Colony Ship Eternum

By Eric Horn

The Colony Ship Eternum was one of four North American launched Colony Ships towards the beginning of the 21st century. Ten years into its voyage, a collision with an asteroid forces the ship into auto-pilot, leading it to eventually orbit a distant star. There it is found by an Alien civilization with previous experiences relating to humans. After taking the ship to one of their councils, the Aliens must choose. Will they wipe out humanity a third time, or attempt to reform this wayward race?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eric Horn
• Release date: Aug 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465908452

Eric Horn

Eric I. Horn was born in 1991. He has had an avid love of writing since he was 6 and after reading years of Fantasy and Science Fiction has endeavored to put his own work out for the market.

Book preview

Colony Ship Eternum

By Eric I. Horn

Copyright Eric Horn 2011

Published at Smashwords

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Dedicated to: Barbara Hartley (For getting me into Science Fiction)

About the Author

Eric I. Horn was born in 1991. He currently lives in Corvallis, Oregon pursuing a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Oregon State University. He has had an avid love of writing since he was 6 and after reading years of Fantasy and Science Fiction has endeavored to put his own work out for the market.

©2011 Eric I. Horn

©2011 Nemrith(Online Persona)

Disclaimer: all individuals represented in this work are fictional, and any similarity through name or action is coincidental.

Prelude

With the onset of cryogenic technology and the creation of ultra efficiency vacuum preservation. Humanities first burst from the earth sphere was in colony ships. Dozens of them were launched each year for a decade, equipped with multi-purpose equipment and specialists enough to establish colonies on asteroids and small moons, the colonization of an entire planet.

About 50 years after the colonization project, Humanity became aggressive, their fleet of offensive ships taking colonization too far. At first the other intergalactic civilizations paid no heed. Then, the first pirates disabled and boarded advanced vessels. After that, an aggressive advancement and campaign began by the humans. They took the technology they'd stolen and became a force in which other civilizations must take note. Two hundred and fifty years after leaving their earth sphere. Their decline was even faster. Once becoming a threat the galactic council of civilizations created a hunter killer fleet. Which had the sole purpose of finding and eradicating the human species that had become so viral and violent.

The battles were fierce. Many 'first colonies' became memorials, as the humans concentrated their raw strength, on the defensive for the first time in memory against true alien aggression. Debris from ships destroyed in orbit rained down on the planets, creating shooting stars as infantry and bombing runs annihilated the still young colonies. Planets which had only just begun to sprout the flowers of society and civilization, Alpha and Beta Centauri, Christ Majora, Compress, Veril's belt, & eventually Earth. The hunter killers were joined by the combined might of the regular militaries of the coalition of races to deal this final blow to the scourge of the galaxy. The ground war was summary enough, the cities leveled and then thoroughly swept with legions of units.

It was said that when the last human died a great sigh was let up from the collective conscious of the universe. They left a token force to deal with any humans that might attempt to return to their homeland. Their objective complete the hunter-killer fleet was disbanded, the respective species returning to their own. Though the infrastructure for raising it again remained in place, training a portion of volunteers for the potential need to join once more. It was these remainders, that believed that the humans were not totally gone, that the histories gathered before their total annihilation were incomplete, colonies that had never been found again.

There were of course those that disagreed heartily, believing the human menace gone. After all, they'd destroyed all the registered ships and many times that number in unregistered human ships. As certain as they were, a millennium passed and then the token force on Earth, well settled by then reported a flotilla of human engineering had appeared in the system. The space fleet having long since withdrawn. Had left the ground forces vulnerable, with only a dated ground artillery. The HK section chief deployed the nearest patrolling vessels, and alerted the ambassadors representing the states. Their response was skeptical, but they could not deny the threat that came with a reappearance of the humans.

By the time the HK ships arrived, a fierce ground battle was already underway, the human fleet having expended it's minimal ballistic payload in order to destroy the defenses, and the point defenses were too weak to penetrate the atmosphere. They shattered the fleet, boarding a couple of vessels in order to find the location of their origin, a hidden federation had gathered together in the absence of centralized human government and had organized an attack in order to strike away the incumbent human government, so removed were they from current events. Once again the galactic civilizations banded together, and summarily executed all of the colonies within the federation.

Anew began the age without humans. So far removed, another millennium passed, and exploration of former human space became ritual. The ship Beyond Time under the command of a Sylian revisionist. Stumbled upon one of the original human colony ships. It's unconventional shape and blocky design dated back to the first great leap humanity made for the stars. It was the HCV-221 or Human Colonization Vessel, Eternum. It had fallen ill of a particularly large asteroid early in its voyage and the auto pilot was altered, such that it drifted listlessly in the void of space, expending fuel to avoid encounters with gravitic anomalies and using point defense when smaller things threatened the integrity of the ship, eventually it settled in a stable orbit around a star system. It was in this system that the Sylian captain found it.

Enhance the image, and give me a reading on the hull of the vessel. The captain ordered.

The design is from the early human space period, when they were preoccupied with expansion rather than acquisition. The analysis officer reported over the command display.

And, what is its threat level? Armaments? Awareness? The captain requested.

According to our readings of the hull, and passive, and active scans, we're receiving a total of 24 laser emplacements, mining grade, of those 24, about 10 are still functional. The sensors of the ship have in all probability detected an anomalous presence, as this is a pre-encounter vessel it will be unable to identify us with either friend or foe tags.

Prepare a boarding party, what else can we glean from this vessel, do we have any historical schematics? The captain requested.

We don't have the schematics, but there appears to be three or four airlocks on the vessel. We can easily disable their defenses if necessary. the second in command replied.

Send the oldest friend tag we have in the database from human vessels, with any luck it'll recognize it and we'll be able to avoid destroying it, it'll be quite the trophy to take home.

I want sympathizers with the revisionist movement in those boarding parties. With any luck we'll be able to save those specimens for study, we'll be able to prove or disprove that humans can be trained, we can lay to rest those old rumors. And finally we shall be free of the enigma present in the mystery of the humans.

So the ship docked, with no ill effect, apparently even the modernized human fleets had retained those original friendly codes that their first ships had utilized. The airlocks breached, the boarding parties were surprised to find stale but breathable air. The layout of the ship was fairly spartan in design, most of the systems were between the hull and the living quarters, reducing the need for the crowding of the passages.

Where's the control room of the ship? One of the Bnue members asked the Sylian squad leader.

" This termina seems to have a lot of data on it, though the life support seems to be faltering. It's cold in here. Ah, here's the map. Appears to be near the bow of the ship, there's two ways of reaching it. There's a series of ramps leading to the level its on, or we could take our chances with