[fanfic] - Eternity's Edge
uranium_235
Join Date: 2002-11-20 Member: 9478Banned
Join Date: 2002-11-20 Member: 9478Banned
<div class="IPBDescription">Prologue</div> <i>I'm slowly toiling away at these. I'll publish the chapters as soon as I get two chapters AHEAD. This allows me to go back and make revisions. So basically, you're getting the prologue now, and Chapter 2 is just beginning. This makes it easy on me, and you. However, this means that the pace is much slower, but will be written that much better.</i>
Enjoy.
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<b>Eternity's Edge</b> - <i>Prologue</i>
Will Drath swung his legs over the edge of his bunk, and slid the worn book under it. He turned out the light above his bunk, stood up, and stretched. He checked the time on his roommate’s clock across the tiny, cramped quarters. His shift down in Engineering and Maintenance began in a couple minutes. He was already dressed for his job, and had lain down to read briefly before starting work.
Bending over, Will pressed his face to the room’s only tiny window. He wasn’t sure why. The view outside the station never changed. On any planet, the view would be breathtaking. He’d been on the station for three months, and the view had never changed, and he would’ve welcomed the ‘boring’ vistas of his home in exchange for the desolate emptiness he saw.
Through the window, a mere 2 inches of transparent plasteel that separated the living inside of the station from the hostile vacuum of space, the stars and planets danced to a song man could never comprehend. The station was remarkably close to the Crab Nebula, though the view was dramatically different then it was from far-off earth. The station was traveling on the far side of it, in the Ariadne Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. Once every week or so, the station made a full rotation, and the view through the window would change. On the far side of the station was a large, super hot, blue giant of a star. It was merely the size of his fingernail, but was massive enough that even at the huge distances separating it and the station, its gravitational field was acting to slingshot the station into a new trajectory.
He sighed and stood up, and closed the window’s blinds. Looking into space, he would begin to think about other places, far away, traveling rapidly through the Milky Way, and visiting stellar phenomena up close and personal. He’d examine neutron stars up close, ponder the depths of a black hole, and visit uncharted planets. Then he’d snap back to reality and realize he could never do any of that. Space had always fascinated him, and even though he saw fantastic, up close holoprojections of black holes, with their beautiful accretion disks, or binary stars sucking each other to death, he always wanted to BE there, and have the exhilaration of it being REAL this time, not a fake image constructed for astronomy lessons. He would think about just how massive the galaxy was, and how tiny and insignificant he was. Who cared what you did with your life? All it took was a few billion years and an exploding star would annihilate all you had done. Of course, it didn’t help that your life was being sucked away on a forgotten station, drifting through god-knows-where.
Now thoroughly depressed, he exited the room and stepped into the brightly lit hallway. He followed the hallway into a small lobby, where he summoned an elevator. When it arrived, he took the elevator down to floor B-3, where he would spend the next 8 hours performing monotonous service checks and pretend to be busy when his supervisor came around.
Today was an exciting day in the doldrums of his life. The UAS Raleigh, a Rylan-class scouting ship, was experiencing technical troubles with their reactor system. On his desk were papers pertaining to the UAS Raleigh’s known trajectories, speed, and position. Underneath the papers was a thick folder that Will knew would contain all the tech specs on the Raleigh’s systems he was to service. He flipped open the folder and thumbed through the papers. Nothing new to him, just blown compression pumps from too much coolant pressure. He shuffled through the loose papers. Apparently the Raleigh had been traveling at near light-speeds to it’s destination, a relatively nearby planet. The planet had an atmosphere and an icy covering with a high possibility of liquid water under it. Samples had been taken, a monitoring station set up, and the Raleigh began its two year journey back home.
Will stood and stretched. The Raleigh was to dock with the station in a few hours. In the meantime, he worked on his other tasks: Inspecting the electrical system for flaws and performing maintenance examinations on the ionic turbines.
Will finished inspecting the electrical system and hurried back to his overstated office. It was an unkempt desk wedged in the corner of the engineering deck. Noisy, smelly, and dirty. The techs had begun clearing space around the second docking airlock, where the Raleigh would land. He donned a cheap headset, which was connected to the Communications deck, and he was able to listen to the commands given to incoming ships. A femaly voice from the Communication Center was already on the channel. “Four-Six-Able-Foxtrot-Niner, you have entered within range of our scanners.”
“Communications, this is Engineering, mind if I eavesdrop?” he asked politely.
“Not at all, Engineering. Four-Six-Able-Foxtrot-Niner this is Omega-Sigma-Five-Nine-One-Four, do you copy. Over.” Aside from her voice, the channel was quiet, with only the background hiss that signified the connection was intact.
“Four-Six-Able-Foxtrot-Niner this is Omega-Sigma-Five-Nine-One-Four. Please respond. Over.”
Again, silence.
“This is Omega-Sigma-Five-Nine-One-Four hailing Four-Six-Able-Foxtrot-Niner. Requesting permission to initiate automatic docking procedure Four-Four-Five-Beta. Over.”
The background hiss answered back.
“Four-Six-Able-Foxtrot-Niner, please come in.”
The voice in the Communications Deck repeated her transmissions once more, before running a program that would allow the station’s computers to take master control of the ships systems. If the pilot was awake on the ship, they’d be able to override the system, and most usually did, preferring the dock on their own.
The computer remained engaged and proceeded to bring the ship into Internal Dock 2. Will tossed off the headset and walked over to the dock. The outer airlock was open, and the large ship eased through the spacious lock. Through a small porthole, he saw the outer lock rumble shut. The glass creaked as the air pressurized. The inner doors opened and the ship slipped into the engineering bay.
Rylan-class ships weren’t very small. They were blocky ships, 86 meters long, 42 meters wide, and 19 meters tall, at max. The frontal lobe contained the bridge and crew quarters. A small connecting spur served as a cargo bay and staging center, and held the bridge to the engines, powerful systems capable of light-speed travel. The large ship took up nearly half the entire Engineering Deck, leaving just enough room for Dock 1. Two ships could fit side-by-side, but there would be no room to work.
Will assisted another tech in bringing a ladder to the side of the ship. As the senior engineer, he climbed the ladder and pounded on the airlock door twice. After no answer, he drew a small computer from his pocket and began to tap in a code. At the rear of the ship, techs had used a similar method to open the service systems at the engines. A couple grabbed lights and tools and climbed inside. One of them shouted for Will. He paused and slipped the small computer back in his pocket and descended the ladder. He headed aft towards the exposed engines. The mechanics who had gone inside had come back out with a bewildered look on their face. One of the engineers was leaning over, peering inside the access hatches. Another was picking at his hand. “What is it?” Will asked.
“Sir, I don’t know what this **** is, but it’s caked all over the reactor housing,” said the blonde-haired technician. In his gloved hand he held a large, slimy blob of an organic substance. It looked to Will like cooked spinach. He voiced this observation. The technician grimaced and shook his hand. “It feels like it’s squeezing.”
“Right, I’ll call up Medical, they’ll handle this.” Will ran over to his desk and put on the headset. He tapped a button that linked him to the medical floor. A polite voice answered. “This is Will down in Engineering. We’ve got something... strange you should have a look at. No, I haven’t touched it. One of the technicians has. Yeah. It looks like cooked spinach, like a thick fungus or mold. Okay. No, it was in the reactor subsystem, nothing could live in there. Thanks.” He tossed off the headset and dashed back to the ship. The tech was busy scraping the organic sludge off his hand into a can normally used to hold oily rags. “Sit tight, they’re coming up. I’m going to go wake the crew up, see if they know what’s up.” The blonde man nodded and continued scraping his hand.
Will climbed the ladder again and fished out his computer. He finished punching in the code, then plugged the computer into a small port by the hatch. As the door slid open, air hissed around it, escaping from the cabin. When it was completely open, Will reached inside and fumbled for a light switch. He found a large button on the wall near the door, and punched it. Overhead, a cold blue fluorescent light flickered to life. “HEY!” Will shouted, his voice sounding tinny as it echoed from the steel walls of the cabin. “Wake up ladies! Rise and shine!” He continued shouting as he walked to the door labeled ‘Quarters’. He tugged the heavy steel door open. “You guys gonna sleep all day or what?” The room was, as expected, dark. He blindly searched for another light switch.
The next few seconds were a blur. He found a button and depressed it, and the ceiling lights illuminated the room. He saw something flash by in the corner of his eye, something that made a frightening, unnatural roar. It slammed into his side, and the world went black.
He awoke less then a few seconds later, lying in a pool of a hot, sticky liquid, and next to his own severed arm. He could see the flesh where it had been torn by an array of razor sharp teeth, and the bone had been crushed to dust. The nightmare creature that performed the horrible deed stood on his chest.
The creature was the size of a small dog. It had four legs, each leg ending in a vicious dagger. Its head was tapered, again like a dog, but ended in a huge mouth of teeth. Its eyes were shapless milky yellow orbs.
“Chief, you in there?” shouted a mechanic from outside.
The creature glanced towards the front of the ship. Then it emitted another roar, raised its front legs, and stabbed the daggers through his chest. He could even hear the metallic clank where they hit the deck floor underneath him. The creature withdrew his ‘feet’, and watched Will with curious interest as small jets of blood shot out of the new wounds. The blood eased to a trickle, then stopped entirely as his injured heart stopped beating.
<span style='font-size:7.01pt;line-height:100%'>© Dave “Uranium – 235” Schutz 2003. Natural-Selection and all related material is copyright trademark of Charles “Flayra” Cleveland.</span>
Enjoy.
-------------------------------------
<b>Eternity's Edge</b> - <i>Prologue</i>
Will Drath swung his legs over the edge of his bunk, and slid the worn book under it. He turned out the light above his bunk, stood up, and stretched. He checked the time on his roommate’s clock across the tiny, cramped quarters. His shift down in Engineering and Maintenance began in a couple minutes. He was already dressed for his job, and had lain down to read briefly before starting work.
Bending over, Will pressed his face to the room’s only tiny window. He wasn’t sure why. The view outside the station never changed. On any planet, the view would be breathtaking. He’d been on the station for three months, and the view had never changed, and he would’ve welcomed the ‘boring’ vistas of his home in exchange for the desolate emptiness he saw.
Through the window, a mere 2 inches of transparent plasteel that separated the living inside of the station from the hostile vacuum of space, the stars and planets danced to a song man could never comprehend. The station was remarkably close to the Crab Nebula, though the view was dramatically different then it was from far-off earth. The station was traveling on the far side of it, in the Ariadne Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. Once every week or so, the station made a full rotation, and the view through the window would change. On the far side of the station was a large, super hot, blue giant of a star. It was merely the size of his fingernail, but was massive enough that even at the huge distances separating it and the station, its gravitational field was acting to slingshot the station into a new trajectory.
He sighed and stood up, and closed the window’s blinds. Looking into space, he would begin to think about other places, far away, traveling rapidly through the Milky Way, and visiting stellar phenomena up close and personal. He’d examine neutron stars up close, ponder the depths of a black hole, and visit uncharted planets. Then he’d snap back to reality and realize he could never do any of that. Space had always fascinated him, and even though he saw fantastic, up close holoprojections of black holes, with their beautiful accretion disks, or binary stars sucking each other to death, he always wanted to BE there, and have the exhilaration of it being REAL this time, not a fake image constructed for astronomy lessons. He would think about just how massive the galaxy was, and how tiny and insignificant he was. Who cared what you did with your life? All it took was a few billion years and an exploding star would annihilate all you had done. Of course, it didn’t help that your life was being sucked away on a forgotten station, drifting through god-knows-where.
Now thoroughly depressed, he exited the room and stepped into the brightly lit hallway. He followed the hallway into a small lobby, where he summoned an elevator. When it arrived, he took the elevator down to floor B-3, where he would spend the next 8 hours performing monotonous service checks and pretend to be busy when his supervisor came around.
Today was an exciting day in the doldrums of his life. The UAS Raleigh, a Rylan-class scouting ship, was experiencing technical troubles with their reactor system. On his desk were papers pertaining to the UAS Raleigh’s known trajectories, speed, and position. Underneath the papers was a thick folder that Will knew would contain all the tech specs on the Raleigh’s systems he was to service. He flipped open the folder and thumbed through the papers. Nothing new to him, just blown compression pumps from too much coolant pressure. He shuffled through the loose papers. Apparently the Raleigh had been traveling at near light-speeds to it’s destination, a relatively nearby planet. The planet had an atmosphere and an icy covering with a high possibility of liquid water under it. Samples had been taken, a monitoring station set up, and the Raleigh began its two year journey back home.
Will stood and stretched. The Raleigh was to dock with the station in a few hours. In the meantime, he worked on his other tasks: Inspecting the electrical system for flaws and performing maintenance examinations on the ionic turbines.
Will finished inspecting the electrical system and hurried back to his overstated office. It was an unkempt desk wedged in the corner of the engineering deck. Noisy, smelly, and dirty. The techs had begun clearing space around the second docking airlock, where the Raleigh would land. He donned a cheap headset, which was connected to the Communications deck, and he was able to listen to the commands given to incoming ships. A femaly voice from the Communication Center was already on the channel. “Four-Six-Able-Foxtrot-Niner, you have entered within range of our scanners.”
“Communications, this is Engineering, mind if I eavesdrop?” he asked politely.
“Not at all, Engineering. Four-Six-Able-Foxtrot-Niner this is Omega-Sigma-Five-Nine-One-Four, do you copy. Over.” Aside from her voice, the channel was quiet, with only the background hiss that signified the connection was intact.
“Four-Six-Able-Foxtrot-Niner this is Omega-Sigma-Five-Nine-One-Four. Please respond. Over.”
Again, silence.
“This is Omega-Sigma-Five-Nine-One-Four hailing Four-Six-Able-Foxtrot-Niner. Requesting permission to initiate automatic docking procedure Four-Four-Five-Beta. Over.”
The background hiss answered back.
“Four-Six-Able-Foxtrot-Niner, please come in.”
The voice in the Communications Deck repeated her transmissions once more, before running a program that would allow the station’s computers to take master control of the ships systems. If the pilot was awake on the ship, they’d be able to override the system, and most usually did, preferring the dock on their own.
The computer remained engaged and proceeded to bring the ship into Internal Dock 2. Will tossed off the headset and walked over to the dock. The outer airlock was open, and the large ship eased through the spacious lock. Through a small porthole, he saw the outer lock rumble shut. The glass creaked as the air pressurized. The inner doors opened and the ship slipped into the engineering bay.
Rylan-class ships weren’t very small. They were blocky ships, 86 meters long, 42 meters wide, and 19 meters tall, at max. The frontal lobe contained the bridge and crew quarters. A small connecting spur served as a cargo bay and staging center, and held the bridge to the engines, powerful systems capable of light-speed travel. The large ship took up nearly half the entire Engineering Deck, leaving just enough room for Dock 1. Two ships could fit side-by-side, but there would be no room to work.
Will assisted another tech in bringing a ladder to the side of the ship. As the senior engineer, he climbed the ladder and pounded on the airlock door twice. After no answer, he drew a small computer from his pocket and began to tap in a code. At the rear of the ship, techs had used a similar method to open the service systems at the engines. A couple grabbed lights and tools and climbed inside. One of them shouted for Will. He paused and slipped the small computer back in his pocket and descended the ladder. He headed aft towards the exposed engines. The mechanics who had gone inside had come back out with a bewildered look on their face. One of the engineers was leaning over, peering inside the access hatches. Another was picking at his hand. “What is it?” Will asked.
“Sir, I don’t know what this **** is, but it’s caked all over the reactor housing,” said the blonde-haired technician. In his gloved hand he held a large, slimy blob of an organic substance. It looked to Will like cooked spinach. He voiced this observation. The technician grimaced and shook his hand. “It feels like it’s squeezing.”
“Right, I’ll call up Medical, they’ll handle this.” Will ran over to his desk and put on the headset. He tapped a button that linked him to the medical floor. A polite voice answered. “This is Will down in Engineering. We’ve got something... strange you should have a look at. No, I haven’t touched it. One of the technicians has. Yeah. It looks like cooked spinach, like a thick fungus or mold. Okay. No, it was in the reactor subsystem, nothing could live in there. Thanks.” He tossed off the headset and dashed back to the ship. The tech was busy scraping the organic sludge off his hand into a can normally used to hold oily rags. “Sit tight, they’re coming up. I’m going to go wake the crew up, see if they know what’s up.” The blonde man nodded and continued scraping his hand.
Will climbed the ladder again and fished out his computer. He finished punching in the code, then plugged the computer into a small port by the hatch. As the door slid open, air hissed around it, escaping from the cabin. When it was completely open, Will reached inside and fumbled for a light switch. He found a large button on the wall near the door, and punched it. Overhead, a cold blue fluorescent light flickered to life. “HEY!” Will shouted, his voice sounding tinny as it echoed from the steel walls of the cabin. “Wake up ladies! Rise and shine!” He continued shouting as he walked to the door labeled ‘Quarters’. He tugged the heavy steel door open. “You guys gonna sleep all day or what?” The room was, as expected, dark. He blindly searched for another light switch.
The next few seconds were a blur. He found a button and depressed it, and the ceiling lights illuminated the room. He saw something flash by in the corner of his eye, something that made a frightening, unnatural roar. It slammed into his side, and the world went black.
He awoke less then a few seconds later, lying in a pool of a hot, sticky liquid, and next to his own severed arm. He could see the flesh where it had been torn by an array of razor sharp teeth, and the bone had been crushed to dust. The nightmare creature that performed the horrible deed stood on his chest.
The creature was the size of a small dog. It had four legs, each leg ending in a vicious dagger. Its head was tapered, again like a dog, but ended in a huge mouth of teeth. Its eyes were shapless milky yellow orbs.
“Chief, you in there?” shouted a mechanic from outside.
The creature glanced towards the front of the ship. Then it emitted another roar, raised its front legs, and stabbed the daggers through his chest. He could even hear the metallic clank where they hit the deck floor underneath him. The creature withdrew his ‘feet’, and watched Will with curious interest as small jets of blood shot out of the new wounds. The blood eased to a trickle, then stopped entirely as his injured heart stopped beating.
<span style='font-size:7.01pt;line-height:100%'>© Dave “Uranium – 235” Schutz 2003. Natural-Selection and all related material is copyright trademark of Charles “Flayra” Cleveland.</span>
Comments
Prologue, remember that <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo--> And I didn't want to make him just a 'throwaway' character you KNOW is going to die.
No, yesterdays.
Here a new fan fic coming up from that line, oooh, ta for the inspiration.