The Gray Waters of Morality

Grievance set his comm system to transmit queries on regular intervals to any other human ships that might have entered the unknown system through the same or other wormholes. The queries offered ISK to any pilot who could give the location of a wormhole out. After several weeks of fighting sleepers, their ragtag fleet was low on supplies.

Suddenly a transmission came through from a human Buzzard class craft. "Coordinates of a wormhole transmitting" Grievance entered them into the navigation computer and engaged the warp drive. They landed near a tiny wormhole that appeared near collapse just after the Buzzard disappeared through it. There was a distinct possibility that it would not support the mass of his ship, let alone the rest of their small fleet. Darkside's battleship would certainly not make it. Grievance had not only his own crew, but also the six thousand man crew of Darkside's ship to think about. He had to get out in order to guide a corp mate with a prober back to the wormhole to guide Dark's battleship out.

Grievance saw Voyk's Thorax and Daniel's pod drop out of warp next to the wormhole. He had anticipated the possibility of this scenario the moment he accepted the others to his fleet. The capsuleer parted the gray waters of morality and space with the knife of energy transmitted by his warp disruptor at Voyk's ship.

Voyk's Thorax met the challenge and burned towards him, his lasers flashing into the Rupture's shields. Grievance activated his autocannons and loosed his drones on the Thorax. Looking with concern as the shields dropped along with the range to the Thorax, Grievance was concerned that his long range barrage cannons would be able to track and pulsed his micro warpdrive. It was not needed as he could clearly see that the Thorax armor was melting much faster than his own, and he hadn't even activated his repper yet. "He transmitted a message to Voyk's pod emerging from the crumbling ship, "Safe journeys" knowing full well that only the capsuleer would awaken in a clone vat as his crew boiled and froze in the unknown space of a distant galaxy. Voyk transmitted, "Good flying" just before his pod burst under the autocannons. Daniel's pod was next, some men could never bring themselves to self destruct and face death even though they knew their clone would awaken once again. Death was death.

As debris floated around the Rupture and began to swirl around the event horizon of the tiny wormhole, Grievance transmitted to Darkside, "I will be back, God willing"

As his ship fell through the liquid watercolors and came out on the other side, Grievance watched his navigation computers with hope turned to acid as they reported, "Unknown Constellation. Unknown System. Uncharted Planets..."

The Unknown

Grievance almost lost his stomach as his ship came to rest. His navigation computer flashed "Unknown Solar System... Unknown Constellation... Uncharted Planet" Space rippled around him again as the other ships in their fleet arrived. Grievance warped to a planet and marked safe spots en route should he need a random point in space to escape from any threat. He then began scanning. Many anomalies showed up, and he called out to the fleet, "I have some kind of dead space installation on scan, shall we check it out?" Daniel and Voyk responded "Aye" and he warped the squad to the unknown installation.

As they dropped out of warp, Grievance saw an enormous installation with two frigate and two cruiser sized spacecraft of unknown type lying dead in space. He looked around and saw asteroids composed of valuable minerals in the vicinity. Suddenly, the unknown craft came to life, as if awakened from a long sleep. His ship was instantly locked and missile spat from tubes that were obviously launchers. Grievance immediately called "Battlestations!" and activated the Damage Control teams. He then selected a nearby planet and began alignment sequence. Only then did he lock the unknown craft with his targetting computer and activate his guns. A bright flash of plasma momentarily blinded his plasma gun as Daniel's ship exploded next to him.

A missile struck and Grievance watched as his shield fell to 55% from the single strike. Fortunately his autocannons were eating into the Sleeper's armor. Another missile hit their aft section, and shields collapsed. Damage control teams were already busy mitigating damage to the ship's armor and hull. A Sleeper frigate melted under his fire and Griev initiated warp to the nearby planet. Only by warping back several times was he able to destroy the sleepers and loot their wrecks of what appeared to be ancient databanks.

His cargohold full of artifacts retrieved from the Sleeper wrecks, Grievance called for Daniel's pod and Voyk's Thorax cruiser to head back to the wormhole. As they dropped out of warp, a fleet of battleships flashed onto his overview. Paying his tiny cruiser no mind, they entered the wormhole causing space to melt and splash like a pebble thrown into a pond. Suddenly it was as if a bubble burst and the wormhole was gone. Grievance called Cobra on the comm and asked his location,

"Oh, I am outside, I went back to station to get some supplies" replied Cobra cheerily.

Grievance's tone was flat, "The wormhole collapsed"

"Oh well, you are outside, aren't you?

"Inside" Grievance switched from the corporate comm to fleet. The corp might as well be in another galaxy, for in fact they were.

"Any of you have a probe launcher?" Grievance hoped that at least they might find another wormhole leading back to somewhere in New Eden. Both Darkside and Voyk responded negative.

"Then we are fucked!"

Liquid Watercolors

Grievance listened to his corp mates intercepting another automated hauler in Yong and rolled his eyes. Not worth even undocking. He turned his attention to the current events on the news comm. Anomalies were not only destroying planets, but seemed to be opening up wormholes to systems in distant galaxies. Some had gone through, and encountered strange and powerful technologies. Suddenly a transmission came in from Cobra Khan on the Maverick Navy channel, "Hey guys, I have a wormhole on scan... anyone want to come help me check it out?" Grievance raised his eyebrow, this was something new, something important. He engaged the transmitter, "This is Griev, 19 jumps out and on my way!"

Grievance engaged his warp drive to the vicinity of the wormhole. Several moments later, his Rupture dropped out of warp and he saw something that had not been seen by men in New Eden for thousands of years, when the Eve wormhole colapsed. This event sent his ancestores into the dark ages, destined to claw their way back up to the stars all over again the hard way.

"What do you think?" asked Cobra.

"Do you have any probes?"

"You bet, over one hundred"

"Well, then we should be able to find our way out... if the way out lasts long enough." Grievance thought about the possible mystery, wonder, and possible riches of being one of the first men in New Eden to explore a wormhole.

Two other ships from the local system joined their fleet, along with another corp mate Darkside.

Grievance opened the internal ship comms to his crew, "Whoever does not want to follow our ancestors into the unknown may take escape pods off the ship now and report back to corporate headquarters without repercussions." He watched the ship systems and not one pod activated. Grievance laughed, proud of his crew, "Alrighty then Mavs, Penis up!"

He set his ship on approach to the gravity well and the world turned to liquid watercolors.