What Lies Beyond the Black

[Kitkat]

The massive starship Kahbalezar rocketed through space with incredible speed. At least, incredible to the civilization it had left what seemed so long ago. At 16 times the speed of light, it still took the huge ship and its crew of 50 half a standard decade to reach their destination, a small green world very far from home, a planet named Halferon, meaning "Third World", a reference to how it was the first fully habitable world known to the Iathrians.

The ship was approaching the outer edge of the system, and as per protocol, Captain Nachunray called all of the rotational staff to the bridge to observe (as the systems on an Iathrian starship are primarily computer controlled, with intervention only sometimes neccesary). Almost, if not ALL of the 50 people were cramped onto the small bridge, meant to only accommodate around 15 people at one time to oversee the systems, but this was not by any means an ordinary situation.

"How are the systems performing? The Spacewarp Drive, Garley? How is it?" the Captain said, barely restraining his excitement. Garley was the specialist on board in charge of evaluating the performance of the Spacewarp Drive. He ran a check on the systems involved with its operation and chimed in, "All's good captain, we'll be ready to drop in a matter of minutes! Here' I'll put a timer on screen so that you may all burst with anticipation." He was known for his quirky sense of humor. The timer popped up on all thge monitors, showing the Iathrian equivalent of a 10 minute countdown. They all wated excitedly for that countdown to reach zero.

As the timer ticked down close to the zero mark, a majority of the people in the donut-shaped bridge crowded around the small, thickly-glassed windows situated about the room. The timer reached five, then four, three, two, one, and then, the mechanical hum of the drive began to drop in pitch and die down... only to resume, and grow in intensity less than a second later. "Garley, what's the problem?" The captain asked tensely. "I- Don't know captain, this shouldn't be happening. I will run a system diagnostic here..." As he ran the diagnotsic, the display made his eyes widen to a seemingly impossible size. "Captain, reactor power is going super critical! 154 percent and rising fast! he said quickly. " The warp field appears to be feeding the energy cut during field shutdown back into the core; there's too much power to cut the field!" "Is it possible to vent the energy somehow?" the Captain had to nearly yell over the noise of the drive. "I might be able to eject the energy directly from the core, but there's no telling how long that'll take!"

"Try it!" That was all the captain could say, because before he was done, the warp drive's helmsman was already finished completing the commands which would dump the immense amounts of energy in the core out into empty space. "There's no telling if we'll survive this venture," said Captain Nachunray to the crew, "So I suppose we will all say our last wishes to our people back home. Gather 'round." He turned on the camera recorder rear his station, and began addressing is for his ship's final message home. //This is Captain Nachunray in command of the starship Kahbalezar. We have encountered a fatal error in the systems of the starship's Spacewarp drive, as Doctor Farezel Garley will elaborate upon. It is unclear if the situation will be resolved, but in any case, I and my crew wish to share our final wishes with you all back home.// The captain made a short statement directed to his family on Iathria, and gave the recorder to Garley, who detailed the failure of the drive and attached the diagnostic report, and the camera was passed slowly, almost ceremoniously, to all of the crew.

There was no telling if anyone would ever receive the message, but it was certain that the huge amount of radiation emanating from the ship would attract attention. From someone beyond the black of space...

[Clarke]

When the Iathrian scientists, those few responsible for picking out a new world where the species might thrive, had scanned the system, they had reached the conclusion of a single habitable world. Indeed Halferon was the only habitable world, but only if you excluded an otherwise unremarkable moon, who'strait that made it stand out was its large size at .8 Earth masses.

The light reaching the great telescopes of the Iathrians was outdated, you see. For only a few decades ago, the great Suldija tran-solar co-ops had spotted the moon, and saw it not as an icy wasteland but as an economic opportunity, another world to add to the string of rocks that fell under the control of the Suldija. Gases were skimmed from the billowing clouds of the parent jovian, and genetically modified plants mined the bedice and atmosphere, turning out methane and other hydrocarbons that rained down upon the moon so that great seas were formed.

Handafi contemplated this and more, all the while staring down on the moon, Nyimurinn, gazing at the great rings of solsats that focused electromagnetic radiation onto the surface, the heat that marked urban settlement as it contrasted with the relatively dim stretches of rural settlements, and especially the hair-thin line of the skyhook that his cart was rapidly climbing. This world has grown, he thought, since he and the other captains of his father's shipping co-op had hauled first terraforming equipment, then settlers to the moon. He was the only one who had elected to stay and start a life by himself on the port city of New Einhofn. Many years later, and after creating a regional shipping co-op of his own, he found himself surprised when the current representative of the managing sector of New-Life Co.(the terraforming co-op which had originally invested in the transformation of the moon) had contacted and asked him to come up and discuss a special job with him. The urgency in his voice, and the rather large sum being offered for the job(whatever it was) had compelled him to catch the nearest cart up the elevator.

The soft "ding" that marked the cart's arrival snapped Handafi out of this reverie. His computer guiding him through the corridor, filled waist-high with liquid methane simulating the shallow seas of Ein, he arrived at the door of the representative. As he reached forward to open the door, he couldn't shake the feeling that the job he felt certain he would take would be worthy of the urgency implied by the representative.

As he walked through the door the Suldija busy at his view screen spun around.
"Handafi, what a pleasure to see you! Please, come in if you care to."

"The pleasure is only mine, Fravek. I had no idea that you had been elected to represent your division."

"Yes, it was quite a bit of a shock for me as well." Fravek performed the equivalent of a frown. "But I am afraid we are not here to discuss pleasantries. You see, earlier today we recorded an unauthorized superluminal entrance into the system. This would have been simple to deal with, as it is generally just a fact of a mistep registration-wise, except for one thing. Instead of arriving at the usual safe distance for visiting ships, it arrived incredibly close, at approximately 1 Au away. Its inneficient warp-drive system, at only 16x light speed, accompanied by the aforementioned close position makes us believe it to be an alien ship, with the aliens being used to a liquid water environment."

"But surely that should be a simple opperation, right? Just ping it, ask for the name of the species..."

"That's the strange thing. Almost right after it entered the system, it started sending off signals of a frequency and language that, while obviously foreign, was not stored in our records. After focusing our telescopes on it, we realized that something had damaged the warp drive, and that the signals were most probably S.O.S. signals."

"So what do you want me to do? There's other pilots, many just as if not more experienced than me, if you're planning a rescue mission. "

"Yes, but none of them have ever made contact with an alien vessel. You're experience on Denara makes you the only choice."

"But I was only an engineer when we contacted the Empheri."

"Still, Nyimaurinn is still a small world. There's only a handful of qualified pilots, and you're the only one with experience, no matter how small, with an alien race. But its all up to you in the end, of course. So what do you say, sound fun.?"

Handafi performed a sigh-equivalent. "Sure, I could use some excitement."

"Good. The ship is ready, you depart in two hours."


Two hours later, in orbit around a gassy moon,if one had looked closely a pinpoint of light could have been seen, a GUT drive propelling a metal construction toward another in dire need.

[thatweirdguy]

The Galdeen survey ship Geli Merik was exploring the Langules constellation of stars when they detected the massive energy burst in a system that was only 7.8 light-years away, practically right next door, in a system dubbed two Galieen centuries ago Langules-315. A Captain Marak decided to head toward Langules-315 after the energy burst was discovered to be artificial in nature.

When they entered the system 30 minutes later, the Geli's Subspace Comm officer reported a alien SOS from the inner system. The Sensor officer also reported a large ship with mostly primitive technology in the same area as the SOS and a different ship on the other side of the system heading toward the first. Captain Marak ordered the helmsman to warp toward the first alien ship since they were the ones needing help.

Five minutes later, they jumped out of warp five thousand kilometers away from the ship. By that time, the alien SOS was translated and the Chief Engineer was disturbed about how much power is was dumped into their reactor core.

"Captain, I ran my calculations and rechecked them twice. It appears the only way to make sure the ship doesn't explode is to either eject their entire core or try to fire a EMP at them and hope for the best. Sir, with respect, I have never seen anything like this happen before," Chief Engineer Kagl told the Captain.

"*Sigh* Alright. Comms, try to them a message telling them we're going to dock. Lets try and getting some close up readings." Marak turned to his second-in-command, Commander Logi. "Prepare a shuttle for launch with escorts, Chief Engineer Kagl, get a repair team ready and have them meet us at the hanger in ten minutes with full environmental suits. Commander Logi, your in command until we get back."

"Yes Captain," The Commander replied.

Ten minutes later, a shuttle launched from the Geli Merik and flew straight toward the massive ship. If they weren't noticed before, they do now because of the engine flare from the shuttle's fusion engines.