How come you don’t know about them? You can’t go on your first deep mission without knowing what to do if you see one. They’re out there in the black. Some say they’re from the before times, Some say they’re proof of alien life. Folks say if you see one, you’d better make a wish, fast. If you don’t wish, something bad will happen. Misfortune comes to the scoffers. It comes every time.
Hetty Gaines saw one once, coming out of a fast deceleration around Sigma station. She had a mangled portside thruster, and it was her third attempt to dock. She said she was hoping pretty hard that she wouldn’t end up as a smear of junk on the underside of the warship that was tailing her.
She reckoned she had just enough wish karma to keep the bad juju off her ship. Stands to reason that she would store up her wish karma for an emergency. It’s what any good spacer should do.
Of course, Hetty’s the stuff of legends herself. It would take more than one of those things to take down old Hetty. But ever since she saw one she’s drank more, and shipped out less. A close encounter with one of those changes a person, even if that person is Hetty Gaines.
The crew of the Earl Marshal didn’t make out quite so well. They saw one on an approach to Beta station, farking Beta station, the second biggest freepoint in the known galaxy. The captain made a joke about it on the broadcom.
That was obviously a mistake. Even if you don’t believe in a thing it never pays to mock things you don’t understand. But you don’t get to be a captain of a dreadnaught if you’re afraid of shadows. Or legends.
So the captain scoffed. Then, wham, the Earl Marshal was losing atmo and the lifeboats wouldn’t launch. Their emergency message wouldn’t broadcast. They got out one single, strangled “help”. Then nothing more. All hands lost without so much as another peep.
The drifting, partly mangled husk became a navigational hazard. It was like spacetime didn’t work in the usual way around the ruined ship. The authorities finally slapped a warning beacon on her. No tugger or scrapper will touch her, even with a prime load of Crystal in the holds.
Another time, there was one of those menaces caught in low orbit around Tau-Rho colony. The colonists made a point of not going out any time the moon was up so that they wouldn’t risk seeing it. You can’t be too careful where these things are concerned.
Yeah, I know. There was never a colony on Tau-Rho, at least that’s what the Galactic Union says, officially. It just kind of proves the point, ya know? Those things can take out a whole colony, just like that.
That thing on Tau-Rho is why the Galactic Union is in such bad shape these days. This guy, the last survivor of the colony, said the G.U. Swansong emptied her entire magazine of deployables at it, and it just drifted away. Swansong of course high-tailed it out of there, not wanting to meet the same fate as the Earl Marshal. And then the G.U. scoured the whole colony clean, so that no one would know what really happened.
Even so, the rumors persist.
A team of astro-archaeologists went after the one that Hetty Gaines saw. They have a theory that if they can bag that one, they can get the rest under control. The team got blessed by a representative of every religion that they could find. They wanted to take along a Vaunterian shaman.
Everybody knows that those Vaunterians are the best at removing juju, but not one would sign on. It turns out the Vaunterians don’t believe in the Voyagers. They say that they’re just an Old Earth legend. Scoffers. They better hope they never see one.