Into The Court Of Autumn

Posted on Mon Mar 11th, 2019 @ 11:38pm by
Edited on on Mon Mar 11th, 2019 @ 11:40pm

429 words; about a 2 minute read

Mission: S1:4: A Murder Of Crows
Location: Beacon star system.
Timeline: MD63 1015AM

The ageing star had many names. Over the centuries as its hydrogen fuel supply ran low, and it began to fuse iron to become a rust-tinted ember in the night sky, it had signalled the downfall of kings and the accession of prophets. But it had never harboured life. Its worlds had been rocky, airless husks battered by constant debris impacts. There had been no comforting gas giants to sweep away the clutter of stellar formation, and so its cradles had been smashed repeatedly again and again.

To the people of Perambulation, the star had been called The Angry Mother.
To the people of Xilos, it had been the central star in the constellation of The Raging Storm.
And to the crew of the Traveller, unknowable to the ways of Messier 4, they had named the star Beacon.

The Traveller dropped out of warp with the sort of shuddering reversion to normal space reserved for the truly weary. From a distance she still held onto her dignity, her streamlined sprinters build, the honed edges of her weapons cleared and free. But up close the marks of damage could be seen. The tell-tale flicker on her port nacelle that spoke of impending coil failure, the odd wrinkling of her hull plates on her lower hull where the of another star had heat had warped them.

A place of rest and repair was required and had been found.

The ships deflector dish worked overtime to clear a path through the dust-filled space of Beacon, the red giant at the heart of the star alighting the dust cloud in oranges and full reds. A place of autumnal change. Through the dust cloud, the heavy cruiser waded, its shield dancing with microscopic impacts from all sides until a looming shadow grew out of the mist. At one point a planet, at another a moon, and now the continent-sized piece of stellar debris hung in a lonely orbit around a greedy ageing star.

The Traveller slipped into its shadow, the russet light of Beacon replaced by a soft summer twilight from the surrounding dust cloud. Running lights illuminated the Starfleet vessels hull, as it drew to within a kilometre of the asteroid's jagged bulk and came to a rest. The asteroid would shield them from the worst of Beacon’s radiation, and its meagre gravity would attract more of the debris to it and away from the wounded Ronin class ship.

The Traveller had arrived in its Cove System, in Beacon.

But it had not arrived unnoticed.

 

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