Disclaimer: This story and all of its characters and situations are
property of Kyle Emmerson. Do not copy in entirety or in part without the
permission of the author. Thank you.

Sliverfall: Starseed

Prologue

	When a man looks at the moon, he thinks one of several
things. A place of mystery, but a barren landscape. Astronomers over
the past several years have long since decided the moon was
uninteresting, not worthy of their expensive telescopes or any
further space missions.

	Which was why nobody on Earth noticed all the commotion that
was encompassed the gray sattellite.

	To the naked eye, it seemed as though two ships were busy
playing cat-and-mouse, running high speed circles around the moon. To
the naked eye, the sleek, reflective hulls of the ships were being
bombarded by one another, respectively.

	Apparently it just goes to show that sometimes you can
believe your eyes.

	Each ship was well-matched, although each had taken a massive
amount of damage. The pursuer was relentless in its chase, seemingly
stopping at nothing to try and disable or destroy the pursuee. It had
a very similiar design to the other ship, except for the fact that it
was a darker shade of gray, and the name painted on the side of the
ship.

	The name had a fairly simple meaning. It read CRD Scout
Shuttle D-7363.

	The other ship, however had a far simpler name. It was
painted in a lighter shade, with thin black lettering on the side
reading The Temperate Light. Of course, none of this was in fact,
english. They were actually two seperate dialects, none of which any
living human being could decipher without actually knowing what to
translate.

	The Temperate Light barely dodged a direct hit from the tiny
explosive projectiles come from the shuttle, rather, they hit the
surface of Earth's moon, creating new craters, most of them no bigger
than a small automobile. They may not have been massive firepower,
but all it needed to do was cause a single hole in the hull of the
Temperate Light, and then it was all over.

	The Light accelerated to mach five, and did an inverted nose
dive, climbing away from the surface of the moon at several
kilometers per second, and then dove back down towards the scout
shuttle.

	The shuttle reacted quickly, accelerating it's own engines
beyond mach eight, in a calculated effort to avoid the Light's weapon
systems.

	The Light took chase, finally gaining the upper hand. It
launched projectile after projectile at the shuttle, the ones that
struck home lighting up the green field around the ship.

	Finally, the shield around the shuttle flickered, and then
failed. The ship imploded seconds later, a victim of micrometeorites
impaling it piece by piece. The Temperate Light flew straight into
the wreckage, and barely made it through the other side.

----

	"Shit," Orianna swore, pulling away from the moon and toward
the tiny blue planet in the distance. "Iris, status?"

	Orianna, for an alien, looked remarkably human. She could
have easily been mistaken for a light-skinned black woman, if not for
her snow-white hair and eyebrows. Also, her ears were pointed in an
elf-like fashion. She could have easily been mistaken for a Vulcan,
straight out of Star Trek, if not for the absence of a unibrow.
Rather, she had two, well formed eyebrows, which were also white.
Orianna was Perlaien, but once one got to know her, one would decide
that she was nothing like a real Vulcan. If, in fact, Vulcans existed
at all.

	"We've passed straight through a Rin D'kar Scout Shuttle,
Orianna," Iris replied. "We're not exactly built to do that. Our
shields protected most of the ship, but The Temperate Light has taken
excessive damage at aft and port."

	Iris, on the other hand was nothing like Orianna. She was a
regular, run of the mill humanoid companion. Except for the fact that
she wasn't exactly human. Or humanoid for that matter. She was an
artificial intelligence. A fifty-year-old prototype artificial
intelligence developed by a D'karian scientist. About forty years
ago, she defected from her original programming and joined the
resistance effort against the Council of the Rin D'kar. She later
became Orianna's companion. Future versions of Iris' program were
coded to be unable to rewrite their programs.

	"Hull integrity?"

	"Thirty-five percent," Iris reported. "The ship may not
survive entering the atmosphere."

	"What if we ignite the dross ore?" Orianna asked, checking
her fuel reserves.

	"There's a fifteen point five-seven-five percent chance of
success."

	Orianna shook her head. "Can we increase that chance?"

	"We can if we irradiate the ore before ignition. It will
increase up to sixty percent, but since our fore thrusters need the
dross ore to operate, it will negate our chances of stopping before--"

	"Becoming as flat as pancakes, correct?"

	"In your illustrious, yet strangely chosen words Orianna."

	"Not to mention radiated dross ore couldn't be good for human
health."

	"I wouldn't put Chancellor Jezar within breeding distance of
it," Iris stated, a computerized attempt at humour.

	"Okay, to hell with the ship," Orianna barked. "Can you and I
get to the planet safely?"

	"Well," Iris started. "If we broadcast--"

	"No. I am NOT broadcasting. Do you realize how quickly the
Council would be able to home in on that? We don't need a Council
Warfleet jumping out behind their moon, you know. It's bad enough
that Scout Shuttle followed us." Orianna tapped a few buttons on her
console.

	"True," Iris replied. "Then I can only suggest one more
thing."

	"Make me happy, girl," Orianna said.

	"We have perhaps three minutes before we hit the atmosphere.
I suggest you transfer my program to the spare mobile unit and
perform a great act of bravery."

	"Which means we're probably going to die, right?" Orianna
asked.

	"There is a possibility," Iris replied.

	"What kind of probability?"

	"Fifty-three percent."

	Orianna was silent for a few moments, she then flipped a few
switches pulled a small device from a small drawer under the main
console and attached it to her wrist. It fastened automatically,
making a sound not too dissimiliar from a electrical discharge.

	"Transfer your program, Iris. Let's do this."

	A moment later, all traces of Iris left the ship's computer
and materialized in a three dimensional form on Orianna's wrist.
Calculations and formula swirled in the air in front of Orianna, and
then stopped just as abruptly. The image of Iris' body appeared next
to her.

	She resembled a human being in every aspect. A tall,
intelligent looking young woman with short red hair, donned in
flowing robes of green and red and yellow. By no means was she
unpleasing to the eye, on the contrary, she could have easily been
one of the top contenders in the 'Miss America' pageant.

	"What now?" Orianna asked, without looking.

	"First, we must speed up. If we irradiate and ignite the ore
within three minutes, then there is minimal chance of it affecting
the Earthers," Iris replied, looking over Orianna's shoulder at the
rapidly growing blue sphere.

	"You're sure about this?"

	"Yes," Iris replied. She then placed her holographic hand
upon Orianna's shoulder.

	Orianna looked up. "You'd better get the AES Unit," she said.

	Iris nodded and left her alone for a few moments.

	"Okay, girl," Orianna said to herself. "Time to do this
right." She tapped a few buttons and drained the remaining weapon
fuel into the dross ore tank. She sighed.

	Igniting dross ore was easy, among one of the easiest things
to do in the galaxy. All you had to do was expose it to a vacuum.
However, igniting it and also staying alive was extremely difficult.
All she needed was one hull breach and it was all over.

	She checked her speed. Eighteen HPS. She could ignite it, but
there was no guarantee that she was fast enough to escape the blast,
while still catching a ride on it. Sure, it would send the ship
through the atmophere much faster, but the friction alone would rip
the ship to pieces.She could only rely on the micromatter shields
around the ship. They weren't built for atmospheric entry. The
Temperate Light and all of its sister ships were meant for space
transport and exploration, pilots were supposed to use broadcasting
in order to get to the surface of any planet, or board any other ship.

	Not an easy task, not one bit. But she needed the speed to
get through the atmosphere, otherwise the micromatter shields would
fail.

	She turned around and noticed Iris coming back into the
compartment, carrying the AtEmSys.

	The AtEmSys Unit, or Atmospheric Emergeny System, was an
important survival tool in deep space. It contained a multitude of
functions, one of the more important of the functions was to shield
its user from dangerous environments, such as vaccuums, non-photonic
weapons and any non-photonic matter. However, it could easily be just
as destructive. The shields ate through any matter like a bullet
through wet tissue paper. The unit also contained another, extremely
important tool. An inertial damper.

	One of the benefits of extremely high-speed travel was the
ability to get where you're going in deep space without aging several
decades, or in some cases, centuries. However, moving inside of an
object that can travel at several hundred times the velocity of light
could quite easily turn any person or object not nailed down into a
remarkably flat piece of dead matter in nanoseconds. That was where
the inertial damper came it. It prevented the flatness effect from
affecting its users. Essentially, anything inside of the dampening
field was not affected by inertia whatsoever.

	The AtEmSys employed just such a field, except on a much
smaller scale. Gravity kept the user at the center of the field,
which was shaped exactly like a bubble, to prevent its user from
losing an appendage, be it limb, tentacle or other important parts.
The inertial damper made it possible for the user to escape as high
velocities.

	The final and most important commodity in the AtEmSys was the
ability to stop, and control where the 'bubble' goes.

	"Ready?" Orianna asked.

	"I would suggest storing my program first. Atmospheric
conditions won't affect me, and I would pass right through the
AtEmSys shields, therefore I could be rather painful to you if you
pass through me."

	"Fine," Orianna said. "Get back in your bottle, Iris."

	Abruptly, Iris disappeared into a swirl of light, dropping
the AES unit. Orianna bent over to pick it up, and then put it on her
back.

	She turned back to the console before her and activated the
unit, and then, in one final step, ignited the dross ore.

----



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