In the 22nd century, humanity has finally ventured into deep space in search of knowledge, wealth, and power. Space is vast and humans have found that they aren’t the first to explore it. Still, thousands of planets and stars have yet to be claimed and humanity intends to make a home for itself -by whatever means necessary. This is the story of the deep-space starship “Dauntless” and her crew, exploring beyond the authority, and protection, of the corporate/colonial boundary.
The corporate wars are an abomination, everyone thinks so, but humans are mostly all under contract so there wasn’t much they could do to gainsay those with voting shares. In this most recent battle, taking place on the edge of a resource rich asteroid belt, you and the crew of the Dauntless were one of more than a million ships exchanging fire. Compressed plasma melted hulls, nano clouds ate entire crews, and uranium grapeshot shredded billions of credits worth of materiel. You saw all this, took part in it, until you were hit by a dark matter mine that took out all power to the ship.
That was four days ago. Blind, crippled, and frantically avoiding the vacuum of space, you have been fighting failure after failure caused by the immense collateral damage that piled up during the battle. After the mine, you were hit by spillover plasma and nano alike as ships died all around you. Life support the priority, you have only now gotten sensors back online. You see little more than a graveyard. Based on the level of wreckage, you estimate that of the million ships less than a hundred thousand managed to survive. As old messages and comms float in, you find that even the CEOs must have lost their stomach for the carnage, with the alien allies on both sides shocked (and awed) by human nature laid bare. Stock prices plummeted across the board in the interstellar markets, while commodities have skyrocketed above even normal wartime levels, prompting what looks to be shaking out as an obligatory, prolonged cease fire rather than a lasting peace.
More immediate, you find no sign of any warships in the vicinity, yet are picking up subtle signs of scavengers working the debris, a war crime punishable by death and divestment. Further, you are floating above one of the systems primitive planets, its inhabitants devastated by the falling debris of a few fusion powered starships caught in decaying orbits. It was class M before the engagement, an Earthlike world ready for development and exploitation, but now caught in the beginnings of very real ecological devastation due to the wreckage. You note that you, along with another dozen or so star ships, are in decaying orbits.
Finally, the castaway laws are very clear. Since your corporate supervisors have declared you and your ship lost, and consequently left you all for dead, any and all resources you gather and secure are yours by way of Survival Clause 983745.78sk. Simply put, in this fragile new peace you find yourselves partners in ownership of the Dauntless, damaged as she is, so long as you can manage to keep her – and claim her with a registered authority. A wage slave one moment, entrepreneurs the next, for you and the surviving crew the galaxy is suddenly a VERY different place.
This is where we find you. There’s no help on the way and you’re slowly falling to a fiery death on a ship that may or may not be fixable, down to a primitive planet whose population is being torn asunder by the wreckage of an interstellar war. The Dauntless, your ticket to survival, solvency, and freedom from all contracts, is dying -and you along with it.
With that said, who are you? More importantly, what do you do?
Hosted and narrated by:
Bry Whi (BryWhi)
Started 08/21/16.
Scenes played: 3
License: Community License
18+
