If/Then

A Star Ocean The Second Story

alternate universe fanfic

By Maiji/Mary Huang

PROLOGUE

welcome to arctura iv

He felt like his head was going to explode.

Damn it …

He winced tightly; it was difficult to see. Soaking, wet skin and hair, body chilled to the bone; the sensation and sound of the rain were like drills boring into his skull. He could barely discern the dark figures surrounding him; the edges of his awareness were shaky, fading into things beyond his consciousness.

There were too many of them, whoever they were, and they had caught him at the worse possible time: more than off-guard, more than defenceless. Senses disoriented by neither the unfamiliar surroundings nor the unrelenting downpour; but by the nonstandard teleportation he'd been ripped through only minutes ago.

No smooth, gentle data stream conversion; it had been an instant of indescribable, searing fire, tearing his molecular structure apart and flinging it halfway across the universe for an unceremonious reassembly.

Another fist smashed into his gut, setting him coughing. Redness sputtered against the ground, mingling with the rainwater. He collapsed onto his knees: sick, gasping for breath, feeling the air darken around him.

A muffled thud against the muddy ground, and he knew nothing.

…

"-Roger. Determining status of Federation Service Number 1449-2356-8733-1292G."

A pause, followed by a series of confirmative beeps.

"Ensign Kenni, do you read?" The woman's voice was melodious and calm, trained to flow with clarity and efficiency even in the face of panic. "This is the Battleship Calnus, on standby and requesting receipt of coordinates for relocation on-board. Repeat, Ensign Kenni …"

The invisible transmission beamed deep into space, sweeping across vast years of light, piercing the dusty veil of numerous galaxies. It reached out: searching, straining blindly for a single target amongst the dense ocean of stars.

In Theta Sector, deep within the unsurveyed Arctura cluster, something alien awoke.

In a place where such distances would have been unimaginable, the handheld communicator sputtered to life, receptors working furiously to process data.

- galactic federation service number 1449-2356-8733-1292G …

determining status … completing system self-analysis … -

A neat, uniform string of symbols scrolled rapidly across the flickering screen, almost exactly in time with the glimmering rain, the flashing sky.

- damage tolerance exceeded 003.14159-

initiating automatic emergency response system-

initiating mayday transmission … -

"Fed … ss … m … day …may … d … ay …" it managed to hack out, the confirmative output barely audible against the tempest. The power flow from the energy cells wavered, the transmission cutting short.

Undaunted, the system stubbornly attempted again. But the de/reconstructive strain experienced in the transportation process had been too much for its energy cells; the communicator had not yet stabilized enough. The interface began to flash with an increasing intensity, every generated data string less steady than the one before, as though being beaten into the ground by the external elements.

Peripheral systems and diagnostic programs began to set themselves up in the background, trying to make repairs; but each launch soon hit a wall of insufficient resources, each one shutting down soon after the other. The remainder of the original verbal alert disintegrated into static waste, lost in the pounding rain, the caustic lightning.

But even if the operating system had not been overloaded, even if the stream had been processed successfully, even if the weather had not drowned out the dispatch, it would not have made a difference. A world away, the Calnus' signal grew weak from travel – wavering, thinning, and finally dissipating altogether. Where the starship's voice could not go, its receptors could not hear. The communicator's own signal barely managed to penetrate the outer layer of the planet's atmosphere, beyond the limits of the battleship's reception.

- OUT OF RANGE -

it reported, bold letters flashing across the screen one last time.

Then everything died.