Chapter 25: Chapter 8.2: Rise

      The gravity drive was the first human innovation following the great migration. Conceived by a mind gone mad, the device was quite possibly the greatest human achievement ever made. It didn’t come without sacrifice, and many would come to wish it had never been made.

      The gravity drive, in many ways, made the Great War inevitable. It folded space and time, allowing a ship to breach the thin layer of reality, and re-enter through another seam in the vastness of the galaxy. The engine itself was invented by a Nephilim, who was said to have isolated herself for years on Sihnon Ariel until somehow unlocking the equations of reality itself. 

      This revolutionized space travel forever. Before the drive, the first colony ships took centuries to reach their target worlds in the cluster. The first, and second generation trade ships took years to travel between star regions with sub-light engines. The gravity drive allowed travel to become almost instantaneous…if one were willing to accept the consequences.

      The secret truth was that managing a gravity drive was extremely hazardous. One out of every ten ships disappeared during transit, never to be seen or heard from again. More often then not, ships that successfully jumped were reported to suffer from…strange side-effects. Those side-effects were many, and varied. Space farers whispered many tales of terrible affliction often associated with badly timed gravity jumps.

      The key to a successful jump was not in its crew, or even bridge staff, but in the engineer who managed the complicated device. Stowed away in the center of the ship, tucked inside their own chamber surrounded by thick slabs of iron, the engineer personally managed the gravity drive. Once activated, it was the engineer that guided its ignition sequence, and ensured it could safely rip through the fabric of reality successfully. 

      An experienced engineer rarely ever left their chamber. They would often spend their entire life tuning their dedicated machine, sometimes even talking to it as if it were a person. The Star of Argon was not gifted with such an experienced engineer, or a well tuned gravity drive. That didn’t mean they lacked an engineer, or that the gravity drive wasn’t tested, but making such a blind jump was prone to any number of mistakes, the likes of which Rise struggled to contemplate. 

      The fact they made it through at all was a miracle, and now they were busy checking every system for any flaw. Rise knew they would all need to undergo psych evaluations, and check on the personal health of every crewman on board. One particularly nasty story he had heard was of a vessel whos crew ended up ‘bonded’ to the infrastructure of the ship, becoming a ghastly abattoir of pain and insanity. Whether or not it was true, he wasn’t sure, but that story lingered in the back of his mind.

      Eventually, the alarms calmed down, and Rise was able to comfortably say that the gravity jump had been a success. It was then that the real challenge began. The random jump had positioned them close to a star, a rather large one at that, and had it not been for their void shields they all would’ve roasted from radiation already. Only after they had broken free of the star’s gravity did he take a moment to study the greater solar system. They were so far out into the unknown, that it took thirty minutes for the Star of Argon’s internal star charts to ascertain where they were.

      “Who the literal hell named this system?” Rise asked in befuddlement.  

      The title for the system was Ter Threperebus. It awkwardly came into view on their internal sensors as a messy, radiation rich, system. It was filled to the brim with barren worlds, each of which likely held their own atmosphere’s until the star’s rapid expansion. There were no gas giants, they were all likely eaten away already. The only thing of any significance was a tiny mote on the very edge of the system. A stellar gas deposit, likely leaked from a large void craft, dangled into view. It appeared as a thin green streak hanging near one of the barren worlds.

      The emergency jump wasn’t clean enough for them to transport to a region in their scheduled path. Instead the engineer operating the gravity drive struggled to guide the ship to a safe region of space near a gravity well. The Star of Argon had found itself out of immediate danger, and far outside their charted course. 

      “It’ll take another three hours before we can chart a safe heading out of the system,” The master of navigation announced to the captain above. “Judging by what we know, this will add another several months to our trip.”

      “How does this strain our supplies?” The captain asked one of the staff officers seated nearby. The Star of Argon had filled their holds with enough food and water to, hopefully, last them longer than necessary. Even still though, any lapse in their schedule could spell disaster. 

      Rise swallowed, trying to wet his dry throat. He watched as his fellow staff officer ran through some calculations. 

      “We should be good, but we can’t take another major detour like that. Not unless you want us to start rationing.” Rise knew the young luitenant, he was an honest sort. The kind that never saw a battlefield, or ever saw a man die in front of him. Rise wished he knew the staff officers name, although he remembered seeing his face in the bar lounge more than once.

      The captain settled in his command chair, “Very good. I want status reports from every section. Also, send a security team to the flight deck. I want to meet our new guest in person.”

      Another hour passed before Rise was finally relieved. He gasped a sigh of relief, and eagerly left his post without a second thought. His nerves were still tingling when he left the bridge. He decided to seek out Dithy, and perhaps see if his personal Comfort Liaison was ready to loosen him up.

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