Infinitum super-duper-mega-update 7/16/17

[Spaceception]

Here's chapter 4, A new galaxy, please leave your thoughts below

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Raven groaned, the weird sensation they felt during the passage made her and everyone else feel dizzy. She looked around, and saw the others having similar reactions, Morales was standing, his hand over his face. When she saw everyone was alright, she looked out the window, and gasped at what she saw, in front of her was a massive spiral galaxy, and a brilliant blue nebula as far as the eye could see.

This is like a dream. She thought with a childlike curiosity, “Xavier,” She said in an awed voice, “Where are we?”

Xavier was rubbing his eyes, “On it,” He opened up his screen, and began scanning. He was silent for several moments and muttered something unintelligible under his breath. After a couple minutes, he finally spoke up. “Uh, so, it looks like we’re around a gas giant,” Started Xavier.

“Wait, around a gas giant?”

“Yep, we’re going too slow to fall into orbit, but it’ll take awhile to get to the atmosphere.”

“Okay, Morales start, a orbi-” Started Raven, but Xavier cut her off.

“Hang on there’s more, the scanner is picking something else up,” he was quiet for a few moments, before going wide-eyed.

“What is it?” Asked Sage, “Spit it out.”

“Holy crap, Morales, can you turn the ship around 120 degrees?”

Morales looked confused, and still dazed, “Excuse me?”

“Turn the ship around, I’m picking something huge up right behind up, I can see it, but it’s just so big, all I know is that there’s a lot of energy being emitted.”

Morales sighed and grabbed the controls “Okay, how big is big?” turning on the RCS, and turning the ship around.

“It’s around the size of a dwarf planet but not nearly as massive as one, that’s strange.”

“Well then,” As it turned, a massive object started coming into view, it looked extremely close and circular.

“What is that,” Sage said, getting up.

“Woah, that’s enormous,” Morales said wide-eyed, mostly snapping out of his daze. A bright red ring came into view, and the entire crew stared in disbelief as the ship spun completely around, showing a massive structure, over a thousand kilometers across with almost two dozen shimmering rings of red, the closest taking up the entire view, and the rest showing up on the scanner. “Holy crap,” Said Xavier, his jaw was slack, and he looked dumbfounded at the immense structure in front of them.

The structure seemed to have been built into a large Asteroid, with shimmering rings embedded into what remained of it, with a large ring, running on the outside of it. Is that a gravity ring? Wondered Raven. Whatever it is, it was built by an advanced civilization, they could see dim orange light reflecting off of whatever it was, and they saw dozens of ships flying around the complex structure, some going into the gates periodically. Everyone stared at the sight in front of them in wonder, then Morales’ console suddenly beeped.

“There’s a ship on a direct course, and it’s big,” Morales said, peering at the console, “ETA six minutes, Raven?”

Raven was standing at the window, hands pressed to the glass, her warm breath misting it, as she stared at the structure, wanting dearly to be inside of it, to see whoever built it. She could distantly hear Morales voice, and brought herself hesitantly to listen.”Huh, what? What’s that?”

“There’s a ship approaching us, what do you want to do?” Said Morales, staring at her oddly.

“We’ll wait, for now, Sage?”

“As far as I can tell they’re not hostile, should I arm the weapons?”

Raven thought for a moment, “No, we don’t want them thinking we’re hostile.”

Sage nodded, and turned to her console, “Yes ma’am.”

“Karol, see if you can open up communications, try binary, or prime numbers, Xavier, see if you can figure out where we are.”

“Uh, alright,” Karol aimed the dish at the ship and started sending a sequence of prime numbers, hoping to get a response.

The ship was silent.

Xavier, worked as fast as he could, his hands flying over the console, after about a minute, he had something. “Hey guys, I think I know where we are,” He said, distracted, still focused on his console.

“Yeah, and where might that be?” Asked Morales, looking back down on his console, “The ETA is four minutes, by the way, so make it quick.”

“Oh right,” He said, still distracted, “I think we’re in the Large Magellanic Cloud.”

“Wait, what? How’d you figure that out?” Said Raven incredulously, staring at Xavier.

“I had the computers look for anything familiar, and I saw the Andromeda galaxy, the Triangulum galaxy, and the Small Magellanic Cloud, we’re the the Large one, and that’s the Milky way,” He said, pointing at the massive spiral outside of the ship.

“Wow, over 160,000 light years away from home, “Said Sage, “I don’t think anyone will find us.”

“Unless they send a ship through, and it ends up here.”

“ETA two minutes.” Said Morales.

When the ship was less than 100 meters from them, it extended a large arm, and pulled it in, then jetted towards a large rotating dock. Massive, twelve kilometer wide doors opened, and slowly bathed the bridge in white light, the ship entered, and placed the ship down, before getting a machine that started putting a hole in the bridge.

The entire crew was surprised at the feeling of gravity, and turned their magnet boots off. “ Evan,” Raven radioed. “Turn the gravity wheel off.”

“Yeah, about that, how are we feeling gravity exactly?” He said curiously. Raven saw that the gravity wheel was spinning down as he was talking.

“Uh, I think we just made contact.” Said Raven.

Lance radioed in as well, “Hey, we’re feeling gravity, down here, how’s that possible?”

“We entered a space dock in another galaxy.”

Lances comm was completely silent for several moments, as he processed what Raven said. “What?’ He said in a high voice.

“W-” Raven was cut off, jumping at a loud noise and backed away as far as possible. Some air was lost outside, and they felt their ears pop at the small pressure drop, their breathing suddenly became quick and ragged as they waited apprehensively for several minutes before they heard clanging noises.

Despite the loud noise, Raven could feel and hear her heart beating extremely fast, feeling as it was trying to burst out of her chest, she held her breath tentatively and stepped in front of the rest of the crew, in an attempt to shield them.

“Raven? What’s going on in there? We’re all hearing loud noises somewhere.” Came Lance's voice from the crew bay, it seemed higher.

Raven opened her mouth, trying to form words, “Uh,” she cleared her throat, “I think we’re being boarded.” She said in a voice much higher than her own.

“Wait what? By who?”

“Aliens, I guess, I don’t know.” She said, voice still high-pitched Dammit Raven, get it together. She thought to herself angrily.

Lances comm went silent again, and he gave a nervous laugh, “Okay, that’s a pretty good joke, but really, what’s going on?” He said.

“No, really, that’s what’s happening?”

“You’re serious?”

“Yes. Co-“ She was about to say more but was interrupted by an ear-splitting noise coming from outside of the ship, that shortly opened up to a dark shaft.

Whoever captured them got through the hull.

The noise got louder and louder, and with bated breath, they saw as metal boots slowly came down, they seemed to be magnetic, and it made a loud noise whenever it stepped onto a new step. When it got to the bottom, it slowly turned around and faced them, silently.

The Alien, whoever, or whatever it was, stood almost seven feet tall, it could’ve been taller, but it was hunched over, it was very thin, with a black and silver mech suit. And it was wearing a helmet with a black visor, they couldn’t see its face, but it had a long tail that flexed up and down periodically, narrow feet with long toes that made seem taller, and long arms. The suit looked like it could flex pretty far, since it was hunched over and somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered if it could climb walls

Raven could feel her heart beating so fast, she thought it would burst through her chest. She stared at it with wide eyes, shaking in fear, and awe. The mechanized Alien walked through the hole with heavy clanging noises, and bent over, walking towards them on all fours like a predator that she saw in shows from Earth. The Alien looked at them, and in one swift, fluid movement, it formed its body into something resembling a wheel, and careered towards them quickly, everyone jumped, it stopped, and went back into a bipedal form, right in front of Raven, and surveyed them silently.

Raven thought her heart would burst out of her chest, as she stared into her reflection on the visor, wondering what it was thinking. If it wanted to, it could easily kill her, and there would be nothing she could do about it. It cocked its head, It curious? she thought. Breathing very shallowly, she raised her hand up, Karol, shaking violently, walked forward cautiously, only a few steps, and tried talking to it, “H-hello?” She said in a squeaky voice.

The Alien looked at her as she talked and slowly walked towards her. She stumbled back in fear and tried talking again, “W-who are you?” She squeaked.

“I don’t think they can understand you,” Said Morales quietly, keeping a keen eye on the Alien, and moving towards Karol slowly.

“I need to try something, hey!” She said in a higher voice, as Morales lightly grabbed her arm, and stood next to her protectively.

“Move to the console,” He said in the lower voice. She nodded quickly and moved to the console, with Morales closely behind her, the Alien followed their movement to the console but didn’t move toward them. Just stood there like a statue.

“What do you want me to do?” She said, trying to whisper, but instead loudly hissing.

“Anything, try putting it on the speakers or view screen.”

Karol nodded very quickly, with her eyes closed. “Okay, I’ll use binary.”

The screen lit up and the Alien’s attention was redirected towards the screen, as Karol used binary to show simple numbers, a voice in the speakers said the number, and the binary form turned into numbers.

0, 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000, 1001. At each binary number, the screen turned it into a number, and then into a visualization.

The Alien seemed interested and seemed to almost cock its head in curiosity. At least that’s what Raven thought to herself. She almost laughed out of nerves at the thought that they would have human emotions.

The Alien tapped its chest, and several minutes later, they heard more clanging, and shortly after, saw two more Aliens step into the ship.

Karol was still at the console with Morales, working on making some sort of contact, the Alien walked forward, and stopped less than a foot from Karol and Morales, who stared up, and seemed to lose their breath. The Alien reached up and slowly took off its helmet.

Its face was gray and reptilian, and it had four eyes, two smaller ones at the side, and two large ones on the front, likely so it had a wide viewing radius. It had large elongated ears, and a wide lipless mouth, with what looked like gills between its face and neck. Its head was completely bald, with light reflecting off of it, and before any of them could react, it swiftly exited the bridge, climbing up the ladder to the main ship. Several seconds later, she heard screams from the crew.

Raven jumped, startled at the screams, but quickly snapped out of her stunned appearance, and clambered up the ladder to the crew.

When she entered the crew bay, she saw everyone looked terrified, the Alien looked at all of them, almost curiously, some of the crew had left the bay completely, but some were in a state of trying to unstrap themselves, and looking at the Alien in shock. Lance was at the forefront, standing up, and looking the Alien in the eye.

When he saw Raven enter he did a double take as if he were expecting more Aliens to walk through. “S-so, you w-weren’t j-joking,” He said in a voice, much higher than his own.

Raven shook her head with wide eyes, wondering what the Alien was going to do next.

She walked in front of it slowly, and opened a channel to Karol, “I need you to come down here with your touchpad, now,” She said, keeping an eye on the Alien.

The Alien stood there, watching her as if expecting her to do something, “Lance, can I borrow your notepad and pen?”

“Yeah, sure,” He said stumbling towards her, as he was paying more attention to the Alien then his walking, Raven fumbled with it for a moment and quickly started writing something down. She held it up when she was finished, it was a diagram of basic math problems and the answers to them.

“What are you doing?” Asked Lance, his voice still shaking, but getting steadier.

“Trying to find common ground.” Replied Raven, quickly writing something else down.

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter where in the Universe you go, two plus two is four, hydrogen is hydrogen, stars create energy from fusion, a water molecule is always a water molecule, etcetera. If we can find common ground in math and science, that will be a huge leap forward," She said very quickly.

There was a loud noise at the ladder, and several moments later, Karol came down and made a wide circle around the Alien as she walked over to Raven and Lance. “What do you want to try?” Asked Raven, as Karol turned on the touchpad.

“Show it math and science videos, we need to reach a common ground, start with basic math problems and visuals.”

“That’s what I started with, but you have the pad now, why not start with Algebra?” Asked Raven curiously.

“We need to establish an understanding, we have no language relations, so we need to start small, build a foundation, and work our way up, we’ll also show the alphabet and basic sounds once they understand our math and science terms.” She said in a shaky voice, that was getting steadier.

Raven nodded, “Okay, I’ll let you do your thing,” She said, eyeing the Alien, and stepping back.

As Karol attempted to establish communication with the Alien, who seemed interested in them, the crew bay cleared out climbing up the ladders to the gravity wheel, with only a few brave crew members hanging out in the shadows, watching from a distance, the others, heading towards the other side of the ship.

Several hours later, Karol was starting to get tired, and Raven took over, showing concept after concept. after a while, the Alien left the ship, along with the others who were on the bridge, as the crew was trying to communicate with as well.

 

Log 55

 

So who would’ve guessed? We’re now on an Alien space station waiting for God knows what.

The crew is freaked out, same with the bridge crew, which is perfectly understandable, I don’t think anyone will be getting much if any sleep. Evan and the other engineers are patching up what they can in the bridge so it doesn’t lose air. And Karol is figuring out the best strategy to teach the Aliens our language, she’s in her room, chugging away at coffee, with Xavier helping her out.

That’s all for now, this has been a long day.

 

End log

 

“So,” said Morales, who was perched on her bed, waiting for her to finish, “Do you log every day?”

“No, sometimes I don’t have the time, or anything to talk about. But I log almost every day.” She said turning off the computer.

Morales nodded, “Well, about our situation, I think it’s pretty good.”

“Yeah, why? We’re in the hanger of a massive station, in the presence of Aliens who have almost no idea what we could be talking about.”

“Well,” Said Morales thoughtfully, “We know where we are, roughly anyway, we didn’t die when we went through, or we did, this is all a dream, and we’re being shredded as we speak,”

“That’s a pleasant thought,” Interrupted Raven, Morales snorted.

“Yeah,” he agreed, “Anyway, we’ve made contact with an Alien civilization who don’t seem like they want to wipe us from existence,”

“At least not right now,” Said Raven.

Morales put a hand to his chest overdramatically, “Are you going to keep interrupting me?”

Raven smiled, “No, I’ll be quiet.”

“Thank you,” He said, smiling back, “Now, we could be much worse right now, we could be in between a couple galaxies, right next to a star, hell, we could’ve ended up in the middle of the Boötes void, I’m just saying, it could be much worse. Okay, now you can talk.”

Raven gave a small laugh, and fell back onto her bed, “Okay, you have point, but what if they figure out our language, and they end up enslaving us?”

Morales fell back onto the bed next to Raven, and looked at her, “You’ve been reading too much old science fiction, I mean seriously, just relax, we’ll fine,” He said in a more gentle tone, “Besides, we’re the first humans to make contact with an Alien civilization, if the SSA ever found out, they’d be liquiding their pants in anger over letting us enter instead of one of their ships.” He said grinning to himself.

Raven laughed, “You’re right.” She stared up at the ceiling. “At least I hope you’re right,” she turned over on her side to face him, “How do you think this will play out?”

Morales shrugged, “Hell if I know, but I bet it’ll be something awesome. Anyway,” He said, getting up, “I’ll see you tomorrow, night cap’n.” He said, giving a mock salute before leaving.

“Night.” She sighed and turned off the light, tossing and turning all night.

 

Raven groggily got up the next day, having not gotten much sleep from the stress of sleeping inside of an Alien ship. She walked to the mess hall, which was strangely quiet, Raven expected everyone to be talking from the previous night, but only realized that the Alien from last night was standing silently in the mess hall when she looked over the room where people kept glancing every so often.

Morales, Karol, Lance, Evan, and Xavier were already at their table, waiting for Raven to get there before launching into conversation the moment she sat.

“So Xavier and I have been working on a plan-“

“Do you know how exciting-“

“Seems like somebody’s-“

Raven raised her hands up, slightly irritated, “Guys, wait for me to wake up a little, I didn’t get any sleep, one at a time, when did he, she, whatever get here?”

“Less than an hour ago,” Said Xavier.

“Yeah, he tried talking to it like it was going to respond in perfect English the moment he could.” Interrupted Karol.

“I was excited,” Said Xavier awkwardly.

“Yeah, you were indistinguishable from a bird, once you got past the initial speechless part.”

“How do you know?”

“I spent a few weeks on Titan once, they have a small zoo, and there were these annoying birds just chirping like there was no tomorrow.”

“Wait you’ve been to Titan,” said Morales leaning across the table, “Do tell.”

“It was a university thing, “I was studying the environment and life of Titan.”

“So, all I needed to do to travel to the richest and largest colony in the outer system, was… Getting a xenobiologist degree?” Asked Morales.

“Guys, focus,” Said Raven, tiredly.

“Right, well first off, Raven are you sure you don’t want sleep, you look terrible.” Said Morales looking at her concernedly.

“I’m fine,” She said, stifling a yawn.

“Okay,” Said Morales, unsure, “But if you need sleep, that perfectly fine.”

Raven smiled at him, “Thanks Morales. I’ll be fine,” She turned to the rest of the table, “Any updates?”

“There’s a couple in the bridge, I think they’re splicing their computers into ours, in any case, I don’t know how to help, but if it means it makes my job easier, go for it.” Said Karol, with a cup of coffee, her face was right above it, so the steam would go into her nose.

“Evan, what’s the gravity here? It feels heavy”

Evan was buried in his plate, eating quickly, he looked up, and swallowed before answering “It’s a bit over sixty percent Earth normal, so almost twice what we’re used to, it we didn’t do high-g training, it would be much harder on us,”

“For most of the crew, it is,” Lance interjected, “Especially on the kids, who haven’t been under more than one g for longer than a few minutes, it’s hard on them, they’ll get used to it, but it will take some time.”

“And other than that, there aren’t many medical issues?”

Lance shook his head, “Luckily, no.”

Raven gave a breath of relief, “That’s good, I was worried it was going to be worse,” She leaned her head towards the Alien, “What do you think he, she, whatever gender it is, is doing?”

“Probably studying us, watching our behaviour, it hasn’t done anything, the Alien has just been standing there.”

Raven nodded, “How’s the bridge?”

“It’s fine, there were a couple of weak spots, but we fixed them up, I saw the Aliens who came down looking at it this morning when I went up to see how it was holding up.”

Raven realized she hadn’t eaten anything, and quickly started eating the muffin on her plate, which had cooled now. The others ate quietly as well, taking furtive glances at the Alien every so often. When they were finished, they got up, and headed for the bridge, everyone else noticed, and quickly left, not wanting to be alone with it. The Alien followed them up the ladder, and stood at the back when they were all up.

Raven was still nervous, and noticed the others cautious movements as well, but they had all calmed down considerably from the previous night.

There were two other Aliens in the bridge, who stood when they entered, and looked at them for a moment before continuing working at their computers.

“So you think they’re splicing their networks into ours?” Asked Raven, as she observed them working, on the bridge screen, she saw the image glitch from time to time, It must be adjusting to the different programming. She thought.

“Yep,” replied Sage, “It’s the most likely explanation, they’ve been there for at least a few hours.”

“So what about communication?”

Karol raised her tablet, I’ve got it all here,” she turned to the Alien, and walked towards it tentatively, the Alien hunched over on all fours to be closer to her eye level, and Karol began teaching it English. Over the next few hours, the Alien was starting to imitate her. They quickly saw that it identified even complex math equations quickly, given multiple choice answers.

“My name is Karol,” she said slowly pointing at herself “Karol.”.

The Alien opened its mouth a couple times, and imitated her almost perfectly, in a lower voice that sounded a bit raspy, pointing at her as it said it.

Morales stared at it, “That is really creepy.”

“Yeah,” said Sage breathlessly, “At least we know it can speak English, now it just needs to learn all of it.”

 

Two hours later

 

Log 56

 

Right now, Karol is busy teaching the Alien English, I have no idea how long it will take for them to decipher it, but hopefully they can figure out our computers, in the meantime, we’ll just have to do things the slow way.

The crew is a bit restless, and many people seem to be on edge, Lance and the other medical officers are trying to calm everyone down right now, and I’ll have to talk with some of the more stubborn ones tomorrow.

It’s an extremely exciting and apprehensive time right now, I hope it pans out alright.

End log

Okay, this is me, not the book, what did you think of the Alien? I tried striking a balance so that it felt  Alien, but not so Alien we would have no idea how to relate, and not humanoid so that it's practically a hollywood Alien.

 

Edited March 9, 2017 by Spaceception
Oh hey, we're on page 2 now :D And a couple mistakes.

[Spaceception]

So what do you guys think of the storyline so far? By the way, for anyone wondering, my outline is almost 30 chapters long.

Also, I'm working on C5 now, 300 words done

[Nailed it!]

  On 2/2/2017 at 4:02 PM, Spaceception said:

Sigma Prime inspiration

Expand  

Let me guess... Iceland?

  On 2/1/2017 at 8:04 PM, Spaceception said:

So you've seen the updated title, and I need help with planets. I have a few ideas, but I need more.

So, can you guys give me planetary ideas? Whether they're habitable, hostile, frigid, moon, planet, gas giant, whatever, give me some ideas, I only need 12. Also, can you also give some interesting features as well?

And they have to be realistic.

Expand  

Do you have all the planets?

If not, an idea: a Venusian-like world outside the habitable zone, but kept warm thanks to greenhouse effect. Inhabited by many types of fungi and animal fungi-analogs.

  On 3/9/2017 at 7:17 PM, Spaceception said:

So what do you guys think of the storyline so far? By the way, for anyone wondering, my outline is almost 30 chapters long.

Also, I'm working on C5 now, 300 words done

Expand  

Nice story dude! I would like to get my hand on your book right when it releases. Full support on this project!

Edited March 11, 2017 by Nailed it!

[Spaceception]

  On 3/9/2017 at 9:20 PM, Nailed it! said:

Let me guess... Iceland?

Do you have all the planets?

If not, an idea: a Venusian-like world outside the habitable zone, but kept warm thanks to greenhouse effect. Inhabited by many types of fungi and animal fungi-.

Nice story dude! I would like to get my hand on your book right when it releases. Full support on this project!

Expand  

Yep

Most of them, I'm using Space Engine to find the rest.

Good idea, I may use something like that.

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it a lot

[Spaceception]

Here's the first 300 words of chapter 5 By the way, to everyone who clicked the first option on the poll, and maybe the third one as well, what do you guys think of the story overall?

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Two weeks later

 

Raven tiredly walked to the bridge, wondering what the new update was. She hadn’t gotten much sleep over the past couple weeks, but that was no surprise, not many people on the ship got much sleep these days, she passed  crew members who looked like they were going to faint at any moment all the time now. “Hey, what are they doing?” Asked Raven, watching the Aliens take their computer and leave the bridge.

“Oh, hey Raven,” said Karol, looking up briefly, she noticed her eyes were bloodshot, “I’m pretty sure they figured out our computer systems, they started packing up about an hour ago.”

Raven nodded, “Ah,” Over in the corner, Xavier was talking to the Alien, who was talking back in short sentences, over the past couple weeks, they had built a rudimentary translator, and they had been busy working out the kinks. “How’s he doing?” She asked, Xavier looked tired from here, his clothes were stained, and his hair was messy, he had been working day and night trying to communicate with the Alien, but even so, he still had a small excited gleam in his eye.

“Xavier’s doing fine, but I’m going to make him get some sleep soon. You know how he gets when sleep deprivation and work mix.”

Raven gave a tired laugh, the last time he was like that, he was completely deaf to everyone, and had mild hallucinations of dead geniuses, if was funny in retrospect, but mostly creepy. She rubbed her forehead, and yawned, “Well, get him to a bed soon, I’m going to go down to the mess hall, see you later.”

“Mmm,” Karol replied, without looking up.

When she got to the mess hall, she was immediately surrounded by people waiting for her.

“What are they doing?”

 

Edited March 13, 2017 by Spaceception

[Spaceception]

Happy Pi day everyone!

Formats slightly different again, I have a new writing tool (LibreOffice), anyway, here's Chapter 5, hope you guys enjoy

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Two weeks later

 

Raven tiredly walked to the bridge, wondering what the new update was. She hadn’t gotten much sleep over the past couple weeks, but that was no surprise, not many people on the ship got much sleep these days, she passed  crew members who looked like they were going to faint at any moment all the time now. “Hey, what are they doing?” Asked Raven, watching the Aliens take their computer and leave the bridge.

“Oh, hey Raven,” said Karol, looking up briefly, she noticed her eyes were bloodshot, “I’m pretty sure they figured out our computer systems, they started packing up about an hour ago.”

Raven nodded, “Ah,” Over in the corner, Xavier was talking to the Alien, who was talking back in short sentences, over the past couple weeks, they had built a rudimentary translator, and they had been busy working out the kinks. “How’s he doing?” She asked, Xavier looked tired from here, his clothes were stained, and his hair was messy, he had been working day and night trying to communicate with the Alien, but even so, he still had a small excited gleam in his eye.

“Xavier’s doing fine, but I’m going to make him get some sleep soon. You know how he gets when sleep deprivation and work mix.”

Raven gave a tired laugh, the last time he was like that, he was completely deaf to everyone, and had mild hallucinations of dead geniuses, if was funny in retrospect, but mostly creepy. She rubbed her forehead, and yawned, “Well, get him to a bed soon, I’m going to go down to the mess hall, see you later.”

“Mmm,” Karol replied, without looking up.

When she got to the mess hall, she was immediately surrounded by people waiting for her.

“What are they doing?”

“Are they peaceful?”

“Do they want anything?”

“Why did we end up here?”

There were dozens of people talking loudly trying to get Raven’s attention, she supposed she should’ve talked to them more, Then maybe they wouldn’t be harassing me. She thought, irritated.

She raised her hands in frustration, “Okay, okay, settle down everyone!” She said, yelling, everyone quickly stopped talking, she pointed at a young woman holding her baby, “What did you say?”

“Are we going to be safe?” She asked, Raven noticed her nervous look, and everyone stared at her wondering what she was going to say.

“Yes, we’re going to be just fine, just like I said two weeks ago.”

“Why are we still here, what do they want?”

“I don’t know, but we did come out of nowhere, they’re likely just trying to figure us out.”

“When will we leave?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll try to figure something out, I promise.” Raven walked through the crowd to get her breakfast, and everyone’s conversations started back up again. When she got her breakfast, she walked over the her table, only Morales was there.

“Morning,” she said dully, picking apart her bread.

“Hey, tough crowd,” He said nodding his head at the crew’s direction.

“Yeah, didn’t they talk to you?”

Morales shook his head, “Nah, they tried, but I told them to grow a pair and calm down.” He looked over at her, concerned, “Hey,” he said, rubbing her shoulder, “What’s bothering you?”

“Lot’s of stuff, to which issue are you referring to?”

Morales smiled, “Us being inside of an Alien hanger,”

Raven looked around to see if anyone was listening, and spoke quietly so Morales had to lean in close, “I honestly don’t know, everything I’m telling them is just guesswork, I hope Xavier and Karol hurry up soon, I’d like to talk to the Alien like a person, and not a oversized reptilian baby.”

“Well,” he replied, also quietly, “Xavier told me this morning he felt he was getting close to being able to talk to them, so it’s only a matter of time.”

“Hey guys,” said Lance tiredly, he looked at them oddly, “Why are you sitting so close?”

“We were just talking-” started Morales.

“Yeah,” interjected Lance, “Okay,”

Raven gave him a pointed look, “How’s the crew doing?” She said drily

“Terrible, I’ve had to give sleeping medicine to over fifty people over the past couple hours because they couldn’t sleep, it’s a nightmare.”

“How much do we have?”

“For now? Plenty, the hydroponics is a bit slow, and there’s other things that need to be grown, but we’ll have enough for the time being.”

Raven sighed, “Good, I was worried we might be running out, and you may need to give some to Xavier soon, Karol said he’s getting close to cracking.”

“I’ll talk to him after breakfast, if he can’t sleep, I’ll give him some medicine. Speaking of sleep, you both look terrible, you sure you don’t want to sleep?”

“Maybe later, there’s so much that needs to be done.” she said bringing up her coffee.

Lance reached across the table, and set the cup down, “Well, speaking as a friend, and not a doctor, I’m giving you an hour to get some work done, then you’re getting some sleep, you’re in charge, and we can’t have our captain dozing off.”

“Okay, fine,” Raven finished her bread and walked up to the bridge.”

Lance and Morales watched her go up to the bridge, “So Morales, is there anything going on between you and Raven?”

Morales did a double take, “What? No, I swear, we were talking about the crew-”

”Yeah, you two have been spending a lot of time together over the past couple weeks, so I was wondering,” said Lance grinning, walking off to the med bay, leaving Morales with a confused expression on his face. He gave a sigh, and walked off towards engineering.

 

Raven walked into the bridge to Xavier dozing off next to the Alien, and walked over to him, “Hey Xavier, you look like crap.” He snapped awake for a moment, then his eyes began to droop.

He looked at her, trying to focus, “Yeah, I know,” he said sluggishly, Raven activate her headset.

“Lance, get Xavier the sleeping meds now, he really-”

“No, I’m fine,” he said, trying to get up, she watched skeptically as he stumbled, hitting a console, and falling over. Raven looked over him with a raised eyebrow.

“You need sleep.”

Xavier sighed, “Fine,” he said trying to get up, but Raven knelt over, and gently put a hand on his shoulder.

“No, just lay down,” she said, watching him mutter under his breath, she got up, and walking to the ladder, she could see Lance coming down the ladder a couple moments later.

“Hey Raven,” said when he got down to the bridge, “Where’s Xavier?”

“He’s laying down, going in and out of consciousness, talking about random stuff,” she said leading him over, Lance followed, while the Alien watched them lift Xavier up the ladder, it took much longer than usual, with the higher gravity, and dead weight, and Karol had to help Raven push him up, eventually, when they got to the top, they carried him to his room, and gave him the sleeping medicine.

“Damn, we’re all just a bunch of walking corpses,” said Lance, Karol nodded in agreement.

“Yeah,” she said, rubbing her neck, “We really should force a sleeping schedule on everyone, nobody is in good shape to be doing anything.”

“I’ve been thinking about one over the past couple days,” said Lance, “But I should get around implementing it.”

“Well, do it tonight during dinner, give everyone small doses of sleeping medicine, just enough to get them to sleep for a few hours, hopefully they’re tired enough they’ll stay asleep.”

Lance nodded, “Alright, we should have more than enough for that,” he said, walking out of the room. Raven and Karol followed, “So, Karol, how’s communication?”

“So far, I think it’s going well,”

“Let’s hope they figured out our computers, I do not want to teach them from scratch.”

“Neither do I,” Karol replied, starting to climb down the ladder, Raven followed her down.

“Well, let’s get our work done today, then when we’ve had some rest, we’ll revise our plans,” said Raven in the middle of a yawn.

“Here, here,” said Lance, when they entered the bridge, it was empty.

“Where’s the Alien?” Asked Karol, confused.

“Well, I doubt it walked into the main ship, maybe it went back to it’s own ship?” Raven inquired.

“It doesn’t leave this early,” said Karol, “Maybe they’re figuring out our language?”

“Possibly, well, Lance, shoot me up with some meds, because I really need to sleep.” said Raven.

“Yeah, first, let’s go down to your quarters, I don’t want to carry you as well.” he replied, Raven smiled.

“I’ll get ready for bed.” she said, walking back up the ladder, and to her quarters, “That’s a pretty big dose,” Raven said to Lance when she was finished getting ready, he had just finished examining her.

“It’s a normal dose, your vitals are shot, and you desperately need sleep, Morales will take care of everything, see you tomorrow captain,” Lance replied as he put the hypospray device to her neck, and pressed the button, almost immediately, her eyes began to close, and she fell sideways onto her bed. he put her feet on the bed, and put a blanket over her, turning out the lights, and letting her sleep.

 

Five hours later

 

“Okay everyone, listen up, Lance has an important announcement, he needs to share with everyone,” said Morales loudly, standing on a table to get everyone’s attention, immediately, people started talking, Morales couldn’t place any of it, and it took him almost a minute to get everyone to quiet down, “Hey! I’m the speaker, not you, so shut up and listen! Look, I know you’re all confused, I am too, probably more than some of you, and we’re handling it, this isn’t something you can take care of overnight, so just listen to Lance.” Morales stepped down, and let Lance have the room.

“So, due to alarming rates of sleep deprivation, I am imposing a ship-wide sleep schedule to insure everyone get’s sleep, I understand it’s a stressful time, but you need sleep, my medical doctors will be going around the ship, making sure everyone get’s doses.” This response was met by mild disagreement, mostly because almost everyone was too tired to argue.

“This rule will be followed by everyone on this ship, no questions,” said Lance, walking out of the mess hall.

“Okay,” said Morales, getting everyone’s attention, “Everyone to your quarters, you will be given sleep medicine shortly.”

Everyone slowly left the mess hall, grumbling, Morales sighed, and took a drink. “Well, that went better than I expected,” said Sage.

“Yeah, I can’t tell if it’s because they want to sleep, or because they’re too tired to argue.”

“Well, hopefully the crew is wide-awake tomorrow.”

Morales nodded in agreement, “Yep, anyway, we should go to our quarters as well, it’s been a long day,” he said, walking out towards his quarters.

“Right behind you,” she replied, following him out.

 

Raven got up the next morning, feeling both like she wanted to keep sleeping, and like she was ready to get up, she raised her head, and pushed the hair out of her eyes to read the clock, it was almost twelve am.

“Oh, crap,” she said wide-eyed, she quickly got dressed, and ran out of her room to the bridge, only Xavier and Karol were in it, “Where’s the others?”

“Still asleep,” replied Xavier, “The Alien hasn’t come back yet, I wonder why.”

“How long have you guys been here?” she asked.

“Only about an hour, we brought our breakfast with us, there’s still some left, want some?”

Raven looked at the food, realizing she was hungry, “Yeah, so how did you guys sleep?”

“Really well,” he replied, “I’m still a little tired, but I haven’t felt this good in weeks, you?”

“That’s good to hear, and I’m still tired as well, hopefully I feel better as the day goes by.”

They waited patiently for the next half hour, before hearing noise coming from the outside where the Alien came in.

“About time!” said Xavier, walking forward with his touchpad in hand, when the Alien walked through, looking at them all.

“Hello everyone, it is good to see you,” it said, Xavier almost dropped his touchpad, and all three of them stared in shock.

“Did you just talk... normally?” asked Raven, shocked.

“Yes,” it replied, Raven noticed his voice was raspy and monotone, but otherwise, he was speaking perfectly.

“So… uh, what’s your name?” asked Karol.

“You cannot spell it, not right now, but it’s pronounced ‘Nadan’,” Nadan said slowly.

“So…” started Karol slowly, “How can you suddenly speak English?”

“I have a, hang on, I need to find the right word… ah, I have a Neural lace in my brain, as well as an artificial lens in my eye. That allows me to speak many different languages without much effort.”

“How? Don’t you need to practice?” asked Xavier.

“I have been, and I am now, the longer I communicate with you, the better I get. Being fluent in almost a dozen Alien languages doesn’t hurt either.”

“So, are you a boy or a girl?” asked Raven.

“My species doesn’t have quite the same gender profiling as yours, but I’m closer to a male.” he replied.

“So, uh, I think I’m assuming correctly, you’ve deciphered our computers?”

“Yes, we’ve been researching your culture, your sciences, am I correct in assuming that you’re from what you call Milky Way?”

“Yes, we are.”

“Fascinating, your species is the first one from another galaxy, we’ve made contact with.”

“So, I’m guessing we surprised you when we went through the Wormhole.”

“Yes, you did, we weren’t expecting anyone to come through at that time, and when we saw your ship, we were very surprised.”

“So, where are we?”

“You are on one of three Wormhole hubs in this system, which, is my home system, here, we have countless Alien species coming in from all over this galaxy.”

“That’s incredible, so do you all live in space habitats?”

“No, we still colonize planets, we use habitats for mining colonies, and space industry.”

“So, why are we in your hanger bay?”

“We needed to understand you, we had no idea who or what you were, but now we do.”

“Well, we went through the Wormhole to colonize a planet for ourselves, I don’t suppose you have one for us?”

“Hmm, we will need to look through exoplanet files, but there are planets in our sphere of influence that we haven’t colonized.”

“Why not? Would the population be stretched to thin?”

Nadan shook his head, “No, they orbit much brighter stars, we evolved under the red light of an M-dwarf, that is what you call them correct?” the others nodded. “Well, we evolved under much dimmer light, so they’re essentially just sitting there, you could possibly colonize on of those.”

“That would be-, wait a moment, did you shake your head?” asked Raven incredulously.

“Yes, I also know human emotions, and gestures, it makes the process much smoother for new civilizations,” said Nadan. Raven nodded slowly.

“Okay, uh, cool,” she said, “Anyway, as I was saying, our crew has been jumpy the past couple weeks.”

“I’ve noticed, hopefully you get used to us, and we can become allies.”

“Hey guys,” said Morales, as he came down the ladder, “That was one hell of a good night’s sleep, I feel amazing!” he said stretching his arms, he paused and looked at them, sitting in a semicircle, in front of Nadan, “Oh, hi,” he said to Nadan, giving an awkward wave.

“Hello, you’re the pilot, correct? I’ve been reading through your files.” Morales’ jaw dropped, pointing to Nadan silently, and failing to get words out.

“Di he just talk to me? I mean, just yesterday-” he said in a high voice.

“Yes, I did,” Nadan replied.

“So, uh, allies, did I hear that correctly?” said Raven awkwardly, looking between Morales and Nadan.

“Yes, you wouldn’t take part in any military operations, but you could take part in government affairs.”

“Uh, alright then,” said Raven dazed Alien governments? This is getting insane.

“Now, would you like to take a tour of our station?”

“You mean… actually walk around in it?”

“Yes, we’ve observed your biology, and the atmosphere is breathable for you, carbon dioxide levels will make you slightly dizzy, but you will be fine.”

“Well let’s go then,” he said, climbing up the ladder, Raven, Karol, Xavier, and Morales looked at each other, and followed him up, Nadan was waiting for them at the top, “So, if you would follow me, it’s not very hard to get lost in here,” he said as he turned around and walked through what Raven thought was an airlock, when everyone was inside, he cycled the lock, and opened up the other side, which led to a room about the same size, lit by orange LED's, Nadan was right, she did feel a bit dizzy..

“So, where are we now? And what’s that smell? Ammonia?”

“Security, they’re making sure we’re clean before letting us through, as well as making sure all seals are shut, and yes, a small percentage of the atmosphere is ammonia,” replied Nadan, as the door opened, “And here we are,” he said. Raven’s jaw dropped, the door opened up to a wide hall full of Aliens of all types, there were bipedal Aliens, like Nadan, though none looked human, Aliens walking on all fours, almost as tall as she was, even some that looked like molluscoids, she thought she saw at least either different species of Aliens in the wide halls, which were lit by dim blue LED’s.

“This is incredible,” she said.

“Follow me, we’re going to head over to the ‘New species’ section, there, you will be able to register ‘Humans’ here.”

“Wait, hold up,” said Morales, confused, “Register?”

“That is the closest word to what you will be doing,” replied Nadan, “And in order for you to leave this station, and head to a new planet, you need to register.”

“Okay,” said Raven, biting her cheek, “Let’s go.”

When they got to the registration section, which took longer than usual, Nadan commented, due to the fact they kept drifting off to look at some new thing, they sat outside, to wait for Nadan to let them in.

“So…” said Xavier awkwardly, “What’s the plan Raven?”

Raven shook her head, her lips pressed together, “I don’t know,” she said looking at him, “This is going to be really weird.”

“Okay, you may enter now,” said Nadan, with another Alien behind him. Maybe I’m going crazy, but they have some pretty human looking emotions. She thought getting up.

The room was more brightly lit than the rest of the station that they had seen so far, and was empty except for them, it wasn’t very big, compared to everything else, and looked like it could only hold about a hundred people. “So what else is this room for? I don’t expect you to make contact on a daily basis,” said Raven.

“We don’t, but this room is also used to help get new species used to everything around here, it can be… overwhelming for many.” he replied.

Morales was staring all over the room in awe, his head tilted back, trying to see everything, “Yeah, it kinda is.”

“Well, captain, here you go,” said Nadan, leading her to a console, with a large screen above it, wider than she was. It was translated to English for them, but there were countless symbols she didn’t understand at all.

“Just enter the name of your species, your name, how many of you there are, and what language you speak.” he said.

“How do I do this?” Asked Raven, confused.

“Speak into the microphone,” he said, pointing at a small black wire sticking up, Raven bent over it.

“Uh, this is Raven Gray, my species is humanity, there’s… how many total, or how many that came through the Wormhole?” she inquired to Nadan.

“How many that came through the Wormhole, we don’t expect to make contact with the rest anytime soon.” he replied.

“139 people are here, and we speak English.” she finished.

“Okay, now that that’s all settled, we can get your crew and supplies on a new ship, and take you to another planet.”

“What’s wrong with the one we already have?”

“The only way we can get to these systems is through hyperspace, we don’t build Wormhole gates everywhere, and I doubt you want to be in space for decades on end.”

Nadan has a point, thought Raven, “Alright, well, I really want to stay, but I need to go back to my ship.”

“I understand, let’s go back,” replied Nadan, leaving the room, Raven and the others followed.

Raven’s head was pounding, both from the carbon dioxide levels, and the immense sights in front of her. “Excuse me, Raven, stay next to me,” came Nadan’s voice distantly, she shook herself away, and noticed she was walking off toward a large terminal surrounded by a large group of Aliens.

“Uh, okay,” she called back, the others were staring at her, but she could tell they wanted to wander off as well.

Several minutes later, they arrived at the airlock, and went back into the ship, where Lance, and Sage were in the bridge, when they walked down the ladder, they looked at the others in surprise, “Where did you guys go?” asked Sage, Raven looked at them with wide eyes, leaning back and forth on the balls of her feet, “Uh, well, I’ll let Nadan explain it.”

“Nadan,” asked Lance, “Who’s Nadan?”

“I am Nadan,” he said, walking in the bridge, Lance’s and Sage’s faces went from confusion to shock instantly. Lance pointed at Nadan silently, and opened and closed his mouth like a fish out of water.

Nadan turned to Raven, “I’ll be back tomorrow, it has been a pleasure meeting you, we’ll talk more later,” he said raising his hand, Raven stared at it, his fingers were as long as her hand, and had small claws on the end, she took it awkwardly, and shook it. “Well,” he said to the room at large, “I’ll see you all tomorrow,” he turned and walked back up the ladder.

“Well,” said Raven, biting her cheek, “I’m going to head to bed, see you tomorrow.”

The others looked between each other, and dispersed, Morales and Xavier slept on the bridge, talking about what they had seen excitedly.

 

Log 64

 

Hello, there has been a huge breakthrough in communication today, the Alien revealed himself to be named Nadan, and we got the opportunity to walk in the station, he’s coming back tomorrow, and will talk to us more. Anyway my mind is racing at a million kilometers per hour, and I need to try and get some sleep, I might need to call Lance.

‘Night.

 

End log

Please leave feedback, comments etc, that would be awesome

Edited March 14, 2017 by Spaceception

[Spaceception]

So what did you think of Chapter 5 of Infinitum? I could really use the feedback, so I know what I need to fix and/or improve in later drafts

[Spaceception]

So, after some consideration, I've decided that I'm only going to put the first 7 chapters up here, and once I'm done with the 2nd draft, I'll put the first two revised chapters up.

I'll still do progress updates, however, and publishing updates when the book is complete, and I'm looking to publish it.

@KAL 9000 @0111narwhalz You two will still see the full book, every draft, so I know how I'm going to improve it, and to everyone else, I'll give two more spots in the PM, the first 2 to ask can get added

Edited March 16, 2017 by Spaceception

[Spaceception]

Chapter 6! Now, you might be wondering, why is this text red? Well, one section in the chapter (You'll know it when you see it... I hope) might be fine, or it might not be, and I really need your guy's opinion.

Anyway enjoy

  Reveal hidden contents

Raven woke up the next morning, feeling excited and unsure at the same time, she quickly got dressed and walked to the bridge, where Morales and Xavier were slumped over chairs, snoring. Raven smiled, resisting the urge to wake them up, and went back up the ladder to get breakfast.

Morales stirred several minutes later, and got up rubbing his back, yawning, Was that a dream? He walked over to the hole where Nadan walked through, and examined it. He was peeking his head through, when he heard Raven’s voice suddenly, and hit his head on the metal overhang. “Morning Morales,” said Raven brightly, as she came down the ladder

He looked over, rubbing the top of his head, “Oh hey Raven,” he said tiredly, “I had the weirdest dream last night.”

“You sure it was a dream?”

“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “I’m not quite sure.”

“It wasn’t,” she said, walking over with breakfast, “Nadan will be back soon,” she said handing it over. Morales sat still for a moment, a childish grin spreading across his face.

“So all that walking around on the station, him talking, was real?”

“Yep, why would you think otherwise?” asked Raven, confused.

“Sleep deprivation, I mean, I could’ve had an elaborate dream, we were all pretty tired.”

“Well, it wasn’t a dream, I feel like a kid again, I hope he gets here soon,” said Raven ecstatically.

“Yeah,” said Morales through a mouthful of food, “I can’t wait, we should bring the others along.”

“Should we wake Xavier up?” asked Raven, Morales looked at Xavier for a moment, and turned back to Raven.

“Yeah, we should,” he said, bending over, and tapping his shoulder, “Hey man, wake up,” Xavier made a disgruntled noise, and turned his back on them. Morales sighed, and got up, clapping his hands loudly near his ear, Xavier shot up.

“Wha-,”

“Hey man, nice of you to join the party, come join us, will you?”said Morales, taking a drink, Xavier dragged himself towards them, tiredly.

“Yeah, thanks for that,” he mumbled.

“Hey,” he said, hitting his shoulder lightly, “I didn’t have to wake you up, I could’ve left you sleeping, and Raven and I could’ve gone of on the station by ourselves.”

“So, is Nadan here yet?” Morales shook his head.

“If he did, we’d be on the station by now, nah, we’re just waiting patiently, here, have some food,” he said, passing him a muffin, Xavier took a large bite.

The three ate in silence, waiting for Nadan to come through, checking the opening every so often, finally, after what seemed like forever, they heard the distant metal clanking of someone climbing down the ladder.

Raven’s stomach leapt, she snapped her head towards the opening, and walked over to it, bouncing on her feet in anticipation.

When Nadan walked in the bridge, he was wearing deep red clothes with a cape that had a metal chest piece. “Hello everyone,” he said, “How are you today? I found that’s a human greeting.” Raven noticed his voice was still monotone, but getting better His voice isn’t as raspy. She thought.

“We’re good, where are we going today?” she asked excitedly, she ignored the fact she was acting like a kid.

“We’re staying here,” he replied, I have much to tell you, then in a couple days, we will go back on the station, and you can find your planet.

“Oh, uh okay,” said Raven, disappointed.

“Are there others here? I thought I saw more of you when I first came here,” he asked.

“Yeah,” started Morales, “Should I go get them?”

“Please, do,” he replied.

Morales scaled the ladder quickly, and the three sat in awkward silence as they waited for him to come back, “So, uh, Nadan,” started Raven, rubbing her neck, “What kind of planet do you live on?”

“We should wait for everyone first,” he replied, Raven chewed on her cheek, and slowly nodded.

Almost half an hour later, they heard footsteps from the top, and looked up suddenly, Morales came down first, followed by Sage, Karol, Lance, Felicity, and Evan, their footsteps seemed much louder than usual without everything running and something happening, the sound of mag-boots clanging on metal ringing in her ears.

“Hello everyone,” said Nadan, Felicity, and Evan, who hadn’t been introduced yet, stood there with identical expressions on their faces, Morales smirked, and sat down next to Raven.

“Take a seat,” he said, patting the floor, “It’s storytime,” he said, turning back to Nadan with an eager expression on his face. Nadan looked at him, with what seemed to be a smile, Raven noticed. That’s really eerie.

“So, in order for you to take part in our government, we need to get you used to our culture, our worlds, our technology, and more. Culture can go later, technology and worlds can be explained much more easily to you.”

“Our planet is a tidally locked world with a massive hurricane on the front-side, water pools on the terminator, and underground oceans on the night-side, it has a thick atmosphere, and many diverse forms of life. This solar system has many planets, we’re in orbit around the third one. It’s a gas giant with several Asteroid Moons, two of which have Wormhole hubs built into them, we’re in the smaller of the two.”

Morales raised his hand awkwardly, “Yes?” asked Nadan.

“I was wondering, how common is life in this galaxy?”

“We’ve found it’s very common, and there are many planets nearby that have life, and many more that could if you give it the right push.”

“So how many, uh, intelligent lifeforms are there?”

“We don’t know for certain, but we know of several, more primitive civilizations, and eleven other advanced civilizations in active part of our government, now twelve.”

“So what’s your solar system like?” asked Felicity nervously, she was eyeing Nadan cautiously.

“It comprises of sixteen planets, and two stars, both M dwarfs, our home star has six planets, a hot ice giant, a hot desert, our planet, a warm ice giant, my homeworld, a temperate terran, a cool desert, and a cold ice giant.”

“Wouldn’t an ice giant so close cause problems?” asked Xavier.

“No, its fallen into a stable orbital system,” replied Nadan.

“Okay, what’s around the second star?” asked Karol.

“Two hot deserts, a Warm ice giant, a cool desert, a cold gas giant, and a cold ice world.”

“Wait,” said Lance after a moment, “That’s twelve planets, what about the other four?”

“Well, there’s also two binary systems orbiting both stars, a frozen ice giant, a frozen desert, and two frozen ice worlds.”

“Wow, that’s a lot of planets, have you colonized most of them?” said Sage.

“No, there’s uncrewed mining drones on many, but we prefer to colonize habitable planets.”

“What about faster than light travel?” asked Xavier, “It must take forever to set up Wormhole stations.”

“No, it doesn’t, we also have...” Nadan paused for a moment, thinking about the right word, “Hyperspace travel?” he asked unsure.

“Yes, that’s one proposed method of doing that.” said Xavier.

“Well, we also use that as a mode of transport, Wormholes are used for near, instantaneous travel between important systems, and Hyperspace is used for slower travel between lesser important systems.”

“How do you power something like that though?” asked Evan, “It must take an enormous amount of energy to power it.”

“We use...” Nadan paused for a moment again, “Micro black holes to power them, they’re also used as a source of propulsion.”

“Wow, that’s incredible, can I check out the specs?” asked Evan, awed.

“We can show you it when we get your crew on a new ship.”

“Yes!” he said grinning broadly.

“So, when we get our crew safely on our planet, could I, and maybe some of the others go across the galaxy with you?” asked Raven awkwardly.

“That was a plan, would your crew be alright without you?”

Raven paused for a moment, unsure, “Um, I don’t know-”

“I can stay,” piped in Karol.

“What? You don-”

“I don’t even want to explore really, I just wanted to leave the solar system and settle down somewhere,” she said.

“Well, we can assign members of my people to help with the colonization, since this is all rather strange for us, and your population is so small.”

“Really?” asked Raven hopefully, “Who else would be going?”

“Well,” started Morales, “I’m going to stick by my captain, no matter what, plus I really, really want to pilot an Alien ship,” he said grinning, Raven smiled.

“Thanks Morales, you always have my back.”

“Yes I do,” he said, poking her, “so who else is joining us?” he said looking around.

“I’d like to,” said Lance, dreamily, “I’ve always wanted to see space in all of its beauty.”

“I don’t know,” said Xavier, rubbing his neck, “part of me want’s to go with you, but I also want to help establish a colony.”

“Well, we don’t have to decide today, just sleep on it,” said Raven, Xavier nodded.

“I’m going to have to sleep on it as well,” said Felicity, “maybe I’ll join you for a few months and decide if I want to stay.”

Evan nodded, “Yeah, I think I’ll do the same thing, I don’t want to commit myself to a life I may not want, besides, I was also thinking of settling down.”

“Well,” said Raven, “I don’t really want to say goodbye, but as long as we can keep communicating, I’ll be happy.”

“So how did you guys figure out faster than light travel?” asked Morales

“Many, many years of research and development went into Wormhole travel,” said Nadan, leaning forward a bit, “At first, we had to travel between stars at sublight speeds, before setting up wormhole stations but eventually, we figured out Hyperspace travel.”

“How long did that take?” asked Xavier.

“It’s a very interesting, and tragic story, over eight hundred years ago, around our first interstellar colony, we found out the hard way about how Hyperspace travel works,” began Nadan, everyone leaned in.

 

Eight hundred twenty one years ago

 

“This is Alpha eight, resupply ship, heading for the Kelrak prime colony.” said Hariv into her mouthset. She was in a mechsuit, that allowed her to travel in vacuum and in atmosphere at will for short periods of time, without the bulk of older spacesuits.

“You are clear to enter,” said the stern station keeper of the Wormhole. In front of her was the Wormhole, a bright shimmering red gate, her visor allowed her to look directly at the Wormhole without going blind.

The alpha eight was a resupply ship that was used to supply the first, and so far only colony of the Kelrak species, it was designed to hold several months worth of supplies as the colony became self sustaining. So far it wasn’t, and there were only a couple thousand of them on the colony. This supply ship was late, but the colony was prepared, and had a couple months extra of food as backup.

Several seconds later, the ship entered, by now she was used to it, seeing space shrink down to nothing, then being replaced by an endless gray, with an odd feeling of absolutely no acceleration for a moment before space returning to normal, her first time through, she felt odd, but after a couple more trips through, the feeling went away.

When they got through, Hariv noticed the Wormhole looked strange, there were weird fluctuations, and the light seemed to be bent more than normal.

“Kelrak prime, this is Alpha resupply eight, we’re on our way to you now,” she said. She opened a channel to the Wormhole keeper, “What’s wrong with the Wormhole?” Whoever spoke to her sounded confused.

“I don’t know, it is acting odd, there’s weird data coming from it, we’ll send the data packet to you, and you can report it when you go back through.”

“Sounds good,” she replied, turning to her pilot, “Take us to a lower orbit so we can get ready for landing,”

“Yes, captain,” she said, taking the controls, and planning a trajectory.

The Wormhole continued giving odd fluctuations for the next several moments, suddenly, it looked warped and distorted,”Uh, what’s going on with the station?” she asked the station keeper, she couldn’t make anything out, everything was distorted by static, suddenly, the Wormhole became extremely bright, and before any of them could react, the massive explosion caught up to the spacecraft, destroying it.

From the surface of Kelrak prime, they could see a massive explosion, that continued giving off light days after the explosion, over the next several weeks, food dwindled down to nothing, the colonists tried building sustainable farms as fast as they could, and rationed as well as they could, but it was no use, after over a month after the Wormhole explosion, they were completely out of food, and showing the first signs of starvation. Some tried eating the native life forms, but they died eating it, the farms weren’t big enough for so many people, and there were riots over who got the food.

Meanwhile, in their home system, they saw the Wormhole get sucked into into something from out of nowhere, on their charts, they saw the Wormhole getting pulled into a higher dimension, similar to the one they tapped into with Wormholes, only there wasn’t a clear path, instead, it followed strange routes to the Kelrak prime colony.

When the second end of the Wormhole hits the exploded one, it immediately exploded, sending a second shockwave through, and brightening the sky again. Debris hit the atmosphere, creating something that appeared as a huge meteor shower, the colonists looked at it hopelessly, knowing they wouldn’t get help for years.

Back in the home system, they were building a new ship as fast as they could, loaded with years of food, water, and air, as well as lot’s of farming equipment. They fueled it with antimatter, and sent it on it’s way. About seven years later, after traveling at eighty-five percent of the speed of light, they arrived to find less than fifty survivors, who were only weeks from starving to death. They were horrified to learn in order to survive they had to eat the remains of dead colonists. They sent down the supplies, and helped the colonists cope with what they did, after over twelve years, another ship came, with more colonists, supplies, and a Wormhole gate, the ship was fitted with an experimental Hyperspace drive, and it only took a couple weeks to get there.

 

“After that horrible accident, we made sure that it would never happen again, and took extreme measures to insure it would never happen,” finished Nadan, everyone had a look of horror and shock on their faces. They were silent for several moments, then Xavier spoke quietly.

“How did the Wormhole explode in the first place?” asked Xavier, he said, not meeting Nadan’s eyes.

“It was a foolish mistake with the calculations, due to the nature of faster than light travel. There’s always some catch with it, and if you don’t account for it, you pay the price,” Nadan looked at all of them, and continued, “Most of the ships only went one way, and that’s where we messed up, one end of the Wormhole, the end in our home system, was gaining mass every time a ship went through, while the end in the Kelrak prime system was losing mass, occasionally, it was offset by ships that went both ways, but it was a small Wormhole, and more ships went one way than ones that went both ways.”

“I don’t follow,” said Felicity, “Why is that a problem?”

Nadan raised his hand for silence, “Eventually, the Wormhole had negative mass, or, should I say, appeared to have negative mass, the tunnel itself had to have negative mass in order to stay open, but there was so much, it appeared that the gate which kept it open also had negative mass. This caused it to become unstable, and it expanded too fast and too large for the gate to handle, so it exploded. Because both ends were connected, the end in our system was pulled into Hyperspace, where it collided with the destroyed gate, and exploded.”

“And after that?” asked Morales.

“We made sure that there was a balance, so that both ends always had plenty of positive mass, we also made them much bigger, just in case, to make sure that even if all ships went one way, it would take sometime before both ends exploded.”

“So, I guess we kinda messed up that one Wormhole we came through, huh?” asked Morales.

“Yes, but your ship was very small, it can be offset quite easily,” he replied.

“Has that happened since?”

“No, we’ve done our best to make sure it never happens again, and we are doing admirably, now, that’s enough for today, it’s a lot of information that you need to process, so I have some questions for you,” he said.

“Okay,” said Raven, “Anything.”

“Why did you leave your people?”

Raven looked between the others, “We didn’t want a life of oppression, the outer colonies were overpopulated and rundown, the inner system only gave us the resources to keep us alive, they didn’t help upgrade or anything, they only really paid attention to Callisto and Titan, everywhere else was just extra. I mean, sometimes, they lifted us out of really bad situations, like when crime lords tried to take over Mimas,” the others nodded remembering that, it was a really bad several months for all of them, “Titan didn’t have the manpower to stop them, so Mars stepped in and suppressed them, they gave us some extra supplies, but as soon as they helped they backed away, only doing something when it was really bad.”

Nadan considered that for a moment, “Then how did you end up here?”

“The inner system was developing a Wormhole program so they could get supplies to Proxima Centauri faster, the one way gate was very experimental, only for data collection so they knew how to make a connected one, it was small too, not much wider than the ship.”

“And they let you go through it?” he asked curiously.

“Yeah, I think they were expecting us to die in it, or wherever we ended up. The only reason I can think of for why they let us through is to see if a ship could even pass through, and we were the willing guinea pigs in their eyes.” chipped in Morales.

They sound like horrible people,” he said.

“Most of them are,” agreed Raven, “but I’ve met some, and they’re not all bad, it’s mostly their governments, only concerned with themselves.”

“What about the colony, around, Proxima, Cen, Cen-”

“Centuari,” said Raven, “And it’s the closest star to Earth, other than our sun. It has two planets orbiting it, one of them is about the size of our planet, it was first found in the early twenty-first century, and was almost habitable, when they got there, with uncrewed exploration drones, they found a barren desert with a weak magnetic field, thin atmosphere, and a small ice cap on its night-side.”

“You’re trying to colonize that?” asked Nadan.

“Not me, Earth, none of the other colonies has really high gravity, so only people on Earth can colonize it. And they didn’t start off colonizing it, they created a space station, and began terraforming it, by creating an artificial magnetic field in one of its Lagrange points. Then they started mining the second planet out for water, and bringing ice from the night side to thaw it out, and thicken the atmosphere.”

“How long did that take?”

“It’s an ongoing process, but it’s taking a very long time, they need supplies and colonists from the solar system, and that takes almost eleven years one way, that’s why they were building the Wormhole, so they could get supplies there almost instantly.”

“How far have they gotten?” asked Nadan, leaning forward a bit, Raven noticed his tail was moving more than usual.

“I’m not sure exactly how far they’ve gotten, the light delay is over four years, and I didn’t keep up with it in the months preceding our launch, but last I heard, they were able to triple the atmosphere pressure, and warm the planet to above freezing, there’s even liquid water pooling on the surface, I saw some pictures from space and on the ground, apparently, it’s starting to rain.”

“Wow, despite the long travel times, they’re moving quickly,” said Nadan.

“Yup,” said Raven, eager to talk, “We’ve learned a ton from terraforming Venus and Mars, that and Proxima b was pretty good when they got there, it already had a reasonably thick atmosphere, just way to thin for humans, but almost fine for water, and temperatures not too far below freezing, and it did have a lot of water, just on the night-side.”

“What about its magnetic field?” asked Nadan, despite being excited she was teaching him something, Raven noticed his speech patterns were becoming more human, and less automatic.

“It was really weak, Proxima b is tidally locked, it couldn’t hold a large Moon, and there weren’t any planets close by to give it a dynamo effect, but it had an iron core larger than Earth’s, so it had a weak magnetic field, just strong enough to shield its thin atmosphere, but not nearly enough to protect it from flares and radiation.”

“So they built an artificial one?” he asked.

“Yes, they put it in the L1 position, between Proxima b, and Proxima Centauri, it was made from carbon nanotubes, and is several times stronger than Earth’s, after they built it, they began mining water from the night-side, and bringing it to the day-side, where it evaporated into the atmosphere, making it thicker, and warming the planet.”

“Well, we have similar ways of terraforming, how long did the planetary engineers think it would take?”

“Well, in the last estimate, I think they said close to five hundred years,” said Raven, “How long does it take you to terraform planets?”

“It depends, for the most hostile ones we’ve attempted, around fifty years, and for the ones that mostly just need atmosphere changes, around ten.”

“Wow, that’s really fast, how do you do that?” asked Evan impressed.

“We have faster than light travel, and extremely large ships, with both, we have the ability to do almost anything,” he said, getting up, and turning for the entrance.

“Wait, where are you going?” asked Raven, walking up to him.

“We will pick this back up tomorrow, in the meantime, I need to go back on the station.”

“Oh,” she said, her face falling, “Okay.”

“And tomorrow, we will discuss your ship, and your planet.”

Raven’s face lit back up, “Really?”

“Yes, it’s getting time to get you off of this station, we shouldn’t be keeping you here.”

“Alright, we’ll see you tomorrow then,” she said, offering her hand, Nadan took it, and left, Raven listened to his heavy steps getting quieter and quieter as he climbed up the ladder.

Raven turned to the others, “So, we’ll be leaving soon, at least we have some news the crew will like,” Morales nodded.

“Yeah, that’s probably the only news they’ll listen to these days,” said, getting up, and stretching, “Anyway, I’m hungry, anyone coming with me to raid the kitchens?” Felicity, Sage, and Lance followed him up the ladder, and Raven turned to the others.

“So, we should probably eat as well, you don’t need to worry about working right now, you guys have done a lot.”

“Okay, I’m just so excited, when do you think we’ll leave?”

“Well, Nadan did say we’ll be getting a new ship when we went on the station, so that’s probably going to take awhile, but I don’t expect it to take that long, if they can terraform as fast her says,” she yawned, “I’m going to go up to the kitchens, see you,” she said waving to them, and going up the ladder.

 

Tow hours later

 

Log 65

 

Today, we’ve been learning about Nadan and the Kelraks, his species, I just got finished with dinner, and I’m getting ready for bed, he’ll be back tomorrow, and will be taking us back on the station, I’m so excited, I honestly haven’t felt this way since I was a kid, anyway, good night, I’m really tired, luckily I feel I can sleep without meds.

 

End log

Also, over 21.5k words finished

[Nailed it!]

  On 3/19/2017 at 10:57 PM, Spaceception said:

Chapter 6! Now, you might be wondering, why is this text red? Well, one section in the chapter (You'll know it when you see it... I hope) might be fine, or it might not be, and I really need your guy's opinion.

Anyway enjoy

Also, over 21.5k words finished

Expand  

Nice job @Spaceception ! You are nailing the book!

But I think you need more full stops (this: .  Don't really know the name because I'm Spanish)

Don't get me wrong, the book it's perfectly understandable, but do you think anyone could say a whole paragraph in a full breath?

Anyway, apart from that, good work!

Edited March 22, 2017 by Nailed it!
Deleting the chapter from the previous post. Done!

[Spaceception]

  On 3/21/2017 at 5:24 PM, Nailed it! said:

Nice job @Spaceception ! You are nailing the book!

But I think you need more full stops (this: .  Don't really know the name because I'm Spanish)

Don't get me wrong, the book it's perfectly understandable, but do you think anyone could say a whole paragraph in a full breath?

Anyway, apart from that, good work!

Expand  

Thanks

And, small request, can you remove the chapter from your quote? All you need to do is click on the box a couple times and backspace.

[Spaceception]

I found a new Nova system in space engine, and it's glorious

[Spaceception]

Still looking for 1 person for the beta-reader PM Leave a comment if you want it, you'll see all drafts, and will be the first to see major updates.

Edited April 1, 2017 by Spaceception
Don't need anyone else.

[Spaceception]

Wow, we're here, that was quick, I'm now 1/4 of the way finished with Infinitum, 25.8k words out a planned minimum of 100k words, or 28 planned chapters.

Your guy's support has been awesome, and greatly appreciated, without the forums, I don't think I would've ever started writing without them. So a big thank you to anyone who's even read a chapter of my work, I will be updating here, and on my profile as I continue, and I really hope I can get this published.

Btw, this ended up being longer than planned, 4.2k words total, I expected around 3.5k.

So here's Chapter 7, A new home

  Reveal hidden contents

When Raven got to the bridge with breakfast, she was surprised to find that Nadan was accompanied by three other Aliens, one of them a Kelark, but the Alien on his right was short and stocky, and looked amphibious, she could see water being transferred to its gills, the one next to it was about as tall as Nadan, and looked avian, it had two sets of wings, and was very thin, with large talons for fingers. All four were wearing robes.

The others were already there, and looked over at Raven, when she got there, “Oh, hey Raven,” said Morales, “Nadan brought some friends.”

“Okay, so I assume we’ll be going up to the station now?”

“Yes, we will be your guides, after that, we will go visit the ship we are building for you, and you will look through our planet catalogs to find yourself a new home.”

Raven smiled, she realized she hadn’t thanked them much since they got here, and paused for a moment before continuing, “Thank you for your generosity, and thank you for building us a new ship,”

“The pleasure is mine,” replied Nadan, “We are very pleased to be making your acquaintance, now, if you’ll follow us,” he said turning, and climbing up the ladder.

“So what’s up with all of the thank yous?” muttered Morales when Raven walked past.

“We haven’t thanked them much, and look at what they’re giving us,” she muttered.

“Don’t lay it on too thick, or they might take it the wrong way,’ he muttered back as she holstered herself on the ladder. When they were all at the top, they squeezed into the airlock.

“So sorry for this, it was all done rather quickly,” said Nadan, who pushed between his fellow Kelrack, and the bird-like Alien. Raven didn’t really know Alien emotions, but she thought they looked uncomfortable.

“So, what are your names?” she asked.

“The bird-like Alien replied first, “My name is Joorgan, I am pleased to meet you,” Joorgan said, Raven thought his speech patterns sounded like someone who tried talking when they had a bad sore throat. The Kelrak to Nadan’s left spoke next, but his speech sounded more normal I wonder if Nadan has been teaching them our language. Wondered Raven.

“My name is Urv,” Urv said. The amphibious Alien didn’t speak, but instead wrote something down in rough English.

“Fadet?” asked Raven, Nadan nodded, “Why can’t you speak?” she asked.

“Fadet can only ‘speak’ properly when he’s underwater,” replied Nadan, “he comes from an oceanic world, almost no land, some sub-species were able to become amphibious and work on the land, while the rest worked underwater, it took them a very long time to develop technology. We actually stepped in when they got steam working,” he said, Fadet nodded in confirmation, “This was about eighty years before you showed up,” he said, pausing for a moment, “Not many our in our government, and they haven’t colonized any worlds outside of their solar system, but they’re advancing rapidly.”

“How do they communicate?” asked Karol, interested.

“Sonar,” replied Nadan, “It took us awhile to figure out how to translate it, but even still we’re still having some trouble in some area’s. Luckily they had written language, but it takes a long time, we’re actually still working on a translator.”

“And the others?” Morales asked, he was squished in the corner behind Sage and Xavier.

Joorgan replied, “I come from a low gravity world with a thick atmosphere, under this gravity, and atmospheric pressure, I cannot fly, but on my planet, I can soar for hours without getting tired.”

“Low gravity? Wouldn’t your planet lose it’s heating and become uninhabitable?” asked Xavier.

“No, our planet is in a binary system, the primary planet is a desert world not too much larger than ours, and the system orbits on the outer edge of the habitable zone.”

“So what’s the gravity on your planet?” asked Felicity.

“It’s about twenty-eight percent of what you’re used to.” Joorgan replied.

“So, this must be hard on you, sixty percent of what we’re used to is over twice what you’re used to,” said Morales, “How do you cope? I mean, you could make your bones denser, do more training, but that could hinder your flight abilities, right?”

“It does, a bit,” he confirmed, “but not by much, my wings suffer the most however, in fact without years of preparatory training, I could die in a rocket launch,” Morales looked at him wide-eyed.

“So, I’m guessing liftoff gees are as low as possible?”

“Back in the old days, yes, but now we use space elevators, we still do rocket training, but not many still use them, mostly only military personnel.”

“What about Fadet’s species?” asked Sage.

“Their bodies are pretty well suited for spaceflight, provided they can breathe water during it, usually however, they’re put under and sleep through the entire launch, if they’re not trained. But they prefer space elevators as well,” said Nadan, “Okay, the airlock has finished cycling, let’s go,” he said, squeezing past the others, and leading them out.

“And you Urv?” asked Karol, as they trotted behind Nadan.

“I’m an engineer, I work on on the flagship you will be stationed on.” Urv replied.

“And uh,”started Evan awkwardly, “What gender can we refer to you to?”

“I would be closer to female,” she replied., Evan nodded.

“Flagship?” inquired Raven.

“Yes, Nadan told me some of you want to take part in the galactic government, is that so?” Raven nodded.

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“Well, you need a ship, don’t you? After we’re finished looking at the ship most of your crew will be on, and you’ve chosen a suitable planet they can colonize, you will take a tour on the flagship, now, we’re told you get dizzy from our atmosphere,” Raven nodded.

“Yeah, it sometimes felt my head was pounding,” she said.

Urv nodded, “Well, your rooms will have independent life-support systems so you can alter the composition when you go to sleep, we can also provide you with a small mask, it’s transparent, and will filter out most of the carbon dioxide, this way you don’t have to breathe it too much.”

“Thank you,” will the mask alter the way I talk?”

“Not really, and you will barely notice it’s there, so make sure you take it off before eating,” Raven laughed.

“No problem, I don’t want to do something embarrassing in front of you guys.”

“Follow me,” said Nadan, he was walking towards what looked like an elevator. When everyone was on it, he spoke into a mic with a strange hissing, and they shot up.

Raven watched the station get smaller and smaller, the various levels whipping past her faster than she could see. She tried leaning forward to see the bottom, but Urv pulled her back.

“Not a good idea,” she said.

“How big is this place?” she asked.

The station is about, um, give me a moment, two kilometers tall, four kilometers wide, and over a hundred and fifty kilometers long, it can hold several million Aliens on any given day.”

Raven didn’t reply, she was busy watching the station whip past her, on one level, she saw someone flying with a jetpack, and on another, a huge crowd. She didn’t see it long enough to make everything out, but she was entranced all the same. The lights whipped past her in streaks, some were orange, some were blue, others were white, there were even green lights.”

“What’s with all of the different lighting colors?”

“The Aliens on this station have different suns, some have similar suns to us, so they’re used to dim lighting, while others grew up around brighter ones, so the lights are brighter, some stations we will go to will have much brighter lights.” replied Nadan. A couple minutes later, when they were at what Raven assumed was there level, Nadan stepped off, and walked inside a much wider room.

“What this?” asked Raven.

“Another airlock, this one leads to one of many spaceports on the station, where thousands of ships come and leave every day.” he replied, cycling it, Raven thought they could fit the entire crew in here without much discomfort. After it was finished cycling, Nadan stepped out with the others close behind him. Raven gasped, there were thousands of ships leaving and docking to the station, it was brightly lit with white LED’s, and glass walls allowed her to see everything, outside the station, she could see the crescent of the gas giant outside the station, and blue engine trails for ships slowly exiting the station, before the space around them warped and the ships vanished.

“This is definitely more impressive than the solar system.” Morales said, standing next to her. Raven nodded.

“Yeah, it is,” she said, stunned.

“Follow me,” said Nadan, after giving them a couple moments to absorb the view. Raven tore her attention from the port, and followed closely behind him.

“Where are we going now?” asked Raven, trying to keep up with his wide strides.

“Right now we’re on our way to your crew’s ship, now, because it isn’t high priority, it’s closer to the back, so we’ll be taking a small ship that will take us there,” he replied.

Raven followed them up to the rail which was attached to the wall, and she watched as the ships whipped by. “How long is this port?” she wondered, feeling herself being pushed up against her seat.

“It’s about a hundred and fifty kilometers long, and about seventy kilometers wide, and built into the Asteroid,” he replied.

“That’s larger than the spaceport at Mimas,” said Morales shocked.

“Yeah,” she said pushing her face against the glass, how long did it take them to build this? She thought, “A couple could easily fit. In here, if it were empty.”

Morales and Xavier went off with Urv to explore the ship as they traveled to their ship, Raven watched as they chatted excitedly with her, She looks annoyed. Thought Raven, amused.

 

“So how many of these ships are there?” asked Morales, grinning, he couldn’t keep his attention on anything, and Urv kept having to pull him away from anything he could mess up.

“Several thousand, they’re used to transport cargo and crew between ships, for humans, it could hold several hundred people,” she said, pulling him away from a room full of busy Aliens.

“So, could I pilot one of these ships someday?” asked Morales, staring at the bridge crew.

“And let you destroy everything? Not anytime soon.”

Xavier laughed, “Oh, Morales,” he doubled over laughing, Morales shot him a glare.

“Shut up man,” he said, trying to be serious, but he looked amused.

“Could you teach me someday?”

“I’m an engineer, not a pilot, no I cannot teach you,” she said, going towards the back of the ship.

“Where are we going?” asked Xavier.

“To the engineering bay,” she replied, when they got there, she showed them the propulsion bay, “These ships are powered by Fusion thermal engines, they have a fair amount of thrust, and are also used for landing shuttles,” she said, showing them a diagram on the panel/

“What about thrusters?”

“We use cold gas, same as you, but for larger ships, we have to use chemical rockets, reaction controls are also used, but they take to long to turn a rocket,” she explained, a couple Kelraks walked past them, deaf to what they were doing, Xavier gaped at them.

“”How long does it take to go from one side to the other?” he asked.

“A few hours give or take, it’s very large, and we have to be careful of other ships like these, it’s extremely crowded in here.”

“How many are on here right now?” asked Morales, “We can’t be the only ones for such a large ship.”

“Several hundred others in various crew bays, we’ll be making a few stops on the way to our ships,”

Over the next hour, Xavier and Morales watched as hundreds of Aliens stepped off the shuttle to their ships, they had to stay pressed in the back to avoid being accidentally put on other ships.

“This place is extremely busy,” said Morales, the side of his face pushed up against the glass in order to see the ships leaving the port, “Which ship do you think is ours?”

“Well,” started Xavier, looking towards the end of the port, “It’s probably not very big, and it’s probably still in construction.”

“Do you think the design is based on our ships?” asked Morales.

“Hmm, probably not,” said Xavier thoughtfully, “The inside, maybe, but the outside probably looks like their ships,” he said, surveying the end of the port.

“So, it’s smaller than what we’re seeing, at the end of the line, and is probably still in construction,” said Morales ticking off his fingers. “Well, we have something to work off of, what should we bet on?”

“I’m not betting with you Morales, let’s just try to do something without betting on anything,” said Xavier, looking at Morales.

Morales sighed, “Fine, whatever,” he said staring out into the port, “So which one do you think it is?

Xavier shrugged “I’m not sure, why are they so big though?” he replied.

“Because they’re powered by black holes,” said Urv, Xavier and Morales jumped.

“Oh, hey, Urv, didn’t see you there,” said Morales.

“I noticed,” Her voice is really creepy. He thought.

“How big are the smallest ones?” asked Xavier.

“Around three kilometers,” she replied, Xavier’s eyes widened.

“That big? For the smallest ships? That’s bigger than the Infinitum, how big is the crew?” he said, scanning the back of the port. Urv walked next to him.

“Around seventy,” she replied.

“Huh, for a ship capable of FTL travel, that’s not a big crew,” said Morales.

“Most of the ship volume goes to black hole, and FTL hardware, if you take it away, the ship isn’t really all that big.”

“Hmm, I’m going to need to take a look at those specs,” said Xavier, impressed. Urv walked behind them.

“So you’re trying to find your ship?”

“Yeah,” replied Xavier, turning his attention back to the port, “Which one is it?”

“I can’t see it from here,” she replied.

“Alright, well, I think that one is ours,” he said, pointing at one near the back.

“Well, I think that one is ours,” Morales said, pointing at one slightly closer.

“Now we have ship candidates,” said Xavier.

“And hence, the waiting game begins,” replied Morales.

“There’s hundreds of ships in the back, how do you expect to find one out of all of those?” asked Urv.

“Don’t know,” admitted Morales cheerfully, “But we’ll find out soon enough.”

 

“So how will we find our planet candidate?” asked Raven to Nadan.

“You’ll look through a catalog with your crew here, you can search based on size, temperature, parent star, and more,” he replied.

“How many are there? And how far does it go?” she asked.

“There’s thousands, that goes on for a couple thousand light years. Obviously we haven’t looked at every star, some are unsuitable for instance, but for the most part, we’ve found a fair amount.”

“What do you recommend? Not the planet, but how far do you think we should look?”

“I think you should find a planet at least six hundred light years away, that is how far our reach goes, we can also point you in a direction without many other Alien civilizations.”

Raven nodded, and got up, stretching, “Alright, so, Karol, what do you think we should look for?”

Karol thought for a moment, “Probably somewhere with about sixty percent of Earth gravity or lower, either tidally locked to a dim star, or having a decent rotational period if not.”

“Wouldn’t a planet with such a low gravity have a weakened magnetic field?” she asked.

“Perhaps, but we can always build an artificial magnetic field when we get there.”

“How long does that take?” Raven asked Nadan, “it took engineers around Proxima b over fifty years to build the basic structure, and another forty to activate it.”

“It’ll take us around a year or two to fully construct and activate it.” he replied.

“So terraforming would take a very short time, especially if the planet is already partially habitable,” said Karol.

Raven looked out the window, she supposed they were almost there, since the end of the port was taking up her view from where she was standing, “How long until we get there?”

“Around half an hour,” replied Nadan, “Not too long.”

“Okay, I wonder where Morales and Xavier are.”

“Probably running around like lunatics, they got adjusted to all of this fast,” said Sage, laying on the bench.

Karol leaned forward, “So about Morales, you tow have been together more often since we got here,” she said slyly.

“He’s my first officer, he’s been helping me out with all of this,” said Raven awkwardly.

Even edged himself off of his chair with Lance, and they quietly walked out of the room, while the others watched interested.

“Okay, I get that, but he’s also been in your room a lot too,” she said.

“Are you spying on me?” she asked, defensively.

“What? No, It’s a small ship, I just think there’s something going on between you two,”

“Well nothing is going on between us,” she snapped.

“What was that?” asked Morales, walking in with Xavier and Urv. Raven’s expression went blank.

“Nothing, where were you?” she said, feeling her face burning.

“We were exploring the ship, Xavier and I have a bet going on-.”

“No we don’t,” interjected Xavier, “We didn’t bet on anything.”

“Well, what are you ‘betting’ on?” asked Sage, tilting her head back to see Morales.

“Not much, we were just trying to see if we could find the ship before we got there.” he said, plopping down next to Raven. “Oh, and Urv say’s we’ll be there in about twenty minutes,” said Morales leaning back.

“Alright,” said Raven, trying to avoid stares from Karol.

Nadan got up, and looked outside, “We’re almost there, that’s our ship,” he said pointing at one outside. Morales and Xavier shot up, and peered out the window to see what he was pointing at.

“Welp, looks like neither of us are right!” said Morales.

“Whatever,” he said, sitting back down, and waiting for the shuttle to arrive at the ship.

When the shuttle docked to the port bay, Nadan led them off to the bridge of their ship, where they saw several Kelraks working in it, it was several times larger than the one on the Infinitum, and was much taller to account for their height. Raven and the others had to rub their eyes to get used to the room, and they bumped into stuff, since the ship wasn’t providing gravity. The room was dimly lit, and there were large control panels screens around the bridge, and the seats looked odd to Raven’s eye, They must be designed for comfort, I must not be fun sitting on a tail.

“How do you guy’s do high-g maneuvers with those seats?” Asked Raven grabbing on to the edge of a panel to avoid floating off..

“It’s a bit hard on us, but there’s padding on it that makes it less uncomfortable,” he said, turning to her, “Additionally, there’s a special sleeve on it that keeps our tails still,” he said, pushing him towards the chairs, and bringing up a large padded sleeve for them to see. Nadan straightened up, and slowly turned around motioning them to follow him, making sure to not accidentally hit them with his tail.

“This will be the bridge crew,” said Nadan, “You will merely be passengers on this ship, but as some of you expressed interest in it, we will be willing to train you to be crew,” Evan’s, Xavier’s and Morales’ faces lit up with excitement. “I’ll show you to the crew bay for your crew, it’s separate from my people’s bay, and is closer to the back,” he said passing them, “Then you can find a suitable planet for you to colonize.”

After a lot of floating around, they made it to their crew bay, Raven immediately noticed it was much more brightly lit then the rest of the ship, but was more or less the same as the rest of the ship. The only thing she noticed was similar to what they used was in the mess hall and quarters which were based on human designs.

“Did you get all of this from our computers?” she asked Nadan.

“Mostly, I also saw some of it when I walked around your ship a couple weeks ago.” he replied.

“Hmm,” started Evan, looking around, “Not bad, some of our crew may feel a bit strange, but it looks really good.” Raven nodded in agreement.

“We’ll make the announcement tonight during dinner, uh, could you talk to them?” she asked Nadan.

“No, tomorrow,” interjected Morales, “They’re already stressed out, and scared of them, we need to assure them that Nadan and the Kelraks are on our side,” he said, looking at Nadan, “You can speak with them tomorrow, we’ll tell them about the ship, and the planet we’’ll be colonizing. Raven can tell them about you and how you can speak English.” Nadan nodded.

“That sounds like a good idea,” he said, “I will see to it I’ll put on something, less… frightening for your crew,” he said.

“In my opinion,” said Sage, hooking her foot on a table, “You don’t look frightening, you look badass,” Nadan smiled, his skin stretching oddly.

“Thank you, but I don’t think your crew will feel the same, now, you’ve seen your ship, let us find you a planet,” he said, floating out of the room, the others followed closely behind him.

 

“So, this is our navigation bay,” said Nadan to the others, here you can look through our exoplanet data, and find a planet,” Raven floated forward, and tapped the screen, which was all translated to English.

“So, how do I do this?” she asked.

“Just set your criteria, and the list will sort itself with the closest thing to what you are looking for,” he replied. Raven looked through the various options, and sorted through the lists.

“So what kind of planet do you guys want to live on?” she asked the others.

“Something with about the same amount of gravity as the Mimas colony,” said Karol.

“Okay,” she said, setting the size, immediately, she was met with a huge list of habitable planets orbiting all kinds of stars, some of them were highlighted dark green, and others dark blue. “What do these colors mean?” asked Raven to Nadan.

“Blue means it’s colonized, and green means there’s life of some kind,” he replied.

Raven nodded, “Okay, I’ll sort through the ones with life that aren’t colonized, that way it’s easier to terraform if it’s required,” she said refining the list, it shortened down to less than a hundred planets.

“That’s still a lot,” said Morales, floating next to Raven, “What about atmospheric conditions? Let’s sort through ones with atmospheres more than sixty percent of normal pressure, to a hundred and twenty percent normal pressure,” he said, tapping the screen, the list went from ninety-eight planets to fifty-three.

“We should also sort through ones with likely water on their surfaces,’ he said tapping the screen again, the list shortened to thirty-two. “Alright, we have thirty-two planets to go through, we don’t have pictures, but we have basic conditions, so don’t tell me you want a mountain world,’ he said, looking over his shoulder to them.

“Okay, the planet should orbit a sun-like star. K or G type, maybe the dimmer F type ones would be good as well,” said Karol, the others nodded in agreement. Raven sorted through the last again, and was met with seven remaining planets.

“Okay, seven planets left, we’re getting close, so come up here and see which one would be best for colonization.,” she said, backing away.

“You aren’t choosing it?” asked Lance.

“No, you guy’s should, we have our basic criteria, now go wild,” she said smiling at them, floating next to Nadan, after over half an hour of arguing, they finally agreed on one, a Terran Moon almost eight hundred light years away.

“Okay, Nadan, we have a planet, how long would it take to get there?” asked Morales.

Nadan floated towards the panel, and turned the language back to his own, How do you read that? Thought Raven, looking at the symbols curiously.

“Well, through Wormhole gates, we’ll be able to get within forty light years of the system, the rest we’ll have to use the Hyperspace drives for,” he said, “Good choice by the way.”

Raven nodded “We’ll tell the crew when we get back on our ship,” she said, “I hope they’re going to be pleased.”

“Well, we should get back to your ship, it’s going to take awhile,” he said. The others followed him out, back onto the shuttle, and went back to their ship.

 

Log 66

 

So today we were able to enter our ship that will take the crew to our chosen planet, on the way back, Nadan said we’ll be entering the flagship soon. The crew took the news well, this is probably the first time I’ve really seen them excited, but they’re a bit apprehensive of Nadan, which is understandable.

It’s really late, again, man, I should really start getting to bed earlier, anyway, G’night.

 

End log

Also, can you guys tell me if the chapter titles are good or not? I may also be posting chapter titles as I finish them

Edited March 26, 2017 by Spaceception

[Nailed it!]

  On 3/26/2017 at 3:52 AM, Spaceception said:

Wow, we're here, that was quick, I'm now 1/4 of the way finished with Infinitum, 25.8k words out a planned minimum of 100k words, or 28 planned chapters.

Your guy's support has been awesome, and greatly appreciated, without the forums, I don't think I would've ever started writing without them. So a big thank you to anyone who's even read a chapter of my work, I will be updating here, and on my profile as I continue, and I really hope I can get this published.

Btw, this ended up being longer than planned, 4.2k words total, I expected around 3.5k.

Sod here's Chapter 7, A new home

Also, can you guys tell me if the chapter titles are good or not? I may also be posting chapter titles as I finish them

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Cool! I'm curious about the appearance of the planet. 

But that problem with the comas is still there, but it was reduced. 

[Spaceception]

  On 3/26/2017 at 3:37 PM, Nailed it! said:

Cool! I'm curious about the appearance of the planet. 

But that problem with the comas is still there, but it was reduced. 

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Thanks!

I'm working on it.

And to everyone else, I am no longer taking betas for the PM.

Edited March 26, 2017 by Spaceception

[Spaceception]

Hey guys! During the month of April, I'll be doing camp NaNoWriMo, with the goal of finishing most (But hopefully all) of Infinitum.

I'll be doing updates every day (Or hopefully every day), so keep a lookout, since I won't be updating the title.

[Spaceception]

  On 2/22/2017 at 9:56 PM, Slam_Jones said:

Always stoked to see a young writer enjoying their craft!

Keep up the good work!

One minor comment: IMO, the intro is not exactly gripping.  Rather than "Hello, today is _____ and my name is _______," I prefer intros more along the line of "The black infinity stretched before him, devoid of stars.  Touching the viewport, his pale fingers created small clouds of condensation against the frozen glass..."

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I thought of something else (Still a WIP though)

Raven woke up, groggily, and tiredly walked towards her window, watching Mimas rotate underneath her, as her reflection showed her how nervous she was.
*Today, we're leaving for the wormhole* she thought in disbelief, pressing her palm against the glass, smiling softly out of nerves.
"Let's get to work," she said to no one
Nothing would be the same after today.

[Spaceception]

Happy April fools day, what did you do today? Here's a Camp NaNo update!

Today, I've written 1,068 words on Chapter 8 (And overall for NaNo), and 26.9k overall, we're making some progress

[Spaceception]

Day 2! Camp NaNo update!

I've written over 2.5k words today! But I'm still 1.4k words behind if I want to finish on time, and about 29.5k overall  

[Spaceception]

Day 3! Camp NaNo update!

I've written around 2.5k words today! ~6.2k words total for NaNo, and 32k words overall

But I'm 1.3k  words behind

[Spaceception]

Day 4 over! And what a day! I've written over 3.2k words today, 9.4k words total, and I'm only 600 words behind!!

I WILL catch up tomorrow, I can do it!

The little Spaceception that could

Anyway, over 35k words overall, and almost finished with Chapter 9! I'm so happy!

[fredinno]

H O L Y  S H I T  F A M

 

Look at me, writing 500 words in a day if I'm lucky. (usually nothing at all)

 

What are you, a full-time writer? Geebus!

Edited April 5, 2017 by fredinno

[0111narwhalz]

  On 4/5/2017 at 6:43 AM, fredinno said:

What are you, a full-time writer?

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During NaNoWriMo, every participant is a full-time author.

[fredinno]

  On 4/5/2017 at 7:50 AM, 0111narwhalz said:

During NaNoWriMo, every participant is a full-time author.

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I couldn't do that even as a full timer.