EVE Fiction

Echoes of Seyllin

YC 111, March 10.

SCOPE News BREAKING NEWS text flashed urgently in the lower left corner of his screen. A tortured-looking star gasped its last breath in the center of the screen, and the feed blinked out of existence, as the last remaining fluid router connecting the innermost planet of the Seyllin star system was destroyed.

Zero hour had arrived. A vast energized mass of stellar matter had reached the orbit of the innermost planet, Seyllin One, a colonized mining-world consisting of millions of Gallente Federation citizens.

As the Seyllin star’s wrath abated, news rushed in to fill Julianus Soter’s wall of screens. A Serpentis freighter on a humanitarian mission had been the first to call in the horrifying news. As SCOPE news vessels had reentered the system, they confirmed the total destruction of the planet; hundreds of millions likely killed. Even worse, the same dire reports arriving from other areas of the New Eden cluster. The world had changed forever, in the blink of an eye.

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Several months after the Seyllin Main-Sequence Event

“Aria Jenneth, my dear, it is time to pool our talents”

The diminutive Achura raised an eyebrow at Julianus’ proposal.

“Jules, what you’re asking for is not a small thing”

The two had never been described as ‘friends’, and indeed, they had never met in person. Typically, the staunchly pro-State Jenneth, had traded weapons fire more often than smiles against the more Federation-focused Julianus Soter over the years. But things were different.

It had been several months since the devastating events of March Tenth, YC 111.

The destruction of Seyllin One and her colony had been only a symptom of what apparently had changed the very fabric of space and time across New Eden. Wormholes had been opening and closing across all of known space, leading to a mysterious nether-realm of “Wormhole Space”, consisting of hundreds and thousands of star systems.

Julianus Soter, at the time, a mercenary capsuleer within the FOOM organization of Syndicate, had been leading expeditions to this space ever since the Seyllin event. What he had found frightened him.

Thousands of installations attended by even more ships of tremendous firepower. An entire civilization, hidden away behind the wormholes, had been discovered, with technology and capabilities on par, and indeed often superior, to that of Capsuleers. The Sleepers. As FOOM’s forces raided the most deadly of these new territories, Julianus knew that something was not well with the situation. There was a growing sense of danger in his mind, of that what these machines of destruction might do if unleashed on Mankind.

What was more disturbing was how little anyone had bothered to learn about them.

“We must understand what we’re up against, Aria. You know what the Sleepers can do. We need to find out what they want to do.”

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(Source: http://thesynenoseaccord.wordpress.com/seyllin-conference/first-seyllin-conference-18-07-111yc/transcript-part-1/ )

A holopad beeped with an incoming message. “You ready?” blinked Morwen Lagann’s text to Jules. He looked down and tapped a short reply. “Yes”.

Months of planning, expeditions, and the formation of a new organization, the Synenose Accord, had led to this moment. The creed of the movement had been simple: Understand the Sleeper civilization, and defend Humanity from it and its technology, by any means necessary.

To this end, scoundrels, scientists, cultists, Sansha supporters, and loyalists of every Empire had put together their combined talents to drive back the mystery and confusion about Wormhole Space and its inhabitants, the Sleepers.

Jules thought of his colleagues, who had prepared extensive presentations based on weeks of combined effort. Everyone had put forward so much of themselves. It all came down to this. An opportunity to warn New Eden of what they had to go up against, should the worst come to pass.

Jules walked up to the podium from his seat.

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