Chereads / Bounty of The Stars / Chapter 1 - Beyond the Shore

Bounty of The Stars

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Synopsis

Chapter 1 - Beyond the Shore

The ship shook a bit as it exited out of FTL at the edge of the star system. Although there was another jump before they reached their destination, but the last jump took 3 months to complete. The crew of the THS Shore felt relieved as the ship jumped out of Hyperspace without any problems.

"Someone calibrate the current time with the Galactic standard, this jump took way longer than expected. Check the FTL drives and the ship's main engines. Get me an ETA for our next jump",

The Captain quickly gave the post FTL instructions to the crew on the bridge as he started looking at the reports of the current star system. It was known only by it's codename, NEX2320 was a binary star system. A complex array of 34 Planets and their respective moons orbited the pair of White dwarfs, Each not much bigger than the Star of humanities home system.

It was situated in a very remote region of Milky way. It only had 1 other neighbor in a 976 light year radius. It's Closest neighbor, the KS9378 also known as the V point was the target destination of THS Shore. It was on a mission to survey the alleged super structure that was observed around the main star of the Penta Star System. It was a Massive Blue Giant Surrounded by 4 white dwarfs. The sheer amount of heat and radiation it emitted was so huge that It was really hard to observe the star system from afar. As everything else in the system got masked by the huge amount of light it gave off.

Nevertheless, A super structure was supposedly observed around the main star called V0, standing for the 0th star of the system.

The crew of THS Shore was sent to survey the star system and the possible super structure. Although the type of the super structure wasn't clear. From the observable data, It looked to be circular in shape. Calculated estimates indicated towards a Dyson Sphere.

Although Dyson Spheres wasn't exactly rare in the current day and age, but one of such magnitude was unheard of. But the big question was,

"Who's responsible for this?", Dr. Kita asked as he was tasked with figuring out more about the Structure from what little they could capture of it from afar.

Kita is one of the Scientists assigned on this mission to find out more and study of the super structure. He was one of the brightest minds on the ship and was the effective leader of the scientists. His Boss, Dr. Kbom Jetson was currently busy with his own research on the matter and left all the things to Kita to manage.

Dr. Kbom was over 240 years old and was one of the greatest minds the The Great Terran Confederacy had to offer. He was a Specialist of super luminal travel and Multi-Dimensional theory. He was the first human to take the Alien FTL Technology and Modify it to increase it's efficiency. He single handedly cut the time to travel between the stars to 1/8th! His Contribution to Super luminal travel helped humanity travel between the stars more efficiently and conquer many parts of the Milky way. His contribution to humanity's rise to be one of the 4 major races couldn't be overstated.

Kita was picked up by Dr. Kbom when he was just 26 and fresh out of College. Kbom saw potential in Kita and took him in as his disciple. Kita never expected the guy he talked with on a park bench one evening was the famous Dr. Kbom. From there, Kita's life only took a turn for the better. With the support of his master he quickly made his mark in Science and Engineering and rose to fame as the 2nd coming of Dr. Kbom.

Now, Both of them was sent on this really important mission to inspect and study the massive super structure that surrounded V0.

"The Structure doesn't match any of the existing styles that the Other 3 major races use. And to build one out in V Point? What was going through their minds when building it?", Kita murmured to himself while he studied data and images of the structure.

Although nothing could be understood through the really fuzzy images, Kita was still trying to determine the type of the structure through the images and other readings. Determining the type of the structure was important to their mission as if they could manage to get the a good understanding of what it is and how they built it, They might be able to recreate such a structure in the star systems under Human Control and turn them into strongholds of the Empire.

"Status Update!", the captain said to his bridge officers.

"We are currently at the edge of NEX2320, All core ship status green. FTL Drives on Cooldown."

"Cooldown Duration?"

"Approximately 16 days and 20 hours."

"Drive Status?"

"All status green. Nothing out of the ordinary. No Cracks"

"Good, What's our next Lagrange point?", The captain looked at the projection of the current solar system.

"Here, Point 25640 at the outer periphery of Hercium 8, at the other side of the system.", The navigation officer pointed out at the point on the map.

The captain frowned. "That's quite far away, How long will it take us to travel to this location?"

"It'll take the shore approximately 8 days to reach this location at full sub-light speeds, and it'll expend about 1.8% of the remaining fuel.", The chief navigation officer reported to the captain.

"Set a course for the most efficient route to Point 25640, try to conserve as much sub light fuel as possible, we'll need it for the core events of our mission.", Although the captain didn't like the amount of distance they had to cover for the next Lagrange point, Nothing could be done about it. He trusted his chief navigation officer to give him the best point available for their next long jump.