The Viluverse - Chapter One

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The space station doors opened before him as light streamed from inside. He adjusted his binocs and hit the manual controls on the dashboard in front of him: all systems go.

The two double doors continued their widened pathway as his ship, the Lonesome, made its way past their gigantic structures, each door the size of a small moon as his ship looked like a tiny insect crawling between two behemoths.

It didn’t have to be this dramatic, but the dream architects had decided to play it for all its worth and created something extraordinarily complex where simplicity could have sufficed. A flair for the dramatic abounded everywhere as tiny fireflies dotted around in front of his view screen.

He regarded them with cool curiosity before seeing other ships flashing him in the vicinity, the station a hub of activity as freighters from God knows where teemed like tiny deep sea fish in the infinite bounds of the station’s recesses.

The ship floated onward towards its destination: one of the landing collars in the first outer ring of the station. Each ring was designed as a defense mechanism to keep intruders at bay, with entry points designed at intervals to funnel any enemy ships coming in.

The place gleamed with an eerie, almost milky glow as the Lonesome made its weary way through a vast field of ships, each distinctly different as if birthed from the same mother yet multiple fathers. One ship, a draconic, rested in its collar like a hulking beast from beyond, its curved shape signaling a foreboding of red death that could emerge at any minute from its fiery interior.

He regarded it all with his usual detached curiosity as the station’s internal systems guided his ship so smoothly he might as well have dozed off for a nap in the process, gleaning what he could from his surroundings as the station enveloped him within its warm embrace.

He felt much like an old friend coming to visit home as the station, one of the largest in the sector, signaled its warm embrace via the docking collar, extending outwards to greet his ship. It resembled a long, white arm, with two pincers at the far end, which rounded themselves at the point like brackets.

His ship was maneuvered into place and drifted neatly between the two arms, which extended outward to accommodate his ship before grasping its midsection, the usual point of entry for docking. He felt the tension from the exchange reverberate through the ship before the voice of his computer gave its usual two beeps that all was okay to move forward.

He waved his arm, and the safety mechanisms containing him detached, and he floated through the cockpit, all the way through to the midsection of the ship through the main corridor that ran all the way through it, before turning on the anti-grav with a click of his fingers - a programmed auto-cue - that then kicked gravity back into action again, sending him back to earth is a slow descent, letting his feet slowly hit the ground.

He loved doing that and usually preferred being weightless wherever possible to take on the notion that he was in deep space and not in any environment remotely resembling normality.

He peered down at the hatch and began his descent, his metallic shoes hitting each rung of the ladder as the white entry collar below him opened its welcoming embrace, and he felt the cool air of the corridor below. This particular corridor was invisible to the outside world, a cool little gimmick that only a dream architect would construct to amuse themselves, and he found himself looking at the long, wall-length windows that connected him with a sense of being deep in the station.

He was, however, only in the outer ring and paused to see the fleets of ships driving to and fro beyond him like shoals of fish in the open ocean. Several ships looked like they’d been battered and bruised, and he used his enhanced vision to take a glean at them but could only see what looked like laser scars across their mid-sections and could discern no evidence of the type of weapon that had born their deadly cargo.

It was possible to sometimes identify certain races by their ships and the weapons used but no such luck, and he carried on down the long corridor, pausing to look up at his ship as it rested above the translucent ceiling. It was a beauty, not his first ship, but certainly, he hoped his last, a ship that could change shape instantly and possessed two wings on either side with an arrow tip for a head at the front.

Hidden weapons remained concealed with its interior: he wanted his potential adversaries to feel whatever defenses were hurled their way by surprise and always liked to think he maintained the advantage that way. Being unpredictable was one of the ship’s strengths, imbued with biotechnological nano-plasticity that rendered it capable of growing new capabilities based on instantaneous reactions from its host organism, which connected with him for an almost seamless relationship born of speed and durability.

He kissed the old girl goodbye and continued his long walk down the corridor to the entranceway, which led to the network of tunnels leading from the docking collars. These corridors were designed to be narrow and long, regularly equipped with checkpoints and hidden doors which could be shut instantly to trap and delay the progress of any intruders that may come on board.

That nobody had breached the station in more than a century was a testament to its ingenuity, and as he marveled at the thought of being onboard his old friend, a familiar voice came through the intercom beyond.

“Jensen, good to see you again; come right on in; we’ll be waiting; got an old friend waiting to see you.”

He smiled and nodded, knowing the biosensors which lined every inch of the corridor had been secretly scanning and measuring his movements since he departed the ship, much like recorders survey a site, and he walked through the door, which motioned upwards, smooth and silky and ventured down the length labyrinth to his next destination and port of call.

The doors ahead beckoned to him as he saw the neon ring around them pulsate slowly before sliding to let him through. They were semi-transparent, a fog lifting as the door opened; he saw the familiar face of Tycer Gibson beaming in his direction.