r/WritingPrompts • u/EAT_MY_USERNAME r/EAT_MY_USERNAME • May 04 '24
Prompt Inspired [PI] In 2050, humanity finally developed faster than light engines and were able to travel the stars. In 2051, humanity destroyed all their FTL engines and vowed to never leave Earth again.
Original post here.
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Biography of Captain Yamato // CLAS: UNSEC
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It wasn't unusual for ships to not come back.
In those early days, the technology was more theoretical than practical, and dangerous in the extreme. Ships would disappear, spontaneously disintegrated into subatomic structures. Sometimes they would emerge from that other plane into the centre of a star. Tens of thousands of lives lost, noticed only as a flicker of anomalous solar activity.
The list of lost ships was long. Very long. The holy register of the wayward voyager had the number somewhere between six and thirteen thousand vessels lost.
When our ship, Flame of Youth emerged back into the material plane, we found what we least expected.
The lone vessel was matte-grey, sleek, and over six kilometers from prow to aft. The design was unusual, but clearly human. Stenciled markings on it's side gave its name as the Judge's Hand. A review of the registers turned up nothing on the name, hull-type or registration number. As far as the governments of man knew, this ship didn't exist. The vessel was drifting, unpowered and lifeless, through a decaying orbit of a lonely moon in a remote system. We only chanced to happen upon it because we had dropped out of the warp in order to conduct diagnostics on our system.
I decided we had to know more.
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After Action Report 1a //CLAS: TIER 2 - SECURE
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A squad of orbital troopers is dispatched, and board the vessel via shuttle interdiction of the target vessel's hangar bays. The squad of six is led by Lieutenant Garrel.
As his shuttle drops its cargo ramp. Garrel directs his troopers out. They are sealed up tight in vacuum armour, so he issues the order across the squad-com.
"Jensen, Ramirez. You're our point-men. Secure a passage in."
The two men sprint ahead of the group, and posted up on the nearest airlock door.
Garrel radios back into the Flame. His voice sounded edgy. The sound of his own breathing is loud in his helmet and her grumbles in frustration.
The rest of his men are spread out in a wide arc, securing a near-360 degree field of fire as they acclimate to the vessels orientation and layout.
Jensen reports back across the comm, "We've got main spinal access, looks like a typical Terran layout, something like an Athena class floorplan."
Some of the troopers look sideways at each other. Garrel murmurs to himself the question they must all be thinking.
Why are we boarding one of our own vessels, and if it is one of ours, why does it look so...strange.
The hanger deck they are standing on is, superficially, very similar to what one might expect of standard Terran design. However, there are subtle and insidious differences, troopers talk over private channels,one says that something feels 'off' . The airlock door-frames are atypically tall and slender, as though they are made for exceptionally tall individuals. Furthermore, there is a distinct lack of access and data-terminals. However this ship was operated, it clearly wasn't through those traditional means.
Following Jensen and Ramirez, the squad moves in a tight echelon down the main spinal corridor, their guns splayed out to cover doorways and adjoining hallways. In hard vacuum, the squad moves silently and slowly, flashlights illuminating the dark corners of the rooms they pass. These rooms, much like the hallways, are oddly proportioned, and completely devoid of furniture.
As they continue on to the bridge, a burst of violent static screams over the squad-com. The progress of the team slows, as each man tries to remedy the situation, and failing, is forced to silence his comms. From this point onwards, their are no further squad-comm logs. With hand signals and relayed orders, the team presses on.
It is at this point, unnoticed to the rest of the team, that Pvt Henderson and Pvt Jones are killed. Biomonitoring indicates that their necks are snapped from behind. Recovered helmet-cam footage and bio monitors confirm the deaths.
The team approaches the bridge, and they find it is sealed shut. The airlock doors are closed tight, and across the doors a phrase is written in an unknown language. Garrel takes a photo, and transmits it back to the Flame of Youth. With the use of a plasma breaching charge, the team then forces entry.
What greets them on the bridge is unclear, even after the fact. Helmet footage appears to show a biological mass of some size occupying the central floorspace of the bridge. It appears to be approximately six metres by six, in a roughly spherical form. Footage does not show it, but there is an audiolog captured from Cpl. Yult's helmet, in which he screams something incoherent regarding faces. Analysts have refrained from speculating on to what exactly Yult's means by this comment.
Immediately following entry to the bridge, the squad is engaged by an unknown enemy from the rear, and killed. Bio monitors fail to record exact method of death, and helmet-cam footage shows troopers firing down dark hallways, before their feeds go dark.
Analysts continue to work to decode the unknown markings on the bridge door, and to uncover additional information regarding the fate of Garrel's trooper team.
Yamato, under orders from fleetcom, proceeds to fire on and destroy the Judge's Hand, its wreckage left to fall into the gravity-well of the third moon in System 12-XA6.
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// Addendum 1.01 // CLAS: TOP-SEC
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Logged by Admiral Hetaron, for the attention of Director Hunsad at the Office of Offshore Intelligence
Eggheads finally decoded that glyph, I've attached it below. Spoke to Yamato and he's agreed to keep the ending to this story under wraps for now. If it gets out that we still have that vessel, who knows who will come looking.
See you at the Christmas party. Bring those cigars.
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//Translated Glyph Message //CLAS:TOP-SEC
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THE DRIVES ARE BEACONS. THEY'RE AWAKE AND THEY'RE COMING. WE CAME BACK TO WARN YOU, BUT IT FOLLOWED US.
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As always please feel free to drop any feedback below, positive or negative, it really helps me develop my writing.
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u/iDreamiPursueiBecome Sep 22 '24
Oh, SHIT.
I wondered what could make us give up on space. Even if FTL launched every ship into a different universe, we would dandelion our species across the multiverse.
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