The missiles are loaded, and I can't help but feel as if I made a mistake. Every speck of being within me begs me to give up. It's like deep down I know how bad of an idea this really is.
Fray speaks, and it derails my train of thought, "You really shouldn't have let them live."
I turn in the pilot's chair to face them. "Why? They gave up willingly."
"Yes and now they likely know where we're headed. If they know we're traveling back to Eden space, they'll hunt us down. They've probably already gathered forces."
"We'll be gone before they find us." I look back to the controls and begin preparing for warp. "It shouldn't take more than one, and you managed to get three."
"I'm not particularly thrilled about having any at all." Fraeia's voice is low, as if trying to speak under their breath.
"Me either," I reply. We have no way of knowing just how safe they are. Dhitol likely ignored many safety measures to speed up development. A collision, even with something small, could set the missiles off.
The lights flicker off and we sit in a pitch black silence. We made the calculations. Gibraltar plans to reemerge at The Fever Breach. Why there? Even after the attack, it's still populated, and the eden would attack it just as quickly as I would.
When we drop from warp the lights flicker back on. I hear tapping on the hull from outside, a sound that reminds me of the rain back on Safeharbor. That's not a good sign.
When the panoramic view kicks in, we find ourselves in a sea of wreckage. The remains of eden ships surround us.
I maneuver, quick to avoid anything that would jostle the ship more than I'd like. "I think Gibraltar's already here."
Fraeia stares at the screen in shock. "Look…" they point to molten steel, blackened edges and the faintest haze of prismatic vapor surrounding the ships. "That doesn't make sense."
"What?"
They narrow their eyes. "The gas, residual prism. It's like our ships turned on each other. Gibraltar didn't do this."
"Could it be an assault by the breakers of chains?"
"Maybe."
We move deeper into the field of debris. There's nothing left. There's no sign of life, no readings on sensors.
Fraeia lets out a sigh and shakes their head. "No. We need to leave."
This isn't how this was meant to happen. Where is it? Where is Gibraltar?
"Amber, we need to go."
I whisper my reply, "I can't."
"You must. We-" they stop as something comes into view. We pass a large chunk of hull and the sight leaves me just as speechless.
Despite the distance, we can actually see the details clear as day. The archangel, a titan class vessel that has served as the pride of the Eden fleet for thousands of years, now floats like a dead moon around the black hole at the center of the system.
Fraeia cries out as if in pain. "How?"
We draw closer to the breach and see the same as before, a prismatic haze that surrounds the wreckage. Nothing the Eden produce could stand up to their most powerful vessel. What did this?
My eyes catch a hint of light from the sensors but when I look, I see nothing. Before I look away, I catch it again. I see signals appear and vanish. The system isn't dead. We're being jammed.
I speak while setting a new course. "Maybe you're right. We should leave."
"Well, now it's too late," Fraeia replies. "We'll be interdicted if we run."
I hear a notification chime from my right, a broadcast. I hit play and regret it immediately. I cringe at the sound of high pitched screams. It's speaking, but my translator doesn't know the language. I look at Fraeia who shrugs while covering their ears.
Is it something new? That would explain why we lack their language in our translators, but then again, no one else has access to prism.
Fraeia points to the screen and shouts, "Look there."
I see a writhing mass of tendrils dancing in the void. Within a hundred kilometers is another, and further still is a third.
I spit out the name, "Gibraltar."
"More than one... or perhaps others like it."
The eden rely on a resource I can barely fathom. Prism is a strange substance, named for the plentiful hues that emerge when light passes through it. It can be anything. It can be a Solid, liquid or gas. It can be made of any element in the universe. What truly separates prismatic helium from the standard variety is the fact that it isn't stable. It's something else entirely.
Even antimatter is in a state of equilibrium. All matter is caught in the quantum heat death of reality. The eden, however, found a loophole. By detecting and acquiring “relic matter” left over from the beginning of the universe, they learned how to bypass the quantum noise present in all matter existing in this state of equilibrium. I dont get it either.
The random elements of quantum mechanics are not truly random. They just appear to be because we're in this state of "thermal equilibrium." With non-equilibrium matter, you can solve problems like FTL travel and communication, breaking quantum cryptography, and more. Prism is their big secret, the reason the eden are at the top of the galactic food chain.
A nice McGuffin that can take a wide variety of forms to suit any narrative. I'm imagining crystals that shine with rainbow light deep beneath the surface of a planet... though that place may be a bit too stable to produce what you have described as 'non-equilibrium.' Could be fun for characters to try and search through a bunch of identical boxes in order to find the one that's made from prism.