supergiant
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A lone, tiny ship popped out of its FTL drive. The crew was silent for a moment. Then a flurry of activity descended upon the corridor.
“Commander!” The captain called over the activity. “Report. What happened?”
“Waiting on the report, sir.” The Commander said.
The reports came fast. Each department was reporting no trouble. As far as anyone was concerned, the ship had simply decided to drop FTL in the middle of nowhere. There were no star systems for lightyears, and there not so much as a piece of space junk to break up the empty void of space. Then one report came back with an oddity.
“Sir, the grav scan team found something.” The Commander said.
“Grav scan? What do they have to do with anything? There’s nothing generating any gravity out here except for us.” The Captain said.
“Yes, sir, I know. But they found something. Something big. A massive gravity well big enough that the ship couldn’t compensate at FTL speeds, so it dropped us out.”
“Long range scan team, work with the grav scan team and find out where this…whatever it is is located.”
Once again, the bridge was thrust into action. But this time it was directed, coordinated. The crew fell into known, practiced rhythms as each member did their job. It was not long before Captain had his report. It did indeed seem like a massive object. Almost as big as a small moon. The only problem was that there were no planets nearby.
“It can’t be a moon.” Captain mused. “A space station?”
“Out here where there’s no planets to supply from?” Commander asked. “Besides, there aren’t any known stations that big. The cost of building one alone. Nobody has that find of funding.”
“Do you have any other ideas?”
There was silence. The very thought was insane, but it was the only explanation. It became even more apparent as the scan team found the object was too regular to be natural, and was made of metal. And soon they even identified it as being hollow.
“Wait, something’s not right.” One of the scan team members said. “The station is…moving? And I’m picking up some massive energy readings from one side of it. It…it’s not a station. Captain, I think it might be a ship.”
The bridge was silent. A space station that size was enough of an impossibility, but a ship? Something that size capable of moving under its own power was unthinkable. It would take an entire planet’s worth of energy to get it moving, and there was no way it could reach FTL speeds.
A comms officer spoke up. “We’re getting a signal from the…whatever it is.”
“Put it on.” Captain said. He was almost dreading meeting whatever or whoever could build something like that monster.
When the visual display activated, the being on screen was odd. Its round head sported two eyes set into it, and had short, brown strands of fur or hair on top of it, and nowhere else. It spoke in an unfamiliar language from its single, large mouth.
“Translation?” Captain called. The reply was given that the ship’s computer and language experts were working on the being’s words. Their efforts soon bore fruit.
“We are…humanity…” The translator said. “We have come far and in peace. That’s roughly what they said, sir.”
The Captain let out a heavy breath before replying. “Well, I guess we should reply. Hopefully they really do have peaceful intentions. I would hate to find out what a species insane enough to build that is capable of when angered.”
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It'd be pretty neat to have a ship like this built. It'll never happen, of course, but it'd be pretty neat to see.
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