~ four

After the intermission (Saffron laughs)

~ 2017 ~

 

('Are You Gonna Go My Way' by Lenny Kravitz)

A small spider drone drags its cables through a lighting corridor lined with initiating panels and monitors.  It dodges two walking feet, a short stumble between the crossing wires before continuing.

~ Esmeralda rides through the Air Force Boneyard, obsolete aircraft lining the road.

The central display clicks on its hologram, the six points of the compass charted, the seventh point flashing its six beacon tones.

~ Through the boneyard.

Walking past and through the arms from the walls as they swing out to operate the stations, past two sweeping the floor, past Auto panicking in an apron and a chef hat over a failed cookie batch, into the cockpit Zelda enters and sits initiating the systems.

~ Ahead the Decibel drops its aft ramp, she accelerates as the bracer arms open to lock her placement.  The wrecks around are displaced, some crushed or flipped, a near ring of junk mildly patrolled with scientist notes taken.  Calls received, the immediately start to leave.

Zelda responds flopping back in the chair a bit as the bike hits.  She turns back through the long and active corridor (it goes all the way straight through), to the cargo hold where Esmeralda locks with the motorcycle, the motorcycle lights its singularity drive while locking with the ship.

It stars its lift, the wrecks starting to rattle.  Base personnel line fast into the bunker, some to the observation room (if anyone were to notice, the general's drinking coffee with Elizabeth (normally dressed) in a dark corner passed by the camera sweep.

Reaching altitude, the ship ports out making the wrecks more wrecked like a straw nest being made.  In slipstream, Zelda notes the display repeated from the central, the compass points and the destination, drags it to that system's known information.

Only the mapped paths from the six beacon signals to the destination, orbitals extrapolated by the crossing of the signal, the presumed system starts building itself in the display.  

Zelda gives a fast cycle through the year the beacon array took data in leaving a sparse if not stupid map to work with, but with functional lock within the target system bodies (shorter cycles).  A system appears.  

She moves it back and forth, studying the motions into the relative present, then to the predicted arrival time, map carving.

Auto looks up a second ...

... nods ...

And back to the cookies.

The Decibel pulls up at the slipstream blowing through what would be a wall, deploying what appears anti-missile counter measures through then dropping a new beacon.   In high turbulence the ship drops another beacon by a chain from the aft as the colors surrounding cascade with formation, dragging it like an anchor.

The beacons connect by beam, forming a new slipstream behind.

Zelda flips on the gunnery control at the wheel, marks the target destination, focuses through the moving map for a clean shot ... takes it.  A harpoon beacon off another chain held at the fore it's beam shot forth with it, the ship jerks at its pull when the chain hits end.

The ship stops shaking, calming to normal transit, no stars, the occasional sway between the links as the tunnel drags behind.  

Nerd notes ~ The chains are to distance from the active beacons' electromagnetisms, the fore being the more disruptive, the ship disruptive to the aft.  Chains because of the difference in the way they take slack in zero-g.

Non-conductive, and they also buffer any sharp adjustments in path or obstructions.  The ship itself is much like the weight on a kite, if not the bobber on a lure.

The hologram checks the beam locale to the lost fleet beacons as the extrapolated distant map shows the compression of space between them.  Through the view-port, starless space, occasional slipstream drag from the harpoon, marking where the tunnel is made behind.

~ welcome back ~

 

 

Unknown crew of among the six ships run alien corridors, walls scarred and torn organic as flesh, yet sparking in the dark from their insides like exposed nerves.  Their crew uniforms in scraps where not discarded entirely, strange leather and blankets sewn harshly.  

 

A clog of aliens chase in shadows as they flee toward an hall long port, a wall of light shining through.  Past a bulkhead lock, a dim blinking light on a disc overhead and through the light.  

 

A hack-wired wall switch next to them they turn back to face.  The aliens hiss and chatter their unknown threats, stopping at the smokey light.

The leader of the crew turn with a smile as the crew all human hiss their returns in mockery.  Wall switch hit, the door slams behind the alien pursuers.  The team leader flips the switch guard on the remote, kisses the air at them and hits the button, blowing them into the light and cooking them.

________

To the crew at a campfire on their dark defunct bridge, alien meat on sticks cooking while others tear away at their hungrily all in silence.  To the space out the viewport, countless alien wrecks colliding amid the bright, randomly destroyed by a beam while waves more continue porting in endlessly.  

 

The view continues to the space just beyond, the Decibel ports in.  From the cockpit, the battle fades from view, a calm planetary system of distant shadowed bodies.

 

Zelda - Over the scanner, "Ummm ... there's a lot of life sign here and I don't recognize any of it."

Esmeralda - "Beacons ?"

Zelda - "All from one location ... but none of this life sign is centralized.  It's everywhere."  

 

Esmeralda - "... no geothermal activity ..."

 

Zelda - "And ... no ships !  Everything and nothing.  Locked on to the useless beacons and ... approaching the ... carcass ?"

As the view of the planetoid turns with their approach, a massive carcass.  Bone protrudes from space frozen flash, warmed to rot on the other side with the face to the sun but nothing to rot it.  Closer view shows what appears as wounds from explosives, charred streaks from blast over long cuts.

Between the ribs the gut upward and emptied, gashing teeth marks as though eaten alive, a twisting form frozen.  Descending to the signal, a shelter extended from a life pod, a shattered mechanism hanging from its aft.

 

~ 2007 ~

Gunner - At the escape pod bay, flashes through the ports.  "I'll make it."

Aedera - "You have to."  She looks to the window, the lights ... then back.  "You have to."

The pod launches from the Rose, dragging a singularity drive.  Unnoticed in its unpowered drift, the alien warships knock it aside on their approach to the Rose.

 

Aedera - Recalled by the gunner in the pod, "One chance.  Two jumps.  Set the beacons.  And survive."

 

Knocked around as debris until beyond the mess, he drifts ...

 

Gunner - Remembers putting his hand on Aedera's shoulder, "We all survive."

 

Ignites the systems as the ships turn responding, plugs coordinates to the drive and jumps.  Now adrift as the ships jump after seeking, knocking the pod aside, he jumps again, tearing a hole in the warship.

 

As he ports in, he ejects core just before they arrive to follow.  The open fire on it as he watches, view in free fall to the body below.

Voiced over as he approaches the surface, unknown beasts at the site looking up.  "Survive."

 

~ 2017 ~

 

 

The Decibel drifts where the pod's view was.  Mad eyes watch it's landing, glances at the beacons lit and spread around among the bone piles, laughs in stretched face and bloodshot eyes.  "Ku ... ru."  

 

He laughs again loud, a sound of heavy steel hitting the ground.

('The Way Love Used to Be' by Pain Teens)

In the black of the abyss nothing seen until an explosion through the alien warships, a bright light past before obscured again by the closing ships, more porting in.

 

Aedera floats unseen through the alien wrecks and flashes of light, an occasional destruction and strike.  Her suit a mix of human and alien hafted on, light puffs from her rocket guiding her through, a duffel filled with unknowns lagging from her shoulders in the drift.

The wrecks crosshatch over in chaotic layers blocking the light until it fills the reflection on her helm.  A heavy filter for viewing eclipse, she sees his form in the light.  Arms splayed back holding a sphere of his own wrought destruction behind.

 

His form flickers here and there around the shallow globe before returning again to place watching her approach, the explosions left behind of his movement.  Like a static comm, she watches his placement, growing larger and larger as she approaches.

 

Aedera - Sobbing to watch him, "I love you so much.  We'll get there.  Be strong.  We're almost there."

A brief near and perhaps indulgent smile, a reflection of a tear from his eye as the mouth opens, a flash away and back, another explosion leading to collisions between, he opens his mouth as she passes through.  

 

Nearly beyond the tolerance of the ears, "LOVE ..." a gust of sediment worthy of sail propels her to the ships, the inversion of his face inside the sphere watching over, more destruction behind.

 

She drifts toward the six ships huddled at the core of darkness.  View back out through his closing mouth, through the wrecks and hulls and past beyond the light seen, the last of the ships obscuring the light again until nothing seen.

More port in over.