Encheta Shimoa and the BattleCruiser Vagrant

[Encheta]

As the Vagrant idled forwards, the deep green mist of the nebula slowly thinned, until vast open space could be seen once more. One by one with a soft beep, each of the ship’s more sensitive scanners came back online, no longer interfered by the cloud’s electromagnetism, heat and gamma radiation. In the distance, two planets, each orbited by a single moon, revolved around their resident star and could be easily seen. While in the background, the dark shadow of a medium sized dust cloud was barely visible.

Once again Encheta queried the time on his cranial persocom. It had taken them longer than expected – just over fourteen hours - to navigate out of the nebula cloud. Fortunately though, the Vagrant’s gravitonic scanners (one of the few able to function within the nebula) had not detected any fluctuations near the jump hole, indicating that the Keeper vessel had yet to come through to give chase. During this time much of the crew were also able to get some much needed sleep, blissfully uninterrupted by the cold words of a Keeper’s voice. He himself however did not, as his upsetting gut feelings stubbornly refused to go away.

Encheta turned to Carlos, the Scanners Op, who was ready and waiting for a new set of orders.
“Alright, you know the drill. Conduct a general system scan and attempt to pinpoint any gravitational anomalies. Afterwards, relay the information you find to the main holodisplay.”
“Yes Sir!”

Once again, the Scanner Op’s hands moved like wildfire, and the HUD before him sped with hundreds upon hundreds of rows of numbers. Encheta was impressed at the intense speed at which Carlos could process the information before him. For Encheta, the text was moving so fast he couldn’t read it, let alone understand it.

As he was wondering whether Carlos also had a persocom specially programmed to enhance data management, an unfamiliar beep came from the Scanner Op’s station. The officer faltered, confused at the unexpected figures before him, and soon stopped typing altogether. Not believing what he was seeing, Carlos cleared his screen and began to repeat his initial scans again. Within minutes, the same, unfamiliar beep sounded, and the same unexpected information appeared on his screen.

“Uh, Sir. From what I’m getting from my IR scans here, it appears that the orange planet on the far side of this system is inhabited.”
“What?” burst Zac from the other side of the bridge.
“If that’s the case, we should be able to find out where we are with our current Nav charts!”

Without consent, Zac immediately commenced a search on his own display, and Encheta’s heart stopped. Only now did it finally hit him – there were only two possible places where they could possibly be.

Encheta opened his mouth to order Zac to stop, but it was already too late. The HUD ceased flickering, displaying only one result on its final display. Within seconds Zacs face changed from hopefull glee to absolute terror.

“Christ… We’re in Omicron Alpha…”

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