Now as we all know the Earth is a on again/off again member of the Asyserian Confederacy.
The AC used to be guided along by the gentle hands of the Founders,a race of cobra headed
humanoids who'd had access to some pretty nifty faster than warp light drives tens of thousands
of years ago.
Alas the AC and the Founders had parted ways,and the Assyerians ( nine foot tall humans )
had taken over the leadership
of the Confederacy,and the Chipterans ( a techhie race of cricket-humanoid things ) had been tasked with
developing a suitable starship engine.
Since at the time the only space propulsion systems the rest of the AC planets had access
to were chemical and nuclear hydrogen powered rocket engines capable of perhaps
.000076 light year tops,there were problems for the far flung Confederacy,which measured a spiral
of star systems 99 light years by 99 light years.
Big transport issues there.
So the Chipterans,stuck with primitive atomic fission dries,had diddled about and discovered
that if they used Hg-500 nuclear fuel,the coolant radiators used on the outer hull
of the engine module both radiated or absorbed "time" into outer space.
Basically the chipterans devised a HG Impulse Rocket Engine that could halt time inside a ship,
and manipulate it inside the actual rocket engine to power up the rocket to unimagineable levels.
The Hg could push a ship up to .50 Light year,and since the folk in the spaceship were frozen in time,it didn't matter to them whether it took 9 years or 200 to get across their 99 Light Year wide Confederacy.
There had been tradgedies however in the early test development flights .
For example Chipteran Test pilot Adelaide had pushed her C-1000 up to .666 light speed
and all had seemed a success.
The sensor logs however had shown her cockpit had been floded with "time radiation" of a new sort
whilst she'd been kicking along at .666.
The doctors had pronounced her hail and hearty however and after the ticker tape parade,she'd headed off to her retreat with her
boyfriend.
The cameras the two lovemaking crickets had running had shown it all.
She'd been playing with his antennae with her mandibles when with a grimace,
her exoskeleton had begun to split and crack open as she underwent a major growth and evolution into a
new kind of six legged insect that looked like a giant female wasp.
Her lover ended up as wasp fodder and the new Adelaide had later been cornered in a
Hg ship facility and supposedly taken down.
The doctors did their research and discovered that the chipteran race
would evolve over the next tens of millions of years into a giant evil canaballistic wasp queen race of insects.
And travelling at .666 light speed had triggered that evolutionary change in Adelaide tens of millions
of years ahead of schedule.
So the Chipterans had a issue.
.500 light speed was uncomfortably close to .666 light speed.
One meant Captain Marduk the Garbage Scow Hero of the Mantis Wars got his
ship and crew to the other side of the Confederacy in 2 centuries.
The other meant Queen Marduk laid her wasp eggs,nested in the storage tanks and developed a
taste for cricket meat.
So the Chipterans destroyed all records that the HG engines were capable of .666 and perhaps faster speeds,and retooled their ships to chug along at much less evolution causing speeds
of .1 to .25 light speed.
Which was nothing to sneeze at,still a good clip compared to the alternatives.
However accidents still occured,and the Chipterans had built safety devices into their craft,just in case .666 light speed was achieved to to computer malfunctions,whathaveyou.
Basically the afflicted craft froze their passengers,both Chipteran and other passengers ,ina time bubble,then the craft was programmed to rocket out of the Confederacy until its engines ran out of fuel.
It just so happened that a thousand years earlier a passenger liner had done just that,and now the
abandoned and long forgotten hulk slowly circled Mortalia,its compliment of potential giant killer
wasp queens and other unknowns frozen in time in their cabins,bunks,restraunts and stations,unaware they were monsters in the making.
It was this huge cone shaped craft,a mile long,two miles wide,with a cluster of long silent
Hg engine modules nestled in the 33 bays along the bottom of the cone,that the good ship
Glenn Shepherd approached,her human crew desperate to seek safety after the 15 year voyage in a
nuclear powered Deep Space Earth ship had just gotten past Pluto,and discovered
the rogue planet Mortalia behind it.
Captain Jones had already asked Kira for signs of life aboard the alien star ship,but there'd been no response,and Kira was looking in concern at the Gleen Shepherds chronometer,which was
giving slower readings the closer they got to the former Chipteran Ship of the Line
( that Mantis War ) Marduks Avenger,know known as the passenger liner Elysian Delight.
Jack drooled in the co-pilit seat as he imagined what those HG engimnes were capable of.
In a flash of inspiration,he turned to Jessica Jones,that workaholic and asked her to try
the old Earth distress signals CQ and SOS.
He figured anything that big must have a awfully big cybernetic brain aboard and could figure out
a ditrss signall was being flashed to the hulking thing.
It worked,though the Chipterans had placed in various safety systems aboard the Elysian Avenger,
they'd neglected to turn off the Ditress and Aid InterceptComputer Extrapolator,which,smart thing that it was,had been monitoring Earth broadcast signals for the last century and a half ( lets say this is 2053AD ) and knew
exactly what a "SOS" was.
The Daisy,a left over from the Mantis Wars,immediately commandeered
various ship systems .
The folk aboard the Glenn Shepherd felt their hearts beat a little harder as the dead hulk swiftly
swung around,scooped them up in a "time grabble" and,determining this was NOT the Conferate
lanes of space,and thinking the Mantis Wars were still on,swept into battle drive and shrieked along at .5 light speed,the hapless human astronauts dragged along for the ride...