Deleted no story here

Removed by author
Mods please delete this post, I though better of it after posting

a reply to: LABTECH767

Right this has sat there for ages with no story as I deleted my original crap one, sorry and It got a star afterwards which made me laugh so just in case you stumble on this here is a quick apologetic one from me on the next comment or maybe two down.

The Last Tears of Humanity.

Uncovering a dark and terrible truth.

Calysta woke shivering, waves of nausea came over her and she felt the tingling in her limb's like thousands of tiny needle point's stabbing into her flesh.

She screamed as the adrenalyne pumped into her system and pounded on the transparrent shell of her sarcophagus like sleep chamber, she could not see out only the reflection of the blue light that now illuminated the sleeper chambers interior reflecting on a layer of ice that seemed to have formed outside, she pounded again and tried to get the chamber to open as it should have but it seemed stuck as if the ice had fronen over it and welded it shut.

As her mind came back from the primal panick state that had set in when she woke from the state of shock her body was in after being revived from the near death state she began to calm down and reached up to the display panel set into the door further back over her head craning her neck as far as she could and arching her back and tried to read the upside down writing her sight still blurred, the display had onever been intended for an outside operator whom would read it with the pod door open but nevertheless it provided all the information she needed and with a few instructions Calysta was able to hack into the ship's network, lucky for her this was one of the Beta pod's and half it's system's were managed by the ships main computer unlike the later alpha pod's like the captain and other essential personell were assigned for the long journey.

She thought it could not be right, no it had to be wrong but then she read it again.

"Sleep duration 2164 years 19 days and 45 minutes", she ghasped as the date set itself into her mind and settled into her consciousness, the trade route was only a five year journey, something must be wrong with the readout she told herself but she knew that she was just denying the fact's the interface was relaying to her and that something very bad must have gone wrong, with a little difficulty she managed to patch into the ship's command interface computer and that was when she found out the really bad news.

The Severigne Corporation freighter had been damaged by an impact and thrown off course, eighty percent of the ship's systems were not reporting or were reporting null status and the automatic repair systems were almost totally non functional running only basic maintainance on the fusion chambers and partial life support in isolated sections of the ship.

She tried to bring up the internal feed's and found the visual feed for the sleeper chamber her pod was located in, it was a bloody mess, there was a huge hole on one side which shocked her as she could see the inky blackness of open space beyond, it took her some time to work out were her sleep pod should have been and found that it was encased in what looked like a solid mass of frozen gas ice completely hidden and buried.

As she looked and the realization of her predicament settled into her she realised that this was why she was alive since all of the other pod's were either completely missing or so damaged that no one could have survived in them, indeed she could see the frozen remain's of one sleeper hanging half out of his pod like a human icicle.

How the hell was she going to get out of here she thought to herself as her mind raced and she resisted the urge to scream her claustrophobia making it all the more difficult, she was buried several meters inside a solid mound of frozen gas, the atmospheric feed to the chamber had been behind her pod and once exposed to space the system had tried in vain to repressurise the chamber with gas that froze almost instantly as it blew out of the vent until it had frozen over encasing her pod and sealed itself over as well, that meant the automatic sensor's which should have detected the huge depressurisation event must have been destroyed utterly or the vent would have shut off automatically, it was damn cold out there, nearly minus 240 degree's, so cold even a deep space evironment suit would have struggled to keep it's occupant warm for any length of time but of course her pod was designed with rapid temperature changes in temperature in mind.

Over two thousand years, she realised like an afterthought that the ship must have drifted very far from the trade lanes in that time but that was the last of her worries and she put it out of her mind for now.

She checked the ship's log's, Visual playback was scrambled in most areas but she could see by the automatic red stamp that the log from the time the ship had been wrecked had been red issued by the computer which meant that outgoing messages and automatic distress signals were impossible, though it would take thousands of years for any signal to reach even the nearest outpost since radio waves travelled at sub light speed's and after the red log only status reports automatically entered by the ship itself listed in an almost endless wall of dates almost all detailing failures of remaining systems over time as one broke down after another but it was clear the red stamp event had been cataclysmic with 94 percent ship's failure and 97 percent of ships systems ceasing to return status reports at that time, it had happened two years into there transit and though with the engines shut down the ship had probably dropped from hyperspace it must have drifed in that time many light years off course.

Her mind connected the dot's of what she could do as she scanned what little was available and what little she could do from this small console, it was her only chance but it would be risky, definitely lethal to her if it went wrong but she reasoned she was a dead woman anyway if she did nothing, as she had scanned the few still functioning internal feeds she found a section of the ship near to one of the cargo pod's that seemed intact, it was running on low power but seemed to still have minimul atmosphere still being pumped though the recycling system though barely, probably near failure after the thousands of years of non stop atmosphere scrubbing and several of the freight bot's in the adjoining cargo pod seemed to be intact and returned acknowledgment's when she hacked into the cargo control interface with a command over ride, the problem was the cargo bot's were never intended to go outside the ship and being huge heavy lifter's they were not intended for delicate work so would not fit through the small corridors that connected that part of the ship to the sleeper bay were she was but of course she had no choice it was do or die,it would be nearly impossible to say the least and on her first two attempt's she lost the robot's which drifted off into space.

But third time lucky and as the large freight robot moved under her control over the ruin's of the outer hull she saw the extent of the damage throught an optical display of it's sensor's, more than half the 14 mile long freighter was missing including the crew quarters, most of the cargo pods in the train behind the drive section's and the entire drive section itself was litterally smashed junk, eventually as she carefully navigated to over the hull she came to a huge tear like a massive bit taken out of this section of the ship, somewhere down there through that dark hole in the depths of that metal debris lined crater her pod had stayed active but only because the power to the most damaged sections of the ship had been shut down automatically and the fusion generators output had been reduced to a mere trickle or the power would have ceased long ago.

She moved the robot carefully into the whole passing through the wrecked deck's as her passage was mapped automatically for an automated return journey by the robot and it passed now unrecognizable structures until she finally came to the the bottom of the deep crater and scanned the icicle containing her pod beyond, it was strange looking at her prison from outside and she knew this was going to be almost impossible because she somehow had to move her pod while it was still sealed inside it's icy case which would also mean no power or control since her small console and readout would have to be severed from it's feed while the robot carried her back to the cargo pod.

The robot's fusion pack's could be set to overload, explosively so and it would be hard guaging how far from her pod it would have to be for what she intended but she took a wild stab in the dark after reading some calculation's she ran through the computer and entered the command's to carried out automatically when the robot got her sleep back, she doubted she would survive but hoped.

After the robot had carried her pod back to the cargo section taking mere minutes to retrace the route it had taken her hours to manually plot it placed itself beside the frozen pod at a distance and the low humming of it's fusion pack's became a whining screetch as they went into overcharge and over heated exposively.

The sudden violent blast shattered most of her icy tomb and threw the pod and ice hard agains a bulk head several metered further away violently knocking her unconsciouse.

It was some time before ship's engineer Calysta Jonestown woke, she had been in a vivid dream in which she had relived a childhood memory, she had been walking along the harbour front of the old city looking out at the sky scrapers of the new city that rose out of the sea in Kingstown back in her ancestral homeland a small island nation called Jamaica with her Aunty Jenna, it had been so real but she had only been nine and that had been back before the Exodus corporation had declared martial law in 2439, she had been only 13 when the aptitude analysis had meant that her education had been tailored into the technical skill's and the corporations saved money this way since personal choice was something only the rich enjoyed but by the age of 22 she was already working in the transit station between earth and the lunar ship yards.

Her head acking she found herself lying had down as her pod lay at an odd angle but at least she door was now free so she pushed against it, banged and kicked with her knee's and then she put her feet up as far as she could and pushed with all of her feeble strength, more than she thought she had with her knee's and hand's enduring the pain as her heart thundered in her chest, suddenly the remaining ice which had held it shut cracked and the door flew open as bitterly cold air washed over her.

Laying there exhausted and naked she shivered for a moment but brought herself up angry with herself for staying in the pod after trying for so long to get out of it and found her feet, as she stood up and stepped out onto the icy floor almost instantly frost bit tore at the flesh of our souls as they froze to the icy deck plating among the shattered blocks of melting gas ice, she screamed as the pain shot up her leg's and ran ripping the flesh from her souls until she collapsed in warmer part of the cargo area, she would have to treat her feet as soon as she found a medkit but for now she was alive at least and out of her coffin like pod, she looked around in the dim lighting, only a few of the light's still working and she saw a small cubicle that sat on rail's that ran the mile long length of the freight chamber, she crawled on her hand's knee's now unable to stand on her agonized feet but once inside the systems wirred into life and she found an emergency medkit, the chamber was self contained with it's own atmospheric processor and heating as it was meant to be used when the freight bay was open and it felt so good especially after the pain killers she almost went to sleep in her exhaustion.

She had never had any interest in the ship's cargo train with her dutys having been maintainance of the ship's computer systems but she knew the carbo pod's each a mile long carried all manner of goods from raw materials to clothing, supplys to farm equipment and everything in between as the ship made it's cyclic jourey through the 57 colony world's, as well as on it's rare occassional return to earth it brought back manufactured luxurys that could no longer be produced on the dying home world of the human race.

Now though it was a matter of life and death, calysta, her feet now bandaged and numbed scanned throught the manifest and found something that was litterally the least likely find possible, somewhere out there among the pod's was a container that contained a corporation space yacht, it could have made the journey faster than the freighter ever could and even probably had far greater despite it's tiny size but for some reason it had been shipped and not piloted probably as a bonus gift for some greasy spooned company executive, he had to be someone important to get a space yacht thought to herself, probably corporate royalty.

It took some time but eventually she found it, other containers had prefabricated housing in them or manufactured good's and there was even an orbital science station packed away on board among the millions of other varied items just in this one intact freight bay.

It was not what she expected and she looked on in amazement at the strange sight as the pod was opened by the robots, the strange ship looked totally alien as it's gleaming exterior came into view, it was unlike anything she had ever seen an elongated lozenge shaped craft about seventy meters long, twenty meters high and 40 meters wide with trange bulbous protrusions and domed projections at various points along it's length, despite the magnetic lock's being active in the cargo hold as well as the low gravity field the strange ship was just foating there with no sign of the usual landing struts.

She hobbled over her feet starting to pain again in spite of the thick layer of spray on burn skin that bound her wound's and she tried to find the door, there was none anywhere that she could see and in frustration as well as exhaustion she leaned onto the strange vessel resting her head against her arm burying her face but as her hand touched the cool metalic exterior of the strange vessel it lit up in a puddle around were she had touched it and she stepped back amazed as a round portal opened almost as if had it melted right beside were she had touched, she had never seen anything like it and looked on fascinated as three steps molded themselves from the very hull of the yacht, she stepped into the alien luxury of the strangest thing she had ever seen.

As she stepped through the oval opeing it closed silently behind her the metal seeming to flow and ripple before becoming as seamless from within as it had been from outside, a set of small flashing light's set into the carpeted floor directed her along a corridor and she followed them slowly her feet now agony again but the warm comfortable conditions inside this strange craft contrasted with the bitter cold stale air outside in the freight bay.

She came to what looked like a conferance room of some kind and an android servitor vaguely humanoid and femine in appearance but faceless except for two blue lights that were meant to represent eye's came over and bowed welcoming her aboard and calling her Mister Li, she did not argue with it and when it asked if she would like refreshment she said yes and jokingly asked for a meal she would imagine an executive to have, something she could hever have afforded on her wage.

As she sat eating the impossible meal of steaming hot real corn fed beef steak in a wine sauce with baby organic vegetables in the impossible ship she suddenly felt her feet imoblilised and almost panicked but saw as she looked down in fright that it was a small strange looking bot that was marked with a medical symbol, five minutes later it retreated and she stood on her perfectly restored feet not even a hint of pain or injury anywhere and followed the small waiting robot medic to a room it was beckoning her toward silently.

As she came back about half an hour later feeling better and more healthy than she had in her entire life she came back to the conferance room and sat in a chair at the head of the table which the servitor android had pulled out for her.

The servitor asked if it was to start the special presentation yet as all the guests had not arrived and she replied yes.

A small holo projector dropped form the ceiling and projected an image streight onto her retina's as audio was beamed discreetly to her ear's.

Mister Li it turned out was someone very important, the ship she was in it explained had been manufactured from reverse engineered Zetan Technology and it was explained matter of factly how the technology had been recovered by a Li enterprise expedition to a ruined alien colony orbiting a dwarf star in the Gamma Centripides area some eighty years earlier and how among the the ruins of the long dead Zetan colony world there the company had recovered many more technologys that the company was still patenting and reverse engineering, it had taken nearly seventy years to reverese engineer enough of the Zetan technology to construct this ship which she was now in, a ship that had been named the lazarus after the project to claim the dead races technology and grant that technology a rebirth it in the human colony's, a ship made from the human reproduction of the advanced technology's of a long dead alien civilization which had mysteriously just vanished about the same time human's had started banging rock's together to make fire's.

Calysta looked around the ship for some time, it was beyond amazing and the projection had been accompanied by a neural feed which had downloaded schematics and control codes for it's operation directly into her mind, she had the key's and it was all her's or at least it was until the company claimed it if they still existed after these two millenium, of course she had let the automated system's think that she was whom it had assumed she was, this Mister Li and only his reclusive nature had prevented the vessel from rejecting her instantly as he was so reclusive that there were absolutely no biometric's on file for him, she remembered hearing about him as she thought back, he had used several bodys, young men and woman over the three century's of the corporation controlled government rule of the earth, so he had left the dying world like the rest of the illuminated masters after all.

As she walked into the control centre the automated system's came to life and she ordered the ship to scan the freigher for any other life signs or pod signatures, there were non just as she had expected, all twenty thousand crew members and colonist sleepers were long dead but why she wondered had no one ever come to recover the cargo or salvage the ship.

The yacht returned a sudden scan alert and informed it her it was switching to military stealth mode, active hostile muntions had been detected on board, she asked for it to explain and it read the information streight into her mind.

The analysis of the freighter had shown the damage had been caused by a heavy weapon strike so it had not been an accidental impact but probably a rival corporation trying to level the playing field by putting the super freighter out of action and it had seeded the wreck of the ship with small drones which then waited like mine's for an unsuspecting visitor to find the ship waiting semi dormant since that time which explained why no one had salvaged the wreck, the yacht suddenly powered and she did not even feel it as it moved out of the freight bay making evasive manouvres as it did so, this small ship was very heavily armed she realized as she receieved statuse reports as it vaporised a large hole in the wrecks hull and flew out into emtpy space before firing some form of deadly accurate counter measures at some of the waiting the weapons which had locked onto it and activated, then the ship informed her that it had turned on it's Zetan stealth field.

Two thousand years is a long time to sleep and for Calysta her a stranger to a now alien universe and the owner of an even more alien ship this was perhaps just the start of her journey, it was some time before the ship detected the remains of a navigation bouy over a light year away, as she looked at the utterly different sleeper chamber she really did not want to go into stasis just yet so decided to spend a few week's learning from the ship's specification archives all she could about her new mobile home but setting course for earth she eventually lay down in the strange looking bed and slept as the whole bed room sealed and activated as she slipped into suspended animation, it would take about eighteen months.

As the ship dropped from hyperspace the room warmed and callista was woken to the sound of bird's, the projection painting a perfect illusion of her bed sitting in the middle of an open springtime country field with ancient farmers loading straw into horse drawn carts with pitch fork's, the android servitor said "Good morning Mister Li we have arrived and will be at the company station in approximately one hour, there are no conference call's and there is absolutely no traffic in the sol system.

Her mind was foggy but as she sat up in the bed the android placed a pillow behind her back then served a tray of fruits and ice cold orange juice which she greedily devoured.

It did not settle in until later "no traffick in the sol system" but as she looked down at the barren dead world below it finally dawned on her, this was what the evacuation was about, the sun had gone into a super hot period of activity and the earth had become a sterile barren world that now resembled venus the oceans boiled into the atmosphere, Calysta cried as she looked down, even the lunar colony's had been backed except for two automated station's at each of the moon's polar region's, somewhere humanity may still exist she told herself but looking down at a world that had ended in fire she felt a sense of utter loss as if she was looking at the body of her mother and as some deep racial feeling inside her mourned for the root's that were now dead.

There was nothing here for her so she set course for the nearest colony an found it long abandoned, the city's on the planet a mars like world had long been dead and there was now no activity in that star system just like back at sol, the same at the next system and the next on and on until she came upon an automated bouy orbiting an earth like world orbiting Zeta Reticuli, another world were the corporations had found advanced alien ruins long dead, the message was simple, it was the last message of someone whom was leaving a warning and it was simple, it had been left by a scientist named Faustus Argentinio.

"The Reapers are here, we don't have much time they harvest and wipe out advanced civilization's and we are now there target, god help us I tried to warn them but they would not listen we should have left the artifact alone it was a trap, a bait used to lure us in, they always leave them on world's that are still viable after they have wiped the race whome called them home out, but they would not listen it seemed to offer them everything they ever needed, hyperdimensional travel, time displacement technology just the tip of the ice berg so they would not listen, I knew we were doomed the moment I detected it sending the signal, the reapers have always been here waiting and waiting for the signal to show another race has unlocked there trap, they looked like black shadows sillhouetted against the sky, like giant black emtpy flying men with wing's and the people just died, I was out of phase in my laboratory but I saw it all, I am the last oh God what have we done".

The information carried a video feed, she watched it and saw the humanoid shaped craft, the were like holes in the sky almost like a parody of angel's but with black bat like wing's, maybe the aliens, the reapers whom or what ever they were somehow read the hopes of a race and turned them into fear's and as she watched the people just fell dead then the city in the video seemed to turn to dust and she saw as craft trying to flee simply burst into plasma flames in the sky, nothing escaped and it took mere second's for the reapers to wipe out the millions of humans and level ther city.

Faustus last word's echoed in her mind, "God what have we done".

Callysta cried until she could cry no more, she knew that no one had survived anywhere but she still tried to find them, any hope was better than none and what other purpose could she give herself.