Wings of Light., No L and no C this time. Ok, there is quite a bit of c. Options

[jack cloudy]

Next one. Ok, several things first.
1: THIS IS NOT FANFICTION. No, this is a story taking place in an original universe. I hope no one minds.
2: Don't expect regular updates. This is an attempt at a professional novel so I want to plan it out and get all the good stuff in it. Foreshadowing, multiple plot lines, character interaction, cool hardware and a god, or maybe two.
3: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Also known as: Technobabble and Handwaves explain everything.
4: The laws of robotics are not implemented here. Sorry Isaac, but I want them to drive the cool stuff. They don't have time to babysit some organic wimps.



WINGS OF LIGHT

CHAPTER 1: Lights, colours, not here.

Without a sound, the SS Hesphire moved to its destination. It would have been useless to expect any sound as such a phenomenon had a hard time travelling through the vacuum of space.
,,This is your captain speaking. We are approaching the wormhole leading to the Eden system. The estimated time for our arrival is approximately half an hour from now. There will be a short burn for course corrections. We advise that all passengers strap themselves in till we’ve entered the wormhole and stabilized our course. If you require any help, our crew is willing to assist you. Thank you.” The disembodied voice echoed through speakers all over the ship.

With this announcement, everyone dropped whatever he or she was doing and moved to the observation deck. Entering a wormhole was always an exciting event for those who were new to interstellar travel. There were also those who were not new to interstellar travel. They also moved to the observation deck, though for a different reason.

Belonging to the second group was Paul Anthony Detroit. Every single cell of his body revealed him as a true veteran of space. He smoothly sailed from wall to wall, without any of the awkward bouncing of the average tourist. His clothes were tight fitting like those worn by all true space farers, yet without looking like a diver’s suit, oversized pyama or any other kind of embarrassing outfit newbies wore. The passengers he passed were mostly less successful in their choice of clothing. Wide, flowing clothes were fashionable these days yet had the unpleasant habit of getting stuck between doors or flowing away from the areas they were supposed to cover. Easy to use belts for strapping down clothes to the limbs were standard issue on civilian ships carrying passengers.

Thanks to his skill at zero g manoeuvring, he arrived well before the other passengers and secured the best place of all, the ceiling. Instantly, a steward pushed off against a wall to reach him.
,,Please mister, you may want to sit in one of the seats. Free floating during course corrections are not advised.” The young man, barely in his twenties, warned. Detroit looked down at the traditional name tag and smiled.
,,Well mister Rein, I can assure you that part of a g is not going to be a problem for me. Unless the SS Hesphire is using an illegally rigged High-performance Fusion torch and will be running multiple gees. In which case I would have to arrest everyone onboard.” He responded with the cool tone of voice that could come from only one kind of person. Military officers, the high-ranking ones.

The steward wisely backed off, allowing Detroit to enjoy the view. The man looked how everyone else entered the observation deck and got strapped in. There was some chaos but the stewards managed to get their job done and everyone strapped into a chair. He smiled again as he thought of the faces they would pull upon seeing a wormhole.
,,This is your captain speaking. We shall initiate our burn in 30 seconds. Anyone who is not yet secured should grab the nearest support and hold on for the next few minutes. Thank you.” This time, Detroit did follow the advise. He reached out and grabbed a small handle jutting out of the glass dome that covered the observation deck at the nose of the ship.

Little puffs of hydrogen jetted out of the minuscule thrusters spread across the Hesphire’s hull. The long cylindrical vehicle turned its nose around slowly. Two minutes later, the thrusters fired again to stop the rotation. Now the main thruster at the far end of the ship fired. Unlike during the turn, the acceleration caused by the main thrusters was felt by the people onboard. It felt as if you were suspended in the air under a parachute with a gentle breeze pushing you along.
,,This is your captain speaking. We are entering the wormhole in five…four…three…two…one…entering now.”

Necks were stretched in awkward positions, eyes seemed to bulge out of their sockets. The stars disappeared, to be replaced by pure darkness. Slowly, a hint of disappointment spread across the two dozen or so faces gathered on the observation deck. Detroits smile grew bigger.
,,No lights, no fancy colours, no humming sounds, no sudden acceleration. This ain’t your average holovision show. Welcome to real space. It is boring, it is slow and it rarely takes you anywhere interesting. At least you won’t find bad looking aliens with worse looking rayguns at every corner.” He spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. Then, he laughed. Yes, the passengers would be angry with him for the rest of the trip but why should he care? It would only be a week or so and then he would be back where he was supposed to be. On a ship of his own. One with guns, big guns.
“And twenty-two wormholes away from the action.”

[jack cloudy]

And here we go again. I'll probably make a glossary and put a link to it in my sig. Anyway, time for the new chapter.




Chapter 3: Into the black night.

The Geno stood in front of the mirror, carefully examining his teeth. Satisfied, he flushed his mouth with water and held the tube of toothpaste in front of him.
“After all these centuries, we still lug around little sacks of white goo. It’s funny how little some things change.” He mumbled with a faint smile.
“Funny how much some things change.” He added with a sigh as he looked out of one of the few windows onboard the Glorious Rustbucket. A large group of spaceships dominated the view. Among them was a blue wedge he knew only too well. That was also why he was feeling down right now.

The Bucket’s computer drew the Geno’s attention with a simple beep. He forced himself back to reality and went to see what required his presence. A single look at the screen answered his question. He had received an email.
“Hmm, I didn’t rent any digital storage at Eden. And even if I did, no one would be able to send me a message out here, beyond civilization. So that means, someone stepped on quite a few toes to contact me. Oh, I hope it is not about that.” He muttered to himself and brought up the message. According to the ship’s details, the message had been sent from a stationary object only fifty-six kilometres away which clearly ruled out the possibility of an interstellar transmission.

Interstellar transmissions didn’t really travel across interstellar distances. Instead, each mapped wormhole had a relay at its two points of entry. These relays could send a simple transmission through the wormhole to the relay on the other side, effectively taking a shortcut and avoiding lightyears of unnecessary distance. Any transfer of information was done by either radio or a laser and bounced from relay to relay till it got to its destination at speeds only limited by the processing and bandwidth of the relays. In effect, communications between different systems were quicker than originally envisioned, yet there was still a noticeable lag in response varying from several hours to days, depending on how far the transmission had to travel. Light was a merciless barrier.

“Ok, who is it?” The Geno asked himself and after a long hesitation, he opened his email. Whoever had taken the time to contact him would likely know if he ignored it.

5-10-2521, 10:13am
To: SS Glorious Rustbucket, G. Cloudy
Subject: Dunno, just boredom I guess.

Hi, Jacky bro. How are you? Over here, I just managed to convince the captain dude of the plan. We’ll be widening that corridor thingy with some major firepower. There were some complaints but I silenced them before the captain dude got to hear them. Heh, threatening with a kinetic missile of doom always works. Don’t tell anyone I told you, it’s supposed to be a secret so they’d try to pull out my plug. Not that they’ll be able to find it, we’re operating on our own independent powersupply.

And did you get a look at my ride? I bet you did, its only natural after all. I have to admit it, I’m really impressed with what the Techheads did with the Black Hole after you wrecked it and stuff. Not only did they got it fixed, they also upgraded it to the AMF-13 design. I’m happy with that, 23% of improved AM stability can make all the difference. I hate to be killed by something as simple as engine trouble. They also changed the ship’s name. It’s called the Crystal Star now. Nice name, sounds like something out of a book.

Speaking of Techheads, I met this real sweety. A-class Karl Forest. He just loves to poke around inside me and we have the best conversations ever. He’s so nice to me, he even painted smilies on my missile hatches! You two should meet someday, I’m sure you would get along. Anyway, I’ve got to wrap this one up before it becomes too long. I don’t want the communication department to notice when I sent it. Watch after your health, bro. When this little situation here blows over, we’ll have a good drink back at Paradise and go shopping. I look forward to it.
Bye.

This message was sent by: Anonymous (No, your little sister. Lo. Dumb messenger program.)
Origin: Classified. (AMF-13-46 TMS Crystal Star. No need to make a secret out of it. How many warships are around here? One at last count.)

The Geno let out another sigh, this time one of both relief and sadness. Relief, for he hadn’t been called by an overzealous Admiral who hated to see his expensive Geno run in the wild. Sadness, for Lo had not been very subtle with him. Her message had brought the memories of that incident back to the surface.

He opened the small medical cabinet and retrieved a small bottle. His eyes read the label he’d read countless times before.
Mental Stabilisation Medicals. Only use at doctor’s request. These medical supplies have been granted to G. Jack Cloudy at the request of Terran Military. Expiration date: 2606.

He’d never learned how to deal with his feelings. Coping with failure had not been in the design. Any failure was expected to be fatal, a quick reaction of matter and antimatter annihilating each other. Giving psychological treatment to a pocket of spacedust was not exactly useful. Unfortunately for him, his failure had not been fatal. At least it hadn’t been fatal for him. With slow, methodic movements, Jack unscrewed the top and put swallowed one of the small pills. He pulled a face as the bitter taste filled his mouth.
“A bitter cure, but it is the only cure.”



Note: I guess I'll be clear on this one. Jack Cloudy had already been in my mind before I joined the forum. He's changed a lot since then, going from human to alien to human construct. It's going to feel odd, writing about my avatar.