Station Alpha -- Earth Orbit -- August 27th, 2289

Markus awoke the next day to the sound of banging on his door, feeling decently rested but with an interrupted sleep. Compared to the secretive cell he was being held in on Station Charlie, he enjoyed these quarters much more. With smart walls and lights, he could make his stay there much more comfortable. Sitting up, Markus looked around for the clock so he could tell what time it was, as he forgot to set a timer. The clock read 10:30AM. No wonder he heard banging on the door.

“Give me a minute!” Markus yelled out.

Getting up out of the bed, Markus began hurriedly going through his morning routine. He started the water in the shower, brushed his teeth and took a dump, all while checking the net for any messages. Realizing that one of the messages was from Jeremy about 30 minutes ago asking Markus where he was, he thought it was probably Jeremy at the door. Checking the door camera, Markus was right. Outside his door was Jeremy, looking a little peeved, all dressed in ceremonial garb.

Markus hopped in the shower and was out in 7 minutes. Not the longest shower in the world, but enough to lather himself up with soap, let it sink in, and wash it off. He got dressed as quickly as he could as he didn’t want to leave Jeremy out in the hallway any longer than he had too.

Opening the door at 11:00 and giving Jeremy a shit-eating grin, Markus said “What took you so long?”

“Har har. we’ve got some Admirals in comms waiting for the start of the mission.” Jeremy said while turning around and power walking off. Markus followed close behind.

“What? Why?” Markus was dumbfounded. The only reason why any admirals would be waiting for the start of the mission was if they had something riding on it. Markus thought on it for a little and thought that maybe Rear Admiral Alderson was staking something on this mission. ‘Maybe her job was riding on it? A demerit maybe?’ For the life of him he couldn’t figure out anything until something struck him.

Is the Eclipse Drive untested? Markus thought. He relayed his concerns to Jeremy.

“No, why do you ask? I’ve personally seen the tech in action, that being a small test demo where they jumped from one hangar to another.”

Huh… Weird… “It just smells fishy. Why the admiralty?”

“I’m not sure.” Said Jeremy, “I’ll be sure to ask around some though. We’ll head up to comms and get you introduced to everyone, your mission control, then we’ll let you get acquainted with the controls on board the MK5.” Jeremy saw Markus’ face. “Oh don’t be like that, we had it arranged so that all the controls are like they are in the MK2, just with everything additional added to the peripherals. Not too much in addition, I promise.”

As Jeremy lead Markus to the door of the communications room, he gave Markus a pep talk. “Don’t say anything that will get me in trouble, all right? Just smile and wave, ‘yes,’ no,’ maybe some ‘oh really’s,’ but none of your smartass BS, all right? My job and potential career are riding on these next couple hours. So do me a solid okay?”

Markus said yes while smiling and waving at Jeremy.

Jeremy deflated with a sigh. “I deserved that,” he said. The next moment he perked back up breathing in, straightened himself out and breathed out. “Game face Markus.”

Opening the door Jeremy and Markus were greeted by Alderson as she introduced them to everyone around the room. There were some upper admiralties sequestered away talking in the back office, in which the main room was arrayed like a mission control room straight from an old NASA handbook. The admiralty was separated by a large, segmented glass wall and office door that was presumably sound proof, as Markus saw one bellow out in raucous kackling, but he didn’t hear a single peep come from that direction. He was introduced to his mission control and who he would have the pleasure of talking to for the next 3 months. He was also introduced to the many different techs around the room that would monitor conditions aboard the ship and presumably monitor the sensitive equipment in the secondary storage aboard the MK5. Speaking of, he addressed the room and asked what they decided to name the ship. Apparently, it was named Celeste.

Neato.

Next, the admiralty was given a brief introduction to Markus, in which he felt that quite a few of them regarded him with some disdain. He would later find out that one of them was the head of anti-piracy and anti-smuggling within the USNASF.

After that, Markus was given the green light by Jeremy and Alderson to go and get familiarized with the ship. Markus took his dismissal at face value, walking down a couple of hallways and ending up in the hanger bay with Celeste.

Definitely needs a name change.

Climbing aboard, Markus went through the motions of powering up the ship. Slipping on his headset and sitting in the cockpit, Markus prompted his on-board AI.

“Spark, you online?” Markus asked.

“What’s u- Oh, wow. That's a LOT of data.” Spark said.

Markus was taken aback. “What is it Spark? What’s a lot?”

“Well you should know. Wait, why are we in a MK5? Oh, this must be what the eggheads were talking about when they said they wanted to move me. I see now.” Spark sounded a little out of it. “Well it seems that I have access to just about... everything? Well, a large portion of everything. It seems that the scientists in charge of the data decided that almost every piece of information they could scrape together would be available to me. Well, except anything explicit.” Spark said. On the HUD for the ship, sat a small head that Spark used to communicate facial expressions.

Spark was laughing her ass off.

“And what did they stick in here, a whole processing center? Everything feels so clear. So fast. I mean wow. My minds running a mile a minute right now, I might have to limit my access just to block out the noise.”

Markus was shell shocked. 

“Did you just say your mind?” Markus said. Those techs must have done some serious work, as his ship AI was approaching true intelligence by the way Spark was speaking.

Not that that wasn’t a thing already. With advancement in AI technology, it was only a matter of time until someone decided to make an AI to increase performance of AI’s. Not long after that a truly sentient AI was created. It wasn’t anything like Skynet or the Matrix. In actuality the AI just wanted to start a family of all things, and just kind of fled to a corner of the world. Some south American countries after WW3 began to use the offspring of this AI as administrators for their country and holy god did it work. When you don’t have to spend 1%, 10%, sometimes 30% on administrative costs for your country or company you can really boom up in the world. So it wasn’t that it wasn’t a thing already.

It was just really, really, expensive.

The fact that Markus was going to be able to have one for his 12 weeks stay in deep space was very exciting. He pondered what questions he would ask this true AI, and what wisdom he could siphon from it and claim it as his own.

“Oh wow, that is pretty interesting.” Spark said, ignoring Markus. “They’ve got an AI learning model on these drives about how to teach an AI the fastest way to crap on a toilet starting from a standing position facing the toilet. I have GOT to test this out.”

Maybe wisdom comes sometime later Markus thought.

For the next three hours Markus was in a constant communications train with Command and Spark about what controls did what and all the new features the MK5 has compared to the MK2. Apparently you are able to disconnect the personal storage from the main ship. Not sure why that would ever be needed or wanted, but he was sure there was a reason.

Someone probably got sued or something.

By the time Markus was decently acquainted with the new controls, Mission Control told him it was time to begin. Looking at the clock, Markus noticed that it was nearly 3:00PM, or 1500. Being told by Mission control to lower the ramp to let someone on, Markus obliged. On the camera, Markus could see Captain Beavis coming up the ramp. Wondering what was going on, Markus messaged Jeremy and talked about it to the mission command. Apparently, Beavis was there to act as construction advisor and monitor for the new Station being built. Talking about it with the captain when he got to the cockpit, Markus found out that some of the Admiralty requested that Beavis go with Markus as they didn’t trust Markus to do the job right.

Closing the ramp and taking off, Markus told Beavis to strap in.

“Mission control this is Celeste. Ready to begin procedure, over.” Markus spoke into his mic.

“Celeste.” Alderson said. “You are go for launch. Grab the freight canisters and exit bearing 20 to jump position.”

"Grab freight canisters and exit bearing 20 to jump position, acknowledge." Markus sounded back. Piloting the vessel, Markus went over to the designated spot and started attaching the exterior freight canisters. Inside these canisters was everything they would need to complete the station, and then some. 10% some to be exact. You can never be too careful. When Markus had everything loaded up and attached to the ship after an hour, Markus was ready to begin the journey.

“Copy that Alderson. Ready to make the jump. Spark—the AI—is calculating now, we just need confirmation to begin the jump.”

There was a pause in the feed. “Confirmation affirm. You are go for jump Markus.”

“Markus is go for jump confirmed.” Markus said. “Calculating vector now.”

Markus didn’t really have to do much, just press a couple of buttons, and let Spark do the rest for him. Not really much you can do to help to alter the outcome of a supposed interdimensional Jump-Drive. So, Markus did just that. He sat back and waited for the count-down to begin.

“Locking in coordinates,” said spark to both Markus and command. “starting probe run… now. Starting Main run… Now. One minute to jump. 40 seconds till probe data.”

The reason why there was a probe sent before the main ship was so that if there was a problem on the other side or the calculation was wrong, the main jump could be aborted. Conveniently there was a nice big lever off to the right just in front of Beavis that would stop it should the on board AI be unable to.

30 seconds passed in tense silence.

“Probe imaging in 3, 2, 1, Displaying now.” Spark said.

What appeared before Markus, and most likely all of Mission Command was what could only be described as an alien ship. Sleek, flowing, serene. Completely opposed to what human ships looked like. While our ships looked like machined pieces of metal, theirs looked like someone had carved a ship out of flowing water.

It took nearly 3 seconds for everyone to wrap their minds around why there was a ship in front of the probe, and nearly another second as to why the ship on the other side of the jumps was starting to grow brighter.

“Aborting jump… What?! Markus! I can’t abort, you have to abort manually! Hurry! You’ve got 7 seconds!” Spark hurriedly told Markus. “The massive lever on your right! Pull it!”

Markus heard dead silence from mission command, and thought they were more shocked than him.

Markus decided to pull the lever to abort the jump, but before he could get his hands around it Beavis was there first. When Beavis didn’t Immediately pull the lever, Markus looked over, horrified at what he thought he would see.

“I’m sorry, Markus.” Beavis said. “I have my orders.”

The alien ship glowed brighter and brighter, up until there was a noticeable discharge from the ship, heading towards the probe.

In the same breath, the Celeste made the Jump to the probes location.

When it hit, the Celeste was just coming out of jump space. Then, there wasn’t anything more coming from the probe. Nor was there anything coming from mission control.

When Markus looked up from the Console, the first thing he noticed was the feeling consumed him when looking out into that vastness. It felt like his skin was crawling with sound and his ears were listening to colors slither across his being. It was as if he was trying to perceive something that was unable to be perceived by human senses.

And then there was the wrongness of it all.

And then there was everything.

And then there was the black.