The ship rumbled, and I braced myself for the transition to the lovecraftian horror that was transit.
In an instant we dropped, and I was once again hit by the brief flashes of surreal horror that I had seen before.
“Captain Cofey, are you okay? Your vitals just spiked and your body just dumped a significant amount of adrenaline into your bloodstream.”
“Fine Hook. Just fine.” I replied, feeling anything other than fine.
The giant snakelike thing, or tentacle-like thing, I had seen in the distance was much closer this time, nearly double the size as last time.
I focused on the brief flashes I saw, trying to determine differences between them so I could understand the environment I was in. It was like trying to play a game at .1 FPS.
“Okay... so I think I can see where we are going.”
“We are not going anywhere Captain, The void has no distance.”
“Shush.”
I could see...a void in the void? It was strange, the only thing that didn't seem to change every time I saw a snapshot.
“I think I see where we need to go... engaging drives.”
“That is not advised Captain, every time on record main drives have been activated in transit the ship has suffered significant damage.”
I paused in my activation.
“What about maneuvering thrusters?”
“No data is available.”
I focused again on the single unchanging point ahead. It almost seemed as if there were streamers of particles... floating towards it.
One of those streamers was drifting right next to the ship.
I fired the maneuvering thrusters to push the ship into the streamer.
It was... a little further away than the maneuvering thrusters could handle, so I goosed the main drives, just for a fraction of a second.
All of a sudden the entire void lit up, I could see EVERYTHING. And I felt more than heard a deep rumble.
“Uh Oh.”
“What do you mean Uh Oh... I told you not to use the main drives...” Hook sounded almost frantic.
Everything outside went dark as the drives spun down, but on the next flash, I swore the snake body, or tentacle... whatever it was, was closer, it looked nearly twice as big as it had before.
“Going to full emcon protocols, passive sensors only, we can't leak ANYTHING Hook, run silent” I said, desperately shutting things down with my mind as I gave voice to every stealth mode buzz word I had ever heard in sci-fi.
“Understood Captain.”
Most of my attention was on the serpent body writhing in the infinite expanse, but I soon saw... smaller things. In the distance like filaments. As I focused I could see they had individual legs... claws even, and a many toothed face. Almost like clawed serpents from folklore. Lindworms... they were congregating on where I had engaged the drives, which I could discern because that area was vaguely... empty. Emptier at least. This strange void seemed to have almost a fluid like quality, or maybe... like a foam that we were drifting through, wispy and vague, but the area where the fusion drives had lit had been burned clean. One flash the filament lindworm things were circling that area, the next they had penetrated it and appeared to be... killing each other, as far as I could tell in the strange freezeframe world I was viewing.
“Hook... I think I figured out why ships that fire their drives get damaged...”
“Oh? Why is that Captain.”
“Things live here.”
“What do you mean captain.”
“Things live here and they don't like fusion drives being lit off on their front porch.”
as I watched the feeding frenzy of lindworms was abating, but the corpses and offal seemed to be reforming the sortof wispy, spongey membrane that we were moving through.
On the other hand, the brief burst from my fusion drives had driven us right into the path of the... stream? Flow? That was leading to the void point in all of this.
Almost as soon as we entered the flow I shuddered, it was an odd feeling, and it seemed as if the ship could feel it as well.
“Captain? Is something happening? I am receiving reports from across the ship of power fluctuations.”
“If everything goes right we shouldn't have to deal with it for long.” I said, the void point growing larger in my sight even as we speak. It was the one thing I could focus on even in between the surges of light that lit up the rest of the void.
However the flashes of light revealed the lindworms slowly drifting closer to us.
“Spin down the reactor Hook, I want it all down. I'll survive off of canned air.”
“Powering down captain, it will take some time to bring the reactor back online.”
I could feel the ship going dead around me, going numb.
“Passive sensors remaining online for now, on battery backups.”
“Good... I can see what's going to eat us.”
“Captain... could you tell me what you see. It obviously is having some kind of effect.”
“I moved us into a channel that seems to be leading to... what I think is the exit point? We already seemed to be drifting towards it but now we are going much faster, that is when you started saying the systems were getting weird power fluctuations.”
“Okay.”
“In the far distance there is a massive body, like a serpent, a tentacle.... I can't tell for sure. I can only see everything in flashes that come about every eight seconds or so. When we ignited the drive it suddenly moved way closer though. That's not the bad part. There appear to be a swarm of... well I've been calling them lindworms in my head cause that's what they look like. They went after the area our drive plume hollowed out here and had a bit of a feeding frenzy, now they are drifting our way.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
As I watched, however, the Lindworms came in contact with the stream we were in and stopped swarming, instead flowing gently into the stream and curling up on themselves, appearing to go to sleep.
“I think we're good. It looks like they were moving toward the channel not us... Does the ship need to do anything to exit transit?”
“No, ships have lost power immediately after entering transit and have emerged fine on the other side.”
“Good... I don't think it will take long, I'll just shallow breathe till then.”
“I will monitor your life signs.”
And with that I settled in to wait.
***********************************************************************************
it took nearly six hours to reach the point I kept seeing in the flashes, in my mind I had tagged it the void point, or transit point. That was six hours of watching that undulating serpent thing in the distance, and gliding alongside all of those lindworms that appeared to be chilling in the channel with me.
It was six hours too long.
As we got closer the point in the void seemed to encompass everything, something I didn't notice before. The other things in the void seemed to fade away...
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
“five minutes to transit exit.” Hook intoned.
“How can you tell?”
“A sensor that can tell the approach of realspace. It was apparently developed mostly by accident.”
“I see... so it can't really give you an accurate time until exit when you enter, but it can tell you when you are about to leave.”
“Essentially yes.”
“Alright, almost out...”
And suddenly, we were back in real space.
“Oh thank god. It's over.”
“I could not see what you did, but it appears you have discovered a way to control the rate at which you travel through transit space.”
“Yeah, though we almost died doing it.”
“Still, a transit in only 6 hours is one of the shortest transits on record.”
“We might just make it in time.”
“Assuming you can pull this off again.”
“Anyways... whats in this system.”
There is a very large independent space station built into several asteroids orbiting a gas giant within a day of us, but otherwise nothing. Shall we transmit the data package from the last jump?”
“yes, how many times do we need to do that?”
“The contract stipulates the next three jumps, so two now.”
“So... what, I just transmit it in the open?”
“Yes, the basic idea is that anyone who wants to land or dock with a station accepts that they need to take on a set amount of data and then retransmit at their next destination. We were offered money for our data carrying because we weren't going to land, and it seemed like the last colony had not had anyone land for a long time. In more transited areas all ships just take and re transmit packages as a matter of course. It is a little chaotic, but it gets the job done regardless of which empire currently holds a system. The empire and the alliance obviously have dedicated courier ships for when they need a package to get somewhere for certain, as the chaotic spread of information I just described can result in some systems getting left out.”
“I see...”
I transmitted the data package over the comms and continued on my way.
“This system seems much livelier than the others.... I'm detecting multiple ships on our route.”
“This system is closer, though still on the rim, and there are multiple close transit points. It will have much more regular travel.”
“it's weird having other actual people around... are any of them with C.O.G.?”
“If you focus on them you should see their transmitted IFF and metadata.”
I did so and I was suddenly presented with a wealth of information.
“Looks like all three of them are... with the trading coalition? And I just got three requests to invest in cryptocurency... it looks like three different crypto currencies... what the hell is that about.”
“That's normal for the free traders. There is no real established currency unifying the factions, the emprie has their own currency the nobles use, but that is far too expensive to be used for everyday activities on planets. The alliance has a quota everyone receives for their daily usage, but it is useless outside of Alliance space and is not tradable between commodities. C.O.G. Deals in information and raw materials to make things, which cuts out a large amount of what traders actually want to trade, so the traders have this... shared delusion, almost a religion among them, that the first person to establish a true universal currency between the factions will wind up the most powerful of the traders, and have soft power over, if not control of, the other factions.”
“And... they do that by each coming up with their own cryptocurrencies?”
“Essentially yes. Technically un-counterfeitable, it is the most straightforward way to move towards that goal.”
“How far have they gotten.”
“As far as I know the biggest single user of any one cryptocurrency is one entire planet in the middle of 'neutral' space which is technically trader space.”
“So they've been trying this for who knows how long, and they've only gotten a single planet to buy into one of their currencies as it's sole form of currency.”
“Not the sole, just the main form of currency. Obviously no one off planet accepts the currency as payment.”
“And they've been at this for how long?”
“A Century.”
“Feels like a long time to keep falling flat.”
“None of the other factions trust anyone getting such power, much like corporations and banks, they view this kind of financial chicanery with distrust, since, you know, it lead to the consolidation of power into the hands of insane people who became insane AI who destroyed earth.”
“Right.”
I plotted a course to the next transit point and engaged the thrusters.
“The next system has the planet with the appropriate medical facilities to evaluate you.”
“Should I spend the time going there when I'm on such a time crunch?”
“I think you have to Captain. While getting the up to date memories to Prime is a nice thing, and personally important to you.... they WILL live regardless of whether they have those memories. You may not.”
“Alright... Let's se if we can make it through this next transit without attracting too much attention.”
The rest of the trip to the transit point was mercifully uneventful, I was able to retire to my quarters and sleep during the trip, with Hook promising to wake me if anything came too close.
Finally I returned to the bridge.
“Are we ready for another transit?”
“Yes captain, are you going to try to make it another fast transit like last time?”
“Yes, but I would also like to try a few things. First of all, we are only going to use maneuvering thrusters, second... is there any way to launch a missile with a delay on the main rockets or boosters or thrusters or whatever? Like thirty minutes? I want to just lob it away from us, use the maneuvering thrusters to push us towards the stream, if I can find one, and then see what happens when it ignites. If it works it could be useful as a decoy.”
“I see... I will setup the modifications, as soon as you are back in full synchronization you can begin the process.”
“You can't?”
“The locks captain, I am very limited in what I am able to do without captain in the loop. Modifying ship to ship ordnance is beyond those limits.”
“But driving the ship while I'm asleep isn't?”
“Basic auto-pilot was a thing even in your time Captain Cofey.”
I sighed.
“I'll synchronize now and get it going, how long till transit?”
“About half an hour.”
I settled back in to the captain's chair and braced myself for full synchonization.
Once I was settled in I watched the approaching transit point with trepidation, the modified missile burning a hole in my hull so to speak.
The transit came, and I waited for that first flash before I fired the missile, just incase.
The flash came, and I nearly shit myself in terror.
The wall of flesh, the tentacle, the serpent, all those things had described the... thing that had been following me through each of my transits.
It was closer than ever.
