This post is inspired by two prompts in the Worldbuilding community, both related to sleep. I kind of took the ideas in both, tied them in knots, warped them out of all recognition, and came up with... this... Enjoy !
All images in this post created by AI in Wombo.art
The command deck of the Tarnished Phoenix was quiet, dimmed lights and a few softly illuminated readouts providing the only light.
Dannak was the only one on deck; the rest of the crew were sleeping off their hangovers after a week spent trading and partying on Debris Station. Dannak was feeling pretty tired as well, but as the newest crewmember he'd drawn the short straw.
So here he was, sitting in the pilot's seat in the graveyard shift as the Phoenix cruised to her next destination, the trading post at Kerak-UD15. It was going to be a boring run, nothing to break the monotony..... what was that flashing red light over there ?
Dannak came awake suddenly. That was the collision alert !
He sat upright, looked at the display and swore. Whatever it was, it was huge and the Phoenix was right on top of it. All he could do was hit the big red button to initiate crash braking.
The ship lurched violently to the left as the computer tried to calculate a course and stop as fast as possible while avoiding imminent destruction.
It only took twenty seconds before the command deck door opened and the words "What the fuck, Dannak !" emerged at the same time as a part-dressed and incredibly angry-looking Captain Greville.
"I'm.... I'm sorry Sir," the boy stuttered. "The collision alarm.... it didn't go off until the last minute... I didn't see it."
"Didn't see what ? That big thing, that massive asteroid the size of a small mountain that's now only fifty metres in front of our port side ? Idiot !"
Dannak looked down in shame. Right down at the instrument console, which was scrolling through a bunch of readings.
"Captain, I don't think it's an asteroid. It's made of metal. I think it's a ship of some kind."
Greville looked down at the screen, and his eyebrows lifted in surprise. "You could be right. I'll send Gatta and Yafmi out to have a look. Open comms and tell them to suit up; I want them sober and out there in ten minutes."
Ten minutes later, the two girls were outside, and Greville and Dannak were watching the feed back to the command deck from their holo-cameras.
What they saw was astounding; a wall of dull metal that seemed to stretch in all directions, disappearing in the distance with the curve of the ship. But the metal was cratered and pocked, abraded as if it had been through a sand-blaster. They'd never seen anything like it, even on the most twisted and blasted war wreck they had salvaged.
Gatta's voice came over the comms. "Captain, can you confirm the last time my analyser was calibrated ? I'm getting absolutely stupid readings."
Greville pressed a couple of buttons, and called back, "Yes, it was calibrated last week. No discrepancies. What is it telling you ?"
"Sir, it makes no sense. Scanning the metal gives me an age of forty thousand years plus. I mean, I guess it explains why the wear and tear looks nothing like battle damage, why the thing looks like some kind of asteroid. But.... "
That was when Yafmi chimed in. "Come see this, Gatta. I think I've found the way in.
The entrance was some kind of airlock, barely perceptible among the scarred surface of the hull. The two space walkers had to lock on and use crowbars to get it open, and it resisted for several minutes. But eventually, something inside gave way, some component with millennia of corrosion and deterioration, and the airlock door moved inward.
What was revealed was an expansive space, dark and lifeless. There seemed to be no shielding to block the signal as Gatta and Yafmi moved cautiously in.
"We're getting some power readings, Captain. Incredibly low-level, but they're definitely there. We seem to be in some kind of atrium area, there are a whole lot of compartments leading off on all sides."
"Okay," Greville called back, "Pick one and investigate, but be careful and don't go out of contact, keep talking to us."
Greville and Dannak watched the images coming through as the two girls glided through the derelict ship; it was clear that there was no artificial gravity operating. As they passed though a large opening into what looked like a massive pillared hall, there was a gasp from Yafmi.
"My god, it's full of pods. Hundreds of them ! They're where the power readings are coming from. I'm going to go in closer."
The images showed Yafmi's helmet camera moving up to the nearest row of pods. There were no lights or instruments active, but the pods appeared undamaged, their clear covers intact. Closer up, they could be seen to be covered in a light frost.
As Yafmi looked in through the cover of the first pod, everyone's jaws dropped in shock. The occupant was human !
Gatta moved in, and rubbed the frost off a yellow metal plaque fastened to the control panel next to the pod. It was covered in symbols, clearly some kind of script.
"Hold still Gatta, let's get a clear image of that writing and I'll put it through the databanks," said Greville.
He turned a few dials, clicked a mouse button, and then sat back while the computer processed the image.
After a few seconds, Greville exhaled. "Wow.... here's what it says."
She read off the screen, "Reverend Clare Winslow. Born 2235AD. Boarded spaceship New Mayflower to leave Earth and seek a new life among the stars 1st August 2268 AD."
The four of them sat in silence, two on the Phoenix and two in the New Mayflower. It was Yafmi who broke the silence. "Captain, these people have been asleep for forty thousand years, drifting at sub-light speed while the universe carried on without them. They're all still alive. Please, if we're going to claim salvage, we can't just sell them to the Slavers. They deserve better than that, they don't deserve the new life they sought to be one of waking up to terror."
Greville nodded, although he knew Yafmi couldn't see it.
"Don't worry, I'm not that heartless. We can cover their ship with the Phoenix's fields to get them somewhere safe at FTL speeds. We'll have to chance waking up a sleeper or two to find out what kind of world they want, and drop them off there. Then we can sell their ship to a museum and this incredible story to the 3V-News stations. We should make a small fortune from that and the holofilm rights, and it will feel good to know these people can end up with a good life."
Dannak felt some relief at the Captain's statement. Forty thousand years ! And just every humanoid civilisation called their homeworld earth, dirt, or something like that. I wonder if they'd ever be able to work out where it had been, and whether it was still a living planet.
Dude, this is freakin' dope. I love this twist to the prompts - an ancient colony ship adrift for forty thousand years?! what a way to wake up! "Hey, yeah, we found you and the good news is you're not going to get sold to slavers, and you get your pick of planet." What a cool deal!
Thank you ! There's quite a bit of lore (of a sort) underlying this one.
The whole setting is one which has been going for ages - most of my life, actually - and it all originated in a homebrew sci-fi narrative/wargame I played with some friends at school, which then kind of ran on and took on a life of it's own.
The key thing is that I was not playing as Earth, another friend got that one. Few of my characters are actually Terran (even though my Empire actually conquered the Terran one...), but in true Star Trek handwave-style, they're still mostly human/humanoid.
As for the timescale, we had the game start at a time point a good few thousand years ahead of where we are now. We then defined timescales to allow for star cruiser production as one "real world" day was equivalent to two game years. It gave us a chance to write up truly long-term histories. But as a teenager, I didn't think that one through very well, so by now (when I'm far, far older, lol), running on that timescale the game has hit a date somewhere around 40,000 AD.......