The
story so far…
A
space ore-miner inadvertently flies to close to a wormhole and gets sucked in.
On the other side, in some unknown galaxy, he crashes into a strange planetoid
and is marooned there alone. Or is he?
Dutch
and Sweet Mary are on a prison transport headed for a penal colony in Cygnus
Alpha. The ship has been hijacked by a band of desperate criminals and Dutch
has been roped in to pilot the ship to a new destination. Where are they going,
and will they manage to escape?
Mrs
Rose Darck, mother of the space ship commander who is to pilot an expeditionary
ship through the wormhole, has decided to accompany her son and his new bride
to the launch station at GOD 5, some three light months from earth. She is
convinced that her son is going to die in that wormhole.
Federation
Officer Angelo has been assigned the impossible task of finding and capturing
the notorious Prophet Righteous Alchemy, and to take him back to GOD 5 for
questioning.
AND NOW........
General Outer Defence, station 5, known as G.O.D. 5, was
the last in the series of stations built since the discovery of the wormhole.
Primarily it was erected at great cost to protect against anything untoward emerging
from the wormhole, and to send surveillance vessels, unmanned as yet, through
the wormhole to see what was on the other side. Since then G.O.D. 5 had grown
to the size of several large cities. Watched over by Federation Battlestars, Cruisers,
Corsairs and Corvettes, it was a thriving bustling city, trading ships of all
types coming and going in a chaotic stream, bringing culture and corruption,
penthouses, casinos, clubs, celebrities, prostitutes and politician s. All in all, more than 20 million people now
lived there.
G.O.D. 1, the first station, had been built too close to
the vortex and before it had even become operational it had begun to drift on
an inward spiral to oblivion.
G.O.D. 2 had suffered a catastrophic meltdown of a
prototype fission-power reactor and had to be towed at great expense out of
harm’s way, the reactors belching radioactive debris far and wide.
G.O.D. 3 was struck by a meteorite in its early stages,
killing countless thousands of workers.
G.O.D. 4 (known as the pig pen) was still there, only a
stone’s throw away from G.O.D. 5, but it had been abandoned by the Federation when
fractures began to appear where the T-arms joined the central core and the rotational
spin had to be kept below 0.25 G to prevent them pulling out altogether. This was
due to the use of cheap materials and unskilled labourers by Amkor - not to mention a flagrant disregard for safety regulations - who only
got a slap on the wrist for the expensive disaster because they were a
Federation contractor with several high flying congressmen on the board of
directors all wanting their million dollar bonuses. Due to the shoddy workmanship
it also wasn’t very airtight, and leaks in the hull sprung up daily.
Of course oxygen was the number one priority in space, and although it could be recycled almost ad infinitum, they did need a reliable supply of it so far from Earth. Oxygen was actually manufactured by a gigantic Myecine damper in
the central core of the station. All G.O.D. stations were built with these and absorbed most
of the 10 billion marque cost of the construction. The damper was basically a
Hydroxen propagator for the Myecine spores that produced breathable air from
water. Myecine spores not only produce air but also a fairly decent edible
fungus. The water is supplied by ice-heavy asteroids which are captured by gian t ice-haulers – powerful space-tugs that can
lasso and drag these mega-monoliths back to the station to be processed for fuel.
In the early days when the station was first abandoned,
there was enough water on board to service the few homeless tramps who took up
residence there. But soon the population increased as more and more vagrants and illegals decided to make it their home and the oxygen supply began
running out. This was a real problem for the community on G.O.D. 4 until they finally got organized and stole a couple of super space-tugs from the Federation’s fleet.
It was only a matter of time before the news spread and all the
dregs of the universe began moving into G.O.D. 4 and started setting up their Heath
Robinson survival systems, not to mention alcohol stills, chemical labs,
brothels and booze halls. There were: the homeless, hardcore gangsters, murderers
and thieves, runaways, kidnappers, slave traders, and many, many more: a veritable
cornucopia of criminals.
In the beginning the Federation cops had tried to clean
the place out, but the loss of life sustained by pursuing these people through
the warren nests of the station and the ensuing gun battles made it an
untenable proposition. Eventually the undesirables
took control of the entire station, including the landing bays, docking quays,
defence systems and communications. There was no way they could be got at now
except for nuking them out of existence altogether, but even the Federation
wouldn’t go that far. Soon it became more than just an eyesore and an
embarrassment. It became a launching pad for hit and run hijackers, kidnappers
and anti-establishment terrorists. Running space battles and rocket attacks
were now common place in the G.O.D. Sector and the Federation forces were
sometimes hard put to defend even their own piece of turf around G.O.D. 5,
never mind trying to keep law and order on G.O.D. 4.
So with its low gravity, lawlessness, and leaky
atmosphere, Officer Angelo knew that G.O.D. 4 was no place for a holiday. This
was a bad place for good people. It certainly was no place for an undercover
Federation officer without a gun.
Officer Angelo sighed and fastened his seat belt. This was
going to be a difficult one. He squared up his shoulders and prepared himself
for the impossible task of somehow getting an audience with the Prophet: A.K.A.
Righteous Alchemy, or Ra for short.
He looked out the window again and saw the docking gantry
begin to unfurl to receive them.
N
TUNE IN NEXT WEEK AT THE SAME TIME FOR THE NEXT EXCITING EPISODE.
