Survival

Story by Sakura-chan

Here is a new story i've been working on for the last couple of weeks

it's a more sci-fi story then ive done before

enjoy :)

Survival

Against the reach of the endless night and sea of stars the ship continued on, it's once simple mission having turned into an unending one. Its original purpose now lost to time.

How long had it been on its journey?

Decades? Centuries? Millennia? Even by human standards... the ship was massive. There were scars upon her ancient hull. Scar that might have been left by the blaze of a sun or the blow of a comet. Or perhaps they were wounds of tooth and claw from enemies who had died trying to take the ship for their own. Disfigurements from ancient battles, lost to time and long forgotten.

The ship was not entirely silent however. It was populated by dozens of maintenance bots. The corridors and crew quarters were in pristine condition, thanks to the bots. Unfortunately they couldn’t repair the external damage due to them not being able to work in a vacuum.

One such bot approached a stasis pod containing Hibiki Sloss. She was the chief engineer of the Omen. Having been chosen only days before the ship was launched; she had barely enough time to learn about the ship and its mission. Now her toughest challenge was to begin.

***

Slowly I opened my eyes and looked around. ‘Where am I?’ I asked, looking around.

‘You are in the medical bay ma’am.’ The bot replied, ‘You were brought here following your reanimation.’

‘Reanimation?’ I asked, ‘Stasis? How long was I in there?’

‘Approximately 8.9 million years.’ The bot replied unemotionally.

‘8...’

‘8.9 million years.’ The bot said, finishing my sentence.

‘That’s a little longer then was planned.’ I said softly, ‘How far away from Earth are we?’

‘Approximately 8 billion light years from our point of origin.’

‘We couldn’t have travelled that far in such a short length of time.’ I said, ‘It’s not possible.’

‘Because there was no crew... the life support system wasn’t activated, and the power that would have been used was transferred to the FTL engines.’ The bot said. I sighed softly. The ship drew power directly from subspace through use of recently developed subspace capacitors.

‘But we have a near limitless renewable energy source.’ I said, ‘Why was power taken from life support?’

‘While the energy source maybe renewable and near limitless... the capacitor technology was only recently developed before the exodus ships left Earth. They were not designed to be used constantly.’ The bot said, ‘We did make some improvements 30 years after we left based on 1 of the last subspace transmissions we received. Using those instructions we were able to update the capacitors to allow them to draw more power without burning out.’

‘Last?’ I asked, ‘What happened?’ The bot paused, retrieving the information.

‘5 years after we received the updates for the capacitors we received a last transmission... “Do not return...” it kept repeating until the transmitter ran out of power.’

‘Nothing else?’ I asked, ‘It didn’t explain why we shouldn’t go back.’

‘No.’ the bot replied. ‘Why haven’t you told the captain this?’ I asked, ‘Or the XO?’

‘Both the captain and first officer are deceased.’

‘How?’

‘200 years after leaving the Sol system the ship was boarded and both were killed before the automated defences could be activated.’ The bot replied, ‘You are now the highest ranking officer aboard this ship.’ I s

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