Pandora Project: Runaway Star

Excerpt:
Prologue

Life was perfect, or as close as it could come while death remained unsolved. People spoke often about whether or not Elysium had been attained in the land of the living. The old wounds that had scarred the Earth were healing, there was little hunger, and there was room enough for all. Slowly, the Earth was being returned to a garden state, and five great colonies hung in space around her like attendants to a queen. There were no armies, no wars, and little strife. It seemed that the human race had outgrown its terrible past; alone in all the universe, it had finally come to peace with itself.

And then, one day, the noises came. They would've gone unheard save for a mining station listening at the verge of what humanity considered to be its territory. At first, they went unattended, but then they came with greater frequency until they could no longer be explained as random phenomena seeping out of the great unknown. They had a cadence to them that spoke of urgency and a pattern to them that could only be language.

Quietly, in the recesses of government research centers, satellites were built and cast out into space, weaving a net to catch as many of the strange noises as possible. And in the basement of a small building on the colony of Tethys, everything heard was gathered to be deciphered.

The team dedicated to the project was small, one professor of linguistics, two graduate students, and one intern. For five years they worked in secret, and one day, they understood what was being said.

Something was coming. Something large, something dangerous. Something like a multitude. And they were coming, too.

Two weeks later, a probe chasing whispers through deep space encountered something that had not been there before. It came from nowhere and hung floating in the void, whispering the message that they had been hearing all along. They called it Pandora, because they had no idea what might be inside her.

In the face of opposition from those who thought the human race would be better served by staying home and minding its own business, a small handful of scientists, soldiers, and adventurers scraped together the funds and the approval of the Senate.

They dusted off an old colony ship from the days when the human race thought it might like to reach further out into the stars, found long-abandoned plans for starfighters and weapons, and began making their preparations to go meet Pandora and find out what she had brought the human race. And, perhaps more importantly, to find out what might be coming behind her, of which she had tried so desperately to warn them.