Chapter 1: Hyperspace Anomaly
The station was busy as usual. You could hear the clanking of officers, stormtroopers and maintenance staff walking somewhat stressful through the tight corridors of the central command section. I had been tasked of taking care of a few anomalies that had occurred in one of our subsectors, and I hadn't gotten much information on the subject except a few generalizations. I looked across the corridor to find the office I had been granted. Two-hundred and fifty-five, two-hundred and fifty-six, two-hundred and fifty-seven, aha, there it was, office two-hundred and fifty-eight. I walked up to the door and pulled out the keycard from my pocket, sliding it through the terminal and a green light flashed.
The door swung open and revealed my small cramped office. There was a desk, two chairs, a data terminal and a window of transparisteel through which you could see the asteroid field surrounding the station. I turned on the terminal and checked through the data-folders. "Incident 1098 Report" I clicked it and started skimming through the information. It was hard to get a solid picture of what had happened, it seemed that a Durasteel mine in the outer belts had suffered a major malfunction or possibly an attack. Pirates maybe? This wasn't really my department. I worked with the department for hyperspace anomalies, and this seemed to be a strictly Imperial navy type issue. I read further. "One of the surviving miners claim that the incident was caused by a major hyperspace anomaly" This piqued my interest, "He claims that it 'broke space itself', it is unclear what he is referring too" Maybe this is was my kind of work after all. It seemed like the subject had been in a state of shock after the incident had occurred, and the interrogators had gotten only a small amount of fractured data. The only way to get conclusive answers would be too find the miner and question him myself. There wasn't a name anywhere but I could rewrite the code into the main station archives to get the names of all involved.
I scanned the codes into the machine, and a robotic arm worked its way through the data-shards searching for the one with my referral number. The machine found it and handed it to me. I hurried back to my office to read the data into my machine. It showed a variety of names, mostly of miners and other workers in the asteroid mine. CAMDIL HASPEN: DECEASED, MARRONA GERWATE: DECEASED, the list went on with about twenty names of workers who died in the accident. JOSEGIAN PINHELL: SURVIVED, that must have been the miner that the navy questioned. He resided on the planet Xarsara in the Ansion system, only a few light-years from here.
Xarsara was a bleak world, its surface covered in steppes and little vegetation. It had a few forests of short pines and strange horse-like creatures who lived of the grass growing on the large steppes. Josegian lived in the planet's second-largest city, Yubruwei, a large, old, run-down mining city, a perfect getaway for a former miner who wanted to close himself off from the galaxy. Large rusted spires rose from old refineries since long abandoned. Large silos had turned into homes for some of the impoverished populace. But there were also high rise apartment buildings with power lines hanging between windows.
My shuttle was cleared for landing on one of the pads in the local space-port. The large shuttle gracefully locked its wings as it closed on the ground level. A puff of gas and steam shot out as the landing ramp was extended. I could sense that the planet rarely got Imperial attention, the space-port staff seemed stressed over my arrival. I was escorted by the planetary police to a hovercraft that had been waiting for me. The streets smelled of coal dust and chemicals, and the smog made it hard to see the tops of some buildings, but the stores and shops on ground levels lit up the first floors of the skyscrapers in all kinds of colours.
"Take me to the west city hab-blocks," I told the driver. As we flew through the city, I noticed that we were the only ones flying a hovercraft. "Why are we the only ones flying a speeder?" I asked the pilot who sat in front of me. "Nobody can afford such luxury here anymore, especially not now when Durallium Corp closed down. You're flying the planetary governor's speeder, it's the only one we have for-" He paused "-Imperial business". "Is that so?". As I suspected, I didn't get an answer.
The Smog grew thicker as we made our way to the western parts of the city. Here some parts of the machinery were still active and worked by the last competent miners who didn't live on the streets. "This is it, right here," I said as we flew by some large apartment blocks. The speeder landed on the street in front of the building were Josegian supposedly lived.
The Building seemed mostly abandoned. Many of the apartments were darkened and showed no signs of any inhabitants. The corridors had a yellowish eroded colour, and in some places, it was gone completely and uncovered the aluminium coating that laid under.
"Josegian Pinhell". That was the door. I knocked. Nobody answered. I knocked harder. This time a vague, weak voice answered, "Who is it? I don't want any trouble".
"I am Leodar Tritim, Imperial navy, the section for Hyperspace Anomalies, and if you don't want any trouble, I recommend you open up immediately." The door opened and I looked down on the troubled face of an older man. He was short and compactly built, had pasty long grey hair and brown eyes. He missed two fingers on his left hand and in the other, he held a cup of some heated drink. "Please, come in an officer, have a seat." I walked through one of the doors and hanged of my large grey officer's coat on a hook conveniently placed in the walkway.
"Do you want anything to drink? Will you be in town for long?" Josegian asked he seemed a rather wholesome man, living a decently comfortable existence in this forgotten part of the Empire. "No, I don't need anything. I'm just here to ask a few questions". What questions, am I in trouble? are my sons in any bad business?" The short man answered concerned. "No, I can assure you that nobody is in any danger, I'm here to talk about the incident". "Oh yes, the incident of course." "Now please sit down Josegian"
We sat down at one of the tables. To the left of me was a large window, viewing an old Industry area, filled with pipes, tubes and other machines. "Now Josegian, what can you recall of the day of the incident?" "Oh, it was a long day, I was very tired, hadn't slept properly for days, but my cleaning work was done as usual". "What events can you remember leading up to the failure". "I have told you many times! It wasn't a 'failure' it was a deliberate attack!". "Yes I know, of course, it was an attack Josegian, but what happened before it occurred?". "I… I remember I suddenly felt very uneasy. Like there was something wrong, and then, oh god… there was a light, a strange light, it wasn't nothing natural you see, it was…" Josegian looked out of the window, seemingly disconnected from the dialogue. "Yes Josegian, what light" I noted important keywords into my data-terminal. Josegian snapped out of it. "There were colours of all sorts, the station was covered in it. I remember I ran to one of the windows to see what all the fuss was about, and that's when I saw it". He was remembering it very vividly I could see, his face changing as he was rushed by emotion "Go on" I said eagerly.
"It was like a hole had been torn in space itself… Like a gate had been opened to hyperspace. It felt very unnatural. And from this hole, this rift, that's were all the light came from. And that's when I first saw it. Something monstrous came out of the tear, it resembled a ship in some ways, but it rather had the size of a station. It was unfathomable, covered in ornamental spikes and arches, and there were statues of men with blades engraved into the hull. It looked like some sort of religious temple rather than a starship. And the engines, oh, they roared and shot flames of chrome. They burned and screamed and it seemed to shake us even on the mining station. And when it came all the way through the rift, it closed behind it. Now it was cloaked in the shadows of space. You could only see those enormous engines burning and glittering. That's... that's when I decided to flee, you see, I was scared Leodar, I was so scared". The man started sobbing uncontrollably. "Collect yourself Josegian". He looked up at me, tears running down his wrinkled cheeks. "Collect yourself". "I… I left them there… With that… abomination… to die".
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