There was no sound. The buzzing of lights, the hum of the reactor, the thrum of the gravity generator, all of the expected sounds were absent in the small cold rescue ship. The only functioning electronic was my suit, and all it had running was a timer. Everything else was on hold, even my body.

I remember every single second of this "drift time," but it compressed to just a moment as the timer went off. My suit came to life, my body thawed, my brain re-awoke. I had arrived at... wherever this is.

I felt a soft relief as I flipped on switches for my suit mentally, first, limb support. This kept me from atrophying just in case I was ever to find a new world for humanity to call home. Next came my life support, the nutrient fab and oxygen scrubbers. Last to come on was my suit thrusters. I was go.

I fired up a smaller burst to modify my inertia, sending me towards the cockpit of the rescue ship. It wasn't the original cockpit, that had been lost in a asteroid storm that I had been caught in, luckily I had been ... borrowing from a passing freighter. The new cockpit had a smaller screen, but the bullet proof glass made for an excellent view. Unfortunately it was too dark for me to see anything, but it had worked in the deep dark before. The ship only activated if its passive sensors detected uranium or a habitable world, so wherever I was I wouldn't run out of power.

I flipped the start-up to on, and smiled as my custom coded start-up slowly brought gravity back on. My feet settled on the ground, and in seconds my body was feeling a comfortable full g of downward force. Seconds later, the four forward thrusters came to life, starting the ship's drawn out stop. Everything was running smoothly, a bit too smoothly, but within expected norms. I checked the console again. According to it, my auto turret was functioning. I couldn't afford to stay below FTL without something to stop meteors, and from the looks of things I didn't have a choice. Power was nearing red.

This luck was a bit too good. Surely at least one of my thrusters should have been taken out by a rogue particle in transit space, but according to the console everything was green. Perhaps there were just less mass in this jump?

I kept a wary eye on the console, expecting everything to go wrong at any second, but my attention was drawn by a sudden interlink alert. My mood was brightened immediately, and I brought up the latest manufactory schematics. No one knows how the interlink works, at least no one has managed to transmit on it that I've heard. Whoever ran the interlink revealed new programing or construction ideas once in a while. It was always something useful. Sometimes it was even fun!

A more efficient solar panel! Finally! I'd been trying to make one for months, but apparently I'd been using the wrong material alloys for the energy converters. There was also a thing for wheels, which I had never gotten to come out of the fabricators right. I wondered why the interlink would bother with wheels, but thinking of the space stations other engineers made, that may have been useful to some...

I wonder how Dwarf is doing. She said she had plans for her own pirate operation, and this new schematic would definitely help her. It had been, what, a few months since I last saw her? She'd probably gone in cryo sleep a few times by now, to pass the time between ships. I'd have done it.

I checked my watch, it'd only been a few weeks since I had left the last asteroid belt I lived in. I hadn't expected to find someplace so close to mine after I had left my last home, but then again I never expected to live to see a new field.

FTL is faster than light by a longshot, but it isn't perfect. Whatever happened in FTL causes massive migraines, hallucinations, panic attacks. Humans just seem to not be designed to travel that fast. It's why cryo sleep was required for a trip that took days in real time.+

I hope my suit's transponder was working when I messaged her, or she might get caught unaware by those bastards who stole my old field. Then they might find her base and steal it too, the filthy field snatchers. An engineer's home field was sacred, we'd all sworn that, but they ignored that. Just messing around in a friend's base was fine, nicking ground pounder ships or even other engineer's ships was fine, but actually stealing a engineers base was tantamount to rape or murder, in the old sense, before nanites could repair your body and modify your memories.

Of course, rape and murder were still just as bad in a world where medical stations could be destroyed.

Still, I'd been thinking of leaving anyway, already had this old ship modified and ready to move. Escaping had been easy, and I guess they would have gotten the base, no resistance, a week later anyway.

They hadn't waited a week, and they hadn't gotten my base without a fight.

I smiled as I recalled the sight of their main ship withering under missile and cannon fire from over a dozen turrets hidden in the shadow of the asteroid. They'd gotten their shit together the next day, and my defenses were simply smashed through by that giant hunk of metal and engines the night after. I'd fled in the rescue ship right before it struck, using the explosions from my tripped boobytraps to cover my escape vector. In the end, they'd gotten a mined out rock, and I'd gotten a fun break from my dull life.

There was a pop as the ship finally dropped back into relativistic space well below the speed of light. It's a strain on the engines to decelerate below FTL while in FTL space, but none of the computers or engines are fast enough to avoid collisions anywhere near light in relativistic space, and Uranium did funny things when you got too close to the speed of light.

I'd seen a demonstration of a fully stocked cargo ship exiting relativistic space too close to light speed just once. They were still trying to understand what elements the remaining nugget of super matter was made of. They said it was fusion to a unheard of scale. Unfortunately all they had left were the scans, it and my old body were vaporized seconds later by the belated atomic blast. The event's ashes were now just a bright green nebulae closer to Sol.

The sensors came to life, and alarms blared loudly. Protocol whipped through my mind, and I dove for the cockpit. Two quick straps and I realized that my lights were flickering. I looked down at the console and was stunned to see it throwing a fit across the board. I looked up and was awed as a milky wall of unimaginable size filled my field of view. Before I could react, my ship slammed through that barrier, and everything went black.

Luna jolted awake as something literally tore through part of her other body, but shivered as the pain passed and the gap healed. Still, frightened and confused, the night princess rapidly donned her regalia and left her room to find her sister. She was far from certain what had passed through her stars, but each moment the feeling came closer to being in focus. She wasn't quite sure yet, but she thought she had felt the unique spark of life, maybe even sentience. If she was right, then for the first time an alien had entered nearby space.

The lunar princess took the stairs down the tower a dozen at a time, her great legs carrying her faster, safer, and quieter through the castle. She made a left, then a right, and then another right, passing guards and servants. Within seconds of the alert, she was charging into the opulent marble throne room to a stunned Celestia.

Luna only froze momentarily as the feeling she had experience was finally brought into focus. It had been a sentient biological creature.

"Sister!" She cried out once, barely suppressing the fear in her gut. Celestia's befuddlement passed, and worried petitioners looked on as the regal older sister comforted the younger Alicorn. It was a touching scene, but Luna's tone had just begun to register, the unbridled fear touching the crowd.

The crowd filed out, just barely avoiding a stampede thanks to diligent guardsponies, true professionals. Within seconds of Luna's entrance, she and Celestia had the room alone excepting a few staff.

"Luna, you must calm down, what's wrong?" Celestia knew better than to chide her sister. Their fight a little over a thousand years ago had shown her the error of her ways.

"An alien!" Luna cried at once, stunning her sister. "It entered through my stars just moments ago!" To Celestia's credit she didn't let confusion or panic touch her. The regal mare simply steadied her sister and began analyzing the mental list the two had made for such an occasion.

"Luna, how big is it? How much magic did it contain?" Celestia asked softly while stroking her sister's flowing mane.

Luna stopped, and seemed to realize something.

"Sister... it wasn't very big at all, and it had very little magic, but it was in some sort of craft the size of our quarters." Luna stated. Her calm was returning, but it brought with it confusion. Both sisters turned their heads down in thought for a moment. Then, Celestia's rose back up having another question.

"Luna, where was it heading?" Celestia inquired with a urgency audible.

"Fret not sister, it was slowing down, and it appeared to be on a trajectory towards some nearby asteroids. It may never even come near us" Celestia's eyes flew open with worry.

"Sister, with enough acceleration, just one of those asteroids can destroy ... everything. We must discover its intent!" Luna's eyes flew open as she did math that she had never even imagined.

"Ohh shit."

+:It had been theorized that perhaps some human brain waves central to normal functions were operating in a different phase and thus were unable to travel at the same speed as the brain itself in FTL space.

Author's Note

((If you want to see Viking's custom survival ship go to http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=270674709))