A Billion Miles
08 Feb 2021AtomicBlaze23
A Billion MilesChapter 1 The Beginning
Morin City. A war zone, a desolate, barren area. The only place in space only mourners return to. Upon arrival, you would expect a large Starport in front of your ship, but instead a dismal sight of the debris that used to be Morin City is all that remains. Large pieces of steel, and titanium, all around drifting through the endless vacuum of space. The Blue-white star is partly blocked by the pieces of what used to be called home to many people… Including me.
Today, in 3301, this place is a memorial, a sort of sanctuary. However, about twenty years ago as of today, it was a war zone, full of the malicious Imperial forces. Morin City, and the Yanyan system is on the border of the Empire and Federation territory, making it a high-tension and extremely perils area. The Empire believed that Yanyan was a very valuable system, due to it’s almost pure valuable material planets, and ring systems. And believe me, it was. The Pilot’s Federation was making Millions off of the minerals & metals coming off of the planets, and loving every dollar of it.
Aisling Duval, being the leader of the Empire decided to gather her forces to attack the Yanyan system until they surrendered... or until everyone was dead. Ms.Duval’s plan started with Morin City, the head of the Federation’s income in the Yanyan system.
The attack was meant to force the people of Morin City to surrender, but Morin City didn’t surrender. So they kept attacking and attacking, until they fired the last shot; The one that hit the main reactor.
I was on the station when the attack started. The station was my home, the place where my family lived, and other people’s families lived. The week prior, GalNet (The galaxy-wide News cast) stated that according to informants inside the Empire’s main military bases, the Empire was creating a large fleet of their very expensive, and large, Imperial Clipper variant ship, with the right weapons, armor and shields, they could demolish anything that even thought of getting in their way!
So with the Empire ramping up their forces, almost all of inhabited space was under tension, wondering: “What is the Empire’s next move?”
The Monday of the following week, everyone seemed on edge, and preparing for the worst. However, nobody was ready for what actually happened.
Two days later, around three thirty PM, the station’s sensors picked up one very large thermal signature, and about three-thousand small signatures, near a nearby planet.
The station operator thought at first that it may be an asteroid or comet heating up as it came closer to the sun, but it was not. As soon as the fleet got into the range of the station’s ship scanners, He knew exactly what it was: It was the Empire’s infamous fleet. Seconds later, the alarms were blaring, and everyone knew why. There could be only one reason why the attack alarm would be going off… The Empire was taking what they wanted.
As soon as the alarm went off, I knew what had to be done. The plan is to gather everyone in the family and get to my ship, so we could vacate the station as quickly as possible. My daughter, Ruby, was at her friend’s apartment. She would be safe there. It was too far to go get her on time. My wife, was at her job on the station, a maintenance worker. She knew of the rendezvous point, and knew to go to the hangar bay where my ship was stored when the alarms sounded. Ruby’s friend’s mother had a ship as well, so as soon as she was out of the station I would send her the cords for a rendezvous.
I ran down to the hangar bay to find that my wife, Shannon, had already arrived. “Glad that you made it,” I said. “I really hope that Ruby’s Friend’s mother, Alexis, can get to the Hangar bay in time.”
“She knows the drills. And she knows our ship I.D., so she can contact us. Ruby will be fine,” said Shannon.
“I am sure she will, but with Ruby’s leg injury, they might be slowed,” I replied. “I am just worried, that’s all.”
I opened the bay door to find an old Cobra Mk lll covered in a thick layer of dust and dirt. Surprisingly, when I pushed the button to open the door, I found that the reactor hadn’t run out of fuel in the almost two years it had sat in this bay for, which is very fortunate. I quickly booted up the ship's systems, and refueled the ship.
After about a minute, the ship’s computer booted. Then the ship made a notification: “Module Malfunction: Frameshift Drive failed to boot”
So I yelled out to Shannon: “Hey, Shannon! FSD won’t boot!”
“I’m already on it! Fire up the ship, we don’t have much time!”
I sat down in the pilot’s seat, buckled up, and and did a pre-flight checklist. Just to make sure that everything was still working. I activated the lift to raise the ship into the docking bay inside the station, and lifted off the landing platform. “Hold on back there!” I gave the engines full power and retracted the landing gear, aligned with the station exit, and boosted out of the station as quickly as possible. And just in time. Just as we cleared the entrance gate, there were ships dropping out of Supercruise, Imperial ships. Dozens upon dozens of Imperial Clippers were arriving at the station and were shooting on sight.
Then, out of nowhere, what I had feared would happen did.…
The ship’s computer notified on the HUD: “Capital class ship detected.” Suddenly an Imperial Majestic Class Cruiser appeared, larger than the station itself, with deck guns bigger than my ship, and opened fire. Lasers of hot, beaming energy fired upon the station, causing breaches left and right. And then, after a minute of this, It fired a torpedo, directly at sector 7 A, exactly where my daughter was at the time.
Time seemed to slow as the torpedo hit the station, causing a small piece of the station to fragment out into space. My blood ran cold. Only one thing was on my mind: Ruby.
Suddenly, I was filled with great animosity, and intense hatred. I turned the ship around as quickly as it would move, causing me to sink into my seat, and opened fire on the nearest target, sending a spray of bullets into an Imperial Clipper. The pilot responded with a hail of laser spray, which instantly took down the shields on my ship.
And then came the last part…
“Frameshift is fixed!” shouted Shannon. And just like that, alarms started blaring and the HUD read: “Incoming Missile” . I hardly had time to react. It hit, causing the back hatch of the ship to fly open, sucking Shannon out, as well as all the air in the ship, other than the cockpit. Then the FSD fired, sending me into the unknown infiniteness of space.
The ship dropped out of hyperspace, and into Supercruise. I attempted to check the star system we were in. But just as the window opened, I heard an intense whining noise followed by a big clang and the ship’s hud reading: “FSD Failure.” The ship spiraled out of Supercruise, causing me to nearly fly out of my seat, and then I heard another noise: A very large THUD!, followed by a: BOOM! The ship shook, and the HUD read: “Engine Failure.”
So there I was, stranded in space. Ship, in pieces, and my wife, my daughter…
Gone.
This is the story of Jeremy Ross…
This is my story…