The Object

There weren't always dragons in the valley. Specialist Locke knew that every crew member had that same saying beaten into their heads time and time again in the academy... There weren't always dragons in the valley. That truth would see him through his mission he hoped as he looked up through the small window of the space shuttle that would carry him into the heavens. Just as one of the clouds through that window moved from his right to left he could begin to make out the object that had taken over his life for the last four years.

The object had arrived five years ago. It was a large disc like object in the sky, and it wasn't long before news outlets across the world started showing the first images of it in space. It wasn't just a disk, but a habitat. It orbited the earth and made minor corrections to avoid sattelites, even avoiding the space station at one point. Even still humanity was a species bred for war and violence. Locke reflected on those days as he looked down to the controls before him. The master alarm was silent, and the captain was already going through pre flight checks. Locke reached a gloved hand up and checked his harness to make sure it was snug.

Locke had been through this routine more times than he could remember over the last four years of his training. Before he had recieved and offer from the Space Corp, he was working as a Nurse in a small town hospital. The Space Corp operated differently than most institutions. A specialist was someone who posessed a wide variety of useful skills and since Locke had critical care experience as well as combat experience from the Army, he had been hand picked to go up.

It wasn't that Locke wanted to leave everyone behind while he lived life as a space pirate. Locke had no say in the matter. When picked a citizen had to report for duty no questions asked. Space pirate had a nice ring to it however. He was going to be spending his time raiding a random object in space afterall.

People didn't know what to make of the object at first. There where no sightings of anyone controlling it, and there was no communication coming from it. "Hell" he thought, our first reaction was to just blow it out of the sky. Thankfully a genius Engineer by the name of Erich D Vanderlute convinced the world that this would be a marvel for study. It could advance humanity to a space faring people. We could leap forward our technology hundreds of years and finally get off of this rock.

The world was behind Erich for the most part. The space corp was formed using some of the most brilliant minds from all over the globe. The best trainees where hand picked from both civilian and military backgrounds. In just one year the first crew was ready for launch, and finally we would have some answers about the object. That first crew never made it off the planet. Of course humanity has never had a reason to band together completely, and some people still viewed the object as a threat. As the first shuttle blasted off from earth, it was intercepted by a hypersonic missile before it made low orbit. And so the motto was created "there weren't always dragons in the valley."

Locke snapped out of his thoughts as he heard the rumble of engine one, two, and three firing up. "No dragons today" the man next to him said. Locke's knuckles under his gloves whitened as the shuttle began to shudder under the building force of its engines. There weren't always dragons in the valley...