Void Piercer

Chapter 2: Is it Still First Contact if They're All Dead?

The definition of fast has continued to change over time. Once a horse was considered fast. It slowly moved up, first trains, then plains, eventually the light speed barrier presented a problem. To any body from the era of slow boats and relativistic rockets a full two time the speed of light was a breathtaking impossibility. At eight thousand c of speed, we are considered moderately fast. Smaller shuttles can maintain speeds of nine kc uptowards twelve, even a rumored eighteen. Large military ship usually conck out at five and their civilian counterpart at a fifth of that. Our size is an in between, many civilian ships approach five and six kc in speed but our military counterpart in size holds at ten. There's rumors of faster ships such as the Charon class, but then again, they are always rumors.

The Tachyon tubes that connect all the major worlds together though allow for speeds of hundred thousands of c. So even with its moderat speed, this voyage is already begin to feel slow.

We've been underway for another sixteen hours now, five hours since we've taken the bend in the tunnel and lost communication with civilization. The tunnel doesn't turn, it just shifts, abruptly, four light years over, and then continues on. Originally there was talk of leaving a relay at the kink, but we didn't pack any dedicated relays and the engineers were doubtful about their ability to improvise any.

When I arrive on the bridge for my shift Gall is at their station with Nog sitting atop the workstation behind them. Both of them stop talking when I walk in. "What are you..."

"Its my shift," I tell them. "Believe it or not." I take a seat at my consull and place my mug into the improvised cup holder the designers had forgotten. "Don't you ever sleep?" I ask Nog.

"I could ask the same of you," they reply.

"No, I don't," I reply. "I can shut down nearly 80% of brain activity but the auxiliary brain means that 20% is enough for me to operate at nearly full mental capacity."

"What are you, a robot," Gall exclaims.

"Dryad," I reply. "A guid to my species was included in everyones orientation packet," I give them a pointed glance. "Including yours."

Gall does something with their console. "So there is." They read quietly for a few moments. "Says here your an anti civilization grade weapon."

"Derived from," I correct.

"And that you have seven forms of reproduction."

I squirm around in me seat. "Don't you have any place better to be?"

"I'm talking to them," Nog says before Gall has a chance to say anything.

"You don't have to be here either," I inform them. "You've been on the bridge for sixteen hours. Go take a nap." I look at the two of them. "Or whatever it is you do. Trust me, I've got this."

"Fine, Ava, you have the conn." They and Gall stand and make their way to the door.

Then an interesting thing happened, the ship shook. Not in our frame of reference, but outside the stars jerked out of alignment for a short second. I check my readout, and sure enough something of interest has happened. Where once was the empty void of space stretch for untold distance in front of us is now an object. A mere speck on the cosmic scale, but to the trained eye it looks to be some after effect of a spatial distortion technology. It doesn't appear to be a warp drive, more like the recordings I've seen of experimental wormhole tech, just on the macroscopic scale.

And with our current vector, in a void of space thousands of au wide, we are set to hit them dead on. In thirty second.

I fly into action, slowly decelerating the ship and carefully preparing to collapse our warp bubble. I'm only semia aware that I'm speaking, a task relegated to my auxiliary brain. Long lines of vector information spill from my mouth as Nog and Gall come rushing to see exactly what it is that has me on edge.