Chapter One: Deep Space Music

[Akirapryde]

It was one thing to avoid detection from the larger Jumpship, but for our hero pilot avoiding the massive Jumpship that appeared nearly on top of his small shuttle was a completely different story. It took plenty of skill to slipped the shuttle in to an inverted dive under and around the Jumpship. Once the shuttle was safe within its maneuver, Jake was able to breathe a sigh of relief. It was only then that he noticed his targeting radar wasn’t detecting the massive ship just above the shuttle. He could see the ship and his magnetic sensors told him that the ship was there, but according to the radar, it simply wasn’t there.

Jake shifted his eyes up and down the ship as if to search the area for himself. Jake’s mind told him that the ship was there. He could see it plain as day. However, the radar didn’t detect anything around him. Nothing, not his own dropship or the Kellington. As the shuttle moved further under the Jumpship, a lone dropship attached to the Comstar ship came in to view. The ship was Fortress Class combat dropship. Clearly modified to be larger than a standard Fortress, Jake could see a pair of Sub-Capital Cannons near the nose of the massive dropship. It was an unusual pairing for Comstar, but not unheard of. Dodging a group of antennas coming from the Jumpship, Jake was able to see the name of the dropship. It was called the “Prince of Wales”.

As Jake continued his closer than desired pass on the Comstar ships, he saw a partially open hanger door on the Jumpship. The doors were in a strange position, but it allowed Jake to see in to the hanger. There were ground crews that were clearly visible to Jake’s eyes. He could make out their white Comstar uniforms and even tell their hair color at this range. As the Mark VII shuttle passed, Jake searched the hanger and found it strange that the ground crew seemed to be frozen in place. He could see one of them in midair as if leaping from a small nearby tug. The crewmember didn’t fall or floated away. He just hung there in the air as if frozen in time. There seemed to be an expression of urgency on their faces. A set of red lights glowed but didn’t flash across the hanger.

It was the first warning that something was wrong, then it was gone! Just as Jake was looking at the scene in the Comstar Hanger, the Comstar Jumpship seemed to pull away from the shuttle. It appeared to move as if an angry child snatched the ship away from the shuttle. There were violent jolts and shutters as the ship started to move further away. Suddenly it became clear that the ship was shrinking away towards the Kellington or where the Kellington used to be. As the Comstar Jumpship vanished in to nothing, Jake saw that everything else around the shuttle was also gone. The Kellington, the Sckicksal, the escape pods, the Comstar Jumpship, everything around the shuttle were GONE!

Before Jake could even think about the situation, the Mark VII shuttered violently without warning. The shuttle tumbled in the same direction that the Comstar ship had moved. The shuttle shuttered with so violence that there were sounds of groaning and metal twisting. Jake was slammed back against his seat with so much force that his hands slipped from the controls. The shuttle tumbled and shuttered as if it was falling from the sky. Jake could feel the changes of force upon his body.

As if the force upon Jake’s body and the confusion wasn’t enough, the flight deck of the shuttle became flooded with swirling cascade of lights and shadows. The lights and shadows danced across the cockpit viewing windows of the shuttle nearly blinding Jake. Through the lights and shadows, Jake was able to make out the massive form of the Comstar Jumpship near by the shuttle. It was the only thing Jake could zero his vision on through the lights and shadows.

To confuse the situation, the atmosphere flight indicators confirmed that the ship was falling. The Magnetic compass, the artificial horizon, and the heading indicator all spun and flipped around reflecting that the shuttle was falling from the sky. But it was impossible as this was deep space. Jake searched for some measure of sense from his flight instruments, but found none.

Instead, sparks erupted across the flight control panel as the shuttle let out a deep groan. The force pulling at Jake was so much that it took nearly all of his effort just to move his hands back to the flight controls. His training kicked in and he trusted his instincts. Hs craft was falling and he had to bring the ship under control if he was to save the shuttle and its occupants.

Taking breaths were hard as he struggled with the controls. It felt like a twenty ton mech standing on his chest. Jake’s head was forced back against the headrest and the rush of blood nearly caused him to black out. It was the kind of G’s that no pilot ever wanted to experience in any given situation, let alone like this one. But Jake was focused, he had to bring the craft under control.

Despite the thoughts running through his mind, he couldn’t help but wonder if this was the result of a misjump. Jake had known about them in training, but luckily had never experienced one before. He knew that they were the source of nightmares to space pilots. While misjumps are typically destructive to the ship they could easily turn deadly in a blink of an eye. This had to be a misjump, but he never heard of any kind of misjump with this level of radius.

The craft started to fill like it was slowly getting under control. While he could feel the pressure lifting off his chest a bit, it was still so very hard to breathe. His Flight Instruments started to reflect what his body was telling him. The fall was slowly coming under control. Jake scanned his instruments and paused at his flight speed indicator. His eyes blinked in disbelief as he starred at it. According to the airspeed indicator the shuttle was traveling at 99999.99 knots. Jake knew that this couldn’t be correct as the shuttle would be traveling nearly 115,100 miles per hour! Or at least that was the maximum reading the indicator could show.

The shuttle was going through stresses it was never designed to handle, and it was giving warnings to this fact. A slam against the main window of the cockpit brought Jake’s attention back up again. A Comstar crew member slammed in to the front windows of the Mark VII. There was terror across her face as she looked right in to Jake’s eyes. She couldn’t have been beyond her mid-twenties. Jake watched as the woman seemed to age right before his eyes. She continued to age in seconds as her body grew older till her face softened with death. But the aging didn’t stop there. Her body seemed to decay away in to nothing before Jake’s eyes.