Avalon chapter 4

Jandi awoke to find herself helpless aboard the alien craft, unable to move, fear coursed through her body. Knowing she was never prepared for this, she was just a spoiled rich girl who'd made it this far on her parents money and fame, not to say their government rank and peerless genealogy and psionic capability. Damn why did she have to be so sensitive. She'd been so happy before the nasty truth had come out. If anyone ever found out she could tap into other's thought's she'd be cleansed for sure, or worse, interdicted to an outer rim world forever. The imperium couldn't let her remain amongst common people. Lost in her memory she wasn't paying attention to her surroundings, how could she be breaking the first rules of capture, getting lost in her memory, yet another reason she didn't belong out here, her crew was in danger, having no idea where she was, or how the situation stood. Slowly she reached our with her mind, expanding her senses to examine the environment she was in using a special technique most people couldn't detect. Her minds' eye showed a white room whose walls seemed to shimmer and change in some unfamiliar way. Suddenly before she could close her mind a voice unlike any other tore viciously through her mind. Screaming physically and mentally, she began to go black when an unimaginable strength grasped her mind and held her up in its power, her minds core shuddered in its incandescent force. A voice like she'd never felt before bespoke into her, "were deeply sorry at your pain, we did not understand your liminality, we shall seek to communicate inside your threshold, when last we were awake your race was still near its infancy, so we have slept and dreamt of your world, allowing our joined minds to travel the realms mental, yet we think the time of companionship has come, before we awake and pass throughout emergence we must be sure, you will be looked after, trust us".
Again blackness took her, as her mind screamed out on the declamatory mode.

Avalon chapter eight

   She awoke abruptly fears of the hounds rising as she sensed thier nearness.  "calm, sister, calm... your mind was near dissolution, we would not see you harm your self", said a voice, female, beautiful, so full of radiant all knowing wisdom.  Trying to move she realized she was strapped down and blind.  Her minds eye equally blind, she began to panic, struggling against her bonds.  "please sister, be calm...we shall release you, we did not desire harm to come to you, flesh is so....fragile,"  The voice spoke now with what sounded like infinite sadness, maybe even regret.
   Suddenly she realized her limbs were her own, and a cool cloth woven of some strange material she'd never seen was removed, then vanished.  Moving slowly she sat up, not wanting to be restrained agian.  Suddenly she thought of her crew mates, images of a time  before when she was being held by a cold unfeeling force while something tenebrous had been crawling through her mind pulling at her thoughts.  Nearly as quick as she could think,  an image of Jo jo appeared in the air before her.
   Jo jo, how he must despise her, his brown hair, and dark eyes you could fall into forever, with his strong rim forged body, compared to her icy blue eyes, long straight white hair, thin frame, small breasts and edenic features.   Her chest heaved and hitched at the thought of him.  Knowing that firm, calloused hand would never touch her like he even touched that ship.  It was safer than she was, even though both of them had been born in the core, as a rye chuckle escapes her soft throat, her eugenic modification banned as unholy by his people, her heart catches in her pulsing chest, her breathing becomes jagged, psionic, damned, she's a psi, rasped out, she's abomination.  He could never even see her, she was everything his people despised, in the end the ship was more real, both things of the imperium, both eugenically modified, both, she couldn't think it, his faith didn't speak of ships only sentients.
   "be still sister, you worry yourself, tell us more of your crew, and your people, we've slept eons, waiting to come forth in the age of companions, but are you ready to join us"?  A warmth suffused her, calming her like a balm, taking away the pain.  Pain, she thought of the doctor, so strange, like a giant squid floating around on helium filled bladders, but his multiple arms made him an incredible doctor. Even if he was prone to change colors with his moods, and his thoughts strange and angular.  Poor Den, growing up on Hadean.  He was EG too.  Not like her though, his dark skin, and black in black eyes.  Dark gills, and spots all over his body.  She understood, just as she'd been modified for Intelligence, beauty, genetic skill, and psi potential, he'd been modified to thrive.  While she was made unto everything desirable, he was made into everything to survive and serve, though that was left unsaid but never forgotten. His body utilized everything, allowing for almost no waste, what little his body failed to find a use for was excreted through sweat.  He was always so lonely, and sad but you never knew, always laughing, trying to cheer up the rest of the crew.  The first with a laugh or a joke.  Yet his thoughts always circling around the captain.
   Strange how as she thought of these things they seemed to appear in front of her, in full detail, she could almost see things shed never noticed before.  From out of the darkness a new voice was heard, cold, making her skin prickle.   "This takes to long, return her to me, I will finish extracting the information needed", her heart began to race,  blood going cold, she wanted nothing to do with that voice, didn't want it inside her mind.  She began to withdraw her mind into that safe core, reaching out for the others, the captain, Aery, anyone.  "you see brother, you move to quickly, she is not ready, move slowly, the answers come we have waited and slumbered what's a small amount of time, to create emissary?"
   Jandi remembered a trip she once took to the kissing river with friends, it had become a place the young would come to swim and escape the heat, and control of the authority for a short time consuming fermented juices and other illicits. One day they had gone out and a boy she wasn't very much fond of had produced what he called a Queryan blossom. It was truly beautiful, it's azure, cerulean and royal purple petals glowing with it's own inner bio-luminescent light.  She didn't want it destroyed, they were very rare, coming from only one world on the far outer rim.  They were expensive beyond belief to acquire, you could probably by a whole world with the cost of one flower, the world from which they came was in one of the many regions of space owned and governed by those not wanting to abide by imperium law.
    So they had seized large portions of the rim, and whether feudal lord, criminal empire, or corporate realm they protected thier regions of space violently she had heard.  How Jorvan had gotten the blossom was a total mystery, as she moved to stop him he laughingly threw the blossom into the fire, "it's ok, my old man's nearly blind from looking into these things", for a single moment the bloom became so incandescent you could only look away, its odor unlike anything she'd smelled before then the light consumed her as the azure smoke began to rise.  Carrying her mind with it.  For a moment she understood he had stolen the blossom from his father, then all thought had fled from her.  She was a creature of instinct flying over land between sea and sky.  Observing her world as it was, is, and one day will be.  Her mind stretched out beyond her world, out into the deep void, she craved so desperately.  Looking back at her world, she could sense all of the tiny minds like flickering lights, and sought her parents. Finding thier minds pattern easy enough, she could hear their thoughts, draconian syndrome, the bane of psi's for generations.  Tales told of how an out of control dragon had ended the days of old terra in fire and blood.  She knew a little about S. T. S., Synaptic teratogenic syndrome, no one knew what caused it, but it was terrible.  Causing dementia, and physical coma, while the mind remained trapped, useless, and helpless inside the decaying body.  How could they believe she had D. S.  That was impossible, or she thought it was, until that day she overheard her friends, saying those awful things.
   It all came rushing back, the hounds, her fleeing, being sent off to Trinity station that night for her protection.  Then that calming warmth returned, "calm yourself, you are not this dragon you fear, nor we're you ever, we have helped you though.  We've increased your potential a thousand fold", the voice whispered in her mind, "no, no, no, you can't have, oh great maker no, he'll despise me forever", she thought sinking deeper in despair.  "No, sister we've made you better, stronger, no longer an unweeded garden, you are now in full bloo-", she's cut off as a tearing rending thought shatters the aether, "you've ruined me FOREVER, and I'm not your sister".  Then Jandi knew only an alien darkness as it wrapped its tendrils around her body, and mind.

Avalon Chapter Seven "back to the ship"

   Hisses and sparks shot throughout the ship.  Aery increased her clock speed to maximum, shutting down all unneeded systems, keeping only the cryonics active, and the sensors, while monitoring the ships self repair systems.  Even as an A. I. she marveled at the technology which made up her body.  The living genetic components, the nano-technology, and the synergistic components all working together seamlessly repairing and mending damaged systems, her mind moving so rapidly through fractal iterations, going over systems,  seeking solutions, analyzing the telemetry of her array of sensors.  Her biotechnological cyber organic mind capable of psionic abilities, and computing power unheard of for a ship this size, she knew many of the Y class operating systems had thier higher functioning circuitry disabled on most of the vessels her sibling systems where programmed in, even the flagship.  She did find this "distressing", a strange concept, but the captain, once holding the rank of flag officer, had many connections and somehow had acquired her.  Much of the technology of the avalon was banned in the Imperium, her cloaking systems, her holographic integration, her sensorium were based on the most advanced technologies of a thousand worlds, her captain must have many "friends".  She had noted this was important among many sentients, friends seemed to make things happen, which according to Imperium law should not.  Going through her crew records she did register they were all anomalies amongst thier people, much like herself.  Her immense computational capacities allowed her to achieve things impossible, even to systems of her make and model.  Overseeing her own systems going about thier functions, she continued to seek to wake the crew while studying thier anomalous nature. Jojo and Jandi seemed to spend a great deal of time together though they seemed to not fit her calculations.  She was beautiful, wealthy and possessing  great psionic power, while Jojo had come from an agrarian world theistically opposed to everything the core stood for. Yet always they could be found together.  Den reminded her much of herself, the first officer of the ship, coming from an edge world where eugenic modification was needed to survive, he looked very different, only the doctor had an image more strange, while the captain had chosen an occupational path most were forced to take, because there was no other, not individuals with experience and training like hers.

    Doctor Quince, having come from an oceanic planet, had been part of the great diaspora during the ceteacia wars, which nearly destroyed the systems only a teracycle back.   His race having evolved from Cephalopoda his appearance was unique amongst the crew, as was his thought process, yet she had seen his ability to rebuild organics on many occasions.  Having been the recipient of his many appendages herself when her organics had become dysfunctional at a point, she needed to wake him first to safely wake the rest of the crew, yet protocol said wake Jojo first as the head engineer. 

   Observing as her hull, her skin repaired itself, the Star-shine drive, her thermophotovoltaic ablative armor even now generating power, being stored in her ancillary synergistic systems, her particle collider drive powering her main drives, containing the black hole at her core, her faster than light drives, her powerful pulsed shock drive, enable her to create worm holes and jump gate travel, all useless.  Her sensors telling her that even if she could deactivate the cryonics, they would still sleep, her psionic ability connecting her mind to mind with the captain was clearly beyond her reach, as crewman Jandi too was beyond her ability to contact, though she knew she was well within range.  She dared not touch the ship or scan it, if they became aware she operated, they may destroy her, she did not desire to cease functioning, but more so her crew, yes her crew was in danger, she could not allow harm to herself, a dangerous recursive loop kept appearing in her logic strings, what if she found a way to jump away, what of officer Jandi, but the lives in her care must take precedence.  Yet she could not leave another sentient, an unfamiliar term injected itself into her evolving circuits, her friend, behind?  She discarded the loop as irrelevant now, saving it for future analysis, she must acquire control of herself, without acquiring notice of the alien craft, it's unfamiliar design, it's enormous power readings, and telepresence made her.....fearful?   

Avalon chapter Six

Throughout the darkness small flashes of light glimmer and twist, colors blending and spiraling, interweaving, as voices unheard by any ear spoke, minds more ancient than time itself spoke, minds, memories, thoughts, and emotions, alien in ways undreamt of by man.

"decision is needed, a course decided, we know to little", snippets of sentience waltzed through the shadows. "quorum, yes, quorum is needed, we shall decide", voices continue to come together, coalescing into a singular voice of such infinite power. Out of the shadows, colors, scintillating auroras flooded the room. If you could call it a room, the space was so immense, a capital class cruiser could fit, with an armada with it.

Particles began to move, spin and shift, morphing, and turning, twisting, forming and reforming, until the shadow of something began to form, in the center of the vast expanse of the chamber, as shadow became substance, any mind from old terra would know what they saw, an immense circle of crystalline prisms, each like a doorway, surrounding a center "stone", with an object floating above it. A construct fashioned of prisms, each gateway forming a Liminal threshold with ghostly floating imagery within of another time, or places. Images changing and flickering, within of worlds long gone, or yet to be.

Around the central dais a circle of incandescent lights, inside each a cloaked and cowled figures with mirrored curving masks concealing where a face might be, though these beings of incalculable age had long ago left the world where the need for bodies or forms were needed, energy, mind, all they needed, they of the entelechy, a word from a world long dead, meaning the realization of potential, the perfection in form, yet a word still with all it's limitations. The sleepers had long ago moved beyond words or language, knowing to awake and presume emergence, they must partake of a name, though binding themselves to a word seemed barbaric and low, still thier choice to enter the living sleep to await sentience breaching its self imposed liminality and chose awareness, this they believed had occurred, if true, thier time of awakening, emergence, and companionship had arrived.

First they must know, and this ones mind, her self was exceptional, though she did not yet realize her potential, she would, and in her ascension towards entelechy she would tell them of her world, and whether the time had come for within the concilliam some wished to continue the long sleep, minds traveling the edges of time and space while others, wished to heed the watchers, and wake and fulfill the legacy. The founders had left a legacy to the scions, was now the time? All of the enrobed minds looked towards the ever changing object above the dais, it's fractal patterns, and higher dimensions, folding and changing, ever shifting colors and shapes, angles, and curves folding and interweaving, the vinculum pulsed and glowed, flashed and twisted, never fixed, ever evolving, changing as the meta-concert of minds contained within.

Selves enfleshed for the first time in aeons, allowed thought to coalesce again. The many-as-one spoke in thoughts intertwined. "awake, yes, the interrogation, revealing, her minds fragile, no, stronger than she knows, yes, but we press to hard, the captain, yes, the captain, what happened, irrelevant, the verse, yes, yes, the verse, this we need, move forward, learn her world her crew, yes, tell us much, yes, but the secret, NO, always you and knowing, yes, knowledge, irrelevant, yes, yes, yes irrelevant, continue, learn from her, gentle, be gentle, she will show us, we must know, emergence, companionship, is it time, she is our voice, ambassador, yes, yes, duty, job, life-calling, agreement, agreed, agreed, agreed......agreed....", the voices slowly quitted, the last word nearly silent, an echo, of an echo not quite in agreement but only one paying the closest of attention would have felt the slow dissent, or noticed the strange pulse in the vinculum, unseen in aeons.

So long as one mind, now separated, it went unnoticed.

Avalon chapter 5

Sensation seemed to open up before her, within the minds sensorium blossoming, even as she struggled to close her thoughts and memories as she'd been taught, a sense of well-being began immersing her like a warm bath. Knowing she was safe, she allowed her powerful minds barriers to lower, as a voice deep in the center of her thoughts screamed out that something wasn't right, yet the numbing softness rose up, suffusing her mental core, her resistance slowly faltered then simply crumbled.  Suddenly her life's memories began to flow, replaying before her with a clarity better than her own memory. Seeing details she had long forgotten or never known. Watching her childhood, projected, growing up in her governance embassy home, the glittering aurora dome, protecting them from an attack which would never come. Yet hiding the stars she loved and longed to see, denied forever, as the only daughter of a wealthy and powerful family rumored to have held power since the latter days of Old Terra, born on Prime, the capitol world she was being groomed for power.  Then the day of her testing, where they were so proud, scoring so far off the charts they sent her to a special Psion school, joy at the new freedoms, and friendships found at the Academia, where they excepted her for who she was, not as Jandira, daughter of  Xylus and Jendra Ferris, until the day... The point when everything went so terribly wrong in a singular instant. That moment when everything in her privileged life was ruined. The tainted revelation she could tap into others private "peer to peer" thoughts confused her, that was impossible, but hearing her friends conversation in thier psychic gestalt, savaged her, tearing her mind and spirit, flaying her thoughts with its truth to the point of near mental dissolution. Always so proud, so respected, receiving the best of everything, eugenic processing, training, clothes, anything she'd ever wanted. She, the pride of the school, beautiful, wealthy, and influential, in truth reviled by everyone. Her best friends seeing her as just a spoiled rich girl, getting the best because of her parents name, influence, and money.  How could those she'd loved and trusted believe she was just an incredibly stupid, air headed dilettante?  Fleeing the school, as much as herself her mind reeling, rent and torn by the revelations her mind could not shut out, only to be tracked down by HOUNDS sent by her parents, psi's trained to hunt rouge meta's, the shame and humiliation growing. Being dragged back, and forced to expose her inner mind to her families meta-concerted probe. Their discovery of her secret, then banishment, sending her away for her "protection and safety". Exiled to Atlantis 12, the furthest post from the core, at the edge of the rim, she was commissioned as an ambassador. On paper the liaison between rim and core worlds, while acting representative to other races and cultures from the outer regions and the Imperium.  Working on a station where few brains lived, above a world who had no genetic capacity for psionics, leaving her mind her own. Until the day she met a captain looking to hire an ambassador for her crew. She could travel the stars, a job normally illegal for true people of her skill, power and rank because of it's intrinsic dangers. Finely her true dreams of exploring the endless mysteries of space would be realized, as a crew member of the Avalon she found she had little to fear from her psi ability, most of the crew were from worlds without true people, so only the captain and the ship posed a problem, and in the end it was almost a relief to connect to them, neither held any preconceptions or passed judgments, and the captain had her own situation to deal with, well similar but so different, what had happened to make the captain resign, when she had commanded the flag ship of the Imperium, what happened out in the rim to change her so much?  NO! NO! NO! This was wrong, something was terribly, horridly wrong, as thoughts of the captain broke through the sopoforic effects, she would not betray the captain, as waves of despair rose up to engulf her, all her secrets shown, shame at her weakness, powerlessness, unforgivable guilt, irrepressible rage overwhelmed her, as blackness rose up to silence her splintering mind. Quietude all that remained.

Avalon Chronicles Chptr 3

A vast empty space, a sea of unbroken velvet spreads out before the floating ship, a strangely endless void of nothingness where no stars shown, only a ghostly effervescence that would mark this is as no normal region of space only strange energetic fluxes of energy crisscrossing across the darkness, a scintillating opalescent's for as far as the eye can see. As the Avalon floats helplessly circling and spinning in the darkness a strange craft of monstrous size moves closer towards it, a craft like no one had ever seen before, immense, big enough to hold a world in it. Long before it came near the spiraling turning Avalon a beam of brilliant light shot out of the undulating ever-changing vehicle, capturing the Avalon in it's unwavering grasp. Seemingly a small piece of this vessel grew out of the side and broke away moving slowly towards the Avalon, now fixed in space glowing in the incandescent light of the beam from the mother craft. As the smaller vehicle seem to move towards the waiting ship, appendages began to grow from it, affixing itself to the dock of the Avalon like it was some sort of living thing. Within the Avalon, all was silence, the only sound which could be heard was what appeared to be that of dripping water in the background. Slowly with a grinding noise a bay door ground open, Jandi opened her eyes slowly attempting to get a feel for the environment, something seems strange the air itself seemed to have a quality to it, electric almost, similar to a strange combination of cement after rain, and that tingling after a bolt of lightening striking the ground, a smell that just wasn't normal usually. "Aery are you on online?" Only the improbable sound of silence returned to her. She knew vessels were rarely silent and after a jump like that there should be thousands of things going on, the captain should be shouting orders, people should be moving to the action stations and she should be connected to her monitor, she reached out with her mind, sensing an eerie silence she reached out further opening up more, suddenly her mind bristled touching something completely unfamiliar and jerked back, as she began to struggle out of her Cryovac she probed gently the object in her mind, pushing harder she was suddenly thrust out and away in a almost painful manner, nobody she had ever touched had been that strong. Not even the captain. Finally having freed herself from her Cryovac she began looking around. She realized that all of the other members of the crew were locked in their chambers deep in sleep. She began to check the monitors around her seeing if something was amiss. She checked the console by the captain to see if she could bring her online. And she checked the AI to see if there was something she could do there. All the time she was maintaining a slight connection to whatever that was out there. With the rush the door open and standing before her with something should never seen before a creature like nothing she'd experienced on 1000 worlds. It floated there about 6 inches off the floor wrapped up in a black reflective cloak covering its head with a silver curving mask shielding its face. Instantly she reached out with her mind attempting to make a friendly communication but was totally unprepared for the savage power held within that mind. Suddenly darkness began to overcome her, eyes fluttered, then slowly Jandy fell to the floor unconscious. The dark being hovered over to stand near her. A moment of silence as it seemed to reflect upon the collapsed figure. Slowly Jandi lifted into the air, the towering being turned and floated away down the hallways and returned to the ship it had come from, behind it floated Jandy, completely unconscious and helpless. The crew helpless, trapped in Cryovac was alone in space. Jandy unconscious, and headed for the alien spaceship, the only one able to do anything, unknown to everybody was Aery. Who seeking to protect herself from any electromagnetic pulses as they passed through the fractal core had awoken almost instantly and had seen everything coming to her senses she transferred the bulk of her Core personality to a closed system and watched trying to reclaim control of the ship. Switching rapidly through system checks making sure the ship itself was completely online, she sought to find a mechanism which would allow the rest of the crew to awaken, and a thousand other checks and tests in the flashing nanoseconds of awareness. All the while studying the craft and the images she had recorded as the being had entered the ship with every sensor she had available and yet she could find nothing. For the moment they were completely helpless and in the control of this alien power.

Avalon Chpt 2

"Captain, we have a problem it seems there's a micro-black hole ahead of us throwing off radiation quicker than the ship can adjust to it, it's interfering with our particle drive, we're loosing cohesion of the factual core".
   The creepy silence began to emanate from the bridge as the crew started plugging into their terminals sifting through the data in their minds quickly determining there would be no way to break free from the energy which had so quickly ensnared the vessel. In a voice eerily calm in the chaos the captain said, "launch a class XII probe and a beacon warning people away from this region of space, I want everybody through D-con and into cryo in less than three go, now"!

 The sleek black ceremetal ship began to rock wildly as the magnetic emanations from the micro blackhole caused ruptures and tears in the purple lightning rho field, coursing over the ship like a Second skin which allowed the vessel to cross the vast distances of space. As the crew quickly began preparing themselves to leave the bridge and moving towards the doors the silence was broken by the AI interface. "Captain I've discovered a multidimensional fractal Fibonacci spiral code interlaced in the signal, I'm still analyzing it but it seems to be a protocol for sequencing our Rho field resonances, I can use our frequency modulator in our shields and allow us to pass through this field and through the black hole into what appears to be another region of space, shall I do so?"
   As the rest of the crew stops and turns to the captain she says, "I have heard other races possess the technology to utilize black holes to traverse subspace but we don't, will the ship be able to handle the stresses?"
    "I will have to shut down all nonessential systems, and there are a lot of variables that I am unsure of, but from my calculations so far I believe it should be possible, I cannot give you any assurances of where we will arrive afterwards though. It is quite possible we may arrive in a very dangerous area of space".
    "Considering we're being torn apart right now, I can't see it can be much more dangerous go ahead and do it, okay everyone into the Cryo-tanks there isn't a more secure location on the ship". As the crew heads off the bridge and down to decontamination and then prepares to get into the Cryotanks they wonder what kind of region of space they could be exiting into.
    Out on the rim where space was controled by different alien races, mega-corporations, smugglers, slavers, privateers, and the Ultra-wealthy, all tired of the social governance of Imperium law. No one felt particularly secure as the crystalline metal-glass doors sealed around them.
    The captain took one last look as everyone seemed to be securely contained within their embryonic chambers, before she gave the command to seal her own. As the ship was bucked and thrown through space, they moved ever forward towards the black hole which slowly engulfed them in a streaming circle of darkness and space, matter and entropy, until only a glimmering singularity remained.

The Avalon chapter 1

"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.