Corio, a brown dwarf, not far from our own star.
Vanadia, a half frozen planet, tidally locked to Corio.
Temperatures of just 83 degrees Kelvin ravage the planet day and night, but somehow, amazingly, life has flourished here in an unusual way.
Silicon based cells have called Vanadia their home.
Two asteroids could have ended all life on this planet, had they not been captured by the planet and serve as moons.
Over fifty percent of the world is frozen in ice. The rest is mainly water, and there is not much land available.
However, this is only one of the 5 planets with life in the solar system. Who knows what else lives in the area?
MikeRobe, screenshots with stories go here (and general screenshots go in the image dump thread). A new thread was not necessary.
Ok, thanks. I shall keep that in mind.
A flash, suddenly a shuttle looking craft appears through the VexxLagrange3 jump gate in a shockwave of accumulated radiation. Zaq slowly swerved his DragonflyII around the faint Vexx II at 0.75c, an unusually bright brown dwarf with two orbiting planets; Ignis et glaciem and Ipsum frigus.
Ipsum frigus was a massive Ice giant, orbiting roughly 1.3AU away from Vexx II, and was too cold to even begin suspecting life.
Ignis et glaciem on the other hand was a relative paradise, Tidally locked to Vexx II it had an average temperature of 50 degrees celcius on the day side, and -96 on the night, on the border between the two however the temperature averaged a cool 10, and the city Dregg-shan was placed on the lighter side of the terminator. the nights on the dark side were about 12 hours long, for the rest of the time the frigid night side was dimly lit by the 35AU distant Vexx I, the Red dwarf that VexxII orbited.
Zaq readjusted his planetary coordinates, making sure he was registered in the Vexx star system, and re-established connections with the Hyper-Weave. His eyes slowly ajusted to the relatively weak orange glow he took a proper look at Ignis et glaciem, the day side was gripped in an endless Cyclone, constantly recycling the heat through the Earth-like atmosphere. He couldn't see much of the dark side though, but he had heard that there was nothing there but ice and a few fresh-water lakes that the colony slurped thirstily at.
He was approaching quickly now, cruising in at a leisurely 0.2c, slowing all the time as he raced past VisNav beacons on his way to the spaceport. He heard the familiar blip as the spaceport's local AI scanned his VirID and compared it to the bio scans of inside his craft, also making sure he wasn't prone to any of the exotic ailments one might get on Ignis et glaciem, thanks to the curious Iron-Based microbes that give a select few a mysterious and deadly "Rust Death" These microbes however orignally made the planet's oxygen rise to human breathable levels, allowing Earth plants to be planted and Terran animals to be imported to create a balanced Biosphere. The original microbes still remain however and the results aren't pretty if some fancy the iron in your blood as a good meal. Thankfully most of the time the microbes are too alien for your body to just go by without noticing, and are easily broken down by the immune system.
Suddenly, another flash of radiation slammed into the back of his shuttle, and proximity alarms went haywire. He looked behind him to see another Dragonfly screaming past his cockpit, then came the sudden jerk as the impact avoidance systems kicked in, all too late if the had been on a collision course with Zaq, the system was designed to avoid asteroids, not fast moving ships. When the alarms had calmed down He immediately contacted the ship in front of him.
"1521B, what the (hell) are you doing!? you nearly rammed my ship into pieces!"
"*static* Hel- *static* -anted war with th- *static* -arrrrrggh! *static*"
With horror Zaq realised that half the left side of the ship in front of him was missing, and that there was a vapour trail as atmosphere leaked into space.
Zaq cancelled his slowing program, accelerating towards the slowly tumbling damaged craft, scanning for bio signatures as he went, looking for the emergency beacon of a successfully deployed emergency suit. He had barely gotten close before a third, more massive radiation burst knocked out his electrical systems. He cursed under his breath and willed the reboot system to function properly, he was dead without it.
Slowly, the lights and holographic HUD flicked back into life and showed him that a massive unknown class of spaceship had just come out of the jump gate behind him, bearing down on him at 0.7c. Zaq quickly forgot about the other shuttle, and tried rammed up the speed to the maximum 0.5c hoping that the time it took for his Dragonfly to fully accelerate was enough to let him get out of the way of the looming hulk. The giant ship then started slowly turning, not at him, but back towards the gate. Zaq immediately knew what was going to happen, and a split second later he saw the colossal flash as the jump gate was blasted into oblivion. The mammoth then slowly turned back towards the planet, and began decelerating.
"No!.. No! I can't! uh..."
His shields flashed red as the first wisps of atmosphere tugged at him, reaching out to grab him in a fiery embrace.
Flames started licking around the edges of his force field, and a display appeared on his HUD showing him the condition of his shields, fading slowly through the visible spectra as they desperately shed more and more heat, trying to cool down.
The roar became deafening and Zaq was pushed into his seat under the rising deceleration, his CirculationAssist kicked in in order to keep blood flowing to his vital organs. Vibrant plasma surrounded his Dragonfly and the external temperature sensors had stopped giving readings ages ago. He was relying fully on the sensors inside the heat resistant tiles themselves, scary temperatures more than hot enough to vaporize lead. His shields was a vibrant purple now, already fading into UV spectrum. Then with a shudder his shields fell and the heat resistant tiles suddenly took the full force of the raging inferno, quickly setting off overheat alarms on his HUD.
On the ground a small girl was watching the news on the attack with her family when a massive shockwave blasted their house and bent the windows. She disconnected and quickly raced to the balcony with the rest of her family.
The dad looked, and distress calls blared across his neural net.
"My god... that's not a meteor... Ketrisha! contact the spaceport! Now!"
Zaq desperately watched his HUD, looking out for the first signs that the heat tiles had started failing. His shields were long gone, the generators had overloaded themselves trying to cope with the heat, then came a welcome surprise. Instead of rising, it slowed and started descending showing him that he was starting to slow down, he had long lost all feeling to his legs due to being under the crushing force of over 10Gs for over 5 minutes, but that was the only thing stopping him from jumping with glee, but before he could even think about it however, he passed out.
After a short while two medical Ornithopters came rushing in to tow him down to the spaceport, and once he was on the ground he was immediately rushed to the emergency section of the spaceport, where they pumped life back into his dead limbs and rebuilt broken bones. 15 minutes later he was discharged and he went to see his ship, his precious Dragonfly. When he saw it in the hangar he nearly started crying, Her beautiful sleek posture was still there, but caked in a bubbly, rotten-looking exterior. His beautiful Dragonfly looked more like the mutilated corpse of some great animal than a spaceship. There were engineer bots milling around like flies, and one of them came up to him and gave him one of the heat tiles.
"You only had 6.54cm left in them, that is around 30 seconds more of that, the rest of the ship is relatively fine, but the atmospheric engines were breached in several places."
"I didn't believe she had it in her-"
He was cut short by a bright flash, as the giant unknown craft from before came screaming into the atmosphere.
[First fictional story i upload here!
Okay, so the weirdest thing happened to me a few hours ago.
I was about to take my spaceship for a test run after repairing the hull, When the hull started to melt for no reason.
I was sure this was just bad luck, since i have bad luck regularly.
But my luck turned when i realized that i was nearby a planet.
It had both Marine and terrestrial life.
Other than that it also had oxygen.
So i settled down on the planet, fired a beacon, and prepared to get food of some sort.
Oh and the planet had vegetation that resembled something from earth, could it be terraformed?
I have never seen anything like this in my entire life!
I woke up, checked the hull, then i look outside, and everything is gone!
Yes, the plants, the grass, even all signs of life have just disappeared.
But that's not it though. there's something in the sky that i just can't explain.
Here, i'll take a picture of it.
I can't get off this planet, and there's a giant ship in the sky, just as big as the planet I'm standing on.
And I'm going to die here.
With the ship in the sky, staring down on me.
I hate it. I hate it more than anything.
And the oceans are gone.
My tongue is so swollen it's getting hard to breathe.
hurts to move fingers, it's so cold.
I'm even thinking about drinking fuel from the engines.
Christ, what am i thinking!
The ship in the sky is about to block out the sun, making it even colder.
I might as well take one last picture before i die.