Gunslingers of the Solarsphere

Audio Clip #4: “Well I have not made one of these in awhile. Just over 2 months since my last audio message home… making it nearly 3 months since our journey. It feels like a lifetime ago, a different Ariana Sheffield grew up in Bristol, a different Ariana Sheffield studied aerospace engineering at University College London and met …” *audio is a confused muttering, Captain Sheffield sounding confused and trying with difficulty to remember something. “… right. Dave. At the pub. How could I have forgotten that? He will be long dead when this message reaches Earth , so at least he will never know his wife almost forgot him.” *audible chuckling . “A different Ariana Sheffield...”   Audio Clip #5: “We are much closer to Gamma Draconis now, and our guardian angels have been with us the whole way. More of them joining every day! Our new home is looking more and more beautiful. New scope and sensor data support our initial claim that it would be life-supporting. Maybe by t...

The taste of stale peanut and salt filled her mouth. It was verging on grotesque. Alexis Athena popped another handful back. Then a second, and a third. The peanut snacks were a convenient distraction from the latest scenario on Tectonia . Chewing also helped to drown out Captain Baxter’s and Jen Marshall’s latest argument. “They have been back and forth for over half an hour now,” she whispered to Ezra. “I can’t keep track,” Ezra whispered back, while flipping his greasy hair and adjusting his glasses. “Which one wants to head home now?” The chief engineer’s voice raised above salience, surging out from the din in the Mainframe Domain , “…and I will be damned if I end up like Orisa and the other explorers in my lineage. Leaving to some planet or system and never coming home. Without a word. I want to make it home to Po, and that means not getting crushed and becoming an exotic snack for some alien mega-birds.” And they said us scientists were indecisive… “I think Jen does no...

Transcripts from captain’s log on the Soothsayer [civilian science vessel, 3 rd generation]. Speaker is presumed to be captain Ariana Sheffield , British astronaut and solar radiation specialist from the 24 th century. Voice and video data were received by satellite outposts on Charon over a 2-month period during September, 2512. The Soothsayer disappeared while in close solar orbit on May 31 st , 2358. Transcripts herein document the events that followed, and the presumed fate of the Soothsayer ’s 6 crewmembers.   Audio Clip #1: “Sss..something happened. We were collecting data on a fairly standard solar flare… and then it was just gone. It was all gone, the sun, Earth , Mars , the Milky Way . Gone. At least that was what we thought at first. Then Jorge called all of us to the observatory deck. The stars and landmarks weren’t gone, they were wrong. It was us who disappeared.” *no talking for 37 seconds. Audible crying and sighs of grief from Captain Sheffield . “We ...

  The Landing   Jaison Blackwell decided quickly the only way to survive his life sentence was to only think of himself.   It didn’t matter whether he was guilty or not he was gagged, shackled, drugged and shipped off within in minutes of his conviction.   The Justice system was skewed towards the rich and powerful.    If he could have paid for a better defense maybe just maybe.    Once convicted there was no appeal, there was no sentencing or leniency.   All crimes got the same sentence.   It made things simple.     It didn’t matter any more.   He had only a few minutes before his pod would open and then he would face the unknown of La Carcela.   He thought that maybe it would have been cleaner to have just been put to death.   But in The Global Dominion, there was no capital punishment.    It was too messy to kill someone as a punishment.    Letting them kill themselves on this forsa...

In those early, primitive days when humanity hopped out of their gravity well and started poking at things they did not understand, the Solarsphere was first discovered. Surprisingly, the heat- and solar radiation-resistant upgrades to space ship hulls ended up as the most important invention in the history of mankind. Through close orbit of the sun humanity discovered Solarsphere-mediated space-time travel, initially by the disappearance of unfortunate science teams, and then by brave explorers probing how to control travel. Even after the return of the Voice of the Void when the true understanding of the Solarsphere began to form, it took centuries before there was a strong enough grasp on how all the variables, including orbital pattern, velocity, position, distance from the solar body, etc…, determined where and when you traveled to. Nowadays, Solarsphere travel through space is a daily occurrence, and time travel is tightly regulated. Thousands of lost ships, filled with countl...

Jen Marshall, descendant of a long-line of space-faring captains and admirals and explorers, gaped as Captain Baxter brought her up to speed. Her thoughts on the mission grew more pessimistic with each passing second. Chief engineer on a rust-bucket orbiting some useless planet in a useless solar system. Orisa would be pleased to know her great-great-great-whatever granddaughter is so successful... Truth be told, the Garibaldi was not a terrible ship to crew on. It would have been top of the line tech 50 years ago and runs better than any ship the average civilian would have, but is on the low end for gunslingers. Of note, the ship systems were severely outdated when they had departed from Terra Duomo . Jen’s first move as chief engineer, to much reproach and backlash, was directing her software engineers to re-code all systems up to current standards, optimized for efficiency and precision. Almost half a year later, at least their software was modernized. Thankfully for their cur...