This was cool, this was fun. Safe. Perfectly safe. Like walking on the ground. Like riding a bique. No problem.
Doug was having trouble completely convincing himself that buying a Shuttle in the first place was such a great idea. What was wrong with simply staying on a planet? He wanted to be a writer. That's all. Just buy a cottage in Greenbow, settle down. Write some best-selling novels. Simple stuff. He didn't want to be utterly lost and confused in the middle of empty space, waiting for the remote chance that someone would find him and help him. This wasn't what he was doing at the moment, but that was his biggest fear, as soon as he learned of the possibility.
At the moment, he was in the New Babylon Interstellar Spaceport, checking out job opportunities. It was mostly limited to heavy cargo missions, but a few passengers were willing to empty their wallets to get a few dozen light years away. Probably some rich kids running away to join the circus, thought Doug to himself, chuckling a bit. He picked a small cargo run, out to Greenwich, in the Horizon system. The name of the place sounded nice.
Getting the details worked out, the cargo was placed aboard his ship, and he was ready to set off on his first mission. Just a quick couple of quick checks and adjustments, then startup. The ship hovered a few meters off the ground, clearing the docking pad. Doug turned it slowly toward the exit route and brought it out into the open, before gunning the engines almost inadvertently. Finally sailing clear of the planet, Doug looked around at the scenery. The world of New Babylon was far below him, still taking up most of the view. Barely visible along the edge of the planet was the torn, ghastly remains of Spacedock IV. It hurt to think of the Great War that caused the damage, and much other destruction elsewhere. A bright white speck was Georgia, and a larger, much closer speck was the Hypergate. All else was inky blackness, with bright specks of stars stuck in it, glittering the scenery.
Coasting past to where the gravitational field had less effect, Doug prepared the hyperspacial engines. All systems were online and functioning up to capacity. Coordinates were set for Sol. It was just a matter of flipping this switch... and pressing this button...
Things got hazy.
"Shi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-..."
A loud cracking, banging sort of noise pounded Doug's eardrums.
"... it."
Things didn't look very different at first. But here... the sun was kind of a yellowish tint, not the deep orange he was used to. The stars had shifted, just so, and the usual familiar objects were replaced by much less familiar ones. They looked like ordinary stars, but at this speed, they didn't move with him as fast. His scanner picked them up. Jupiter... ah, that name sounded familiar. Hm, gas giant, uninhabitable. His scanner also picked up something he didn't see, the thin asteroid belt between the orbits of Jupiter and... ah, here it is, Mars. Mars is normally uninhabitable, of course, but here... there were interplanetary cargo ships buzzing around the Red Planet. "Terraformation in Progress," the scanner indicated. Wow, that's really something. Maybe they have some new technology. And there... that's Earth. Hm, not as impressive as I figured, thought Doug. Oh well.
The next jump into Alphara proved to be much more interesting. Well, in a way. There was nothing to see, but dodging asteroids was a real blast, especially when the entire system was filled with interfering electromagnetic waves, rendering most of his sensors useless. The star wasn't orbited by anything natural except an enormous gas belt, causing a hazy mist to blur anything he could normally see. There wasn't anything worth looking at in Alphara anyway, as Spacedock III had been wrecked long ago by the War, and the Hypergate was unavailable and unnecessary at this point. Well, it was time to go. Coordinates were set to Spica.
Doug was beginning to rather enjoy his journey, until shortly after entering Spica. Upon arrival in the system, he just meandered around, picking up information about the planet, and scanning passing ships. But as soon as he was ready to leave, his feelings changed from idle pleasure to utter horror. "****!" echoed around the cabin as he checked his energy levels. Zero. He'd had so much fun looking around that he never bothered to land on Earth! How could things have gone that wrong? What happened?
Doug looked around for something, anything, to save himself. There were no ships around anymore. There was only one thing left to do. He headed down to the planet to camp out.
Touching down on Spica, Doug looked out of his viewing ports. It was actually a rather nice planet, save the methane atmosphere, and ammonia pools covering the land. Staying in the shuttle was probably the best idea.
After several hours of total boredom, Doug fired up the engines once again. There was bound to be a passing ship nearby. Right?
Breaking free of the atmosphere, the scenery turned from hazy white to inky black once again. And nearby, within sight, even, was a large, alien looking ship. Very large. In fact, the ship wasn't very nearby at all, but it was so astonishingly huge, it looked close by. As Doug scanned the large, organic looking thing, he remarked to himself how much like a lobster the thing appeared to be. His amusement turned to horrified curiosity as several dozen specks burst from inside of it, like a fine mist. Each particle got bigger as they zoomed closer and closer, and soon, they began to take on shapes. They were... bugs! Well, giant space-borne bugs of some sort, and as Doug tried to work all this out, he realized that he was in quite a lot of danger. The bugs circled him, and they were indeed quite large things. The smallest were twice as big as his shuttle.
Suddenly, a transmission from the alien ship dissipated the silence.
"... Attention... Earthling... you have seen us...
...
... you will now be exterminated..."
As the bugs' ruthlessly efficient weapons tore through Doug's shuttle like it was paper, he remarked morosely to himself that he completely forgot to name his ship.
