Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

Jellyfriend

He certainly did not want to mention how many of them he had stolen for his own selfish ends.

Turns out Dodo's and whatever species Jeffery was got along, and since the two groups tended to eat similar things, they actually ended up balancing out the ecosystem as scarcity became an issue.

He would liked to have called these scientific missions, but his crew had coined the phrase going to the pet store as a better explanation for going on deep space missions.

Behind him McCaster checked and double checked the warp coordinates looking up at Adam with a nervous expression.

"can you...."

"Nope." Adam said cheerfully, "I will not check your work, better make sure you did it right so we don't warp directly into the center of a star."

McCaster blanched and looked over his coordinates one more time, reading and re-reading every line before nervously putting them into the computer.

He took the controls ready to fire.

"And what do we always do before warp?" Adam coaxed.

The young man looked at him confused.

"We warn the rest of the crew." Adam prompted gently.

McCaster blushed, "Oh, yeah yeah of course I.... yeah." He reached out with his hand and engaged the Comms system, giving a shaky warp warning to the ship before steadying himself, slowly and nervously engaging the warp drive rechecking every step as he went. Adam did not bother him to move faster, it was expected that he was going to be slow, and this is how Kelly had encouraged him to fly, give him all the time he needed but make him do it without help just supervision.

Finally McCaster began the countdown and Adam braced himself tightening his stomach and taking greater though control over his bladder. When warp came, he was disoriented for only a few seconds before being back to full operational capacity.

"Wow." He said softly.

Their ship was settled in the center of a large star cluster, and the light that came onto their bridge was almost blinding. There were at least five stars in the cluster, with three of them relatively close together for stars, orbiting each other in a complex patter, the two closest orbiting each other, and the third orbiting both of the main stars. Out behind that a few smaller stars did the same. It was a new cluster of stars to be sure, newly born as far as stars go.

And there was still plenty of emissions and debris littered around the area. Particles of dirt and gas refracted the light streaking the world around them in blue and pink. The crew gave a collective gasp of shock as a chunk of asteroid rolled past their front screen, pearly white in color, and sprinkled with what must have been pure diamond.... Entire asteroids made up of pure carbon chains.

Each of these asteroids reflected the tinted light and cast rainbows in all directions .

"Woah."

"Alright everyone, names, give me names." Adam prompted, "I need to feel it, really feel it."

"Easter."

"Marshmallow."

"Rainbow."

"Yeah I am feeling very uninspired right now." Adam said shaking his head at them in disappointment. Names continued to ring out from the crew until one voice raised up from the others, emanating from behind him in the doorway.

"Clearly, this is the Candy-Land Cluster."

Adam turned in his seat looking to where maverick was standing I the doorway. Her hair was shaved almost all the way down on the sides, though the top was long, braided back across her head like a Viking might have worn it. Exotic alien scales and feathers hung on strings woven int other hair, She wore very tall black boots, a black corset and pulse armor not dissimilar to what Ramirez wore. A digital Tatoo glittered just under her collar.