped out of warp in the area of Neptune's orbit, and was on the deceleration trajectory towards the massive orbital station that was the San Diego

Naval Fleet Base in orbit over Earth, and she received a priority message from the UTG fleet command on Mars, with a immediate. orders to divert course to Saturn. Troubling new discovery, one which worried corporate executives, would be the only reason why the UTGS Kosovo and her precious cargo would be diverted. UTG fleet command, Mars Planetary Authority, Terran Year 2587. After the United Terran government gained control of all of mankind, it was necessary to add additional branches of government, so as to maintain order and control over mankind's growing

expansion into space. The already existing executive branch, legislative branch and judicial branch, were added at the branch of the Propaganda Ministry, a Ministry of Equitable Distribution, which was charged with ensuring that the 99% were allotted a fair share of the Galactic Bounty, which the 1% deemed they deserved.

All of these branches were equal, more or less, but all answered to the branch of supreme authority, most powerful of all branches of government, whose dictates had the authority to over. override any decisions passed by any of the lower branches of government. This branch of supreme authority was made up of a secretive board of 12 executives whose identity was hidden from the public record, but who literally had the power of life and death over the entire galaxy. They were, in essence, as enigmatic as the god whom the ancient earth cults had worshipped centuries ago,

may well have been considered gods themselves. Their status was so far above the elite 1%, but they were considered the 0.1% of the 1%. Though the branch of Supreme Authority was located within the Asian Continental Authority on Earth, there were a few top secret and highly secured locations across colonized space where the Supreme Authority could meet, the second largest of such meeting places being in the capital city dome of the Mars Planetary Authority. It was here where the Supreme Authority met, in the capital rotunda building, several stories high and looking down upon the Mars Capital District. Outside of the Supreme Authority meeting room

was a full battalion of the elite, black-uniformed SS or Secret Service, with orders to kill on site any unauthorized person on that floor. On the streets below, manning roadblocks for one mile surrounding the meeting place was an entire regiment of the highly armed internal regulatory service, the dreaded IRS. They were the government's personal business. brown uniformed armed forces, and they were equal in number to the Tarran government's regular military. The politicians never really trusted the loyalties of the regular military,

especially the space marines, who still held on to ancient traditions such as honor and integrity, which the Turing government found somewhat distasteful. The defeat of the UTG military at Alpha Centauri, against the remarkably well-trained, well-equipped and highly motivated colonies of New Columbia left a bitter taste in the supreme Authority's mouth, which lasted to this day. The meeting place was a grand, opulently decorated semi-circular room whose walls were lined with pure gold. On a large, semi-circular dais, the seats of the Supreme Authority were arranged in two tiers. Five chairs were on the upper tier for the Terran Corporation Executives, and seven chairs on the lower tier for the Terran government

leaders. On the wall behind them was a large, ancient bronze plaque on which mankind's three commandments were engraved. But the citizenry give all for the government. For the government give all for the corporations. But the corporations give some for the citizenry whom the government deems worthy. They sat facing a large holographic projection of the data files which were recovered from the kaleidoscope. A very panic man wearing a white lab coat was emotionally explaining the events which had occurred

in the last hours, events which brought an end to the kaleidoscope's mission to Heiboria Prime. All around him, the facility looked as if it was being shaken, as if caught in the middle of a seaquake, and the sickening sound of bending metal was so loud that he had to yell to be heard above it. The man in the lab coat, apparently the last survivor, the over 3,000 crew and complement of the station, started by recalling that the submarine, the deep dive six, which they sent to the seafloor to gather the seaweed, had encountered a biological specimen of gigantic proportions, resembling an ancient, ancient earth Mosasaur, the creature was at least 250 feet long and covered in a segmented exoskeleton

from the crown of its alligator-like head to its flat vertical tail. Two flippers, each extending 50 feet from the body, protruded just behind the Leviathan 70 foot long and narrow more. Immediately the crew of the deep dive engaged the system which sent a 50,000 volt of electricity out into the water. The maneuver worked well as the Leviathan immediately spun around and sped in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, the creature's massive tail slammed into the submarine amid ships, battering the hull and sending it crashing into the endless bed of seaweed. The hull now breached, the nuclear reactor spilled radioactive material over the ocean floor.

Despite the dangers, a dozen three crew submersibles were sent down to the wreckage, only to find to their horror that the seaweed had somehow come alive, glowing from the radioactive spill, and wrapped all of the submersibles. within its vines. Horror crept upon horror as the crews of the trapped submersibles saw the crew of the downed submarine obviously dead but animated.

The tops of their skulls have been torn away in a vine of seaweed protruding out of the brain cavity. The crews of the submersibles, which numbered over 30 in total, had only a few moments to contemplate the alarming circumstances they found themselves in before the vines of seaweed tore their little submersibles apart

and burrowed into their scumercables. Likewise, the giant sea creatures swimming near the seaweed bed, while also being ensnared by the clinging vines. Their skulls mercilely being broken open as vines slithered into the now open cavity. The glowing vines reached upwards at a rapid pace, wrapping and entangling itself around subsurface structures of the facility before climbing up in the northeastern section of the kaleidoscope and headed towards the nuclear reactors. So fast was the infestation, but not only. one could escape the reach of the seaweed. The vines creeping through the ventilation shafts

to get to the people sealing themselves in their rooms or work spaces. Once the vine was borrowed into the now dead crew members, the reanimated corpses would walk towards the edge of the facility on shambling legs to fall overboard into the waiting ocean. The last survivor was the chief scientist who had first discovered the seaweed and who thought it could be processed into human feed.

As his video feed showed hundreds of the deceased crew now creeping towards the edge of the facility, a vine of seaweed protruding from their skulls. He initiated the shutdown of the nuclear reactors, recorded his last message on the data files, then put the flare gun into his mouth, and pulled the trigger. Though the events which the man described were terrifyingly horrific,

the 12 seated at the dais watched with a sense bordering on boredom. To be honest, there existed literally thousands of transmissions and data files containing the last words of colonizing space exploring. is just moments before some tragedy befell them, and there were likely thousands more scattered throughout the far reaches of space, which had yet to be discovered. Still, the slightly glowing yellowish ooze

which the Marines had collected greatly interested the twelve members of the Supreme Authority, which is why this rare assembly of the Supreme Authority had been convened, as a byproduct of the irradiated seaweed which could control the mind and the action of a massive sea creature. If that substance could somehow be

synthesized into something odourless and tasteless, the Terran Supreme Authority would have complete control of the entire galaxy without fear of a three-thinking civilization like those of the constitutional republics. In fact, if the Terran Supreme Authority could somehow sabotage the water supplies of New Columbia, the rogue colonies of Alpha Centauri could be brought back under control of the United Terran government. It was imperative that the sample be brought to Earth immediately and, of course, sealed safely away in an area free of radiation. Saturn orbit. Terran year 2587 For many years after the ceasefire, the UTG had been utilising specialised mining vessels, known as ice harvesters, to collect ice from the outer rings of Saturn for transportation back to Earth, the Moon and Mars. Long before the facilities were built into the ice-harvesting vessels, the ice collected from space had to be brought either to Earth or Mars to be melted down, filtered, sanitised and purified as water for the ever-growing population of mankind's two home worlds. The massive two-and-a-half-thousand-foot-long ice-harvester UTGS Messica, whose hull resembled that of corn on the cob due to the many 100-foot-wide dome-shaped freezer bays, which bestooned the ship, was two days away from completing its three-month mission of ice.

harvesting, and its exhausted but very well-paid crew of 75 were preparing to return to the Norfolk Port Authority Station, which was in orbit around Earth. There they would spend the next month and a half downloading the ice into smaller shuttles for transportation planet-side. Norfolk Station was a two-square-mile orbital station, half of which was dedicated to docking and port operations, and the other half dedicated to the vices and sins of the flesh, designed to part the weary ship crews from their well-earned pay. 38 hours before the UTGS messickers scheduled jump into hypers, a collision alarms began ringing.

An enormous chunk of ice, over half the size of the ice harvester itself, was hurtling on a collision course with the ship. Fortunately, the early warning alarms gave the massacre nearly a day to change course. That was not what caused alarm to the messengers captain. The ice crystals which form the rings of Saturn ranged from a few millimeters to a few meters. The size of this chunk of ice, with a mass of over a kilometer and a half wide, was an anomaly that bordered on impossible.

Being the inquisitive type, the captain of the UTGS massacre, Captain Edgar Pentaloo, ordered a change of course and recalculated the jump point, but brought the ship near enough to the ice anomaly to use the ship's limited planetary scanners to study in perhaps market for future examination. It was 18 hours to jump when Captain Pintalu suddenly caught a complete stop of the inertial propulsion warp engines, the telemetry data of the massive space iceberg, leaving him in complete shock. On the surface of that gargantuan ice block hurtling through space were signs of carbon, evidence of life. Moreover, it was confirmation of a huge solid metallic structure encased within the ice.

Immediately, Pentaloo relayed UTG fleet command on Mars of the finding he was in turn, ordered to mark the anomaly and follow it closely until a military patrol frigate could arrive on station. This delayed the messengers jump into hyperspace by ten days, but Pentaloo dutifully obeyed his orders. These days all U.T. ships captains had over a century of strict obedience to global corporation and government dictates ingrained into their DNA.

When the naval fleet heavy frigate UTGS Kosovo arrived, Captain Pintalu eagerly handed over all of the limited data telemetry on the spaceburg which the messica was able to collect. Finally, the ice harvester was allowed to jump into hyperspace, headed towards the pleasure centres of Norfolk Station. It wasn't a moment too soon. A slight radiation leak had been discovered in the hydroponics facility two weeks earlier. Pentaloo had planned to have its service once they reached Norfolk Station, but had to have that entire section sealed off during the wait for the naval frigate to arrive. Before the jump to hyperspace, however, the captain of the Kosovo transferred possession of a thick, transparent, double-woured, composi-plastic container, roughly four feet long, two feet wide, three feet high, to Captain Pantalu. It was filled with this slimy, fungus-looking substance, which emitted a slight yellowish glow. Seemingly relieved to be rid of the substance,

Captain of the Kosovo ordered Captain Pentalou to secretly store the container in the Messica's hydroponics facility under armed guard until they reached Norfolk Station, where a military security team would be waiting to take possession of the cargo. When Pantalo inquired of the naval fleet captain why the mysterious glowing substance was not being transferred in a radiation-proof container, the fleet captain replied that the radiation-proof containers had been damaged and were unusable, but that the double-walled,

composite plastic containers were just as good if not better, so long as the cargo was secured in a hydroponics area. Captain Pentali obeyed his instructions without question, neglecting to mention the small, almost negligible radiation leak in hydroponics. The jump from Saturn's rings to Earth orbit was usually a 16-hour journey. It would ultimately take the UTGS massacre six months to reach its destination. Meanwhile, reconnaissance probes from the UTGs, G.S. Kosovo were sent to the massive spaceburg and fired tungsten-steel cable anchors into it.

Once tethered, the examination of the giant anomaly could begin. Dozens of metallic, egg-shaped pods roughly eight feet around and 16 feet long could be seen just under the surface of the ice. They were connected by some sort of thick terror, nearly half a kilometer long, to a giant cylindrical object over 600 feet long, colored in shades of red violet and, and, and the same thing. lavender and highlighted in a bold white stripe which surrounded the four-quarter deck. On this bold white stripe, written thick black letters, 25 feet high, were the words UTGS, Jakarta City.

She was in remarkably well-preserved condition since her disappearance nearly 500 years ago. Took ten hours for the Kosovo's plasma beam on low power to bore a hole through the ice to the Jakarta City wide enough to allow a squad of Marine Raiders, wearing their bulky ship-to-ship life sustainment suits to enter. The spacewalk from the Kosovo to the ice formation, which encased the Jakarta city, was extremely risky, but the world-trained Marine Raiders accomplished the task, including the claustrophobic trek down the narrow ice tunnel, which led to the mysterious ghost ship. The Marines would have to hurry, though, as the ice tunnel would freeze over again in a matter

of hours, trapping them inside to suffer the same fate as the crew. Using a plasma rifle, the Marine Raider team, again led by Lieutenant Gabriel, penetrated into the interior of the ancient coloniser ship. It was a cramped claustrophobia-inducing experience, as much of the interior space was blocked by ice, and in many places, the young female Marine Corporal, operating a newly issued plasma rifle, had to run down several charge capacitors of her own weapon to melt a path through the corridors and peeways, as they struggled forwards to the command deck. Along the way, the Marines discovered the mummified frozen bodies of several of the passengers and crew, all very well preserved, all wearing environmental life support suits,

and all hudder together as if waiting for their inevitable fate. It was a heart-wrenching sight for the Marines, but soon they'd burned their way to the command bridge. With the aperture of the plasma rifle set to full open, and with the last charge capacitor set to its lower setting, the young female Marine carefully and patiently thawed out the tribes which held the Jakarta City's data files. Carefully removing those files from their mountings, the Marines beat a hasty retreat from the frozen tomb and returned to the UTGS Kosovo where Lieutenant Gabriel turned the files over to the naval ship captain.

Like the corpses aboard the Jakarta City, a data files were also remarkably well preserved, and the heartbreaking tale of the fate of the Jakarta City was soon uncovered. the Jakarta city's navigational system was linked to her explorer ship, the UTGS carbon. However, when the carbon inexplicably fell out of hyperspace at the Jupiter jump point, the Jakarta city's navigational link was severed, thus flinging the Jakarta city unguided towards the second hyperspace jump point near Saturn. This unanticipated and violent action damaged the ship's hyperdrive generators, and she tumbled uncontrolled through her inertial flight trajectory until, days later, she

finally ended up drifting lifelessly somewhere within Saturn's rings. Using what was left of their warp power, Jakarta City was able to limp slowly to the edge of Saturn's rings in the hopes of of issuing a May Day alert to the many passing explorer and colonizer vessels who were leaving the solar system and using Saturn's gravitational pull as a slingshot. At last the damaged and overstrained warp engines finally died just as the Jakarta City neared the periphery of Saturn's rings. and although there were at least a dozen starships in the area, her damaged communications array could only send out weak signals, which all went unheeded.

While the Jakarta city was slowly pulled back into Saturn's rings, all of the power she had left was switched to life support. That would only last a few days. Meanwhile, ice from Sutton's rings began slowly forming around the ship. As the end drew near, and the ship temperature rapidly dropped to fatal conditions, family groups were allowed to climb into the ship's inspection and repair pods. Small vessels tethered to the ship which were used to inspect the outer hull and make repairs to the ship.

These pods came equipped with their own internal life support systems and allowed the family groups to spend a few more hours together before the systems ran out of power. The families succumbed together to the frozen void of space. Rather than tow the Jakarta city back to Earth to bury the families on their birth planets, a costly endeavor to say the least, what were the same, expenditure of assets on such a large recovery mission, plus the inevitable lawsuits and legal fees from hundreds, if not thousands, of enraged family members who would, no doubt, be demanding

answers to uncomfortable questions, which the Globo corporations would rather not be asked. The United Terran government instead found a clever solution to the problem. A nondescript space freighter was assigned a ferry-four warp drive engines to the location of the Jakarta city, where the warp engines would then be secured to four points around the spaceburg. In addition, several telemetry scrambleers would be embedded into the ice, effectively making the spaceburg invisible to scanners, unless the spaceberg was actually in visual range of anything. The chances of that happening were as astronomical as a giant meteorite hitting the Moon's Slorenski crater dead center. Once the warp engines were secured,

they would light off in a sequence that would point the Jakarta. Jakarta City in the direction of the Sun. Once the correct vector had been set, all four warp engines would ignite in one burst, which would cause all four to break away from the Spaceburg, send the Jakarta City on a trajectory which, after a few years, would eventually send her directly into the heart of the sun. No one would be any wiser, and a long-forgotten potential financial disaster for the global corporations would remain long-forgotten. between Mars and Jupiter orbit. Terranier 2587. Nine hours into the UTGS Messica's 16-hour journey to Norfolk Station, her alarms were ringing across the ship. Somehow, for reasons unknown to Captain Pintalu,

the mysterious glowing ooze somehow gained some type of sentience. It escaped the Messica's hydroponics facility and forcefully entered the security guard's bodies via their nose, ears and mouth. responding to the primary instinct to replicate itself, the corpses of the now deceased guards attack the other crew members, holding them down with almost superhuman strength while the ooze poured out of their mouths and eyes.

The ooze then forcefully entered the other crew members and the whole horrifying process spread rapidly throughout the ship. Fearing that this infection would be brought to earth, or worse, somehow contaminate the ice which would eventually be turned into drinking water. Captain Pintalu brought his ship out of hyperspace to drift forever as a ghost ship in the void between Mars and Earth. Between Mars and Earth orbit. Terranier 2588. It was a one in a billion trillion occurrence. An impossibility.

Something which only the hand of God could have orchestrated. When the UTGS massacre dropped out of hyperspace, she appeared in the flight trajectory path of the massive spaceburg, which encased the unfortunate UTGS. Jakarta City. The contact was brief, but forceful enough to slightly divert the trajectory of both objects. Spaceburg's trajectory no longer sent it towards the sun, while the inertial trajectory of the UTGS Mezzaker was disturbed enough that it would eventually pass near Earth. A few moments later, Earth's planetary alarms were sounding. Warning as an unknown metallic object was drifting into established space lanes and potentially threatening the hundreds of starships which used those lanes every day.

The orbital station's long-range scanners confirmed that the drifting vessel was a Saturn ice-harvester and attempted to identify her. The mysterious ship drifting aimlessly through space was indeed identified as the UTGS massacre, which had missed its arrival date to Norfolk Station by six months.

As the United Terran government was extremely interested in the ice-harvester for some unknown reason, whose starship tug vessels were immediately dispatched from Norfolk Station to retrieve the massacre and towbacked one of the docks used only by the military. Simultaneously, a squad of naval fleet security personnel were dispatched to the bay where the massacre was docked to retrieve its top secret cargo. At that exact same moment, a mysterious

spaceburg almost a kilometer, smashed dead center directly into the Florenski crater on the moon, completely obliterating the helpless Florenski ship building yards. At this day, no one knows how that huge chunk of space ice got through all of the earth's sensors and scanners and remained undetected until it was too late. With no one but itself to blame for this unprecedented calamity, but unwilling to accept responsibility for the catastrophe, the UTG was forced to shift the blame for the complete destruction of the Florenski ship building yards and the deaths of a quarter of million citizens as an act of God. Such a term had not been used for half a millennia, and the UTG Galactic Propaganda Ministry had a difficult time

explaining the concept of God to the billions of enlightened citizens scattered across the cosmos when the news of the destruction of the galaxy's Lardish shipyards became public. In fact, the concept of God, much less an act of God, it became so foreign that the Taron government simply explained that God was a mythical deity worshipped by those savage constitutional Republicans of New Columbia. Meanwhile, as the massacre was carefully being guided into the docking bay of the city-sized orbital station and the restraining tethers were secured to the ice harvester. Twenty military fleet security personnel breached the entrance hatched to the ship. As they fouled into the interior of the ship,

they found it illuminated by an unnatural, sickly yellow globe. 36 hours later, all contact with the Norfolk Orbital Station was lost. End. Transmission. Copyright. 500 years of space exploration. Historical module lesson one. New Columbia Board of Education. New Columbia Year 1776. And so once again, we reach the end of tonight's podcast.

My thanks as always to the authors of those wonderful stories and to you for taking the time to listen. Now, I'd ask one small favor of you. Wherever you get your podcast from, please write a few nice words and leave a five-star review as it really helps the podcast. That's it for this week, but I'll be back again same time, same place, and I do so hope you'll join me once more. Until next time, sweet dreams and bye-bye.