Sacrifice Chapter 1
Written and as told by Ryu Darragh
The gray haired old man sitting at the controls of his tiny ship was lost. And it didn't bother him all that much. For him, this was an adventure of a lifetime at the dregs of the winter of his life. He had, according to the actuaries on his long un-locatable earth, perhaps 5 years of life left.
He contemplated his life, as he seemed to be doing more often as of late, and realized he'd accomplished almost everything he set out to do. His wife had long since passed away, which nearly killed him with the loss, but he survived. His many great grand nieces and nephews were all that he would miss, as he had no children of his own.
So, when his experimental interstellar jump drive worked as designed, he started his next grand experiment. An Intergalactic Jump Drive. People had stopped calling him crazy long ago. And thus, when the drive worked in ways unexpected, he ended up in another universe entirely. Maybe they should have stayed with the idea he was crazy and locked him up.
The view that he had of the universe outside his ship was pretty bleak. This was parallel earth number 464 he'd seen. And fuel was running low. Not one of them had possessed technology sufficiently advanced to provide the hydrogen he needed and his ship was not equipped to extract it on its own. It was, after all, an experimental work in progress.
As he was about to start setting up for another of what had become a routine inter-universal jump a telltale lit up on the console accompanied by a pleasant female voice, "Anomaly detected. Energy signature of an artificial nature." "Show me." instructed the old man. The screen that had had been showing an earth that was not home changed.
A topographic map of the earth appeared with a single glowing green dot. The sensors showed more than sufficient energy to power his ship. "Take us there," instructed the old man as he began adjusting and activating sensor arrays.
As arrays of sensors came online a new telltale lit and a line of text started scrolling onto the screen. 'Warning! A large body asteroid is on a collision course with the planet below.' "Put it up on screen," he said, as he continued activating controls.
A larger red dot appeared to the left of the globe of the earth and a yellow line grew out from the red dot to the planet. Three days. This earth also showed considerable devastation already, but there would be plenty of time to investigate this energy signature. The question in his mind was, why was this earth being subjected to such a storm of destruction?
The answer became clear as more sensors came online. Nemesis, the brown dwarf that had perturbed the oort cloud in it's 26 million year orbit of all the other parallel earths, was out of place in this universe. It had shifted its orbit in this universe and the asteroid storm was years early.
A new red dot appeared, this time much larger and only a bit further out. This one was a planet killer. It was on almost the same path as the first asteroid, which explained why it was not picked up earlier. It would hit 3 days after the first. After that, there would be no earth in this universe
He checked his fuel reserves again. As he feared, he had enough fuel to land, investigate and take off again as well as power the jump drive one more time. After that, his ship was a flying waffle iron and about as maneuverable.
He landed his ship near the entrance of a large cave in a low mountainous region near what would have been Colorado in his home universe. The energy signature was coming from inside accompanied by a green glow. What sort of technology was this? There was only one way to find out.
He entered the cave with his Tricorder set to record and evaluate every nuance of whatever he found. Hopefully, it would be usable. Or, at the very least, it would be informative.
At the far back end of the cave was an alcove carved into the stone and, on a pedestal of stone, a large emerald like crystal emitting the green glow. He approached the crystal with his attention on the Tricorders readouts.
Which was why the shock of being knocked over and slammed to the floor of the cave came as such a surprise. That, and the fact he was now looking into the muzzle of a large black dragon with a snarl on its face inches away from his own. He heard a voice in his head, 'And what do you think you are doing, human?'
He stared into the dragons face and replied "Trying not to soil myself at this point. I don't suppose you'd buy 'I'm just an explorer', would you?"
He heard a chuckle in his mind and the voice said 'Ah. I might, human. I might.' The large dragon lifted his sharply taloned paw from his chest and moved back to allow the old man to get to his feet. 'My name is Aihhern and my mate is Ayissa,' continued Aihhern gesturing to a new dragon that appeared to materialize out of thin air. 'Greetings, human,' came a somehow more melodious and feminine voice in his mind from the white and gold female dragon.
Aihhern spoke again, 'I sense no deception in your mind, human. But, you will agree that your presence is a trifle.. unexpected, yes?' It was the old mans turn to chuckle and reply "Yes. I suppose so, since I saw no signs of human style habitation as I landed. My name is Japeth and I am a traveler of parallel universes. You know about the asteroids heading this way?"
'Yes,' replied the dragon. 'We have known about them for some time and prepared an ark to allow us to survive the coming devastation. That green crystal you see here is a tesseract. It is larger on the inside than the outside would suggest by many orders of magnitude. Inside it, time flows much more slowly.'
"You might survive the first asteroid," began the old man grimly, "but the second will completely pulverize the planet. It's over 30 times larger and was hidden behind the first."
