The Cult
23 Jun 2020Redneptun
It had been going on for weeks now, CMDR redneptun contemplated while relaxing after a long day of blasting rocks and hauling diamonds. He was pretty new to this side of the bubble and even though he had seen the last days of Borann and the mindnumbing persistence of its prospectors while squeezing every last shiny pebble out of that ice ring, he had thought that its depletion would be the end of an era.Turns out that every end is the beginning of something new. How foolish it had been to think they would move on to a more meaningful existence. He frowned. How foolish to think that he himself would...
The galaxy is vast. Myriads of hot plasma balls, frozen hells and... rings of gravel, ice and riches. It could have only been a few days before a new Borann was found, an icebox of a place named after the unfortunate soul who prospected it first: Kirre.
Some things stayed the same but others changed in major ways: the riches aquired by stripping Borann 2 of its resources had opened up new ways for the miners: old fleet carriers. Once built for glorious battles and the expansion fantasies of humanity's most powerful few, they were now being decommissioned from their navies and sold on the civilian market- at astronomic prices, of course. And while selling this type of military firepower to individual pilots was actually quite a controversial decision at the time, nobody would have thought that these swords would actually end up being turned into... well, not exactly ploughshares... pickaxes or minecarts might be a better fit. The upper military echelon had thought this type of ship could serve one, and only one purpose: waging war. And the amount of civilians being actually able to do that was miniscule at best. The admirals would be able to sell their old iron at a premium instead of having to pay for its scrapping and in turn some Wanna-be-Space-Napoleons would end up getting "their first proper battleship" and in turn secure the military's funding for the next ten years once they started playing with their new little toys.
Nobody had thought the miners would unionize.
Being able to be among the few individuals to actually AFFORD such follies they bought dozens of the old carriers and turned them into a network spanning the whole bubble. This changed everything. Before, a miner's day was looking something like this: wake up, blast rocks for hous and hours until the hold was full and then dope yourself with whatever drugs available to stay awake on the long way back to the next system with a decent price, all while trying not to fall into stars while microsleeping or having a panic induced heart attack because of pirates or murderous lunatics. But that was the mining life of the frontiersman. Now it was possible to mine away, fill your hold, dock with the nearest miner's union carrier, and enjoy the luxury of full station services while waiting to jump the hundreds of lightyears to the best paying buyer available. And all that either for free or at prices so low that tips in diamonds worth millions of credits were pretty commonplace.
But miners are miners and if there is one thing they seem to have an endless supply of (except limpets maybe) it is their greed. For only greed is able to send a person out to the coldest parts of black hell just to get their hands on some shiny ice.
So what does one do, if there is no more risk involved and the round trip only takes half the time? Well, isn't it obvious? Mine double the amount of course!
All of this will have knock-on effects in the future of course, he thought. You cannot have thousands of billionares and armadas of capital class ships - in civilian hands no less - without the galaxy becoming a very different place...
He took a sip of his whiskey while contemplating if this was how it must have felt in the last days of the Old West when the railway lines were being built to connect one coast of North America with the other. Tumultous times. Was there a war coming? He could not tell.
But there was another thing to consider as well: the cult. It had actually started out quite innocently, he thought. Some lucky bastard by the name of Xiba had found a huge rock which consisted almost completely of low temp diamonds. It was ridiculous. Redneptun was surprised that nobody had already tried strapping the whole thing altogether to their carrier before disintegrating themselves while trying to enter hyperspace with it. But for now the miners were content with blasting it with sub surf missiles like there was no tomorrow.
The EGG, they called it. First he thought it was all just a joke. Just some banter over the system wide comms to pass the time while blasting and lazing rocks. But there was more to it and once he got curious and followed their directions and actually SAW the thing...
Some sights are not for mere men to see. Some things in this galaxy are beyond what the human mind can comprehend. Never before had he seen such colors, such purity. He did not remember how long it took him to snap out of it and actually do what he came there for- mine it for its riches. It might have been minutes... or hours. He could not quite tell anymore. He also could not say how long it took him to fill his cargo hold. Given the purity of this thing it could not have been long of course, but to him it felt like the blink of an eye.
He had reaped the gifts of the EGG again and again after that first encounter. He was a made man now, with a fleet carrier of his own. And all of that in days no less- instead of weeks, months or years. But he shuddered at the thought of what it had done to him. During the quiet moments, like this one, he felt it. He saw its shine. He heard its call.
And he knew he was not the only one... others had started talking about it on the comms. They were calling the EGG their saviour, their messiah, their... God.
He had never been a religious man but having SEEN it, he could not deny it had some kind of supernatural presence. It felt like something that COULD NOT be real. But here it was, right there outside his cockpit, taunting him with its eery glow...
HOW THE FUCK DID HE GET HERE?! A wave of fear crashed over him, as he looked down. The last place he remembered being in was his private quarters on the ILL-GOTTEN GAINS, taking a bath and having a drink. But that must have been days ago, judging by the state his body was in. He opened an in-cockpit camera feed and winced at his shaggy beard and hair while he noticed the remains of several meals plastered around his T9's pilot seat. He was glad he could not smell himself now. Hastily he opened the ship's log files. His last time docking with the GAINS had been days ago. He tried to swallow whatever was building up in his throat. He checked his cred wallet balance. There were too many digits to give the number in front of him a name for a few seconds. It was surreal.
He looked in front of him. Orbited by swarms of dead limpets like a queen bee, fat and busy, the EGG smiled at him tauntingly. He felt a little cramped smile forming on his own lips... his cargo hold was only half-full, anyway...
Maybe the blabbering zealots were on to something. Maybe this was more than just a cold shiny rock. Maybe it WAS an egg. And maybe we would all know soon enough what glorious terrors might hatch from it.