Within The Veil
The Hunter curls into a fetal position within its nest as the shocks rippled through the hull. They were growing more frequent now as the ship skipped and bounced off of the Veil. The Hunter was sure no other beings yet lived aboard and that, once the ship breached the Veil and returned to normal space, the Predators aboard would quickly fade as the Veil energies that sustained them wained. This was good for the Hunter as it would no longer need to contend with them for the few remaining rations cashed about the ship. The hunter winced and groaned as the ship breached the Veil and drifted in the pale light of a dying star. Without thrusters or main engines the ship could only drift into a long, slow elliptical orbit under the mundane force of gravity.
The Hunter uncurls, stands, stretches and bares its teeth. It is time to hunt for food again, and to perhaps determine just how long it has drifted within the Veil. The Human ship had held up well, only becoming tainted instead of wholly corrupted, which had left the Hunter places to hide form the Void Predators. For this the hunter was glad, as much as it despised humans and loved the taste of their flesh, for Void Predators were aggressive in their search for flesh and souls to consume.
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The Vertangos System.
The ship's abrupt, uncontrolled revision to reality from the wilds of warpspace had not gone unnoticed. A simple automated Republic sensor outpost slash way station made note of the unexpected arrival, the flare of unknown energy the uncontrolled revision had generated, and the ongoing anomalous IFF beacon readings. The bored onboard AI performs a routine hull scan to determine what sort of Republic ship had stumbled into the system and thus which Command to notify that their wayward ship had appeared. The hull scan came back and the AI dutifully compares it to all known Republic ship types. Then it looped through the list of Republic ships again. Having confirmed no matches the AI sits befuddled for a few processing cycles before unarchinving it's stored contingency orders.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Several moments of sorting through file revisions and decision tress the AI comes to a decision. The Republic Psionics Command is to be notified with the report flagged as a 'Veil Breach' event. Further sensor readings are to continue, with any significant changes noted and added to the report as addenda. The addenda are to be promptly forwarded to the RPC. No effort is to be made to approach or interact with the ship beyond remote sensor readings.
The sensor outpost AI considers this last order to be redundant, as it has no crew or remote platforms to attempt to approach the ship, and finds itself mildly curios. Checking deeper it notes that the contingency order is several decades old, dating to a time before the Republic fully trusted it's remote stations to the care of an AI. With it's monetary curiosity satisfied the sensor outpost AI swiftly crafts and dispatches the required report before adding scanning the ship to it's list of routine sensor sweeps to complete. Given that the ship appears to be a drifting, out of control hulk the AI expect no changes to occur.
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Republic world of Krigertenkere, RPC Site 12
Funi'Happ'Sen raises an eyebrow at seeing an AI-generated automatic (required) report in his message queue for the day. Task Force Golf Seven, Flesh and Iron, was about to go active again after six long years dormant as its members finished out their cover stories and recuperated. Golf Seven Prime, Sinn'Are'Sen, still had a four years left before his cover story wore out in fact and Funi'Happ'Sen had hoped to use that time to let the new member of the team acclimate to life in the Republic. But it was not to be.
Funi'Happ'Sen read over the report, nodding in agreement that the Vertangos station AI had acted properly given it's dated orders, and tapped the 'forward message' button to send the report onto the Rest of 'his' task force with an added massage.
“Coordinator to Flesh and Iron,
“Hot report coming in (see attached) and we are instructed to investigate with caution. Golf Seven Prime, hold in Krigertenkere orbit until Golf Seven Beta arrives. I'll get together what additional information I can for you in that time. Requisitions are already routing consumables to Golf Seven Alpha for the journey there and back with a sixth month stay in between. I don't expect this to take that full duration given the scale of the reported ship, but with something form the other side of the Veil anything is possible.
“Coordinator out.”