One Lonely Sentry

Steky walked briskly into the briefing room aboard the Cascade Essence, a Nidhoggur class carrier. Her boots clanked against the metal deck as her assembled officers quickly rose to attention. She brushed an insubordinate lock of hair from her eyes and called out "As you were!" The fighter pilots, drone control officers, hanger controllers, and other deck officers sat back down in the leather seats and listened. They were no longer milk run carrier officers, and now had the discipline and bearing of soldiers with combat experience. The Cascade Essence had participated in Atlas' capital battle for HZF against Legion of Death, Pandemic Legion, and others. Not only had she survived the battle, taking down numerous enemy dreadnoughts, but they had proceeded to destroy dozens of enemy station towers in the Detorid region.

The briefing began. Atlas was seiging the last remaining enemy holdout in Deterid, the solar system designated 77S8-E. Steky went over the lessons from previous engagements, reminding the sentry drone officers not to deploy after coming out of warp at an enemy tower until the carrier was moving less than 20km per second. The navigation officers were to ensure that the ship maintained range with the enemy tower in case her attention was elsewhere. The pilot could control any subsystem at the speed of thought, but even so her attention had limited bandwidth.

Suddenly Steky stopped in mid word and then called out, "Battlestations!" The lights went red and the men and women scrambled. The Atlas fleet commander had ordered capitals to undock and jump to a cynosaural field in the 77S8 solar system. As the carrier left the station hangar, the space around the station was cluttered with dreadnoughts and carriers. It was a wonder that the station's traffic control system could manage.

Suddenly the fabric of space rippled as the capital ships engaged their jump drives and the stars winked out. Steky quickly shifted to a camera drone within the engine room. Looking the view from the external cams mid jump would be like trying to look out the back of your head, through eyes that weren't there. It lasted only a second or two, and then space was suddenly filled with the glowing rings of a giant gas planet and the shimmering light reflecting off the hulls of over 100 dreadnoughts hanging in space above the rings like an overturned box of jewelery.

The fleet warped to the first enemy tower and the crew ran the ship like a well oiled machine. The sentry drones deployed with their giant rifles hurling explosive warheads through the shields into the control tower. A few minutes later the fleet commander called for a carrier to light a cynosaural field so that more dreads could jump into system. Steky grimaced and acknowledged his request. It would mean that her carrier would be unable to move out of the cyno field for ten full minutes.

About 7 minutes later an enemy stealth bomber dropped out of warp amongst the capital fleet. Steky immediately started locking the tiny ship, but it took the computers what seemed an eternity to lock onto it. In that time the bomber deployed its bombs. The damage they did was insignificant to the capitals, but did enough damage to the sentry drones that three of them were unable to engage their propulsion systems. The enemy tower suddenly began burning ozone and went into reinforced mode. There was nothing more to be done until its ozone supply was depleted some hours later. As soon as her cynosaural field was down, the fleet warped to the next engagement. Steky engaged her warp drive just as two of the three damaged drones made it back to the hangar. One lonely sentry remained behind, its propulsion systems fragged beyond repair.

Liquid Watercolors

Grievance listened to his corp mates intercepting another automated hauler in Yong and rolled his eyes. Not worth even undocking. He turned his attention to the current events on the news comm. Anomalies were not only destroying planets, but seemed to be opening up wormholes to systems in distant galaxies. Some had gone through, and encountered strange and powerful technologies. Suddenly a transmission came in from Cobra Khan on the Maverick Navy channel, "Hey guys, I have a wormhole on scan... anyone want to come help me check it out?" Grievance raised his eyebrow, this was something new, something important. He engaged the transmitter, "This is Griev, 19 jumps out and on my way!"

Grievance engaged his warp drive to the vicinity of the wormhole. Several moments later, his Rupture dropped out of warp and he saw something that had not been seen by men in New Eden for thousands of years, when the Eve wormhole colapsed. This event sent his ancestores into the dark ages, destined to claw their way back up to the stars all over again the hard way.

"What do you think?" asked Cobra.

"Do you have any probes?"

"You bet, over one hundred"

"Well, then we should be able to find our way out... if the way out lasts long enough." Grievance thought about the possible mystery, wonder, and possible riches of being one of the first men in New Eden to explore a wormhole.

Two other ships from the local system joined their fleet, along with another corp mate Darkside.

Grievance opened the internal ship comms to his crew, "Whoever does not want to follow our ancestors into the unknown may take escape pods off the ship now and report back to corporate headquarters without repercussions." He watched the ship systems and not one pod activated. Grievance laughed, proud of his crew, "Alrighty then Mavs, Penis up!"

He set his ship on approach to the gravity well and the world turned to liquid watercolors.