Contact
05 Feb 2017Battlus
"Taliah, how's our fuel look for the rest of the trip?" I asked as I turned to my now hardened crew mate. "We should be able to make it to Palin's base without needing to stop for another scoop, ma'am."
"Good. I don't want this to take any longer than it needs to. We need these new thrusters modified for combat immediately." The Frameshift drive charged as we faced another empty patch of Pleiades space.
"4...3...2...1...Engage" The ships computer remarked as we made our next mundane hyperspace jump. The ship gave a quick jolt as the jump started, entering the alien yet familiar Witchspace. After a few seconds, something I have never experienced prior happened. The ship changed course. "Warning, Hyperspace Conduit Unstable!"
"Taliah, what the hell is going on?!" I shouted.
"I- I don't know, ma'am!" She said with a look of panic on her face. I had no idea what to do, so I did the one thing no pilot never wants to. I waited. Suddenly, we were torn out of Witchspace, spinning. As I tried to get the ship under control, I heard another message from the ship.
"Unknown system malfunc-" The ship cut out while the lights around the cockpit started to flicker. The ship started to slow. Everything got darker and quieter as the ships systems shut off one by one.
"Status report, Taliah!"
"Everything's malfunctioned, ma'am! Life-support was the only thing unaffected! We're in a ship-wide system reboot. Nothing we can do now." Fantastic. The bridge was completely dark. Every console, every source of light had been shut off after the drop from Witchspace.
Chirp
"What was that?!" I asked with a jump.
Chirp
"I can't see anything, just void!"
Chirp
"It sounds like it's coming from outside the ship, but that's impossible, nothing should be able to follow us after what we've just been through. Can you see anything?"
Chirp
Taliah looked out the side of the Cutter's window. "No ma'am, I can't see anything!"
"Well keep your eyes peeled, I don't want any surpri-" I fell silent as I gazed through the canopy.
"Commander? What's wrong?" She turned to face me, and followed my eyes out the window. "Oh my god...."
A ship, stranger than any other I had ever seen, calmly drifted over the top of the ship to just off our forward bow. It looked like an alien flower with eight petals of a green bone-like material, leaving behind trails of brown in its wake like smoke from some invisible engine.
"What... what is that... thing?" I asked.
"I don't know... I've never seen anything like it." As she finished her sentence, the 'petals' lit up and flickered as an alien noise came from the strange visitor. It hung there as the different petals started to extend from the center of the vessel, making the already large ship look larger and even more menacing. As they reached their peak, the petals lit up and glowed with a bright red light greenish-yellow 'beams' of energy attached to the ship, scanning up and down the hull as the strange vessel made a horrendous noise.
"Brace yourself!" I shouted, as clenched my hands harder around my pilot's chair, expecting the worse to come any second. After a few seconds, it came to a sudden stop. The ship's petal started to close and it turned to leave. As it passed us, it caught one of the Cutter's nacelles and sent us spinning.
"Commander! Systems are coming back online!" Taliah shouted excitedly.
"Route as much power to the engines as you can as soon as systems are back online!" I shouted back.
"System reboot sequence initiated." The computer stated. Just then systems came fully online. I spun the ship as fast as I could to face the stranger and boosted towards it. I deployed hardpoints and got ready to fire if it didn't take kindly to being followed. The ship was effortlessly outpacing my cutter at full speed. As the ship got about two kilometers ahead, lasers shot from the front of the ship and cut a hole in space in front of it. I boosted one last time as the ship passed through the veil, hoping to follow it through, but as the ship cleared the hole, it sealed up, as if nothing was ever there.
"Taliah, what did we get on scanners?"
"Nothing..." She hesitated. "It didn't match anything on galactic records!" A look of horror was on her face. I sunk back in my chair. I was hesitant to believe what I just saw before my own eyes. Was it them? Could it be? After all this time?
"Re-plot the course to Maia. Palin is going to get a little more than a few materials during our visit."