Originally posted by Traveler64
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Guess what? NEW EPISODES!
Merry Christmas!
I held on to the device, the glow in the slit fading. The heat dissipated. A deep, black veil came over me and I sunk into its chasm.###
When I came to, my eyes opened upon the sight of a cluster of lightless hives, their forms visible only as the reflection of the moon glowing above a darkly red planet. Coming upon a hive in space, beholding their massive proportions and their size, it is always impressive and eerie, and a revelation of their absolute alien-ness. They inspired more than simple fear; it was the primeval fear of humans that went back to the dawn of time; the fear of being eaten alive by something unknown and unexplainable; and implacable. Coming upon these hives, however, I felt as if I was gazing into the ultimate chasm of one’s existence. It felt like a hole inside me; a hole into which I could drop any time; the same hole that some called insanity. The sight of these hives was unsettling beyond the feeling of facing raw and ruthless power, of a mind incomprehensible to a human, and thus doubly dangerous and deadly; it was the usual feeling of inevitable death. These hives exuded something else with their dark and motionless presence. Malevolence of a different kind seemed to seep into space from these behemoths facing me.
All this crossed my mind in the instant I beheld the hives, in particular the middle one; the largest of them all, deeply black and lightless, so black that it seemed like a cutout in the void of space; it felt as if it was a blackhole. And my dart was unmistakably heading that way, speeding through space like a small atom attracted by a whole planet.
By the time a fully regained awareness of myself and what was around me, the dart was at the entrance of one of the hive’s bays. The portals parted and the dart entered a black chasm, its length and width vaguely revealed by the pale light filtering through the bay doors opened towards the pale sun. All this time, I sat there helpless in the dart’s cabin, clutched in the chair, holding the device in my lap, my hands clasped tightly around it.
I felt the dart settle on a floor I could not see, and as soon as it shuddered to a stop, the bay doors closed and the interior of the bay started to glow with a very pale red luminosity that was obviously more visible to a Wraith’s sensitive eye. The hatch of the dart opened and I was hit by a shale of old, musty air. My eyes began to make out the walls rising around me to the ceiling; or rather what I suspected to have been a ceiling once. All there was now was a like a reverted chasm of broken shafts that seemed to go into infinity. The walls around me were in shreds and collapsed, hanging from ribbings of gnarled black matter, the red glow given off by a few panels that still retained their shape. It looked to me as if I was inside a desiccated whale, the flesh and skin turned to parchment fluttering and rustling in a wind generated by emptiness.
I knew at that moment, without a doubt, that I was inside one of the dying hives. It was not dead yet, or perhaps it had not completely decomposed in space; I could not tell. But what I could surmise—given the law of probabilities that a little dart ejected into space would end up in the midst of the very hives I inquired about—that this was not chance or coincidence. It appeared to me, that the Commander, or my Ship Wraith (I kept calling him ‘my’, I mused sardonically) had already taken the path to the graveyard of these hives and we were close enough for a dart to reach them. Darts also had a nerve center that was controlled by the Wraith and the hive. The question was: had this dart been drawn to this hive by whatever power was left in this enormous dying body, or had the Commander actually commanded this dart to arrive here.
I leaned towards the second. The why, that was another question.
I got off the dart, now my eyes used to the light and able to discern my surroundings. Ahead of me, leading to the far entrance to the main part of the hive—my sense of direction told me I was in the aft part of the ship—was a walkway cutting across the skeleton of the collapsed floor. The silence around me was utter; with the exception of the occasional rustle of a piece falling into the chasm below.
As for me… I took in a deep breath. I was in the dress the Commander gave me, a shimmering, luxurious confection of soft fabric and silver, torn in places from the flight to the dart and dusty with the ashes of this dying hive; a useless outfit that provided me neither protection nor comfort. I was unarmed, except for the device in my hand. I was alone, I was abandoned; and I could’ve killed for a glass of water and a rare steak with mushrooms. And I wanted my Wraith back—sharp teeth, slit, amber pupils, feeding hand and pale green skin; and for all I knew, with a wasp’s sting where human males had their prized possession.
That last thought made me let out a giggle, after which I started to bawl without restraint. I was all alone, so might as well let it rip and all hang out. I blubbered all the way to the portal to the main part of the ship and continued to sob as I walked along the faintly glowing walls, barely a flicker, no more than a brittle skeleton with dried up, shredded walls. A faint smell filled the air. Had it been stronger, it would’ve been nauseating. As it was it was putting me off the thought of a steak with mushrooms.
As I reached a large chamber—one I recognized as leading to the hibernation pods on one side and the quarters of the worshippers on the other side, my sobbing was replaced by mounting anger, focused like a beam on Feng. It was he, and he alone who was the cause of where I was. Perhaps it made no sense; perhaps it had no logic, but that was where my anger aimed. It was helpless, desperate anger because I knew I could not act on it and could not change anything.
I kicked a column with all the force I could give it. My foot crushed the surface and dug into the brittle, amber like material. I had been most unsatisfying. So, I proceeded to punch more columns and kick them and then threw the device at the wall, while screaming at the top of my voice every foul word I knew and gathered through the gutters of my youth.
While I did this, and beginning to feel some of my backbone return, I was vaguely aware of the device rolling away. I stopped in the middle of a particularly profane pronouncement that involved highly improbable actions when I noticed that a device light started to flicker. I bounded to it, just as one of my feet broke the floor and got caught, sending me forward on my face. When I finally reached the infernal object, the light was still blinking, but it had a kind of somnolent, indolent feel about it.
“Well, Doctor Vries,” I spoke to myself, my voice muffled by the hanging shreds, “you better figure this thing out.” I cradled it in my arms and pondered where I could find some more light. “Even a genius like you—and you are a genius, as proven by the situation you’re in—cannot do it by mental reverse osmosis and needs light.”
The one place where I could find light was the worshippers quarters; although I was not keen at all to venture there. I shrugged. This hive was empty. All I would find would be human skeletons strewn inside the hive’s skeleton.
Merry Christmas!
Spoiler:
I held on to the device, the glow in the slit fading. The heat dissipated. A deep, black veil came over me and I sunk into its chasm.###
When I came to, my eyes opened upon the sight of a cluster of lightless hives, their forms visible only as the reflection of the moon glowing above a darkly red planet. Coming upon a hive in space, beholding their massive proportions and their size, it is always impressive and eerie, and a revelation of their absolute alien-ness. They inspired more than simple fear; it was the primeval fear of humans that went back to the dawn of time; the fear of being eaten alive by something unknown and unexplainable; and implacable. Coming upon these hives, however, I felt as if I was gazing into the ultimate chasm of one’s existence. It felt like a hole inside me; a hole into which I could drop any time; the same hole that some called insanity. The sight of these hives was unsettling beyond the feeling of facing raw and ruthless power, of a mind incomprehensible to a human, and thus doubly dangerous and deadly; it was the usual feeling of inevitable death. These hives exuded something else with their dark and motionless presence. Malevolence of a different kind seemed to seep into space from these behemoths facing me.
All this crossed my mind in the instant I beheld the hives, in particular the middle one; the largest of them all, deeply black and lightless, so black that it seemed like a cutout in the void of space; it felt as if it was a blackhole. And my dart was unmistakably heading that way, speeding through space like a small atom attracted by a whole planet.
By the time a fully regained awareness of myself and what was around me, the dart was at the entrance of one of the hive’s bays. The portals parted and the dart entered a black chasm, its length and width vaguely revealed by the pale light filtering through the bay doors opened towards the pale sun. All this time, I sat there helpless in the dart’s cabin, clutched in the chair, holding the device in my lap, my hands clasped tightly around it.
I felt the dart settle on a floor I could not see, and as soon as it shuddered to a stop, the bay doors closed and the interior of the bay started to glow with a very pale red luminosity that was obviously more visible to a Wraith’s sensitive eye. The hatch of the dart opened and I was hit by a shale of old, musty air. My eyes began to make out the walls rising around me to the ceiling; or rather what I suspected to have been a ceiling once. All there was now was a like a reverted chasm of broken shafts that seemed to go into infinity. The walls around me were in shreds and collapsed, hanging from ribbings of gnarled black matter, the red glow given off by a few panels that still retained their shape. It looked to me as if I was inside a desiccated whale, the flesh and skin turned to parchment fluttering and rustling in a wind generated by emptiness.
I knew at that moment, without a doubt, that I was inside one of the dying hives. It was not dead yet, or perhaps it had not completely decomposed in space; I could not tell. But what I could surmise—given the law of probabilities that a little dart ejected into space would end up in the midst of the very hives I inquired about—that this was not chance or coincidence. It appeared to me, that the Commander, or my Ship Wraith (I kept calling him ‘my’, I mused sardonically) had already taken the path to the graveyard of these hives and we were close enough for a dart to reach them. Darts also had a nerve center that was controlled by the Wraith and the hive. The question was: had this dart been drawn to this hive by whatever power was left in this enormous dying body, or had the Commander actually commanded this dart to arrive here.
I leaned towards the second. The why, that was another question.
I got off the dart, now my eyes used to the light and able to discern my surroundings. Ahead of me, leading to the far entrance to the main part of the hive—my sense of direction told me I was in the aft part of the ship—was a walkway cutting across the skeleton of the collapsed floor. The silence around me was utter; with the exception of the occasional rustle of a piece falling into the chasm below.
As for me… I took in a deep breath. I was in the dress the Commander gave me, a shimmering, luxurious confection of soft fabric and silver, torn in places from the flight to the dart and dusty with the ashes of this dying hive; a useless outfit that provided me neither protection nor comfort. I was unarmed, except for the device in my hand. I was alone, I was abandoned; and I could’ve killed for a glass of water and a rare steak with mushrooms. And I wanted my Wraith back—sharp teeth, slit, amber pupils, feeding hand and pale green skin; and for all I knew, with a wasp’s sting where human males had their prized possession.
That last thought made me let out a giggle, after which I started to bawl without restraint. I was all alone, so might as well let it rip and all hang out. I blubbered all the way to the portal to the main part of the ship and continued to sob as I walked along the faintly glowing walls, barely a flicker, no more than a brittle skeleton with dried up, shredded walls. A faint smell filled the air. Had it been stronger, it would’ve been nauseating. As it was it was putting me off the thought of a steak with mushrooms.
As I reached a large chamber—one I recognized as leading to the hibernation pods on one side and the quarters of the worshippers on the other side, my sobbing was replaced by mounting anger, focused like a beam on Feng. It was he, and he alone who was the cause of where I was. Perhaps it made no sense; perhaps it had no logic, but that was where my anger aimed. It was helpless, desperate anger because I knew I could not act on it and could not change anything.
I kicked a column with all the force I could give it. My foot crushed the surface and dug into the brittle, amber like material. I had been most unsatisfying. So, I proceeded to punch more columns and kick them and then threw the device at the wall, while screaming at the top of my voice every foul word I knew and gathered through the gutters of my youth.
While I did this, and beginning to feel some of my backbone return, I was vaguely aware of the device rolling away. I stopped in the middle of a particularly profane pronouncement that involved highly improbable actions when I noticed that a device light started to flicker. I bounded to it, just as one of my feet broke the floor and got caught, sending me forward on my face. When I finally reached the infernal object, the light was still blinking, but it had a kind of somnolent, indolent feel about it.
“Well, Doctor Vries,” I spoke to myself, my voice muffled by the hanging shreds, “you better figure this thing out.” I cradled it in my arms and pondered where I could find some more light. “Even a genius like you—and you are a genius, as proven by the situation you’re in—cannot do it by mental reverse osmosis and needs light.”
The one place where I could find light was the worshippers quarters; although I was not keen at all to venture there. I shrugged. This hive was empty. All I would find would be human skeletons strewn inside the hive’s skeleton.
Just read Chp. 43. But
Spoiler:
do some darts have windows? I thought they had to be flown by instrumentation only. I remember that from "The Hive" because i always thought that that little detail spoiled the "romance" of stealing one and escaping into space with it.
Thank you, thank you!
Your story is "tying up" so many unanswered questions created but ignored by the writers of SGA. Also, your Wraith have individual, well developed characters, but at the same time you have created behaviors characteristic of the Wraith in general. It makes each chapter hugely satisfying.
... while I'm nursing a heartburn from too much indulging here underneath the undercarriage of hive ships...
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