Chapter Two
Captain Chris Popodopolu was a tall dark haired adonis. He did not have to work at his good looks or smooth charm. Normally this would have made him disliked by there men , but Chris was a guys' guy. He loved sports and could talk about them all. He even played a few but was not a professional by any stretch of the imagination. The sports he played were mostly single player games, he especially liked zero-g golf. Getting on with the boys had never been his problem his biggest problem were the woman in his life. Chris just had a hard time saying no to them. He had had a few loves in his life but they had all ended badly, when he had been caught with other women.
'That was all over with,' Chris thought. Denise would be good for him, all he had to do was say no to the other women. That was where his mind was at when the alarm sounded. He looked down at his panel to see what it was all about, and noticed it was a proximity alarm. That meant that something was on a collision course with the Empress. Chris said,
"What and where is it? I need information gentlemen." His navigation officer, Bruce Gumber said,
"I don't know, there is nothing on my screen." The men in the cockpit were frantically looking for what ever was about to hit them. No one saw anything until the co-pilot Monin Leblonc said,
"Oh my god," then he pushed the stick forward, but it was to late.
There in front of them was what is called a cosmic string. It was one
of the most unknown and mostly feared natural phenomena, it was about a
molecule thick, but it was very dense. If the ship hit the string could
cut though it like a hot knife through butter. It looked like a piece of
silver thread with a gold aura around it. It moved through space at just
below light speed and was almost impossible to detect because of it's small
size. The ship was about to dive out of the way when the string hit, and
sent a violent shutter through the whole ship. The string had hit about
half way down from the roof of the cockpit and cut off the top half of
the ship as if it were made of paper not the hardest steel and plastics
known to man. The flight crew and everyone else on the deck did not even
have time to blink before they were dead. Along with all the dead people
the computer and the AI (artificial Intelligence) were all in that area
of the ship.
| Starship Titanic Index |