NanoTec: Flight to a Distant Star

04: 2095: Ancient Legends

Rewritten on 9 December 2016

Enjoy!

*End of Author's Note*

Ancient Legends

In times of crisis there are two kinds of people. There is the kind of people who would do whatever it takes within their power to win, to clamber to the top, taking whatever glory and honor it comes with it. Even if it means stepping all over one's own comrades to do so. Then, there are those people who are righteous, wanting to uphold their morals even at the cost of the battle or even at the cost of their own lives. They care for nothing but to help those in need. On a broken world such as Earth, people are no longer fighting only for mere resources but for their own lives. From the death and destruction, rose people of moral stature. They long not for power, but for the prosperity of humankind as a whole. They are the salvation of the wastelands. They are the Ancient Legends.

SkyLab2 was meant to be a science station and was built like one. There was no armor or any proper hard-points to install weapons, thus the installation of said weapons was particularly tedious.

This time, Clanedd, the Head Engineer's assistant, was given the opportunity to helm the given project.

'Just bolt the turret platforms on, how hard can that be?' Or so Saegen said. Clanedd's thoughts kept straying to what the scientist had said mere minutes ago.

She floated around issuing orders to the engineers and answering the same questions on topics such as 'where to put that' and 'how to install that'. Even though she was out only for 15 minutes, she was already exhausted.

Moving around in EVA was not as easy as it looked, Clanedd thought to herself as she stared blankly at the holographic screen generated by her RIG.

Her gaze wandered and settled onto Earth. The dusty brown ball sitting towards her right together with the sun just to the left of it. It was sunrise along the orbit path of SkyLab2 and the rising sun illuminated the planet's thin atmosphere with a reddish blue hue. It certainly looked beautiful, Clanedd thought to herself, even in spite of the fact that the planet could no longer harbor life. If only that lifeless sphere of dust could become green again like that described in English literature...

"Umm, ma'am? Are you alright?" spoke a voice through her comms. A fellow engineer floated up to her.

Clanedd snapped out of her daydream, "...Yeah, I perfectly fine." She replied promptly with fresh instructions after which the engineer nodded and floated back to the construction site.

Clanedd's thoughts began to stray again but she put it back on track. She maneuvered herself over to the VLS platform mounted over Observatory Deck 12.

Sitting within the deck was a lone man. He was wearing a white lab coat over a plain black shirt and on his lap was a cup of milk coffee. He took a sip and looked up towards Clanedd. She would have recognized that face anywhere.

He raised his left hand and waved. Clanedd's instinctively waved back, returning his smile. He put down his cup of coffee, stood up and pointed at Clanedd. Not at her directly but right over her left shoulder. He put his other hand to the side of his mouth and spoke. Clanedd could not hear him of course but the words formed upon his lips seemed to spell, 'spaceship'.

Clanedd turned around immediately and was faced by the sight of a massive structure floating before her. It was surprising that she did not notice it before.

The object was spherical and by estimation, it was probably about 1.2 km in diameter. Skylab2's record of being the largest space station was smashed by the colossal complex not only in terms of mass, but in sheer size as well.