Unlikely Paths / A Darkness Rises

[Reverend Del]

A beat, repeated once every thirty minutes. Hard to tell a pattern, but the pattern is there. The beat has repeated itself millions of times since the darkness fell. What it signifies is life. Slow life. Imperceptibly alive. Over time the beat repeats faster until it resembles a true heart beat. As the beat grows stronger, faster, the life it signifies grows to consciousness once more. In his small ship Syn wakes up.

"Engines offline, life support offline, weapons offline." Syn growled at the computer. Only running as it was because he'd hooked it up to his own internal power supply. Nothing worked. This ship was dead, as dead as the gods it had once served. As dead as Syn himself felt. He ensured the ships passive sensors had enough power to scan nearby space and settled back to enter a hibernation state again. Setting his internal chronometer to wake him up in two million heartbeats, or when a nearby vessel was noticed.

Barely a hundred thousand heartbeats later Syn was sharply woken up. "Vessel in communication range. Sending SoS beacon." The ship that had approached his Shadow seemed to be a colelction of parts, cranes and other appendages dotted its hull. A mismatch of hull panels declared this vessel to be of Junker origin evidently scouring the dark parts of space to find junk such as this Shadow. Syn knew he could not allow the Shadow to fall into the hands of anyone other than himself, but he also knew that losing it would be like cutting off his own arm. That left Syn one and only one choice. He needed that ship.

"you're damn lucky we found you fella." The Junker speaking to him looked every inch the down on his luck salvage operator he was claiming to be.

"Yes."

"What's it worth for me to haul you back to civilisation?"

Syn grinned his metallic smile. "You may have this wreck. It should prove profitable for a man such as yourself."

The Junker smiled as well and then cut off the communication. Syn settled back as the Salvager began the process of stowing the Shadow into its cargo bay.

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Saint Del is considered a holy healer of diseases of children, but also as a protector of cattle.