Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Not even God, Gods, The angels or the devil hear your pleas. That's what we were told, and I could only wish for the silence f, for scream's are all that I hear now.
"Log 73: Date year, 2748 July 9th. This will probably be my last log and so I leave my epitaph, my ramblings, as I have taken with these monologues." I grumbled in discontent as I looked across the varying status screens of my ship covered in red. If you couldn't guess, red is bad, very bad. The good news, Life Support is green. So here I am, stuck adrift in the depths of space, communications down, Navigation impossible, my only company the black void dotted with the white, amber and blue lights of distant stars. So now you must is wondering how I got here, what brought me to my current circumstances? Let me share my tale.
"My name is Dante Stark Allengrad, Lieutenant – Commander fourth grade in the HEF the Human Exploratory Force as it's called for morale…in reality we're the Escape Force. Humanity is on its last legs, Humanity who so brilliantly reached for the stars and now soon to be far forgotten. The once forty billion strong human race now down to less than 90 million. Most of us are grown now in labs from tubes, genetically modified, manipulated to make us more capable in the harsh expanse of space. You would think "Oh they grow humans, that means there should be more of you!" but in reality it's the last ditch effort to keep the race alive.
I'm one of the few Natural Born this generation, and because of that I'm not as capable as others…which is why I was volunteered for this project to pilot a ship, The Ark through an experimental Space folding device, find a planet to colonize, revive the sleepers onboard, and set up the rift beacons to allow what's left of our fleet to follow to the new earth. Oh sorry I guess I forgot to mention Earth was lost when humanity escaped five hundred years ago in 2194. Humanity met aliens, they were a nomadic type, weren't hostile, at first, in fact peace talks and a coalition was formed. Then an Envoy was killed. Peace talks quickly broke down. They called themselves the Koa-Tae, we simplified that into Kotes. The battles were long and hard fought but in the end Humanity managed to win.
That victory came with a price. The Kote's blood was toxic in multiple ways, causing anything from poisoning the ground to genetic mutations. It's why all natural born have their left arm removed at the elbow and replaced with a cybernetic. Cool AI, nanobots, genetic stability, holograms, pretty decent trade. Oh sorry I got sidetracked again but yeah Let alone Earth, the colonized planets of the milky way were poisoned, and it came like a flood across the worlds. We cannibalized Kote and Human tech, and fled further into space looking for a new home…That was five hundred years ago. And now you're here watching my logfi-" there's a scratch of static and the holographic screen flashed and began the story again. The hologram flickering above the ar bent in an unnatural way.
The ship shook violently, muffled reports of various things fucked, the ship derelict and drifting now caught on some sort of gravitational field, and disappearing in a flash of light. Suddenly, the dark night was illuminated by a bright flash of light streaking across the sky, the frost covered wasteland illuminated in brilliant flashes of gold, blue and red. While beautiful on the outside, within the cockpit of the craft there was nothing but red, lights flashing, alarms blaring and various warnings barking "FUCK…This is it! EVA JETTISON THE PODS THERE'S ATMOSPHERE AND FUCK PROTOCOL SHIPS DEADSTICKED" the figure shrouded in a suit and helmet shouted as he struggled for the ships controls. A final attempt to course correct as the massive colony ship broke through the atmosphere.
A loud monotone voice chimes up "EMERGENCY LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS ACTIVATING" immediately followed by an explosion, violent shaking, and more explosions as lights streaked away from the ship the seat he was on sunk into the floor dropping into a pod of its own as the craft smashed through a mountain yes through it, before smashing into the ice below, craters dragged thousands of yards, smoke and steam rising as debris fell around. Followed by an avalanche of snow from the mountains around burying the cavernous landing point.
A broken body lay next to part of the craft. His suit torn and limbs bent in awkward positions the hologram replaying the message above the left wrist of the body whose chest still softly rose and fell. Various status updates could be heard crackling within the helmet.
"Right arm broken, left leg multiple fractures, ribs 3-6 damaged left lung punctured. Administering first aid, Nanoreplicator offline continuing first aid will take approximately 9 days 14 hours 46 minutes." As the voice spoke, the suits tears visibly stitched themselves as the limbs were forced back into a proper position sickening crunches accompanied by cries of pain. A few days had passed since then the voice chimed in "4 days until competition of first aid, induced coma to facilitate body repairs" That was when the snow and ice above broke. A large furred bipedal creature falling down next onto Dante before it's limp body came to rest beside him, his helmet snapping shut as it's blood painted some of his face, its fur covered in blood as its body lay next to him, "Notification, Life detected, Unknown, genetic sample similar to Canis Lupus Occidentalis, Life signs weak- ALERT Kote Contaminated life signs detected, activating defense protocols."
The left arm moved upwards towards the hole and the hand dropped down a small opening in the wrist opened firing a beam of light at the new intruder sliding down the hole, the beam burning a hole directly through its head as its body slammed into the ground forcefully. A deep growl came from the tunnel as another emerged. His arm moved and another several flashes of light followed, and that one too was dispatched. Soon the monotonous voice quipped once more "Area secured, Energy reserves fourteen percent, lifting alpha protocol, waking host."
Its a mess yes but further chapters will be falling into first person for the most part after setteling the backstory and introductions.
I may eventually get around to fixing this infodump in the future Buuuut blarg.