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Chaos Rising	By : TerminusEst Category: +S through Z > Sonic Views: 1284 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Sonic The Hedgehog game series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter 1: Origin of Chaos
"The distance too great

For you to hear our cries

Never mind take this lamp

We are beyond light
We learned so little

Of inhuman culture

Before disappearance

Went right through us"

--Arcturus - Kinetic
Adrian
lay in his bunk on the freighter Hephaestus, his bank balance 100,000
credits larger than it was yesterday. He had signed on with the
freighter as a technician three months ago, and now he would soon be
back on Mobius, the winter shipping season over. Even in the
twenty-sixth century, seasons were still reckoned based on the climate
of Earth's northern hemisphere. The winter season was always at a
different time of year on Mobius, which had a shorter year than Earth.
He
reached into the drawer under his bed and pulled out a bottle of pills.
They were formulated to prevent the atrophy of muscles and bones,
always a constant danger in a ship with artificial gravity only in the
crew areas, and even then only partial gravity. He pulled out a pill
and swallowed it. The pills were made to be easily swallowed without
wasting water, which was precious on a small starship. Even the crew's
urine was recycled and purified.
He looked down at his hands.
They were clean for the first time in months, the crew allowed to take
showers with the remaining water on board. Commercial ships were often
filthy places, and with severe restrictions on water use, regular
hygiene was not an option. The term "grease monkey" for technicians
took on a very literal sense on star-freighters. But the shower still
did not banish the mats and lice in his fur. At least he was paid
handsomely to get filthy and live in a flying tin can for a third of
the year.
Drew Faulkner, the ship's chief engineer, came into the
bunkroom and came over to Adrian's bunk. "Everything all right?" the
cheerful, ruddy-faced human said as knelt next to Adrian.
"Yeah. How long will it be till we get home?"
"Twelve hours, maybe fourteen. I was just stopping by to deliver a letter from your girlfriend."
"Hmmm,"
said Adrian. "I think the only reason we're still together is because I
make a lot of money doing this. She thinks I'm crazy working on a ship
four months a year like this."
"We're all a little crazy in this
business," Drew said with a chuckle as he rubbed Adrian between the
ears. "Here's the letter." Drew handed Adrian an envelope.
"Uh-huh," said Adrian as he opened the envelope. When he read the letter, his face fell:
Dear Adrian,
After
considering our situation, I have decided now would be a good time to
terminate our relationship. I just can't live anymore with someone who
goes away four months out of the year onto a filthy, wretched, horrible
little starship and returns looking like a concentration-camp refugee.
To be cut off from you a third of the time like this and to have you
just lying around for the rest of the year is not a sustainable
lifestyle for me, no matter how much money you make.
Perhaps
even worse than when you are away is just after you come back, when you
have matted fur and fleas and can't stand up because you haven't
experience gravity in four months. Why do you put me through this? Are
you so obsessed with a paycheck that you'll torture yourself and me for
a hundred thousand? So maybe it might not be easy or even possible for
you to make this kind of money without a college education, but you
don't have to make six figures.
When you settle down and
get a normal job, I'll gladly come back. But right now, you can find
someone else to scrub the bugs out of your fur. Call me back when you
get a civilized career.
Yours,
Nadia
Adrian threw the letter to the floor. Drew immediately picked it up. "What's wrong?" he said as Adrian sighed.
"My
girl dumped me because she doesn't like my job She says I should get a
"civilized" job, as if slaving in front of a desk is a great way to
live."
"Sometimes people are like that. It's not like there aren't enough women to go around."
Adrian
sighed again. "Yeah, but we had been together for two years. It will
take a long time to build a new relationship like that. I think I want
to be alone now."
"I understand." Drew turned around and left the room.
Adrian
rolled onto his side, contemplating his rejection by the woman he had
given his virginity to and cherished like nothing else in his life. He
would have proposed to her when he returned. Now those dreams had
crumbled to dust.
He immediately drove away the tears that wanted
to well up in his eyes. He refused to cry. Men didn't cry. He never
regarded himself as a macho he-man, but he felt it shameful to shed
tears even in private. He crumpled up the letter and threw it against
the wall as hard as he could. Damn her. Damn her for throwing him away
like a bag of rotten vegetables. Damn her to hell.

He needed someone to take care of him while he readjusted to full
gravity. The pills only provided marginal protection against muscle and
bone loss, and Mobius had the second highest gravity of all the
inhabited planets. He decided he would give the local hospital a call
when the ship touched down. It wasn't like he didn't have money.
He
felt a shudder run through the ship, and knew that the freighter had
just dropped out of hyperspace. The window shutters open, revealing a
black expanse studded with stars. The ship would go the rest of the way
at sublight speed. Adrian reasoned that now would be as good a time as
any to go to sleep, even though it was three in the afternoon. He
removed his technician's coverall, hanging it on the bars of the bunk
above him, and pulled the covers up to his shoulders, curling up
slightly as he let himself relax completely. He watched the unchanging
black void out the windows. Relative to Mobius, the ship was traveling
at a speed most easily expressed as a fraction of the speed of light,
but the stars were so far away that the ship appeared to be still.
He
rolled around a few times, trying to find the most comfortable
position. Sleep was not coming easily to him, his mind haunted by
thoughts of Nadia and of seeing real, honest-to-God land for the first
time in four months--he never followed the shuttles planetside during
cargo deliveries.
He felt another shudder run through the
freighter's frame, but this one was a violent, gut-wrenching, sudden
one that nearly threw him out of bed, accompanied by a horrendous bang.
Another bang, and the ship shook again, while a klaxon sounded and the
ceiling lights flashed red. Red lights meant only one thing--they were
taking fire.
He quickly got up and got his coverall down from the bunk above. Drew came into the room just as he started to put it on.
"Holy hell, did you feel that?" said Drew. "Someone's shooting at us!"
"Tell
me something I don't know," said Adrian, using the blanket to conceal
his naked body as he got dressed. "So much for my nap." When he was
finished dressing, he followed Drew out, running as fast as his legs
would carry him. He felt the cold metal floor beneath his unshod feet,
but there was no time to put his shoes on.
Within moments, he was standing in the ship's bridge, the captain frantically screaming a distress call into the transmitter.
"Don't even bother, captain," said Drew. "There's no one out here. We need to get to hyperspace now! Who's firing on us?"
"I'm
picking up two Earth Republic Exocet-class fighters," said Captain
Morgan Stephanopoulos. "They just popped out of nowhere and started
shooting. I have no ide--"
The captain was cut off by the loudest bang yet, as the whole ship trembled as like an epileptic having a seizure.
"Hull
breach in sector B!" shouted Percy Eriksson, the other technician on
the ship aside from Adrian. Adrian rarely saw Percy as they alternated
shifts, with Adrian sleeping as Percy worked. They had both had light
duty today, but there was no more time to relax.
"Was anyone in that sector?" asked the captain.
"Yes. Jeff and Wesley were in there," said Percy, referring to the first mate and one of the cargo handlers.
Everyone
on the bridge fell silent. Drew made the sign of the cross. After a few
seconds of silence, the captain spoke again. "Hyperdrive is now ready.
Let's get the hell out of here before more of us meet the same fate.
Punch it, Percy!"
The ship rocked from another direct hit just as
it jumped into hyperspace. Adrian looked into the swirling multicolored
expanse, the floor chilling his feet, his heart pounding in his chest
as he wondered whether he would ever return alive.
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Chaos Rising