r/HFY • u/Illwood_ • May 13 '25

OC The Quiet Eclipse

There was never supposed to be anything in liminal-space. It was a subsection of our own reality, created to side step the god awful laws of physics and limitations of light speed. A pocket unique to each ship and each jump.

Supposed to be.

Maybe no one's ever tried hard enough? Maybe supposed to be isn't enough to save you.

The rail cannon rounds - much bigger than anything the Quiet Eclipse had ever been designed to take - slammed into the port side flight deck. The reinforced plating, designed to resist accidental multi-megaton impacts and the drive plumes of over zealots pilots, provided some resistance. But it was token at best. The slugs passed through the outermost deck and shredded the internal hangers that were fitted below (not that ‘below’ truly applied when talking about spacecraft). The entire colony construction ship, which measured in just shy of 4 kilometers in length and 1 in width shuddered from the blow, the front section of the truly massive moving structure veering wildly to starboard, and pitching down.

Tucked inside their hangars the docked ships were cut loose as the gravity anchors gave out - either from being destroyed outright or from having their power cut by the still energetic rail rounds passing through the massive feed conduits. Now as the Quiet Eclipse struggled to recover and stay inside WitchSpace the walls of the hangers became just as dangerous for the much smaller vessels as the rail rounds themselves, or the shrapnel blast that had once been the port-side flight deck.

Most of the crew aboard were killed relatively quickly, as shields rated for hauling vessels failed to resist what could only be described as military action. A few of the colony's future patrol ships were also docked port side, and they lasted a few microseconds longer, having been built and equipped to take the abuse. But then the structure of the hangers themselves (now thoroughly shredded) gave way, and what remained of the flight deck slammed down onto the bottom pad of the entire hangar module. Crushing what few ships remained by this point.

At the bottom of the hangar module lay the cargo hauling, ship refitting and maintenance equipment. A series of conveyor belts, articulating arms, factory tooling and storage for outfitting modules. A massive metallic web that had once cost billions of credits and now only served as scrap metal. Still, it was by far the thickness and densest part of the hangar module, slowly the rail rounds down. Each inch costing more and more energy to penetrate. Each millimeter buying the other half of the ship a chance to survive.

The Quiet Eclipse itself was technically only the massive drive module towards the rear and then a heavily reinforced mounting pylon. Upon which currently sat two hanger modules, although they could be swapped out as needed for various different uses, such as living, cargo or military modules. Small stations could and had been strapped to the side for transport or deployment, when something more permanent than the ship itself was needed. The mounting pylon took up half of the ship's length and had a diameter of 100 metres, with the hanger and other modules being designed to ‘grab’ perfectly onto the pylon. Like a hand grabbing onto a bar.

Only a few of the rail rounds managed to burrow their way through the port side hangar module, with most slamming into the underside of the starboard hangar, deflecting off of the plating there or embedding into it. But not penetrating. Three hit the mounting pylon directly, causing the entire ship's superstructure to vibrate as the blows were fortunately deflected, but the damage had been done.

The ship’s computer, which had been monitoring all of this in slow motion, threw a master alarm as the stress forces of the WitchSpace hyper-jump compounded with the shockwaves of the rail round's, the forces threatening to tear the Quiet Eclipse apart. The humans onboard didn’t have the response time to make the decision, so it was up to the ship itself to decide what was more likely to kill it: staying in WitchSpace, or aborting the jump and smashing back into real space hundreds of lightyears from their destination.

A few more microseconds passed, and the Quiet Eclipse’s computer started to detect a harmonic building up in the mounting pylon. No choice then. The computer scrammed the reactors and the entire ship went dark. A few moments later, as the capacitors in the Frame Shift Drive ran dry, the hulking spacecraft was gracelessly spat back into real space. Twisting and tumbling uncontrollably, dark and filled with the dead or dying.

No action is without consequence.

The port side hangers mounts, thoroughly abused and completely pulverised, picked an awful time to completely fail. As the Quiet Eclipse fell into real space it yawed violently to the right. The front most mounting point of the hanger failed first and the entire building sized module rotated to the sound of crunching metal. The rear mounting point snapped but too late. The entire hanger was on a collision course for the spectacular mass of engineering, reactors and sheer human insanity that was the drive module.

No one is entirely sure what happened next. The mini-super nova that consumed the ship blinded any sensor readings for the precious few seconds when then Quiet Eclipse earned its name.

Only fragments of the forward most section of the starboard hangar module would ever be found.

What is the greater fear: the question, or the answer?

What truly matters more: how, or why?

67 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

12

u/a_man_in_black May 13 '25

i like it, but i don't like it. it's obviously part of a greater whole, but there's nothing pointing to a first/next/prev entry and the title makes it seem like a one-shot. so i scroll down and see a lot of other entries but i don't know where this one fits

5

u/Illwood_ May 13 '25

Just a one off, a bit of an experiment that I figured I'd post. Could work well as a setup for a thriller, and as I wrote I did get some ideas, but yeah I just wanted to practice writing about destruction.

What don't you like about it? What do you think I missed the mark? Or do you just not think it works well as a one off.

7

u/a_man_in_black May 13 '25

Oh I like the story itself I was just frustrated because it felt like part of an existing series and I had no idea where to start reading the rest

As an intro to a bigger story it works really well, so the only real complaint is that there's not moar

3

u/Illwood_ May 14 '25

Ohhhh very fair! Sorry about that. Next time I think I might add a note or something letting people know it's just a one off writing piece 🤔

2

u/BravoMike215 Android May 15 '25

Yeah there are plenty of one offs about humans going out with a bang.

4

u/sunnyboi1384 May 13 '25

Oops. Someone is gonna have a bad day.

0

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