Excalibur

CHAPTER 5: THE PAST

The scout ship had followed the previous ship’s trail for over four thousand Earth years. Time meant little to those who crossed the vastness of space, and especially the creatures inside the ship. Owing to their life span, they viewed time very differently from humans. Also, the crew had been in suspension for most of the journey. They remained in that state as the craft decelerated from interstellar speed, a process that took several years and a long orbit around the system’s star.

The crew was awakened as the ship approached the inner planets. Knowing the first ship had disappeared somewhere in the vicinity of this star system, the crew maneuvered with more diligence. They picked up signs of civilization on the third planet and headed toward it.

The scout ship entered the atmosphere of the third planet, searching for any sign of the first craft and scanning the civilization. It was passing above the world’s largest landmass when it was struck by an unexpected bolt of power from below and exploded.

The craft was seriously damaged and the crew tried desperately to retreat to the safety of space, but to no avail. It lost altitude, screaming through the atmosphere over the planet’s largest landmass. An escape craft holding some of the crew popped out of one side, while a few members tried to bring the crippled scout in for a landing.

They failed, and it smashed into the planet, the explosion devastating the countryside, on a scale not seen since meteors had hit the planet many millennia earlier.

The escape craft raced around the planet, settling in to land underwater, as far away from the crash site as possible. Sensors on the fourth planet picked up the escape craft, but also the lack of any signal from the main ship before destruction.

All went back to the status quo.

In the submerged escape craft, the few survivors slowly began to study the planet on which they had landed, prepared to spend many years doing so before settling on a course of action.