Lacerta IV dropped out of negspace about an hour ago, from my perspective, anyway. Everyone on board was long dead by now, dead for millennia. Relativity was a funny thing.
I like to think that there was a critical failure and the whole ship blew to bits in an instant, but the sensor data recordings don’t support that theory. From what we can tell, they simply had a containment failure and their fuel decayed into dark matter like it was never there to begin with. They would have been stranded in the void between galaxies with everything intact but their hyperdrive. As a colony ship, Lacerta IV was more than capable of sustaining a thousand passengers at a time for as many generations.
Left alone and adrift, would the crew have gone on living? Or was there a collective suicide, either in the literal sense or just a decision to stop procreating? Impossible to know.
Six ships lost now, three remaining. We haven’t even crossed the halfway point yet.
The price of freedom has always been someone else’s blood. I hope some of us make it, and I hope they remember those who didn’t. Most of all, I hope I’m one of the ones doing the remembering. Sacrifice means more coming from the willing, anyway.
Warmup Pages 