"What the hell is that", first officer Den-dri stated, watching the ever-changing colors on the screen before him. "Patch it to the mains", captain Eleibeth ordered. Suddenly the wall began to mutate becoming translucent, as lights and colors began to dance and glow, forming into rapid patterns, slowly morphing into codes of letters, numbers, and symbols rippling faster than the eye can see. The room surrounded by screens and consoles manned by a group of people that looked very little in difference between individuals you might find in a bar on any night in any com-sat station in the universe. Nobody wore uniforms, why would they this far out into the fringe. The room was suddenly filled with a loud squealing noise.
"Whats that noise, put it through the translators, and see if you can get anything out of that screen". "Sorry captain, its a signal from a hyper-spatial anomaly about 100 quads ahead of us, the computer is analyzing it now", said Den-dry. Josephus, the ships engineer, and sometimes science office spoke up, though he rarely said anything much, "The A.I. is down again". Joe Joe, as the crew called him had grown up on a fringe world, where they still believed in God, and didn't use technology. He still struggled with his choice of leaving his home world, but after working on the commercial satellite space station in orbit around his planet which processed the rare hand made knick-knacks, and agribusiness his world needed to survive so far out on the fringe.
All of the rim worlds lived in constant fear of the unknown, once you crossed the veil, and left the core worlds, you left the big space-lines behind, much like traveling out in what they called rural areas, on old Terra, at least thats what he'd been told, nobody knew much about Terra now days, after Sol went supernova only the colony worlds survived. Nobody talked much about those days. Seems humans didn't think much, though he'd seen some of the old Terrane art, and heard some of the music, and he wondered how they could create such beauty if they were as stupid as people said they were. It was a sorta joke, that old terrane's put screen doors on sub-marines whatever that meant. Guess it's an example of their short sightedness. Though his family said it was gods just punishment that terra was taken back. According to the pries-tens of his world, they said Terra was a world of beauty and prosperity, but man's evil caused God to take back what he had given. JoJo didn't know, and he didn't really care.
"A. I. Will be back up soon", he said, he had found he had an instinctive understanding of technology, and could communicate with AI systems better than people, maybe because they didn't expect anything from you that wasn't pretty clear up front, not like people. Sparks flew from a panel a short distance from him. As he walked over he looked around what was lovingly referred to as the bridge. The crew, about six people on a standard rotation were, well a motley crew at best. Captain Eleibeth, looked like a girl next door. She had started in the engine room of one of those big capital ships, after the cataclysm she decided the core wasn't for her and resigned.
Den-dri was a fun guy, and could he drink, well he could do just about anything, he came from an edge world, where humanity was eugenically modified to survive there, but he could be trusted. It was hard to earn his trust, so many thought he was brusk, but that was mostly because he was never sure of people. Most citizens weren't really comfortable around EG's. There were always other worlds, why loose your humanity to eek out a living on an inhospitable world. JoJo had grown up an alien on his own world, his people didn't leave their planet, or go into the sciences, so he had a lot of similar experiences as Den had gone through.
Jendri Ferris was hot, very hot, it made him uncomfortable, those feelings. She was the ships ambassador, and liaison to the Capitol. Coming from a core world she had the best med-staff available, so she was eugenically perfect. What upset her was everyone underestimated her. They tended to treat her like a child, when she was very smart, another thing he was familiar with. Doctor Quince, a cephlapodia, having evolved from a cuttlefish like race took some getting used to, but he was well educated in the core, having come from a powerful family. He was a great doctor, well he had great bedside manner, but sometimes he'd connect up to something and was stuck to it despite the evidence.
Lastly was Aery, the AI, amazing, brilliant, but in some ways the most human of the crew. Everyone on board had their reason for being on the ship, most had suffered one way or another, but they had become family over the last few missions. Pulling the panel free he could see where multiple crystals had burned out, so he began pulling the cracked broken structures out of their ports, and after replacing them in their three tiered lattice, the laser portage activated, blinked a few times as the system reset, and lit up.
Aery's voice broke the silence,"signal has been calibrated, the computer is insufficient to process, but their is a sidereal signal, I'm processing now, JoJo would you like me to run this program in a closed loop system". JoJo looked to the captain, "well what do you think, if it's safe do it, start a trace and do a astrometric scan of the source, I want to know everything, while your at it mute that damn screeching". People began to move towards their panels, most people didn't need them, almost everyone on the ship had wireless neurotrophic implants, but JoJo had to use a device called a torc, after some old Terran jewelry, he used to feel out of place but Den-dri needed one too.
Most of them had tablets as well, they hadn't had those on his world. So this strange group was the crew of the Avalon. Not a new ship, but in its time it was the best, corvette class, it was fast and maneuverable, with basic weapons. When the captain got it she had it retrofitted with the best computing power and stealth technologies. Basically they were a courier ship, but their real financing came from transporting highly classified information, to crucial to be trusted to even the most secure tachyon encryption. A little blackmail helped go along way too. The captain had a slogan, "in the darkness of space evil thrives, make it pay". Coming from the Capitol she knew a lot, in fact everyone who came from inner system worlds understood there where a lot of secrets going around, and the crew of the Avalon could be trusted with their secrets for a price.
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