February 2nd, 2101
In a darker corner of the cosmos, past the Perseus Spiral Arm, the wreckage of the
Pod, a huge freighter from the Exoworld Entertainment corporation, floats weightless in its own debris field. The
Empty Chamber, a ship carrying
GunRunners Clyde Rhodes, the Experience, and Mavis, raced through the debris field as other freelancers looking to capitalize on the wreckage fought them for a crate with classified contents.
- the Misfire — a ship armed with an arsenal of exposives, which flew the colors of a gang known as the BEDLAM BOMBERS. The Misfire carried Shockwave Shannon, the captain and coordinator, a human woman of a completely unknown identity; Javier Reyes, the pilot and second-in-command; and Maurice, a Non-Newtonian encased in a mechanical suit of power armor.
- the Cyclops — the expensive ship of Apogee, a guild of freelance spacers that often undertake long-term contracts with wealthy employers. The Cyclops is armed with a massive central laser cannon.
- the Troxler — a mysterious ship that regularly appeared and disappeared during the fight, traveling great distances in between utilizing some kind of advanced cloaking tech.
The battle for the crate was interrupted by a
UNF Carrier patrol, which pulled over all four ships (though the
Troxler vanished and evaded arrest). After a search of all the ships that almost erupted into a full fight and likely arrest thanks to the Experience, the spacers were let go with the crate being confiscated as illegal contraband of an alien lifeform.
The group dejectedly left for a 7-Eleven to fill their tank, interacting with an unfortunately non-sentient
android cashier. After a quick refuel and recharge, the group left to pick up a small Run-N-Gun contract to give some fuel to Jack Higgins, who was stranded in the Cygnus Spur and unfortunately banned from SSS (Spacecraft Support Services). After entering a wormhole for
Mars to hopefully pick up some better-paying jobs, the group was instead met with an unexplained event.
Instead of arriving outside of
Mars' atmosphere, the group found themselves in front of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*. The group watched as dozens of wormholes on one side of the black hole spit out what looked like solar mass at an incredibly high velocity, directly at the black hole's side and in the same direction as the rapidly spinning accretion disk. While this occured, they were presented with five wormholes hovering in front of them, each depicting a dimming star from a populated world (specifically
Venus,
Newton's Moon,
Kul,
Naian, and Kepler-22b). At the center of it all, the silhouette of an untethered astronaut backlit by the gravitationally warped "upper" region of the glowing accretion disk, hovered in the vacuum of space with their hands outstretched. Seconds later, a wormhole darting through space directly at the
Empty Chamber swallowed the spacers whole, spitting them back out in orbit around Mars, their intended location, with the
Sun was looking unexpectedly usual.
Comments