03-19-2025, 03:00 AM
==Timeskip - Eight Days later==
The Yeager dropped from warp at the far edge of the Wairara system, the closest they could get without risking the warp field interacting with something nasty and collapsing or the ship coming into contact with something that would tear it apart at superluminal velocity.
Far more powerful and advanced than a recon probe, the Yeager's sensors revealed a lot more information about the system even in passive mode. The inhabitable world lay about three quarters of an AU from the star, and had no natural satellites of its own. A comet hurtled through space on a projected elliptical course that took it through the upper chromosphere of the star and out towards the system's edge, currently it was between the planet and the star, heading out-system.
Other assorted anomalies included ionic radiation surges; an asteroid belt that was too dense to be naturally-occurring and likely either the result of a planetary collision or explosion, or created artificially; and a neutronic storm that seemed to be lazily wafting through the system.
Of most interest, however, was the temporal particle stream; even from a distance and at maximum magnification, it was massive, easily the size of a dwarf planet at its centre. The temporal stream seemed to emanate from the "top", both spreading and absorbing waves chroniton particles, like a giant fountain in space. Early Earth science-fiction would classify the anomaly as a "white hole".
There seemed to be a race in progress as well; engine emissions and transponder beacons of a dozen tiny ships traced a figure-eight circuit between the planet Wairara and the comet. One seemed to stray too close to the comet and the sensor contact winked out instantly, never returning.
It currently did not appear that the Yeager had been detected.
The Yeager dropped from warp at the far edge of the Wairara system, the closest they could get without risking the warp field interacting with something nasty and collapsing or the ship coming into contact with something that would tear it apart at superluminal velocity.
Far more powerful and advanced than a recon probe, the Yeager's sensors revealed a lot more information about the system even in passive mode. The inhabitable world lay about three quarters of an AU from the star, and had no natural satellites of its own. A comet hurtled through space on a projected elliptical course that took it through the upper chromosphere of the star and out towards the system's edge, currently it was between the planet and the star, heading out-system.
Other assorted anomalies included ionic radiation surges; an asteroid belt that was too dense to be naturally-occurring and likely either the result of a planetary collision or explosion, or created artificially; and a neutronic storm that seemed to be lazily wafting through the system.
Of most interest, however, was the temporal particle stream; even from a distance and at maximum magnification, it was massive, easily the size of a dwarf planet at its centre. The temporal stream seemed to emanate from the "top", both spreading and absorbing waves chroniton particles, like a giant fountain in space. Early Earth science-fiction would classify the anomaly as a "white hole".
There seemed to be a race in progress as well; engine emissions and transponder beacons of a dozen tiny ships traced a figure-eight circuit between the planet Wairara and the comet. One seemed to stray too close to the comet and the sensor contact winked out instantly, never returning.
It currently did not appear that the Yeager had been detected.