What I've been doing #1

Frontier Eternal

(Draft)

1.

            Freedom.  As Claire took a brief moment to gaze out at the trillions of stars, she was reminded of her first space flight as she let her mind wander away.  She remembered that it had been scary to her, and the deeper the ship went, the more she had felt swallowed up by a crushing abyss.  Like a kind of agoraphobia, the vast emptiness had made it hard for her to function the first few days. 

            Gazing out at the abyss now, she remembered those feelings, and she felt a sense of self empathy looking back on them.  The void was crushingly infinite, and the sheer size of the emptiness resisted comprehension, even after a decade of experience flying. 

            Her ship at this time, the Young Colt, was already small compared to most interstellar ships, and against the ocean of stars, it barely seemed to even register as a fleck of dust or sand.  From inside its main bridge, she continued to take in the vastness, shifting her mind to a different memory.  Her father had once told her about his experience travelling through Space, and even after several years, she remembered his words.

            “Well Claire, I agree.  It’s pretty scary out there sometimes.  Crossing from one end of the galaxy to the other really made me feel it.  Sometimes, I still can’t wrap my head around how small we are.  I have to say though, that the best thing about that space is, by far, the freedom it gives you.  Escaping from the politics and the conflicts and just stepping back away from it all.  I feel like it gives you a new perspective on your problems, almost like a meditation.  You finally get to solve problems the way you want to, not the way some government wants you.  You know I hate the lawlessness out here, but I think this freedom is finally giving us a chance to right some wrongs that we couldn’t before.  Too many selfish abuses barbaric traditions were protected by red tape back in the Sol Federation.  I hope they get their game back together eventually and start protecting people again, but until that happens, I think the frontier is a decent alternative”

            Coming back to the present, Claire looked across the abyss one more time.  As empty as it was, the silence and the emptiness were definitely intimidating, but in a way, she almost felt they were challenging.  There was room out there.  It was a Space that could become all kinds of different things.  There was potential out here. 

            It was a sad potential, though.  As much as she wished the worlds would change, she knew just from keeping up with news that there was no end to the violence and chaos in sight.  All that empty space out there, all that potential void, yet she doubted any beings in this galaxy could ever take advantage of it to create something positive.  Perhaps Space would remain a vast, empty wasteland for eternity, its silence and serenity being the only survivors.

            She was snapped out of her meditation when an alarm on a nearby display screen sharply beeped at her.  Examining it, she realized that the ships scanners had finally picked up the signals they were looking for.  The peace and serenity would have to wait for later; it was time for a raid.

2.

            Running over to the nearby console, Claire began preparing the ship.  It’s interior was modeled after the cabins of the beautiful sail boats of Earth, with the walls and floor made of a material convincingly similar to dark maple wood.  The electronics were plentiful, and various holographic displays constantly streamed diagnostics information about their ship and its location, but were stylized after ancient golden instruments to compliment the rest of the traditional aesthetics.  If it wasn’t for the clutter of papers, devices, cables, and food leftovers among the tables, one could mistake it for a luxury ship owned by a billionaire.  Claire chuckled out loud at that thought.  The Young Colt was anything but.

            Continuing, she moved the ship from its orbit.  The local star system was incredibly barren, with nothing in the way of natural resources, and multiple asteroid belts rather than planets.  The only sign of human activity was the small space station that had brought the ship all the way out to the system in the first place.

            Coming up on the view screens, Claire took a good look at the Young Colt’s first target:  a Dark Particle Station.  Faster than light travel could only be possible through the use of dark particles to alter and accelerate a ship beyond what physics would normally allow.  As Dark particles required tremendous amounts of electricity to generate, many ships were limited as to how many particles they could produce, and how far they could travel.  A Particle station, however, solved the problem by using a series of massive energy reactors to not only generate dark particles, but saturate several light years’ worth of space with them.  This way, a small ship could travel faster than light by following a path of dark particle stations across the galaxy, never having to generate its own.  The system worked great.

            Unless you hit a station with a strong electromagnetic pulse.  Claire grinned. 

“Nothing personal, guys,” she said out loud to no one, “your station will be up and running again in fifteen minutes or so.”