I was gonna try to submit this for a contest but got tired of waiting for my brain to make ideas. So, I'll just post it here as I write it vOv.
(http://www.spacebridges.com/Portals/57602/images/andromede%20-%20small-resized-600.jpg)
Terminus
The human race has thought of itself as the pinnacle of life throughout history. From the ancient Egyptians and Industrial Age nations of old, to the post-faster than light constellation spanning Alliances and galactic regional governments. The more humanity spread, the more our egos grew as intelligent life was found to be fleeting and rare throughout local space.
There was a time where we questioned why life was so rare. Why had races flourished and died? Why did great civilizations expand and collapse on themselves with such sudden implosions? We questioned this great puzzle for centuries as our knowledge of the galaxy and universe grew. We drew the conclusion that life, much like human life, had a penchant for self-destruction. It seemed that humanity, for all its sins and faults, simply adapted to its suicidal tendencies more than others.
Golden Ages came and went, our collective wisdom grew and wilted, human factions flourished and died, yet we pressed on into the centuries. Those centuries soon became millennia. We had grown, we had prospered, and we had advanced beyond what our past selves could have ever imagined. We believed our race and its factions to be the alpha of our galaxy. But we were not foolish enough to believe ourselves the only life within the entirety of the endless cosmos.
The universe is unequivocally vast. We casted our eyes beyond the rims of our Milky Way, deep into the darkest reaches of space. The vastness of the universe called out the exploratory nature within us, and it could not be held back. Fleets left the Milky Way, filing out in columns of soldier like precision towards their intended destination galaxies. The macrocosm of our home spiral soon became the center of a celestial web composed of bright lights cast from our ships, stations, and artificial worlds as we spread out using tools to bend the very fabric of space to our whim.
The more we spread, the more audacious our goals became. Eventually our ambition caused our race to turn our caution into something resembling negligence as we fumbled through the universe so much as children traverse a cityscape they know nothing of. Like children in a living city that waited until the opportune moment to strike at its prey.
Rivalka Niorunen
“Vicarious Experiences: The Great Expansion”
PEA 175
(http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/cryo-chamber-x-amanda-makepeace.jpg)
Chapter 1
Year: PGE 2316
Sagan’s Wanderlust en route to:
Galaxy: UDFj-39546284 (Fornax Umbra)
Constellation: MJ53-177A.8 (Tiverot)
Solar System: P9C-559-1383.c (Dingir-Gin)
The hexagonal corridors and minimalistic bulkheads of the Sagan’s Wanderlust slipped past Vance Eiril’s field of vision as he trudged towards the vessel’s Sheath Hall. It had been two months since Vance was woken from his own frozen dreams to monitor the status of the vessel and its precious cargo. Since waking, Vance had busied himself with arrival preparations and orientation scheduling. The ship’s Mer would notify him of his scheduled rounds each morning at 0430 ship time, tactfully waking Vance with bright overhead lights and the whirring of electronic alarms from his ship linked implant. After a moment of begrudging appreciation to the Mer’s friendly reminder, Vance would make his way to the Sheath Hall to run his checks. Despite minor fatigue nibbling at his consciousness, he consoled himself with the fact that this would be the last check he’d need to run.
His boots clunked against the solid metal plating of the floor as the doors to the Sheath hall snicked open with barely a sound, anticipating his entry into the colossal valley of frozen, dreaming humans. Despite having seen the sight before him countless times, Vance still took time each round to admire the seemingly endless walls of soft blue light casting playful shadows across the countless surfaces of the Sheaths. The long, angular caskets latched on to transdiamond covers to look all the world like brilliant, over-sized sapphire pendants holding the vague form of a human within. The pendants stretched from wall to wall, floor to ceiling, never hinting at where they might end.
Fortunately, he did not bear the responsibility to wake all of the Sleepers.
Continuing down the cat walk of his side of the Sheath Hall, Vance willed his AR subroutines to cast a finely squared grid over his field of vision. Information on four Sleepers began to scroll before him as he walked towards his final destination. He’d be waking a group of four this round. Three were baseline humans with limited augmentation he had met prior to departure five years ago, two doctors and one Auditor sent by their company. The fourth was a Diver, much like Vance. It fascinated him to see one of his own playing colleague to baseliners instead of living between stars and galaxies like many others of their kind. He wondered what would drive someone to choose such a boring life stuck in one solar system.
He set aside musing of his faction’s social structure as he entered the retrieval chamber. Console screens appeared in the air before him, moving backwards with each of his strides to the control node. Eight depressions ringed around the half circular chamber, each a perfect molded outline of a Sleeper Sheath. The walls within each depression shifted slightly as Vance pressed down on the control node, allowing his hands to sink into the chromic, viscous mound. The walls of the depressions waved and lapped at the sides of the silhouettes with each motion of Vance’s fingers within the node.
Ghostly blue light began to flood the dimly lit room as Sleeper Sheaths pushed through the liquefied walls of the depressions, pulled further into the room as Vance slid his fingers out of the node. The material of the sphere clung briefly to his hands before snapping back to the node as the Sheaths ceased their movement, locking into their respective pockets.
“Good morning ladies and gentlemen, this is your ship Tender speaking,” Vance said as he ran a finger tip down the middle of the node. “We’ll be arriving at our destination system shortly.” While he knew none of the Sleepers could hear him, the temptation to mock the inane customs of FTL baseline crews was too much to resist.
As he spoke, hair line cracks appeared in the middle of each Sheath, slowly folding the transdiamond covers into themselves to allow their habitant to exit. At the same time, clear gel receded from the body of the occupant and into fine vents set inside the sheaths save for a thin line of body clinging liquid becoming opaquely white. The newly formed body suits would inject a cocktail of nanites and chemicals to quicken the waking process of each occupant while recalling medical history to ensure no complications would arise. Within a minute, all four Sleepers were conscious.
“Welcome to the Dingir-Gin System everyone,” Vance said with a thin smile.
(http://images.wikia.com/mythicalbeastsrp/images/0/06/Spaceship-science-fiction-future-world-1920x1080.jpg)
Chapter 1a-
The Skip Ships
All Skip Ships were monstrous behemoths of alloy, sensor clusters, docking bays, copious sleeper sheath halls and, in some cases, weapons. The mammoth vessel’s interior reflected the same efficient and minimalist design features as its outer hull. Skip ships served only one purpose; to safely move human beings across the vast and majestic gulf between the galaxies throughout the universe.
FTL engines were still used within galactic clusters by all factions of humanity, but only the Hardinger-Liuz Drives were capable of reaching beyond the wall of the galactic rim and out into the darkness of true deep space. Consequently, such vast power could only be contained within even vaster machines capable of holding the exotic reactions of the Drives. This inherent trait left little consideration for such amenities as interior design and human pleasing curves and aesthetics more prevalent in FTL vessels, outposts, and artificial worlds.
While only the most experienced Interstellar Engineer could possibly explain in-depths the workings of the Drive’s acceleration systems, the basic principal of its function was simple to grasp. While FTL engines warped space around a vessel for it to achieve speeds greater than light could travel in vacuum, the Hardinger-Liuz Drives ignored the necessity to travel through the vacuum of space altogether. By manipulating forces equivalent to that of a black hole’s singularity, the Drives wielded gravity like a great interstellar blade to assault the very foundation of reality itself, rending and twisting the quantum foam of space to the requirements inherent with trans-galactic travel in Skip Space.
Quantum foam manipulation, while a relatively old method of travel, had improved over the centuries to the point that the oddities and fluctuations inherent with trans-galactic travel became trivialities. Drives sliced through the fabric of reality itself to enter what was known as Skip Space, a far more complicated concept in and of itself. Once a ship had entered Skip Space, it could travel literally anywhere its crew desired.
To house these powerful Drives, vast ships larger than cities (and some outposts) were created. Skip ships ranged in size between four to twelve kilometers in length and one to four kilometers in width. Each ship was capable of holding hundreds of thousands of passengers, tucked away in sleeper sheaths while their bodily functions, though sustained by the machines many subsystems, remained in limbo between life and death to ensure their preservation during the journey between galaxies. Intricate factories, docking bays for FTL vessels, and even small cities could be placed within the Skip Ships should the crew deem it necessary for the trip.
Each ship housed a single Hardinger-Liuz Drive at the rear of the angular and lengthy hull. Around the Drive, the hull flared out in all directions in slim rectangular obelisks of varying length, all angled at precisely forty-five degrees and pointing away from the behemoth vessel. At the side of the obelisks facing away from the ship and towards deep space were hundreds of thruster vents which propelled the ship through regular space. The obelisks only shut off when, at the heart of the explosion of towering propulsion engines, the Hardinger-Liuz drives flashed into life in a brilliant burst of white and purple. Once activated, the burst travels in separate paths along the lengths of the propulsion obelisks until reaching their apex, where they gouge reality and push the vessel through the celestial wound into Skip Space. It had been five relativistic years since the Sagan’s Wanderlust had entered Skip Space to its far flung destination from its departure point within Andromeda.