Humans Don't Hibernate [Part 19/?] WiP (Patreon)

“...1”

I’d forgotten what the first jump drive activation truly felt like. For the days following it I had just assumed that it was because the experience had been marred and completely overridden by the utter chaos that was the bridge as it was caked in firefoam and the acrid smell of burnt electronics. I had assumed that the overstimulation was what had caused me to overlook if not entirely forget what should have been an ethereal experience.

Entering and exiting a wormhole wasn’t something that any Vanaran had done after all, and so, I had assumed that with this jump, I’d finally be able to experience it without any of the chaos and any of the distractions of our prior jump drive activation.

Yet as the seconds ticked by, my eyes fixated on what was so clearly an impossible sight… the contours and fabric of space itself broken and jagged, with depth and perception completely meaningless in that empty void that lay therein… the ship slowly lurching forward at a mind-numbingly slow speed, as we were seemingly consumed by darkness, only to exit it without much fanfare.

It… felt as if we had landed in the same space, the stars were different, certainly, but to the naked eye it looked practically identical to where we started off.

Indeed, I felt nothing, not the buzzing and vibrations from a warp drive activation, or the gut-churning lurching of a hyperspace jump. It felt eerily like we had just moved from one place to another on sunlight drives alone… and when I thought about it, that honestly was the case with the jump drives wasn’t it?

All it was, was the artificial creation of two tears in space, the ship merely traveling through it as if it were any other point in space.

This revelation didn’t necessarily bother me as my focus shifted towards the elephant in the room, and the pressing concern that was this great unknown that had muddied the waters of what the reality we had so carefully pieced together over the past few days.

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Upon entering the system we were immediately pinged by the satellite in question. A flurry of announcements repeating warnings of unauthorized tampering filled the tactical table as our scanners picked up a lone, single vessel that had practically docked alongside the satellite, or rather, held the satellite right up against the underside of its hull.

The ship… unlike the Interloper vessels we had encountered prior, was decidedly human in appearance. Its long, trapezoidal shape, tapering towards a fine edge was reminiscent of our own vessel’s design and make, except clearly much more refined and advanced. Indeed, the more time our visual scanners had to focus on the details of the vessel, the more the differences started to stack. Its armor was practically seamless, an uninterrupted piece of metal that looked as if it was one solid mass, rather than the distinct tile-like armor plating of our vessel. Its engines… if they could even be called that were but large cylinders seemingly strapped onto the sides of an otherwise elegant design. There were no open exhausts, no visible heat signatures on any of the electromagnetic spectrum Vir had been cycling through. Indeed, what seemed to be present was an unusually high concentration of gravitational anomalies directly behind and around the vessel.

As scans continued, these anomalies started to show a certain pattern, a series of gravitational vortices that formed ripples behind the vessel… as if it were using gravity itself as a propulsion method.

Further observation however did not reveal any markings indicative of the UN emblem so prominently featured on our vessel, but instead, what seemed to be a stylized logo resembling a four pointed star, with the human’s homeworld, and its moon superimposed behind it.

“Do you recognize any of those symbols, Vir?” I inquired, as the AI would continue the endless barrage of scans without pause.

“No. At least not from the databases I currently have. That’s without a question though, a rough graphical representation of the Earth, and the ship… despite how strange it is, matches with how humans generally design their vessels… so what we’re dealing with is potentially a ship from this era? Or maybe-”

Vir’s postulations were rudely interrupted however by a flurry of alarms as the ship suddenly detached from the satellite and began heading towards our direction.

(Author's Note: It's getting quite later over here, nearly 3am and I've been working nonstop on these stories for a while now, so I'll be calling it a night! I'll try to get more out as soon as I can! :D)