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Colonial Pirates
13 September 2006 15:13There are three types of people on colony ships.
There are the people who want to run from something on their planet of origin. They want to wake up hundreds of years later in a new place with no history other than their memories. They are people trying to run from a guilty conscience.
There are people who hate the way things are on their planet of origin. They want to create a new utopian society far away from the pollution and antiquated ideologies of the society they were born into. They are zealots with dreams of a perfect civilization.
There are poor people who just want to go to a place where everyone is on the bottom rung. They want to build houses with their hands along side the other workers within a society that doesn’t look down on them for not having a bank account. They’re willing to give up everything they have for a clean start in a new world.
When the fridge lights go green and the ship wakes the people up at the destination planet, there is always a power struggle between these three factions.
This is the story of a deep space colony ship re-christened as Aggressive Conduct. It never reached its destination.
It floats in between the stars with a skeleton crew in charge of a thousand sleeping killers. It’s a pirate ship collecting a force in preparation for a strike.
There was a malfunction. The planet they were aiming for was uninhabitable by the time they got there. Some sort of gravitational screw up had created an acne storm of volcanoes across the face of the planet and turned the atmosphere opaque with poison.
A crew of eight people was woken up to decide what to do. Those eight people were all criminals. The decision was made quickly. They looked at the people’s psychiatric records.
The really hardcore zealots were woken up and told the good news. They were told that they were the only ones trustworthy enough to see the new world for the first time. Their egos took that bait. They lined up six deep in the massive airlocks. They died turning inside out and screaming shards of blood into open space.
With that accomplished, everyone else was woken up and told the plan. There were a few power struggles but the strongest and smartest criminals came out on top. The poor people followed whoever was in power. The zealots signed up with the criminals in the hopes of helping to keep the peace.
With a peaceful détente established, a rotating schedule of service was created and the rest of the people were put back to sleep.
When a suitable ship or a colony or prey showed up on the scanners, the crew was woken up and the attack began.
It has been doing this for sixteen thousand years.
tags
There are the people who want to run from something on their planet of origin. They want to wake up hundreds of years later in a new place with no history other than their memories. They are people trying to run from a guilty conscience.
There are people who hate the way things are on their planet of origin. They want to create a new utopian society far away from the pollution and antiquated ideologies of the society they were born into. They are zealots with dreams of a perfect civilization.
There are poor people who just want to go to a place where everyone is on the bottom rung. They want to build houses with their hands along side the other workers within a society that doesn’t look down on them for not having a bank account. They’re willing to give up everything they have for a clean start in a new world.
When the fridge lights go green and the ship wakes the people up at the destination planet, there is always a power struggle between these three factions.
This is the story of a deep space colony ship re-christened as Aggressive Conduct. It never reached its destination.
It floats in between the stars with a skeleton crew in charge of a thousand sleeping killers. It’s a pirate ship collecting a force in preparation for a strike.
There was a malfunction. The planet they were aiming for was uninhabitable by the time they got there. Some sort of gravitational screw up had created an acne storm of volcanoes across the face of the planet and turned the atmosphere opaque with poison.
A crew of eight people was woken up to decide what to do. Those eight people were all criminals. The decision was made quickly. They looked at the people’s psychiatric records.
The really hardcore zealots were woken up and told the good news. They were told that they were the only ones trustworthy enough to see the new world for the first time. Their egos took that bait. They lined up six deep in the massive airlocks. They died turning inside out and screaming shards of blood into open space.
With that accomplished, everyone else was woken up and told the plan. There were a few power struggles but the strongest and smartest criminals came out on top. The poor people followed whoever was in power. The zealots signed up with the criminals in the hopes of helping to keep the peace.
With a peaceful détente established, a rotating schedule of service was created and the rest of the people were put back to sleep.
When a suitable ship or a colony or prey showed up on the scanners, the crew was woken up and the attack began.
It has been doing this for sixteen thousand years.
tags
