The Transcended

[Corsair]

Where am I? Wh.. Oh, right..Beaumont Station. I was brought here by Ed Grisby, a Grizzly captain who found me floating in those horrible clouds. The same kind of clouds that were in the other universe. But this person did not want to hurt. He wanted to help. He wanted me to write a journal- to make sense of my rambling.

I- I'll start from the beginning. In the year four-hundred ten, I set out for the Omegas in my newly purchased Griffin, hoping to strike treasure, or perhaps have system named after me. I went further than the warning signs said I should go. I found a jump hole that wasn't yet phased aligned, but as I approached, the white core dispersed and cleared. Scans showed it as aligned, and the probe I sent through came out clear.

I jumped through. It was terrible. Dark, blood-red clouds surrounded me. Not at all like the probe said. Ionic lightning flashed all around. It lanced through my right wing. My blood began to rise, I began to breathe harder. The nebula closed in on me, and I saw shapes in the red soup. They were red, like the nebula. Red with black. I could see them only barely- irregular, sharp shapes.

Something hit me from the side. Hard. I slammed my head against the cockpit wall so hard that I could feel my skull fracture inside of my helmet. My nose began bleeding profusely, and I began to drown in my helmet. I had to wrestle it off, just as one of them hit me from below. I could hear the screech of metal, and when I looked in the cargo bay camera, I could see a huge red-black spike invading my ship, who was thrusting in reverse to dislodge itself.

This went on, the ships ramming and puncturing my ship, until they all stopped at once. I watched in horror as a large ship loomed in the fog. I could see, only barely, as it began to open. It's surface writhed. The shadow moved closer to me. When one landed on my cockpit window, I could see it.

Six legs, leading into a body. The entire body was covered by a black metal that glistened. Three red eyes adorned it's face, gleaming black fangs opened and closed, as it caught small pieces of space debris- and consumed them. It reared back a hooked arm, and smashed it through the front of my ship. I screamed into the vacuum as it hauled me into open space.

I tried to do everything they taught me to do if I was exposed to open space. Close my eyes and mouth, and wait for rescue. I closed my eyes tight, but I didn't need to see what they were doing. They were dragging me back towards the large ship, and I felt a sharp, terrible pain in my chest, just below my throat. It dug deeper, and then down. They were cutting me open in space.

Everything was sucked out. Every single one of my organs were sucked into space. The creature holding me was pinching my spine so that it stayed where it was. I was fading fast, glad for the sudden reprieve from pain.

But I didn't die. I was brought onto their ship and immediately attached to their apparatus. They made me breathe something. How they interfaced with human anatomy- I can't answer. They could survive- and thrive in open space.

I was able to watch as they sawed into my spine, to shorten it. When they brought out a machine that bore their inherent red and black color scheme, I knew what they were doing. A multi-pronged cord was jammed into my sawn-off brain stem. The other end was inserted into the device. The cord retracted into the red and black machine, dragging my head with it. They wrapped my skin around it, and it.. Expanded. It filled my empty skin with metal bone, constructed it's own ligaments and muscle.

They opened a vent above- directly to open space. I was surprised to find that nothing happened. The ship had no atmosphere. I had no lungs telling me to breathe now. The red and black creatures grabbed me, and threw me into open space. My body hung limp and unresponsive.

To my surprise, my ship was waiting to catch me. I sailed through the broken visor and- kept going. The creatures had swiftly gutted my ship. A computer mainframe stood in the center. Three large spikes stood on the far end. A creature grabbed me- and- my nervous system was still operational, jammed my back onto the spikes. I could feel them ratcheting into ports in my back. But it was then that my eyes opened. I was now the ship.

Whatever they had programmed into me activated instantly. I knew how to work my ship, I could feel it's several wounds inflicted by the red and black creatures. I could also see them. See what they were. Where I was.

I was in a universe, several universes away from the universe Sirius resides in. Somehow, a jump hole had de-stabilized while I was in-transit, and instead of collapsing on me, flung me into deep space. This entire universe was red. The species I will refer to from now on as Vashgans were constantly warring. With their own species and others. Everything that they saw, they attacked. They are also incredibly intelligent. They could see where I had come from, and sent me back to my universe.

This was not an act of kindness. They sent me- now my ship, back to Sirius. I am in constant agony. People are frightened of me. My mangled, airless ship, emitting a malevolent energy. I am constantly moving. The Junkers have ejected me from their base.

The Vashgans left me some.. Perks, I suppose. I don't know if they intended for me to have them or not. I cannot use nanobots, it would be like having small insects crawl around inside a human- but I possess an inane immune system. My body, my ship, heals itself. The scars left by the red ones will never heal. But internal functions replenish themselves. And I seem to continue indefinitely. No fuel consumption. The gas fires continue still, another constant torment. I assume the Vashgans implemented that on purpose.

I now wander. I don't know what I'll find in the four hundred years since I've been gone. I guess .. I'll just have to wait and see.

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