Fiction:Station Halcyon/Series 2/Preview

= Summary = The annihilation wreaks havoc across the known universe as a wave travelling faster than the speed of light strangles every inch of the inhabited universe. 

End of the line

 * Character: Xigor
 * Writer: Wormulon

The arcs had come before news of the impending scourge had fully reached the entire Gigaquadrant. One such arc materialised over the colonies of Galaxon, housing colonies and enveloping Station Halcyon. Hundreds more arcs were appearing across the universe. Strangely the chambers of each arc, large enough to house entire planets were connected to every other arc. Halcyon drifted...

There was panic Station Halcyon, families rushing, even the security were in disarray. But Xigor felt like it was a dream, and proceeded to walk through the teething mass of aliens. Xigor looked through the semi-transparent walls of the arc and witnessed trillions of vessels and hundreds of worlds, most likely home planets with original biospheres, being piled into the arcs. He could see through the great mausoleum into his home galaxy; Plazith Rim. Xigor played with the magnification set, to his relief, the Delpha Coalition of Planets were being saved as well by being given their own arc. A great blue-shifted wall came crashing through the abyss. Xigor knew that this meant the superliminal wave had already passed through the galaxy. Xigor felt a surge of anxiety and looked towards the DCP's arc. To his shock, a giant tendril of furious energy, full of squabbling demonic faces reached out and plunged itself through the hope of trilions of sentients. All dead. More tendrils came, wiping out trillions more stragglers. One reached out towards more Plazith Rim arcs, threatening all life from the galaxy. As Xigor watched, he noticed a dark cloud blotting out even the furious night light of the demons. It was the DCP's entire naval force who were tasked with escorting the citizens. Billions of ships charged the tendril, firing all manner of weapons causing the tendril to recoil as if in pain. Xigor felt a moment of mortal patriotism as the DCP ships pushed back to the wall, causing it to pause. But one by one, the light from the DCP's weapons were silenced by the ever thickening cloud. Xigor now felt a pain few should ever feel: the loss of one's entire species. It was a sacrifice, to save the Plazith Rim arcs, and one by one, each left the dying the universe behind.

Alone
Xigor was on his knees. As a Grimbolsaurian he was brought up to never show pain, much like many warrior societies. But this was beyond the rituals of his culture, for his culture was now dead.

"YOU THERE!" A voice came booming from behind. Xigor recognised who the identity of the voice was, a Taxton. In the early days of the Seven Starr Alliance, the Taxton ruled an empire larger than the DCP itself in the Plazith Rim and had allegiance with the Grox. The Taxton were of course a vile race who had retreated to Grox territory after an SSA strike that the DCP had orchestrated. Security guards merely ran by. The Taxton stamped on Xigor while he was down, he was strong. These creatures had no sense of honour, they only cared to win. "Senkra has demanded the death of your people in the name of chaos! I would much enjoy wiping out the last of you." Xigor used his own strength to push back at the Taxton. "Let me grab those eyes", said the Taxton as it reached out to blind Xigor, but Xigor merely retracted them into his head. The Taxton was slightly surprised, if not grossed out, but proceeded to punch Xigor's mandibles, break a jagged tip off his right one. The Grimbolsaurian has grabbed it before it fell to the floor, and jammed into the Taxton's neck. The creature screamed while Xigor struggled to escape. He ran, not caring if the creature was badly hurt or not.

He knew that he was in great danger, so Xigor found himself back in the Science Quarter, now devoid of people. There were shielded rooms which had cloaking devices, these were used to protect sensitive equipment, some DCP in design. One room was full of dysfunctional robotic devices, but the next one was empty and Xigor entered. The DCP had made many enemies, and those who had survived would go after him. From here, cocooned within DCP technology, Xigor could watch the situation unfold. To Xigor's relief, most of the Station's population were leaving, probably to seek out surviving remnants of their civilisation, perhaps to reunite with family and friends. Aside from a few of others in the massive station, Xigor was now alone.

Apocalypse Now

 * Character: Katarina Lombard
 * Writer: CaptainTybusen

The Engineering Quarter was devoid of workers, and it was eerily quiet without constant calls for repairs from all across the station, the only noise being the silent hum of the central machines and automatons of the station. The head Tybusen engineer, Katarina, was the only remaining inhabitant of the Quarter, with some of her engineering contingent having gone on vacation leave a week before the Xhodocto fog emerged and the rest having abandoned the station like so many others. Katarina was busy soldering wires and screwing in bolts in one of the emergency generators that had been damaged in the chaos, a soldering torch in one hand and a wrench in the other. The generator didn't urgently need to be fixed, as the station's power demands had dramatically decreased as the station's inhabitants fled in panic, but Katarina in particular found her work to be a relaxing distraction from the destruction about to ensue outside. She finished soldering a wire and reached for her mouth, where she had been holding some of the generator's specially-made lag bolts, but she found no bolts. A single word coursed through her mind, aptly summing her thoughts at that moment.

Shit.

Now she needed to make the walk all the way to the Science Quarter where the generator bolts were stored. On a normal day it would be something she could send a subordinate to fetch, and even so the walk from Engineering to Science was not particularly long or arduous compared to other destinations, but the distraction had broken Katarina's concentration and thoughts about the incoming Xhodocto fog had started to flood back into her mind. Katarina sighed and left her tools outside of the hatch leading to the generator's interior, taking care to close the hatch securely so that any marauders that ended up in Engineering wouldn't make short work of the generator, inconsequential as it would be.

She was now on the streets of one of the cities of Halcyon, the buildings plastered with the residue of disorder and anarchy. Graffiti was on the road, some windows had been broken, and someone had left a bowl of Cyrannian Dvottie-Feather Soup out for too long on the sidewalk, and now the bowl was emanating a horrid stench and was rapidly decomposing into a pile of flowers. The thing that made Katarina the most nervous, however, was the view of the Gigaquadrant the station's massive glass barriers offered, allowing her to see the fog spreading into the Universe. She fought the urge to look up until she had made it about two-thirds of the way to the Science Quarter, when she could resist it no longer and looked in time to see what she recognized as the fading star-lights of the Milky Way.

"No way..." Her voice trailed off. The Milky Way was already consumed. She knew which galaxy was next in line. Bunsen. Her glance quickly darted over to the distant galaxy, and she could barely make out the silhouette of a Vi'Navitum Ark. She felt a little relieved... until a tendril of Xhodocto fog reached out and constricted the arriving Ark, destroying it in a matter of seconds. Despair filled Katarina's mind as the galaxy was rapidly surrounded by the chaotic fog. She fell to her knees, defeated, and began to softly wail for her forsaken homeland.

Before the cloud had completely enclosed Bunsen however, she saw a bright flash of light emanate from the galaxy's position, and suddenly the galaxy seemed to have disappeared. Katarina was confused and a little stunned. The fog hadn't been moving fast enough to consume the galaxy in such a swift strike. Maybe... the galaxy had been saved after all? But that was impossible. There was no godrace that she knew that could pull off a feat like that in such dire straits. A miracle beyond this universe is the only thing that would've saved a galaxy standing in the way of the Xhodocto onslaught like that. Clinging to this last shred of hope, Katarina rose to her feet and dried her watery eyes, determined now to get to the Science Quarter.

She came across a pair of Taxton as she was walking through the streets. One was sitting on the ground with what appeared to be a broken mandible in his neck, and the other was kneeling, apparently giving the injured one medical attention. The two noticed her passing and began to get up to threaten her, but she quickly pulled out her self-defense plasma pistol. The two warriors stopped as she glared at them and motioned them to move along. Taxton were physically strong, but at the range they were from her, even they would be downed in fairly quick order by a TIAF security-grade plasma weapon. She kept her weapon trained on them until she was out of their sight, and then broke into a jog, hoping to get to the safety of the Science Quarter before anyone tried to jump her.

She arrived at the entrance to the Science Quarter and quickly made her way to the door labeled "no unauthorized personnel". This was the secure inner sanctum of the Science Quarter, and also where the generator lag bolts were stored, which she remembered was the reason she had made the journey here in the first place. Silently shutting the door behind her, she cautiously moved through the halls lined with advanced technology, her hand on her pistol holster in case she encountered anyone hostile. She suddenly heard the sound of a door opening and closing, and she slowly made her way to the source of the noise. It was a section of the Science Quarter filled to the brim with a lot of advanced technology donated mostly by the DCP. Each room had been meticulously protected by shields and cloaking devices, so one couldn't really tell what was inside until opening it. She decided to check the rooms to see if anyone had sneaked into the concealed compartments. Choosing a door at random, she overrode the lock with her head-engineer key card and entered to a surprising sight. She saw a Grimbolsaurian scientist leaned against the wall with his eyes closed, a little beaten up but apparently only sleeping. Katarina sighed in relief. It was comforting to find her good friend, Xigor, still on the station.

Part 2 - The new universe
''Coming up: Xigor is reunited with a couple of crew and discover they are in a familiar galaxy. However, everything has changed.''

In the fields

 * Character: Xigor, Ph'lush
 * Writer: Wormulon

Writing music had become a nostalgic hobby for Xigor. All the DCP's great records were now gone, scrambled and irreparable, except in his brain. Mainstream DCP music was propaganda, however, traditional music had found its way somehow to survive. Why should it stop here, he thought? But then he argued with himself, no-one might care to know. But the music wormed away in his mind, and writing them down became a hobby, an emotional one of irreparable regret for all the things he couldn't make up for. With the musical notation written down, Xigor stepped out onto a balcony of his house in order to play his chordophone. Despite the difficulty of translating music in his head to his fingers, he relished the notation magically coming to life through the the bass-tones of the chordophone and looked up through the cylindrical hub to the ceiling of Halcyon A, where patches of scrubland were already invading the fields of crop. That is when he noticed a clean square of green, that stood out, almost shouting it's artificial nature. It meant someone-else was on the station, Xigor knew a few lingered, most reverting to scavengers like the Taxton, but this meant one other person along with Katarina who had any ability to improve the state of things. Xigor had to meet this person, and made haste, the trip would take about a week at walking pace. Xigor decided to strap the instrument to his waste, at least this way if he survived the journey he would not find his instrument stolen, and if he was to be killed for it, it wouldn't make a difference.

There were two directions Xigor could take to reach the mysterious patch, Xigor took the longer route. This was because the longer route was spinward, and has Katarina had threat over, the station was rapidly losing it's acceleration and the gravitomagnetic plates were offline, making a walk anti-spinward increasingly harder. Xigor first walked along a railroad (due to the nature of traction between a wheel and the track, the gradient of the surface inside prevented the train from counter-exceeding the rotational acceleration of the station), but stopped after the first night, when he saw two bodies stripped of devices and shoes, one Oimonsk, and one Excation. He did not want to know who had killed them. Another two days passed uneventfully as Xigor walked through the countryside. He came to a clearing, where he saw the soil give way to a transparent 'window' panel that was supposed to let natural light in. Already, unchecked, soil and grimy puddles of condensation now full of life were now dirtying it. The ecosystems and biologies of hundreds of worlds had been gengenered to live together. But out there, Xigor spied lights, possibly from vehicles, and wondered if the scavengers were now banding up into tribes. Xigor didn't wait to find out, and creped back into bush.

It was on the last day and a half of the walk when Xigor ran into trouble as he was forced to cross a settlement, when he was sighted by the keen eyes of a female Radeon. He was lucky she had run out of ammunition, but with the whistle sounded, several bandits surrounded Xigor out of nowhere. Two masked figures pointed guns at him and walked up slowly, they had the physical frame of Radeon to Human size, but he couldn't tell what they were. But Xigor noticed that both guns were damaged beyond repair, and saw more bodies. It had seemed they had already suffered heavy losses to another gang. He let the two step a little closer. "Those blaster guns. You don't need to be a technician to know they won't even splutter." Using the element of surprise, Xigor wrenched the two guns out of their hands and slapped both across the head, knocking them out cold. The Radeon woman fled, but three more figures approached, one Artharon, two Taxton, all wielding shards of metal, wickedly sharp.

Where the Radeon woman had perched, there was a tall and thin maintenance tower, possibly scaffolding for a future building never-to-be. Grimbolsaurians were fast climbers, and Xigor could stretch his legs vertically if he wanted to move quickly. And that is what he did, his assailants giving chase. At a certain height however, Xigor began to feel disoriented, the centripetal forces were becoming more apparent closer to the axis of rotation at the centre of the cylinder as he was now moving faster than the ground beneath him, making his head spin. But the makeshift knives were a nastier prospect, so Xigor kept on climbing. The brutish Artharon was struggling too, and accidentally caught his knife on the cable, weakening it to the point it could not support both itself and four large people. Snap! The severed cable drifted with the direction of the spinning station, now weightless. His assailants had also been flung into oblivion. Ironically, Xigor was now travelling to his destination fast, but this wasn't intended. The ground was moving at 80 kilometres an hour and he was travelling head first in a straight line into it...