Hunternet: Sector Zero - Prologue

//Network transmission received
//Source Traced: Sineia Union, Dorag’ras Nebula
//Warning: Data corrupted
//Warning: Message has Class 10 Priority
//E5 Protocol Established: Transmission Forwarded to Hunternet
//Translation Software Online: Translating...
//Begin message
THEY... COMING THEY ARE... NOT...FAL.... THERE IS..... RUN.....RUN.... DO NOT.... SPACE....UNIO.....DESTR....THE....COME....US....
//End message

        

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“The most dangerous enemy is the one that you are most ignorant to.”

- Anonymous 831

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9913 Galactic Standard Time

Earth Federation Warship Zero

Currently under Hunternet Charter: Investigation of Sineia Union

Current Location: Dorag’ras Nebula Outskirts

In the distance, the last scout jumps into the beyond. The subspace distortions from its hyper compress drive ripples the backdrop of the Dorag’ras Nebula like a stone thrown into a mirror smooth lake. For thousands of kilometers, the seemingly circular shape expands, then immediately closes back into real space.

On the Zero’s bridge, the crew takes final checks.

“Scout Five, call sign Viper, confirmed in subspace.” Lieutenant Jal reports from her flight ops console. “Ikara is exiting in five minutes confirm?”

“Exit in five minutes confirm.” Ensign Kara replies.

“Confirmed.” Jal smiles as she locks in the report. “Flight launch is complete.”

The bridge relaxes, the fifteen minute downtime between the star systems of the nebula allowing for just enough breathing room for talk to emerge.

Executive Officer Jordas Lin breaks the silence first. “So any of you take the Nebula Navigation course at the academy?”

“I did.” Ensign Kara, the navigational officer quickly answers.

“Not as a requirement!” Lin specifies as the bridge laughs.

Kara looks back after a dozen other conversations fail to come into fruition. “Three trimesters of theoretical math and two of spatial navigation as a prerequisite for that shit. Doubt anyone would try it unless you need the grad credits.”

“Well it can’t be that hard.” Jai scoffs. “I co-operated a Hunternet Fighter Operation in Orion a few years back and from what I could tell, it was a breeze. In fact, the flight director was a Sineian.”

The Operations Officer, Lieutenant Commander Jameson, pulls his glasses up. “I mean Sineians are born in the thick of this Nebula. They practically learn Nebulous Navigation in whatever Elementary School they have. So you were probably just piggy backing on his expertise.”

“They learn through imprinting you know.” Commander Lin adds to Jameson’s statement. “Kinda like how some amphibians on earth do it to their offspring.”

Jameson turns to Jai. “Hey if you still have his Hunternet Address could you ask for some star charts of this area?”

Kara coughs. “Yeah fat fucking chance of that ever happening. If anything Sineians are known for being the most secretive government that’s part of Hunternet. I wouldn’t be surprised if this just was a running dark exercise for the entire Union.”

“Possible.” Lin points. “Though it’s not a loss for us to investigate under charter. We get points towards the Earth Federation as a possible Hunternet entity and impress the Sineians as good intelligencers.”

The bridge thinks about the implications for a moment.

Over the eons of Hunternet’s existence, the usual gap needed for a civilization’s admission was just under a single millennia of human time. Though, after humanity’s great uplifting at the hands of Hunternet, the progress the Earth Federation had made in just three hundred years was startlingly quick.

“And gather some intel on Sineia without arising suspicion.” Lin carefully coughs.

“Can’t Sineians camouflage or something?” Jal asks.

Lin shakes his head. “They have photosensitive outer skin if that’s what you mean.”

“They have us beat at that right? I mean, what makes a better field agent than one that can camouflage and has twelve arms.”

“Appentages.” Lin corrects. “If you call them arms they get pissed as hell.”

The bridge laughs. Kara looks at the Executive Officer’s light frame. “Man, the Office of Naval Affairs really put you through the species meat grinder for this mission didn’t they?”

“They had to.” Commander Lin sits back, trying not to think of a word in the clicks and clacks of High Sineian vocabulary. “One wrong syllable through the unitrans and they might think we’re here to nuke planets rather than as a response team.”

“To be fair,” Jara interrupts. “All the Sineians I’ve met have spoken almost perfect english.”

Lin looks at her like she just said all humans come from the moon. “That’s because they’ve been through their species’ own foreign species meat grinders.”

She throws her hands up above her head. “I dunno, I’m just saying…”

“Scout One, Callsign Ikara entering Koari’ki’na system.” Jai reports suddenly.

The bridge returns to total and orderly operations.

Data flows through the central view screen, overlayed across the displayed live footage of the Dorag’ras Nebula.

“Mass spectrometer scans…are green.” Lieutenant Commander Jameson furrows his eyes as he spots a few inconsistencies in the data. “Wait.”

Commander Lin looks to the Operations station. “Is there something wrong?”

Lieutenant Commander Jameson lets the information speak as he pulls it up onto the airscreen at the center of the bridge. “The star system is good until the second planet, but there’s a massive gravity anomaly here.”

On the airscreen a border is drawn. A massive area of space is blocked out by a red sphere, encompassing the primary world of the system as well as its singular gas giant in proximity.

“There is no mass in this area, we should be reading two planets, interstellar emissions, and solar particulate. But there’s nothing there.”

“Ikara this is Zero Control do you read?”

Through married quantum particles the voice of the pilot is filled with distortion. “I read.”

“Can we get a visual of the area of space 61 degrees by 17.”

“Copy.”

The scout craft’s thrusters burn as it makes a maneuver towards the space in question, nose rising towards the anomalous area.

There was a sheer section of black in the distance, an oppressive screen that seemed to utterly consume space.

“No no.” Jameson shakes his head. “If there’s nothing there then we’d be seeing stars. Photons should be coming through the null mass area.”

Captain Foulke speaks for the first time in an hour, his deep voice in a calm, focused stature. “Is there an explanation for this?”

“It’s been… eight days since the last transmission from the Union. By now light should’ve been filtered through if there was nothing here.”

Commander Lin stops them. “We’re basing all this on the concept that there is nothing in that area of space. Is that even possible?”

Jai supplies the information. “I’ve heard of a few Hunter Groups prototyping negative mass cannons, but nothing on null space technology.”

The bridge takes a minute to think.

 “Scout Two arriving in Kia’ty System.”

Jameson displays the information, a similar story playing out upon the air screen as the bridge watches.

“I am open to any theories.” Captain Foulke says.

The bridge stares back at him blankly.

They all watch as the scouts report in, their first and other scout bound systems all sharing the same traits.

No communications.

No planets.

Nothing.

“I have a bad feeling about this.” Commander Lin comments.

On the flight control panel; Scout One’s information feed cuts.

Jai brings the headset to her ears. “Ikara, this is Zero Control we’ve lost your data feed, copy?”

Interstellar static is the only response.

“Ikara, this is Zero Control, do you copy.”

Nothing.

The Captain stands. “All outbound units this is Captain Foulke, return to Zero immediately: priority one order.”

All scouts give the acknowledgement light.

Commander Lin turns. “Sir, what is going on?!”

“Without disclosing classified data, I am not willing to risk this vessel any further. As of this moment, we are returning to FOB Akroma.” He points to Kara. “Spool up the drive Ensign.”

Jai looks up. “What about Scout One sir?”

Foulke grimly looks at his feet. “We give them thirty minutes to return as per the Ross Protocol. Then we return to FOB Akroma.”

Objections are raised across the bridge, the concept of leaving a pilot behind utterly insane.

“But sir…”

“That is an order.” He stops his Executive Officer. “I am holding classified information that pertains to the Sineia Union’s current status. We need to leave. Now!”

Loyalty, beyond that of explanation, destroys thought. The men and women of the Zero follow orders, and they do as they’re told.

Scout craft return one by one, docking with the scout cruiser as eyes wait for Scout One to return.

Thirty five minutes pass.

The mass watches the metal creature as its progeny return, growing closer as its colossal shape moves towards its point of attraction.

The strange design was completely unlike anything it had ever seen, minus the small craft it had just added to its fold.

In its time between worlds and stars, galaxies and universes, such craft was unique.

Perfect.

The invisible thing moves closer as the signals grow stronger, tendrils of nothing slowly surrounding the strange construction, hungering for whatever was within its alloy casing.

They were trying to escape of course, they always did.

But nothing really could.

The tendrils grasped onto the fragile hull of the craft, pulling the pressurized can of metal and armor into its center mass.

Weapons fire erupts towards the nothingness, tearing holes into aether that were easily converted into extra materials. Half the vessel in its grasp crash separates as space distorts around it, the mass sending another tendril to contain the situation before it could escape.

A race against time as black shoots off towards the final segment of reality.

Subspace distorts, and the tendril a mere kilometer from the hull is slapped away by the distortions of spacetime.

The frontal segment of the Zero crashes into subspace, the sacrifice of crew and construct pushing it forth into the unknown.

The mass pauses as it incorporates the segmented vessel to its body, realizing that it had let a large portion of future analytical information escape into the field of space.

Nothing to be bothered about.

In this galaxy filled to the brim of radio energy, it was already faced with the dilemma of too many choices, so much so that it had to take an indeterminate amount of time to choose its next target.

The nothingness moved towards that distant star.

Black as pitch on a crusade of unknown purpose and ultimate destruction.

//Communications Established

//Hunternet

//EL3 Threat Identified

//Awaiting return...

//…

//Return received