Hypership (TT2022)

It was your stereotypical Hollywood version of a military briefing.

"Attention", commanded a stern voice from the from of the room, "This is Hypership Lorentz - Omicron Variant. It is a United States built star cruiser capable of 99.9998 percent the speed of light. It uses projected mass propulsion. For the last 45 years our R and D has developed artificial mass projection.. Through a concentrated laser beam mass will be created in front of the craft to pull it exponentially towards the speed of light.

"Your mission is a 100 year one. You have been asked to leave your lives behind and never return to the world you know. You will be put into a medically induced artificial coma and fed intravenously. You will be kept in such stasis for the required 62 days.

"You will be using the effects of time dilation. To a stationary observer your 100 year journey appears to take 57208 years. Hence in 100 years on earth going nearly the speed of light will only age you 62 days. 

"Your mission is to travel to and make contact with the your Space Force counterparts in 100 years. As of now you are scheduled to never return. Once you ascend to your operational orbit the autoprogram will engage and you will go to sleep. We have no clue what you will awaken to and may luck be with you. God speed."


The ship commander awoke to the sound of his own digital heartbeat. It took him a few seconds to realize what was happening. He wasn't expecting to regain his cognition so quickly. As trained he got a the radio to contact earth and initiate the remaining pods to "wake up" protocol. As he took the captain seat he noticed out the windscreen they were being flanked by another more massive ship.

As soon as he put on the headset he heard, "This is The New Calizonevado Starship Equality, please Identify yourself."

The commander was confused. Drawing on training he replied "Command, This is Colonel Peter Thompson, US Space Force Hypership Lorentz, come back."

There was a long pause.  "Please ready your crew and wait for instructions. That is all."

At this point other crewmembers were coming to and becoming aware of the situation. Like the commander, all came to relatively quickly and put on the game face.

The silence broke again. "The following are geographic coordinates for your landing location. Take her any act that deviates from this direction will be considered an act of hostility. Please proceed as directed. ".

As the Navigator put in the coordinates to the reentry program she recognized them. " This is Edwards", she said. "We are landing like the old space shuttle at Edwards."

And that's where the similarity to their world ended.

Upon arrival in the high desert the second officer noticed the flag on the hanger first.  "Holy $#%@, what $#$%in' flag is that?"  He pointed out that the paint on the roof of one hanger was what looked like a combination of multiple  state flags.  Part California, part Arizona, part; Neveda, New Mexico, and Colorado. The vehicles on the tarmac had the appearance of future as well. A black budhet from hell. Some of them with the strange flag insignia and others distinctly Chinese.

As the craft pulled into the directed hanger the tone changed to confrontation. As they exist their craft soldiers held guard as a figure in a hazmat suit walked up to them, "Ni Hao, will you please follow us?"

"What's going on, why are we not being told anything?", said one Technician.

"Will you please follow Us?" Repeated the authoritative figure in the Hazmat suit.

They were brought silently into briefing room and asked to take a seat. A somewhat mystifying full circle journey. Briefing room to briefing room.


"Good day. At 1340 Zulu an unidentified ship appeared in high earth orbit.  It seemed to decelerate out of nowhere and fall into stable orbit. After 6 hours of trying to hail the ships occupants by broadwave radio we sent a patrol ship to investigate. You are the ship we investigated. At this point you will be put into confinement and quarantine. You are now POW's of New Calizonevado. That is all we will say for now."

A dark pit of the stomach feeling came over everyone. At this point the Colonel noticed a map on the wall which he stared at bewildered until being forced towards his unfortunate internment.



Even more disconcerting was the slogan emblazoned on the wall next to other propaganda posters.

One people, One Voice. One New Calizonevado.

The awful dystopia he came back to crystallized at that point. "Why couldn't one of the other new counties ships have found us?"

The END.

Thanks for your Short Story Submission



Good Luck in the Contest!
Johnny

a reply to: Degradation33

I really liked this, love a good bit of science fiction.

We used to have a comic book when I was growing up (1980's) called 2000AD and it had a series of short story's called Future Shocks, this was easily good enough to have been one of them.

In one of those an earth like planet ruled by a version of imperial japan had created an unstoppable fleet of space ships called the Golden Fleet crewed by samurai like space marines that they had used to defeat all there enemy's and conquer all known space, they had successfully created a utopia on there world but did not know what to do with all these super soldiers and there ships as they no longer had any place back upon the world and sent them off into deep space in a straight line never to return but to conquer in the name of there empire all worlds they came across and so they travelled for countless generations doing just this, building new ship's as they needed them and breeding new soldiers to replace the rank's of there fallen conquering mighty and weak races alike as they moved like an unstoppable swarm through the cosmos from galaxy to galaxy always keeping to that straight line.

At the time of the writing of that story the idea that space time is curved and probably spherical was in the minds of the authors so in time the Golden Fleet eventually came across a world populated by fat, lazy and weak people living in a utopia and wanting for nothing and so as they had countless times before they conquered it and raised it's great city's to the ground leaving the world in burning ruins.

It was only when among those ruins near the base of some shattered buildings that someone recognized the remains of an obelisk like monument with writing engraved upon it in an all too familiar script dedicated to the Heroes of the Golden Fleet which had been sent to forever spread the glory of the empire among the stars that they finally realized that they had actually conquered and destroyed there own home world.

With nothing other to do than continue though they returned to there ship's and to there endless journey following there last imperial orders.

This as the kind of story you could find among those old Future shock's, like I say yours would be a match for the best of them especially if put into comic book format, very nice work.

a reply to: LABTECH767

Thank you.

I wish a better name for my hellish breakaway future socialist California country. But I already did the map so.. appreciate the post.