Space Odyssey: Spectre

"Take off checklist is complete. We are proceeding to take off." Captain Neslie announced while Jace sat back in his seat. He was sitting a bit behind the captain and her officers.

"Where are we off to?" Officer Neuman asked. He was in charge of navigation. He was more of an it rather than a man. But he preferred to be identified with a male gender. Neuman is an artificial intelligence inhabiting a robotic mannequin body. The body was originally designed to wear clothes and move around to look like an example for stores. But the rogue metal legion happened and most of them were taken over and modified. This particular body had been further modified to securely house the intelligence inside and shut down in the event of an electromagnetic pulse.

Jace sent coordinates to his station from a data pad he was using. "I sent you the system location. But I need you to teleport outside of the system. I looked over the initial arrival data and confirmed that there is in fact an issue with our arrival in space with debris."

"What star system are we traveling to now?" Captain Neslie asked with a sigh.

"A star system with two suns that orbit each other and plenty of planets but not many other astral or celestial bodies." Jace continued after a moment. "It also happens to be next to a kitinol infested system. Its formal name is the Poppy System."

"Poppy System?" Officer Sian asked with a scoff. He was from the Oda Empire originally but moved to the Cerberus Unit soon after they liberated a planet from the daemons when they first began to appear. "It is named after a plant?"

Jace shook his head as he looked at more of the information and hummed. "No, it is actually named after a drug which easily adapted to most of the planets and grows in abundance." Jace began explaining as he looked at the amount of inhabitants. "Farmers mostly live on this planet; it was an unmarked colony before. They have small arms and a small militia but it looks like the foreigners never got onto the planet they inhabit. Seems like they had trouble with moving through the system."

"Why?" Officer P'lice asked as the ship began to leave through the upper atmosphere and past plenty of space debris that visibly littered space. She is a female Mar'talic.

"Because the gravitational anomaly would mess with their sensors and their ships were too large to pass through them easily enough." Officer Neuman answered. Then after a moment noticing them looking at him in surprise he explained. "I looked it up to see what we would have to worry about. Cerberus already has several different methods to get through the spatial anomalies that surround the system which is basically a network of asteroids bouncing off each other but pulling each other back towards each other because of the magnetic components of the asteroids."

"What?" Captain Neslie asked in confusion.

"The asteroids are bouncing off one another rather than bouncing back towards another. It stays contained to an area but it happens constantly." Jace explained more easily as he watched them pass by a debris field full of ice. "The planets have irregular asteroid falls that decimate the landscape."

"How can they have both asteroid falls on a normal basis and fields to plant and harvest crops?" Officer P'lice asked in confusion.

"Because they have shield bubbles protecting their communities." Jace answered with a sigh. "Seems they developed the technology not too long ago and are growing now. But they will still need help even if it is not with protecting their crop. But before that they used modified ship cannons to shoot down most of the asteroids that were coming toward their crops."

"A laser defence system. That is fairly common amongst most colonies." Captain Neslie pointed out. "Are they aware we are coming?"

"Yes and no, they are aware their system has been claimed and that someone is coming. But they are also aware there are possible hostiles in the area. Communication to the colony is difficult because of the spatial anomaly. We will move to orbit around their colony's planet and then beam a laser signal down requesting to land." Jace explained as they began to speed up and pass by some of the planets.

"So we might be shot at." Captain Neslie sighed. "Okay, what are we doing here?"

"Commander said we cannot use the teleportation drive inside star systems anymore. We have to get to the space in between galaxies before activating it." Officer Neuman explained. "Honestly we should have realized we were acting like a ripple effect. Even if we were having a negligible effect on the celestial bodies that effect would build up until we had rearranged entire systems."

"Make sure you send a notice to the Underworld System about the flaw." Jace informed them as he leaned back in his chair and relaxed. This ship, Persephone's Garden moved from place to place by moving space and other bodies of matter away from their exit point while their entrance point pulled things toward it. Which was fundamentally different from Jace's attempts at switching areas of space or opening stable wormholes that only had a minor gravitational flux that stabilized after the portal was closed for a while.

"We just passed the halfway point, we can start spinning up the drive in preparation." Officer Neuman announced.

"Do it," Captain Neslie agreed as Jace rubbed his temple. He could slowly hear it, last time it came as a surprise. But now that he was listening to it he could hear the sound of the humming in the distance. It slowly got louder over time. "Get your puke bags ready."

It got louder and louder until they left the system and then it activated and Jace could feel the slight twist again. But it was easier to withstand this time. Although a few minutes later he could hear the others throwing up again.

A few minutes later Captain Neslie spoke up again. "That is one strange spatial anomaly." Jace opened his eyes and looked out the front view port. They could see an asteroid floating slowly before colliding with another asteroid and moving towards another direction.

"What the…" Jace mumbled and stood up. Moving forward and looking at Officer P'lice's screen.

"Umm… Commander?" Officer P'lice leaned away from him in confusion.

"That is not a collision, it is some type of magnetic collision. Where it comes near but then bounces off before it collides." Jace pointed out in shock. "The composition of all asteroids are… the same. That is incredible."

"The same? With how much of a variation?" The asteroids were not glowing or anything but they could still pick off the faint reflections from light.

Jace clicked his tongue in annoyance as he leaned back so Officer P'lice could take a closer look. "There are some irregularities but generally they are all pulling and pushing each other together. But they are all made mostly of metals." Officer P'lice explained quickly as she analyzed the data.

"Is that a planet?" Officer Sian asked in shock as they slowly moved into the field of asteroids with the shields up. Jace had an idea to optimize their entrance but it would be good to first see how they did under pressure.

"Planet," Jace answered as he looked at the giant ice mass of a planet that was covered in craters from being slammed with asteroids. "I am guessing its high ice content is the reason for the rest of the system's atmospheres and water deposits. An asteroid would probably slam into the planet and send ice into space and towards other planets."

"That is…" Officer P'lice hummed quietly. "You are right." They floated past the ice planet as an asteroid came towards their ship. "Incoming."

"Slowing pace and adjusting shielding." Officer Neuman declared.

Bing! Ting! Ting! Ting!

The ship shook slightly and then the system began to loudly beep. Notifying them of a problem. "Ma'am, the first layer of shielding just went down. But the second layer bounced the asteroid away that hit us."

"What the hell?" Captain Neslie glanced over at Jace and saw him with a neutral expression already understanding this was another test. He had been doing it constantly while on this assignment. "P'lice and Neuman, chart and navigate a path around the asteroids. Sian, I am looking for a proper shield frequency that is optimal to repel the asteroids you need to redirect power from unnecessary systems."

Neslie quickly began to manipulate her screens and the rest of them quickly got to work and the ship swayed slightly as it dodged asteroids. But when they failed to do that they tried to orient the ship so it glanced off the first shield layer.

Jace was impressed, the captain realized she shouldn't just run through all of the frequencies because one of them might magnetically pull in the asteroids.

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