The Dieya Chronicles - Incident on Ravar

by John Migacz

CHAPTER 18

  The Stromley system consisted of four planets orbiting a giant red sun. The system would never amount to much in the human scheme of things. Life had never begun on any of these planets and now they were being mercilessly bombarded by the erratic solar flares from a dying sun. The fourth planet’s single rotation doomed one side to eternal night. Its one small moon, locked in a geosynchronous orbit, was left in a permanent solar eclipse. It was a moon where life had never begun, but a moon where a form of intelligence did exist.

  The giant ship took several hours to bring its systems online after being buried for a thousand years. Not that it mattered, time didn’t exist for this ship; it only followed orders. The single signal that had awakened the sleeping giant elicited no outburst of emotion, no sleepy desire to snooze. It would sleep for another thousand years if told to.

  The behemoth rose out of its dusty den using its anti-grav engines. Some of the rocks and dirt covering the massive ship streamed back to the moon as it slowly lifted from the surface, but most remained.

  The ship monitored its systems for two hours before igniting its dimgate engines. It would proceed with caution using small jumps.