Nullsec, zero security.
The moon was in Nullsec, undiscovered country, lightyears away from any place that belonged to one of the hundreds of players in the galactic power struggle, a little closer to the D empire, but nothing noteworthy, or the success of this colony would have been doomed from the start. Navigating there was a nightmare on its own due to black holes, neutron stars and uncharted dark matter. It was a journey of over 80 jumps from the human dispersion, and just as much from any other, and it took a perverse amount of fuel to reach it. The system lay so close to the galactic rim that the milky-way and its stars were clearly distinguishable from the darkness beyond, a pitch black nothingness in which a star over the horizon actually meant another isle of worlds, another galaxy altogether. There was the Andromeda galaxy, closest neighbor, like a north star central to the moons sky, yet forever out of reach for even the most elaborate hyperdrives, if arriving there within a human lifespan was a measure of success, yet from here it was nothing but a glimmering dust speckle against the darkness. Once a night, for several hours, the moon would additionally descent into the shadow of the giant reddish-brown gas giant, to which it belonged, and which dominated entire parts of the hemisphere during the day, when it shone somewhat ghostly and disembodied, because his light got dispersed by the clear blue atmosphere. Then, every night, for some minutes, all light would be gone, pitch black darkness, until the first nocturnal hunters and their prey would go on the hunt, the one for the other, and the other for the fruits of bioluminescent plantlife that would begin to glow in all colors of the rainbow, turning the jungle into a spiritual dream from a poster that hang at the wall of a teenagers room.
Life in abundance in a jungle that was covering practically the whole moon except the oceans, a plethora of natural resources, yet too far away from the rest of the galaxy to harvest them profitably, and a strategical importance that scraped against zero from below, except for things that came from the depth between the galaxies. And those were impossible right? Nothing could come from there. All this made the place a paradise, and one that provided one thing more than any other: peace and the possibility for a fresh start.
The freighter that brought them, Diva and the other women, here was a Kitsune class large Hauler.
Refitted to have sleeping pod containers instead of cargo containers in the first 3 rows, it could transport the first load of settlers, 250 of them and all of them female. It was ADD policy to counter the various threats that the universe had in store for males, and which were usually a lot less lethal towards the female parts of any kin. It also came with the bonus that machismo didn’t play a role in determining the ranking. Out there between the stars, women were in charge.
The remaining cargo containers held everything a young colony might need to survive the first 15 Years easily at least, even for settlements on a barren rock rather than this lush and overgrown place. Given the strategic unimportance this was even slightly odd, as ADD usually wasn’t so generous, and the settlement would actually only need to hold 1 year before ADD regulation would allow the subsequent settlement of males, who could then arrrive with additional provisions. As Food containers came though, they were well secured and not to be opened in order not to spoil the content, yet their digital content label, which scanned the inside, showed biomatter and proteins, so they seemed to at least contain what they were supposed to.
All the women were human, it was an ADD settlement after all, supposed to be at least, only Diva was of a different kin. Yet as the anatomy of Humans and Dyear was so close, none of the other women showed any reservations. It would have been them who had even asked her, somewhere in a bar at Vanejin, to join the cause, as ADD didn’t seem to think that military forces were necessary, given that the planet was so uninteresting for anything military. The captain, Alina Brzezicki, who was now also the mayor of the small settlement, a tomboyish redhead of 30 Years and as such oldest and most experienced crew member even if her build and her face wouldn’t show the age, would have been the one asking Diva, pleading her to come, just in case, and even offering her the pension cash she had saved, as an additional incentive.
So Diva was now, in fact, the head of the settlements military forces and coincidentally, those forces themselves, until the other settlers, botanists, engineers, farmers and whatnot would have finished their training, which would be up to her to set up.
Despite Divas strength and her helping the others, it had taken the whole day for this group of over 250 women to set up the camp, and so it would already be getting dark when she was meeting up with Alina in her habitat, when two other women, engineers according to their bluish overalls, and looking as if they were in their younger twenties, would join them: a blonde, somewhat smaller girl who Diva wouldn’t know as of yet, and a very tall dark skinned women with the name Kayipu Obasanjo from a continent that was spoken Af-Rick-Ah, at least according to what Kayipu had told her. Both women held a Datapad, but only Kayipu gave it to Alina, and then began to explain:
“We have a problem, I don’t know how it is possible, but it seems something has messed with the fuel sensing of the freighter. It still shows half full, enough for the flight back, yet when we checked it was almost empty. This must have been broken since we started or otherwise we would have known…. We can’t even lift off this planet like this… And even if we could…the navigation programs just shut down and after restart it was all scrambled up… As if there was a virus at work, even if the scanners can’t find any.”
Alina stared at the datapad and her face turned from joyful to deathly serious as her eyes flew over the text, before she would hand it to Diva. “What do you think, Diva… “ she asked, yet didn’t wait for an answer, as such information was far too serious to leave it unchecked, even if it was just a shallow hope to cling to that the engineers would make a mistake of this magnitude. “Show us please…” she told the girls and followed them, giving Diva the chance to read the report only on their way to the ship.
It was night when they stepped outside Alinas habitat, and the shadow terminator that heralded a minute long absolute darkness drew closer quickly, like a curtain of pitch black darkness that fell over the jungle, rushing closer and closer, held back only by the settlements lamps, yet giving every movement in the settlement a spooky quality as “true night” finally fell over it. It was so dark outside of the settlement, that finding the path to the ship would have been nearly impossible without the flashlights that belonged to every utility belt. The Ship was parked almost half a mile outside, to allow for a takeoff when things were done here, without having to relocate the whole settlement. But this alsomeant it was a little walk at least, so the pitch black darkness would have reached its peak, or better its lowpoint, when they would finally see the cargo ships floodlights shining through the trees.
Pitch black darkness... yet any time now was the moment when the forest would finally begin to “awake” into a dream of color…
Any time now was...the moment when they would hear distant panicking screams back from the settlement…
