2.13 – A piece from before | Stuck Station | Stuck Station

2.14 – A voice from before

Mar 03 2011 Published by under Chapter Two

Even to a universe-weary Mek like Trak, the ships inside the Garage were amazing.

Some ships seemed to fade in and out of reality and others appeared to move like living beings.

Some looked as if they were made of ordinary elements, but in physical states that shouldn’t exist in the vacuum of space. He saw a cruiser of liquid water and a pyramidal craft made of what appeared to be fire.

From his visual analysis, there were also some ships that might be composed of priceless nonmanufacturable material -- matter that clouds could not construct.

Any species would have wanted the ship's in the Garage.

So, Trak supposed, many fleets had warred over it, and many fleets had died.

Trak theorized the dead made up the graveyard, and the victors… many of them had entered the Garage.

Not all of them. Some would have exhibited caution.

But some would not.

And that explained the large swathes of war fighters frozen inside the Garage, still in formation, motionless, and surrounded by other vessels like gifts in packing material. Many of them were flying their victory colors.

Trak thought it had been a foolhardy show of military bravado for these commanders and their fleets to enter the Garage as one—instead of sending a probe or a scout ship inside first—but he could not fault them their desire for glory.

Seizing on the warlike sentiments, a darker part of Trak, a piece of him left from before, suddenly made itself known. It wanted the Saeo-4 Warmonger, a monstrous frigate inside the Garage about 350 miles in front of the Afterthought.

Yes, that’s the one, it said, about the dark purple ship bristling with weapons.

A vehicle for conquest, for domination. Take that vessel, that war engine. Take it. And get me a Ren Fruit Cocktail. A good one. But first, take that frigate. Take it. Take it! Take it and rain fire upon someone, anyone, everyone! it screamed.

Disgusted, Trak mentally pushed away the tantalizing commands. The voice was not his own, but it was always with him.

Trak heard it often, sometimes many times an hour. The owner of the voice was long dead.

Trak rechecked the only safeguard that kept him from acting on the voice’s orders and was relieved to find the protective coding still in place.

Just to be sure, he scheduled several diagnostic checks for later that day, assuming Alitma hadn’t destroyed the Afterthought by then.

He returned his focus to Daniel and Rachel-7.

2 responses so far

Leave a Reply