A rough draft only

This was a rough draft of a short story I was going to write which was going to be set in a well known science fiction universe and to tie it to a future earth.

It revolved around an old man struggling as an asteroid scavenger eking out a meagre existence prospecting rocks' in the asteroid belt some time in the late 26th century, his race does not matter but originally I envisaged this character as a black man of American origin though by that time nation states has collapsed back on earth and corporations ruled most things with even the air being a commodity.

After wars in the late 24th century between corporations the asteroid belt which was by that time pretty much mined out had been almost abandoned by the big corporations in favour of the far more lucrative mining that could be made in the oart cloud and from some of the moons of the outer planets.

Human population had rebounded from the attempt to cull humanity and the wars that followed in the mid and late 20th century's though it had taken a long time and it was not until late 2230 that the first large scale colonies had been established on the moon and another fifty years before mars had been colonised but by the late 23rd century humanity had finally bloomed out from earth though it remained the heart of the solar system.

Over six billion years ago in a distant galaxy a war had taken place between a union of races and a breakaway faction, during this war some of the leaders of a mystical order had received a disturbing report from the outer edges of there galaxy and had dispatched three large ship's each with thousands of genetically engineered soldiers under the leadership of an experienced member of the order and his apprentice.

When they had encountered an enemy from outside of there galaxy against whom they had no defence two of the large ship's had been destroyed during the desperate battle against a large alien ship that appeared to be as much organism as it was machine, a living spacecraft.

One of the two had rammed into the extra galactic vessel and though destroyed itself had managed to partially cripple the enemy craft.

The final ship had lost it's soldiers when just two of the biological warriors had boarded it and the experiences members of the order had died leaving his apprentice whom was also wounded alone.

The apprentice using there mystical ability had managed to bypass the damage and trigger the ship's hyperspace dimensional jump engines but as it entered hyperspace the aggressive enemy vessel had fired a powerful weapon that had damaged it even further and thrown it clear of the Galaxy and to drift trapped in hyperspace for a very long time flying who knows where, one day it would re-emerge back into normal space but that was pretty random and the trapped apprentice was now the only survivor on a ship full of the corpses of the soldiers.

Taking a special crystal from inside there energy blade weapon the apprentice managed to rig up a very long life energy cell and used it to power a special storage device they had on board that was designed to freeze very dangerous prisoners and also to power the medical bay, then the apprentice had placed themselves into the freezing apparatus with no knowledge of when or if they would ever wake again.


So that's a rough outline of the start of the story and yes it was going to be tied in with star wars as I am a fan of that franchise albeit not so much of Disney's take on it, at least not there movies, the Venatar star destroyer which had been damaged by a scout of the Yuzhan vong whom had reached the galaxy decades before the rest of there race entering the Star Wars galaxy through a weak spot in the galactic barrier was meant to have drifted in hyperspace before falling into real space and drifting for a very long time, the Jedi Padawan whom I was originally going to make an alien humanoid perhaps a green skinned female had used the force crystal (kyber) in her and her masters lightsabres to rig up a power source that would last almost indefinitely to power both the medical bay and the carbonite freezing chamber they had on board and this battle was meant to have happened early in the clone wars after the jedi council had heard a rumour and assumed it was perhaps something to do with the CIS acting in the outer rim so had sent the Jedi Master and his Padawan to investigate, instead the Padawan was destined to become the real last Jedi and to wake up after the old scavenger had triggered the carbonite defrost after exploring the derelic Venetar which had drifted into the asteroid belt only for him to stumble onto it, a real force awakening was then going to take place with the Jedi's presence awakening the force itself which had become dormant for billions of years and slept until this event.

Anyway here is what I had so far, I am abandoning it but if you feel inspired please feel free to make use of this for your own ideas or to rewrite it in a more readable format.

This is only the Intro, I am not going to continue it and am not a writer, my grammar and spelling would probably annoy many so please forgive that, this is just an idea and not a story so take it as is and if you want use it and rewrite it in a better format for yourself.

Scavenger.


The old man reached for the bottle as it tumbled slowly end over end past his head tailing the cord he had tied around it's neck, "damn" he swore as he grabbed it in one calloused hand as spherical droplets of amber fluid flew out of it's open top.
Quickly putting a thumb over it he scrabbled for the bottle top before finding it and closing the bottle of whisky then heaving himself out of his chair he went after the largest floating whisky globe expertly catching it in his open mouth, it did not taste as good in zero gravity and he cursed inwardly at the loss.

The proximity alarm sounded from the lidar system, odd the radar should have detected anything before it got close enough to trigger the lidar scans so he quickly and expertly returned to hs chair before bringing up a visual representation on the display.

A small asteroid not much more than a large boulder was drifting past the Scavernger's old ramshackle converted tug, he swore again at having missed this one but at least there was no danger of a collision even though it was only a whisker from actually doing so.

On a whim he adjusted the old tug to match the asteroid's movement adjusting pitch and yaw and velocity as only an old hand he could do manually and then gently soft impacted the space rock before using a drill to take a core sample from it and burn the material using a laser to get a mass spectroscopic reading.

Turned out it was a bust, not enough of anything worth capturing it for so he swore again and let released the small tethers that anchored his small ship to it's surface before backing off a little.

The radar still showed nothing but suddenly the lidar started to sound warning's again so he brought back up the display and it showed a huge accumulation of asteroid's, this should have shown up on the radar and he swore thinking the system must be malfunctioning again but then something odd struck him, it was the arrangement of the rock's they formed a perfect delta V shape on the display and seemed to be holding a static line then he felt it, subtle but definitely there a low gravitational field and he watched with some sorrow as the remaining droplets of whisky still floating around fell toward the forward bulkead.

He slammed the retro's to stop his ship from accelerating in free fall toward the mass of the asteroids as the rock he had just de-tethered from accelerated away toward the conglomeration of material and of course curiosity had him now, so much rock must have something valuable or at least he hoped so.

Fuel, that was the only real problem, each trip he made just enough to pay for spare parts and fuel and a the little left over went to pay for his grand daughters education back at the drifter station, like a few hundred other guy's he scavenged areas of the asteroid belt that the big corporations had deemed too poor in minerals to have already stripped.

His ship was an old tug that had originally operated shepherding freight between the lunar colonies and earth orbit, it would have long ago been scrapped had he not managed to raise enough to buy her and then jury rigged mining and asteroid prospecting gear to her but old as she was she was his ship.

This trip though had been a waste of time, the resources out here where growing ever thinner and lucky strikes were rare but still ever now and then some asteroid scavenger would strike paydirt.

He had been about to move onto one more patch before heading back to the station with the few ton's of low grade ore he had already captured but now this, could it be his long overdue lucky strike?.

Most of the large asteroid's had been mined by the corporations decades ago so finding one they had missed always seemed like a potential bonanza and as he got closer to whatever it was that had pulled all those rocks down to it the old man switched on the light's and opened the portal to see with his own eye's as he got closer to the object and he gasped.

The Stranger.

There in frong of him was something that was definitely not an asteroid, at first he thought that maybe it was an old mining corporation ship but it was far too large, at least a kilometre in length and shaped like an elongated triangle.

It was covered in impacted asteroid's that had landed on it's outer hull, as he moved over it his mind went to the fuel, using his reserves like this to keep from landing or going into an unpredictable orbit of the object was not very efficient so he decided to land near to were one of the asteroids had impacted the surface and slowly descended treating it pretty much as he would have a large asteroid and coming gently in before launching tethers which failed and just bounced off whatever lay under the dark covering of asteroid dust that had built up over the entire outer surface of the object but it did not really matter because there was enough gravity to hold his ship safely on the object.

The radar as far as he could tell was working but something was interfering with it rendering it useless though the lidar seemed fine and showed no other objects were coming in so he decided to go outside and take a close look at the surface with some manual sampling gear he seldom used.

Climbing into the old armoured suit which had been designed to take micro impacts and showed the scars of many such on it's outer plating and scuffed visor he headed out of the airlock gently dropping down onto the large object before heading for what looked like a fissure of sorts.

The tear in the hull.

AS he got close he saw metal strut's twisted and torn into the gaping hole that dropped down into the darkness of the objects interior, turning his helmet light to full beam he looked down into the chasm and saw below what looked like a broken gantry so he tied a guide chord to one of the upper twisted beams strange while metal and then winched himself down onto the gantry, it held though even in the low gravity it did swing alarmingly so he took it slow as he walked toward the attached end and found there a sliding door of some kind half open, crouching as best he could in the bulky armor he slid under it into the darkness beyond and found himself in a corridor, here and there the walls were damaged but ahead it looked to be in better shape so he made his way deeper into the darkness and then.

The body in the white suit.

The body was scattered, an arm here torn off and part of the bone protruding from freeze dried flesh that resembled a white armoured forearm, nearby he found a strange white helmet and picking it up and as he looked into the white saucer like eyes of the helmet before the desecrated head dropped out of it and he saw despite the desiccation that it looked all too human before it hit the floor and exploded in a cloud of dust.

At this point he assumed it was just a corporate ship from the old corporate wars for control of what had once been the incredible bounty of the asteroid belt back when they had used army's of mercenary's to destroy one another's ship's and finding an almost intact corporate ship - if he could find the right buyer - could net him a huge bounty even over a century after the corporate wars had ended, at least in the asteroid belt.

He made his way further into the darkness and found a pile of body's some far better preserved and leanind down he picked up a short rifle of some kind inspecting it noting that it looked like an old fashioned submachine gun before putting the object back near to the body were it had lain before stepping past the pile of corpses and through a damaged door that looked to have been blown open the metal pealed back around it.

He was now deep enough inside the ancient ship to be in a well preserved section, leaning against one of the bulkheads for a moment he accidentally pushed against a panel and suddenly the corridor lit up as small oval lights that ran up the wall's on pannels ever so often began to emit a soft white light then the dust that lined the floor flew up in clouds and was sucked through vent's as if gas poured into the corridor and a sliding door closed silently behind him, then suddenly he heard a sound like a claxon ringing through the thick helmet of his suit as the atmosphere outside stabilized and upon turning he saw saw the way back now blocked by the door that had closed behind him.

Swearing to himself at his own damned foolish curiosity he turned and looked down the corridor before freezing, to one side in an alcove a square two legged robot of some kind shaped like a box on leg's started to move and walked out making a strange gonk sound leaving as two cables snaked behind it being slowly drawn

He tried but every way out of this deep area of the ship seemed blocked off but then for lack of a better way of describing it he felt something, it was odd but he had a compulsion to walk down a corridor in the twisting maze of passages he had not previously explored, all too aware that his suit could not sustain him for much longer and he was running out of air and not knowing if the gas outside his suit was even breathable so he decided to at least see what was there assuming himself to be already a dead man and made his way down a new corridor before coming to a large door, he could not figure out how to open it at first the strange control's at the side on a panel were marked in some unknown language, strange symbols that may or may not have been letters or odd pictogram's but he could not make anything out of them.

a reply to: LABTECH767

I knew this would be lengthy, when I saw your screen name
under the header. What the hell I'm in.

ETA......

Damn Lab tech it was great till you went Star wars on me. And
I have just never been a fan so I beamed my ass back to Earth.

IMO you should've went mild Sci fi to intense space horror. You
definitely are capable of intensity.

Well done