Outsider

[Laowai]

The journey had been a hard one.


She had been manned with a skeleton crew, the bare minimum needed to keep her functioning, armed and maintained. The crew had been promised a million credits each for the journey, but Laowai had been wary of taking the more inexperienced younger members. He knew this trip could be one that many would not come back from, far from Corsair space should they be forced to abandon ship; there would be little hope of rescue.

They stopped at Freeport 11, taking that last opportunity to stock up on supplies and to go over the intelligence on the systems they would be going through. Laowai had taken the Venganza into Nomad space on two occasions before, but recent reports from the order and from the Corsairs own listening posts indicated that the defenses in Nomad space had been upgraded.
When they arrived in Omicron Iota, "upgraded" proved to be an understatement. They had been set upon consistently by patrols from the moment they jumped into the system and by the time they had crossed to the expanse of Iota to the next jumphole the crew was tired and showing strain. Gun crews had been working rotational shifts but the weapons had never fallen silent - Laowai toured the ship constantly, bolstering the crew. They were covered in sweat, shirts off or with sleeves up, the heat of the weapons gradually building over the hours as they fought off the nomad waves.
Omicron 99 had been the same, Nomad patrols had come in harder, faster and better armed than anything their intelligence had led them to believe. They held their own, the Venganza's mighty shields never dropping below 40%. Laowai didnt sleep for the duration of this part of the trip, he noted everything, updated their charts and urged his crew onwards when they began to tire.

In Omicron 90 the pace eased, the patrols became fewer until the navigator called out "There it is Elder.... the jumphole is right where the charts said it would be."
Corsair intelligence on this part of Sirius was particularly sparse. This was on the borders of Outcast space, far from the usual operating area of any Corsair ship and what intelligence he had Laowai had pieced together from various sources: The Order, paying lip service to their alliance had supplied some, but were noticeably reluctant to part with any real detailed information, much had come from the Junkers, and some, surprisingly from a lone IMG survey vessel, the pilot of which Laowai had met in a bar on Crete. The man had seemed strange, distant as if haunted by something. However Ben had found him a valuable source of information on this part of space, and the information came freely with a little motivation from Credits and a free servicing of the man's Ravens Talon.

"Hold here a moment" he said, leaning forward in his chair. He knew that on the other side of this jumphole, there was supposed to be a vast, system sized construction known as a Dyson Sphere. This was the entrance into its interior... an interior which had not been explored in any known detail and which he hoped could help him in his quest to understand and modify the ancient technology that both preserved and imprisoned his wife.

"The jumphole is stable Elder" the navigator added. Ben sat back in his chair, pressing a button on it's arm he sounded a warning across the ship "weapons crews standby for hostiles".

"Take us in" be said calmly.

The ship split the aperture of the anomaly and then shuddered as she plunged into hyperspace, the chaotic maelstrom of lights flying past at inconceivable speeds. Suddenly she burst back into open space, to be greeted by a view that drew collective gasps from all on the bridge who could see it....

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