[u][i]November 10, 2086[/i][/u] [i]The SS Terra, a majestic, nine hundred and fifty foot cargo liner, slowly left Earth in her wake. Her huge engines glowed as the superheated plasma was vented from them in bright blue plumes, slowly accelerating her to nearly light speed. Off to one side, her port side, was the older liner named Edmund Fitzgerald II. She was about eight years older than the five-year-old Terra. Above the Terra, so to say, was the Dynasty, an ugly cargo freighter. The two ships were opposites. The Edmund Fitzgerald was a long, sleek ship shaped like a capsule, with flat sides, rounded belly and back, and a rounded nose. You could say she looked a little like Thunderbird II. She was a bright yellow and white with racing stripes painted down her sides... that was typical of her line. The Comet Transport Company prided themselves on speed. Terra was by no means slow, but the Big Fitz was already pulling out ahead of her. The Dynasty was no such speed demon. She had an ugly, pyramid-shaped nose, with a long, spindly neck extending back to Siamese twin engine pods. On that spindly neck, multi-colored rectangular cargo pods were arranged in triangle formation around it, attached by thin stalks. She was painted a light olive green. Terra herself was a citrus orange and white. This was not a good day, of course. The Big Fitz' namesake had sunk on this date, centuries ago, with no survivors and no bodies. Her sinking was still a mystery... this was dismissed as ridiculous superstition. Edmund Fitzgerald II was certainly not cursed... well... sort of. The champagne bottle had never broken over her bow. They had tried and tried, and it took five times before it broke. Now she was sailing on the date of her namesake's death. The Captain of the Terra wasn't even thinking of this, or how far behind Dynasty was falling. She was the slowest by far, and the ugliest, and the smallest. Terra was the largest, with the Fitz being a little smaller. On her high-tech bridge, the officers of the Terra chatted and conversed quietly. Terra herself, or at least her holographic avatar, sat in the Helmsman's chair. The anthropomorphic jaguar, dressed in a light purple robe right now, hummed "Drunken Sailor" as she gently tugged and pulled on the control levers. All of this was a clever illusion. Terra didn't have to use her steering levers but... she was known to be a little eccentric. A few of the younger sailors ogled at the female. The avatar was quite fair. Slender, subtle curves, perfectly rounded breasts and rump, a serene expression on her soft, smoothly-sculpted face... Terra was proud. The happiness did not last. The communications officer, bent over his console, pressed his headset into his ear. The young, dark-skinned man stood up and called, "Sir! Edmund Fitzgerald II, reporting engine troubles. She may have to turn back." Captain Tesla simply nodded and smiled. He was an aging man from Canada, starting to decline from youth at the middle age of sixty. He was very skinny and pale. His [url=http://i.imgur.com/w06hkaj.png]uniform[/url] seemed like it struggled to hug to him. He didn't seemed concerned and instead just watched the other ship slowly drop by the window... until... why was she getting closer? Tesla jumped up from his seat, "Comms! Tell the Fitz to back off!" The Lunan comms officer, pale as a ghost and with a skeletal structure made from toothpicks, relayed the message into his microphone. He listened again, "Sir! Their helm is not responding!" Tesla turned to yell at Terra, "Terra! Evasive maneuvers!" She looked over at him, panic on her face, "I-I can't get control, sir, my own body isn't doing anything." Tesla looked out of the window again, then turned to the Russian engineer with a royal purple uniform, "Get the controls back!" With his thick accent, the Russian said he would do his best... but something happened then. A huge explosion rocked the Edmund Fitzgerald II. A miniature supernova ripped her engine bays to shreds and consumed the fragments in a rapidly-expanding fireball. The shockwave rocked the Terra and set off her general alarm as objects fell off of shelves and she rocked violently. The bridge crew nearly fell out of their seats. The Fitzgerald rolled over and over, in a death spiral now, trailing vapors and flames from the wrecked engine pod, still approaching her sister ship. She was screaming a mayday now. Terra scanned her. One of her reactors had suffered an alpha-mode failure, and the other three were not far away. Terra screamed, "BRACE FOR IMPACT!" Just before the other three reactors went up in quick succession. The Fitz was incinerated. Terra was tossed off in the opposite direction with her frame creaking and groaning under the stress. Small fragments of the once great Edmund Fitzgerald II peppered the Terra, smashing huge indents into her armor and slicing through in some places. Alarms rang from the various consoles and the alerts on the touchscreen mounted to the Helmsman's console lit up like a Christmas tree. Terra still did not have control of herself. She was drifting out of control, at cruising speed. "Abandon ship!" The alarms rang and changed their tone. The Muster Alarm. A beeping, mournful tone. Passengers, those who hadn't been killed or injured, looked around in shock. The evacuation took nearly an hour, but there was bad news when they went to look at the cryopods. All dead. The Captain looked at the jaguaress avatar of his ship, and said, "Stay here, Terra, we'll send someone for you." As soon as he left, the monitors on the cryopods returned to normal, and so did Terra's readings on them. It was too late to call back the rescue crew. She found that her communications arrays had gone down too, somehow. She settled in for a long wait. [/i] ----------------------- [b][u][i]Much Time Later[/i][/u][/b] Terra wandered her wrecked halls, blinking tears out of her eyes as she gazed into the derelict rooms and unused recreational areas. This had been a thriving place once. Now, she had no one but herself, staring at her own wrecked body. She could feel the memories that were out of reach, lost in corruption from neglect and damage to her computer core. She couldn't remember what had happened, or where her crew went. Thankfully, all of the holographic projectors that put out her hard hologram were still working. She flickered out of existence, then flickered back in, standing next to Reactor Two. It was slowly leaking molten fuel and control rods, bathing the shielded room in the blue glow of radiation and the orange glow of the lava. The hellish concoction flowed out of a crack in the metal cylinder that was the reactor vessel... this steam-filled room had enough radiation to kill someone five times over, but she was safe, since she was nothing more than light and sensor data. She shook her head as she watched the slow loss of one reactor. She had tried to save it, but it was now in a runaway state, slowly melting itself. She re-appeared again, this time on the observation lounge. The AI sat down and stared at the crypods from a luxurious leather-bound couch, just one of many dotting the observation lounge that ran along her own keel. It was an oval-shaped blister that extended from the great white ship's broad belly with floor-to-ceiling windows and two spiral staircases up into the first deck. The walls were paneled with wood, wonderfully dark oak that gleamed under the dim emergency lighting. The floor was some sort of dark grey carpet which muffled footsteps and felt wonderful underfoot, if one was barefoot. The cruise ship's avatar stared and stared, seemingly oblivious to the mournfully howling horns and slowly spinning beacons. Their yellow beams would occasionally cast themselves upon the jaguar, then onto the frosted metal tubes, then they would continue their journey around the room again. Outside the windows was the desolate rock by the name of Ceres on one side, and a field of asteroids to the other. The dim sun was behind Terra's broad stern, and the unknown void lay beyond her spade-shaped nose. Terra was projecting a hard hologram avatar of herself onto the couch, an anthropomorphic jaguaress with a white tunic and a flowing skirt. The female was fairly tall, standing at around five feet nine, with graceful, slender body lines and a nearly perfect face. She was dressed almost like she had come from ancient Rome. Her memory was spotty and failing, however. Sometime, in the past, something had happened to the ship. Something had struck the 950 foot long Terra, taken her crew and passengers, and left her wounded in the inky blackness. Her computerized mind slowly worked as she stared at the pods with a tilted head. Finally she sat up and approached the metal cylinders with their tinted glass, raised a hand, and started the defrost sequence. She stepped back and stood ramrod straight in parade fashion, her clothes flickering out of existence, then re-appearing as her uniform, with white trim. She waited for her chosen subjects to thaw, then said, "Welcome to the Terra! Excuse the mess." --------------------------- [b]Remember the post order![/b]