EVE Fiction

I twist through the wreckage of the Sleeper installation.

The remnants of its defenders broken and smoldering wreckage in my past.

The space around me is quiet except for the thunderous backdrop of the confined wormhole as flashes of light from some unknown place dance across screen in front of me.

Crew status and reports continue flood by as systems repair theirselves......then something happens.

My mind goes blank and I am no longer in my pod.

The excitement is like nothing before felt as I am drawn to a dark spot on the horizon of the landscape.

As I move....or am drawn closer the spot turns into a large half cloven asteroid. Mechanically smoothed surfaces with runways long forgotten emerge from hangar bays long left abandoned.

Wrecks with cockpits for human use remain idle inside of their hangars. Tools strewn about as if great chaos caused their users to suddenly abandon their duties....an attack maybe....as the scorch marks on the runways, buildings and bays tell the tale of a great battle that took place.

A cold greenish wisp wraps itself around the abandoned city as lightning flashes in the back ground. A large asteroid mining colony built into the asteroid floats into view and then vanishes somewhere in the darkness of deep space a sense of dread filling your soul.

But who was the attacker? Only human ships or the husks of the humans achievements remained.

Not a single human corpse.

Where did they all go? In the coldness of space the body would be preserved for all times.

Not a single corpse.

My mind begins to wander again. Could these be the humans that had built the Sleepers. Sleepers built as deep space probes and protectors? Could the Sleeper have gained its sentient thoughts from human intervention or some deeper mysterious force?

These have to be the creators of the Sleepers. Machine cannot create theirself and are only creatable.

Did the Sleeper sentient thoughts override their human programming and then turn on their human creators wiping them clean from deep space? Why did the Sleeper perceive their human creators as a threat?

Why?

The foreboding question lingers as I am drawn to a large spire with a single red glowing light a top a beacon. The cold dark mechanical that begins to overwhelm me can only mean one thing.....Sleepers........So dark and cold is the thought.....

"Sir." chimes the engineers voice in my pod interface "The system has been cleared off all Sleeper debris. The ship has been repaired. We are ready to move out."

"Run a deep sensor scan of the Sleeper ship and station for any transmissions." I say into the mic

A few moments pass in the eternity of the darkness.

"Nothing sir."

"Still having those recurrent Sleeper dreams?" Asks the ships psyche officer

I pause for the moment not wanting to scare the crew with the emergent dreams.

"No just wanting to make certain that the system has been cleared before moving out. We don't want anything sneaking up on us from behind." You saying reporting back to the psyche officer.

"Set course for the next system."

"Aye sir." Responds the warp drive engineer.

As the ship begins its warp out of the area the clouds and lighting of the warp tunnel seem to into an image of the place that you were just in. The clouds rise into buildings and hangar bays. The flashes of lighting filled with the shapes of human figures long dead for hundreds of thousands of years...At the end of the jump your exit point is replaced with a sudden red flash of brilliant light as the tower appears for you once again. The dark and foreboding red pulse on the beacon makes your body shiver with fear as the voice behind you causes you to turn around.

"Still having those recurrent Sleeper dreams sir?" Asks the base psyche officer as he runs a probe over your face, the light soothing your fear only for a moment.

"No worries sir, we'll have those dreams removed shortly." The attending medical doctor says.

You walk to the view port and look outside into the thunderous space before you. Your eyes widen as you watch great battleships emerge from their berths being coaxed out by their tenders. Interceptors and Frigates form in the distance. Their design is not anything that you have ever seen in New Eden.

"What is happening?" you ask with a stammer in your voice.

"He really must be out of it." replies the psyche officer

"If you didn't know we are at war with the Sleepers." responds the psyche officer "After they became sentient at 2200 hours yesterday they began attacking our cities all across space." He scans your arms and neck again with another device that emits a soothing flowing feeling through your body. " We don't why they attacked, perhaps some sort of failed programming."

"But I'm from New Eden....." You reply dropping your eyes to the deck.

"New where?" asks a voice at a computer terminal suited in some type of combat suit.

"I'm a capsuleer from New Eden..."

Then it dawns on you that you have crossed over into some kind of time rift. Your soul has replaced the soul of the early humans who built the Sleepers. But if you are him and he is you......

"I have to get back to my ship......I cant't be here." You say trying to exit the medical room.

Before you are able to exit the medical room a cold hand grabs your shoulder the human voice replaced by a precise and cold metallic tone.

"You never left.....you are still in the ship."

"SIR!" the loud report wakes you from your dream. You hurriedly get out of medical bed and head for the nearest porthole.

Outside you see a familiar sight. Hundreds of New Eden ships coming and going in the early morning sun.

"Still having those recurrent Sleeper dreams sir?"

This was very interesting...