Remnants and Fallout

[arvg]

XiaoBei spluttered in indignation, as crew members were ushered into the stasis pods. Row by row the pods closed, cryostatsis devices that were duplicates of the same used aboard the sleerpships, painstakingly engineered to perfection. Nothing could be taken to chance... not that it mattered if the Vortex drive blew them all to hell...

"All non-essential crew are accounted for and in stasis," Lt. Han reported, as Pasha pushed the Lt. into the last Statis pod, nodding to the doctor as he slammed the door shut, the devices cycling up and releasing the complex cocktail of chemical agents into the tubes, flooding them with a liquid. It was terrifying to watch, crewmembers frantically scrabbling, unprepared for the simulated drowning they were undergoing, not realizing that the liquid would sustain them indefinitely beyond the needs of conventional life support.

And with a sharp crack, the rows of pods went cold, freezing the liquid and the occupants solid in a matter of moments.

"All systems report cryo sleep achieved," Xiaobei stated as he smoked, walking along the line of coffins. Tapping the glass to get a better look at Commissar Miller. "Ugly mug that you are," he murmured carrying on, to where the last row of pods were waiting, standing open.

"Last minute checks are in place Admiral... I recommend setting our course and getting into the pods the moment we come out of the vortex. I am giving us a little... time, so that we don't miss our mark."

He lifted a remote control, "Vortex in T-minus ten seconds and counting..."

He found a seat, as Pasha strapped himself in opposite. The normally stoic man finding a moment to cross himself, and offer a prayer.

The external boosters fluttered and flared as the ship accelerated towards the light threshold.

On the scaffold, the alien device constructed by fusing two very different technologies together reacted with one another. Power from the Dangerous Alien artifacts, fusing with the power of the enriched powercell... flooding into the device that was designed to catapult them across the threshold into... beyond.

He hoped to god his calculations were correct, as the alien device fluctuated and flared, creating the temporal vortex ahead of them...the scaffolding ejecting, as the ship accelerated through the boundary, flashing though time and space in an instant drawing upon the impossible combination of technologies, wielded by the hand of a totally insane genius.

And like that, they had arrived...

The thrill of the moment was gone in the blink of an eye, as XiaoBei clambered up and out of his seat, reaching for the computer console, that was already calculating their position and extrapolating the relative time from the surrounding space.

"We're about one hundred years too early," he called. "But we're near to the relative position. A sustained burst of cruise should get us up to speed, and momentum will carry us on an intercept course with the targets... Time for a nice long nap, I think?"

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