The fear in my assistants eyes increased as we closed in on the location where the Cayman jumphole was supposed to be. It appeared on our radar shortly after.
The Cayman system, why do you want to go there you may ask. There are only ghosts in this system. The Reapers disappeared decades ago. Nobody really knows what happened to them. Rumors have it that they went back to Omircron Alpha, others speculate that they had been assimilated by the Nomads. We found articles declaring that they were in an unstable mental state, which drove them to a mass suicide. But nothing concrete.
All this speculations became obsolete when our long distance scanners picked up ships with Reaper call signs in Omega 49. A Junker reported that he had contact with three ships claiming to be Reapers with a Freelancer IFF in the same system. He claimed that they had questioned him in regards to his cloaking device and what he's using it for, what kind of weapons he would be transporting to the Omegas and Omicrons and more. All this sounded just like their credo: to stabilize the skewed and hostile state of the Omicron and Omega sectors.
We entered the jumphole. A shiver ran through my body once we had materialized on the other side. A orange gloom filled the cockpit. It felt as we had entered a new universe. Everything seemed to have changed. My assistant pulled up the coordinates we had found in the archives on screen and punched in the numbers.
The force of the engaging cruise engines pulled us back into our seats. I was surprised that we made it this far in our Civilian Shuttle.
[Note to myself, ask for a better ship!]
The orange colors cascaded across the main cockpit windows. The knot in my assistant's throat had loosened as she announced that it would take us a while to reach the destination and that she would get us something to drink.
We didn't talk much and began to relax. I was about to close my eyes as the blury outline of a huge installation manifested itself in front of us. My assistant switched to the 'Solars' display, which identified it as 'Manatum Repair Station'.
The touch of my finger and the station was selected. Another touch and the auto-dock sequence was initiated. A robotic voice confirmed the docking request. We looked at each other, realizing that we were both surprised.
The hangar doors closed and a green light indicated that we were cleared to disembark. The whole hangar was empty there was no movement but the readings showed active life support levels above what's needed for humans.
I nodded and my assistant hesitated for a second but then opened the ships hatch. We put on the head sets, which had a little screen attached to them displaying materials and distances of objects in sight.
We followed a corridor leading away from the hangar. There were no people, nothing moved, everything seemed to be dead. The thing we noticed though was that it was clean, as if someone had recently polished everything. There was little rust visible on the metal plates along the corridor and no dirt or even dust on the floor panels. The dim sometimes flickering lights contributed to he ghastly feeling creeping up inside me. We reached a T like intersection and as we stepped into it my assistant screamed pointing to her right. I saw a shadow disappearing in the distance.
My assistant became ecstatic. The echo of her second scream subsided after she had turned around. Then she ran. I didn't know that she could be that fast and had a hard time catching up with her. We entered the ship, her hand slammed on the emergency close button and the next thing I knew was her sitting in the pilots seat and the ship undocking from the station.
She made it clear that we would be leaving this system in a breathless voice. I lost my balance as the cruise engines came online and the ship pulled away from under me slamming me into the back wall and finally landing on my butt.
I began yelling at her, but she totally ignored me until we had put a significant distance between us and the station.
There is somebody on that station and given the reports we received it seems to be that the Reapers are back. But I'd like to have prove before we acknowledge their existence.
You all have a great day. PH signing off from Gran Canaria.
