History of the Galaxy II

[geoschmo]

2402.7

The Hive had been busy. In under three years it had used the Warp points it found to expand its reach in search for the warp point creators, or at least signs of other intelligent life forms. It had used the network of stellar phenomena to visit twelve different star systems already. And had planted permanent settlements in half of those. In fact, in its curiosity and single minded purpose had nearly run out of resources on the planets in the home system with which to build and maintain the Hive ships.

It had developed logistical techniques with which to return resources from the colonies in other systems to the home planet to keep the construction facilities turning out more Hive ships. But this infrastructure took time to develop for each system, and the Hive was impatient.

Rather than face the shutdown of the Construction yard on the host Homeworld, the Hive decided to attempt to extract resources from the asteroids and several uncolonizable planets in the home system. The attempt was not entirely successful.

The Hive was able to build a remote mining ship easily enough, but its technology in that area was not very well developed at the time. The ships it could build were too small to put more than one automated remote mining array on, and because of the complexity of the extraction process, only one mining ship could be assigned to any particular planet or group of asteroids.

The Hive quickly realized the amount of resources it was extracting were not sufficient to even make the effort worthwhile except of a very short period of time. After four months on station the mining ship was returned to the Homeworld and mothballed until the Hive could decide on another purpose for it.

The host in charge of monitoring orbital traffic was watching its computerized displays when an alarm softly chirped. The telemetry link to the mothballed mining ship had been lost. Standard mothball procedures had been followed. Once the final shutdown crew had debarked the ship had been towed to a high stable orbit and left. The only systems left functioning were the guidance systems and enough retro rockets to allow the ship station keeping. This process was handled almost completely by computer, and the telemetry link to the planet was normally only a formality.

The Hive searched for debris, and found none. The only anomalous readings at all were some gravitational fluctuations in the Last reported position of the ship. And these subsided over the next few minutes until they were completely gone. The ship had disappeared as neatly as if it had never existed.

The Hive assigned a few host scientists to explore the evidence and develop a theory about what had happened, and then went on about its tasks. The ship was of minor importance after all.

Meanwhile, onboard the mothballed ship....

Error 610: Orbital position incorrect. Begin correction subroutine

Error 1200: Unable to process Last command. Positional telemetry signal lost. Reacquire positional telemetry signal

Error 750: Unable to comply with Last command. No carrier. Run downlink system diagnostic.

Return 0: Downlink system diagnostic ok.

Return to subroutine 750. Reacquire positional telemetry signal.

Error 750: Unable to comply with Last command. No carrier. Run backup subroutine. Stellar position check.

Error 1550: Data outside of expected range. Stellar position does not match with Last known position. Crosscheck with stellar cartography database and recheck position.

Working.

Working.

Working.

Working.

Working.

Stellar position determined. Present location Mirach Star system.

Primary Command: Reestablish previous orbital position. Bearing known, calculate distance to previous position:

Working.

Distance calculated. Distance to previous position 3169248453331200.7 Km.

Analysis: Main Propulsion system offline. Insufficient reaction propulsion to reacquire previous position.

Secondary command: Contact Orbital command for assistance. Begin automated broadcast to orbital command. Request maintenance team to reengage Main Propulsion system. Repeat message until acknowledged.

Estimated time for Orbital command receipt of maintenance request: 314 years, 6 months, 14 days, 14 hours, 12 minutes, 41 seconds.