indeed.
Ecclesiastes, vanity,
vanity, all is vanity. It drummed upon my mind. Early in my
obsession with history and its repetitions I went into a virtual
reality play, commonly know as a virtreel, and found myself at the
fall of Troy. It was a splendid virtreel, carefully crafted by its
makers with the most accurate details of the period recreated in
all their Bronze Age glories. After the commonly known drama
unfolded, I found myself as one of the refugees making haste away
on a water ship. The land shrunk with distance and as the last
light of day ebbed, there was only the water, the ships, and the
sky. Ominously, even from that distance in the fading light one
could see the smoke of Troy's burning like a funeral
pyre.
Today we made more scans
of the Sunrider lodged into the side of the O'Neil station at the
Arcturian colonies and found myself wondering what the refugees
from that war might have seen and felt looking back. –Princess
Clairissa Maggio.
Roy Rudder
V
Hangar 3
In the morning, station
time, we made for Hangar 3 and the relic Sunrider. My sense of
foreboding increased with every step. I could sense with the beefed
up security who knew it was there, and who merely knew something
was amiss in the hangar. Few knew. Very few. Even the guards at the
outer locks didn't know.
Inside, we'd been given
wide berth. There were no techs poking and prodding at the thing,
and it sat in all its streamlined glory as one era's ultimate
killing machine. Hammerstein watched me like the proverbial hawk
waiting for a sign when too much became too much.
Yet for all my foreboding,
curiosity was having its way with me now. Like any boy of twelve
seeing a great and mysterious warship, my mind raced with a
ridiculous excitement. It was a frigate, large indeed but no more
so than some of the great space planes which it resembled after a
fashion. My first impressions were the quantum echoes of its lost
crew-they had been proud. They had been convinced they were serving
their Imperial defense from the menace of the Colonials.
Then I sensed their shock,
still echoing-sheer confusion like a firestorm-something wrong. Terribly wrong, it
had fractured their sanity in a wild snap, and there was only chaos
in its wake. The chaos still lingered, somehow, I knew, like a
spider fallen into a hot pan, squirming.
The chaos that hated
mankind .
It had hated the Imperials,
hated the Colonials, hated us all- no,
hated all living things with an outrage, a disgust, a lust for
destruction. "You will do well to keep your
techs from the vessel's neural net and computers." I said. I had
spoken involuntarily. "I suggest rudimentary bots only-nothing
approaching even a modicum of an AI should even touch it. Toxic is
too mild a word."
"An Imperial trap?" Hammerstein asked dryly,
wishing it were so.
I gave him a look beyond my years, "No.
Something is here which demolished the minds of strong, brave,
hardened Imperial Cyborgs. It was not of their making. Nothing
could have broken those men, no ordinary tribulation. Here is a
poison which perhaps the very, very fewest of men could have
endured."
"And the Princess and her
archaeological team were exploring it unawares. Perhaps our nemeses
are after it as a weapon?"
The smile on my face, at that, set poor
Hammerstein aback. I looked like a Devil myself then. "Fools beyond
measure if they do."
Fools beyond
measure ...
"The ship itself is a
Sunrider 3062 Frigate. It's equipped with five drive systems and
backups for various flight conditions. The center of the system is
the antigravitational, or gravitational antipolar response field- a
helicon magnetic plasma sail system for emergency fuel efficiency
and movement in and out of heliopauses-a hyperstring enabling
system to negate mass through five dimensional wormhole hyper
streams-a super ion drive Buzzard ramjet array for normal space
bursts through complex field distortion areas-and emergency use
limited standard rocket backup fail safes. Navigation
Ecclesiastes, vanity,
vanity, all is vanity. It drummed upon my mind. Early in my
obsession with history and its repetitions I went into a virtual
reality play, commonly know as a virtreel, and found myself at the
fall of Troy. It was a splendid virtreel, carefully crafted by its
makers with the most accurate details of the period recreated in
all their Bronze Age glories. After the commonly known drama
unfolded, I found myself as one of the refugees making haste away
on a water ship. The land shrunk with distance and as the last
light of day ebbed, there was only the water, the ships, and the
sky. Ominously, even from that distance in the fading light one
could see the smoke of Troy's burning like a funeral
pyre.
Today we made more scans
of the Sunrider lodged into the side of the O'Neil station at the
Arcturian colonies and found myself wondering what the refugees
from that war might have seen and felt looking back. –Princess
Clairissa Maggio.
Roy Rudder
V
Hangar 3
In the morning, station
time, we made for Hangar 3 and the relic Sunrider. My sense of
foreboding increased with every step. I could sense with the beefed
up security who knew it was there, and who merely knew something
was amiss in the hangar. Few knew. Very few. Even the guards at the
outer locks didn't know.
Inside, we'd been given
wide berth. There were no techs poking and prodding at the thing,
and it sat in all its streamlined glory as one era's ultimate
killing machine. Hammerstein watched me like the proverbial hawk
waiting for a sign when too much became too much.
Yet for all my foreboding,
curiosity was having its way with me now. Like any boy of twelve
seeing a great and mysterious warship, my mind raced with a
ridiculous excitement. It was a frigate, large indeed but no more
so than some of the great space planes which it resembled after a
fashion. My first impressions were the quantum echoes of its lost
crew-they had been proud. They had been convinced they were serving
their Imperial defense from the menace of the Colonials.
Then I sensed their shock,
still echoing-sheer confusion like a firestorm-something wrong. Terribly wrong, it
had fractured their sanity in a wild snap, and there was only chaos
in its wake. The chaos still lingered, somehow, I knew, like a
spider fallen into a hot pan, squirming.
The chaos that hated
mankind .
It had hated the Imperials,
hated the Colonials, hated us all- no,
hated all living things with an outrage, a disgust, a lust for
destruction. "You will do well to keep your
techs from the vessel's neural net and computers." I said. I had
spoken involuntarily. "I suggest rudimentary bots only-nothing
approaching even a modicum of an AI should even touch it. Toxic is
too mild a word."
"An Imperial trap?" Hammerstein asked dryly,
wishing it were so.
I gave him a look beyond my years, "No.
Something is here which demolished the minds of strong, brave,
hardened Imperial Cyborgs. It was not of their making. Nothing
could have broken those men, no ordinary tribulation. Here is a
poison which perhaps the very, very fewest of men could have
endured."
"And the Princess and her
archaeological team were exploring it unawares. Perhaps our nemeses
are after it as a weapon?"
The smile on my face, at that, set poor
Hammerstein aback. I looked like a Devil myself then. "Fools beyond
measure if they do."
Fools beyond
measure ...
"The ship itself is a
Sunrider 3062 Frigate. It's equipped with five drive systems and
backups for various flight conditions. The center of the system is
the antigravitational, or gravitational antipolar response field- a
helicon magnetic plasma sail system for emergency fuel efficiency
and movement in and out of heliopauses-a hyperstring enabling
system to negate mass through five dimensional wormhole hyper
streams-a super ion drive Buzzard ramjet array for normal space
bursts through complex field distortion areas-and emergency use
limited standard rocket backup fail safes. Navigation
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