[ WP ] Sailors have always been a superstitious bunch . In the long stretches of darkness and isolation between stars superstitions still run high . So let 's hear a ghost story from deep space .

Cold points of white light streaked by in the blackness outside the viewscreen as Ensign Paull conveyed the paper cup of bitter black caffa to his weary captain. Captain Samuel Harris, a burly grey-grizzled veteran of multiple wars on various sides and more mercenary runs than any man had right to live through, slouched wearily in his commanding chair. He accepted the cup with a quiet, polite, `` Thank you, son,'' and sipped it, careful of the burn. ``'T is a night for ghosts, lad,'' he remarked softly, though night and day were long-foreign concepts to those who strode the stars. `` Perhaps a tale would while away the hours?'' 
 
 `` Aye sir, four months from Terra Prima and not a single meteor storm within a month's travel. So much free time, may as well be in cryo, eh?'' 
 
 The Captain glanced at the young Ensign as he took another sip of his caffa. `` Have you ever been in cryo, son?'' 
 
 Ensign Paull looked away, `` No sir.'' A distinct silence could be heard on the bridge as the rest of the crew strained to listen. 
 
 `` There's not a man here who would choose cryo over the long, slow voyage we ’ ve had, son. Cryo is the place of dreams. Cryo is the place of nightmares.'' 
 
 Captain Harris swirled the steaming contents of his cup slowly as he pondered. `` I remember the first time I went into cryo,'' he said slowly. `` The only time, as it were. It was the Battle of Raxa XII. Before your time, I imagine.'' The ensign nodded soberly. It was before the time of nine tenths of the ten people on the bridge. The tenth procured a set of huge muffling headphones from her station and clamped them over her ears, eyes squinched tightly shut. The captain continued, `` I was sworn to the Delrari in those days, and the Delrari were desperate. Only desperation could have driven them to send five thousand human ships into cryo, to have them reach the far edges of space unaged. But hardly unaltered.'' 
 
 The captain took a long swallow of his caffa. `` Cryo, you see... cryo has a strange effect on the human brain. See, under cryothermal anesthesia, the neural pathways of the brain are shut down. The electrical impulses that would normally transmit thought to thought to memory are just seized in place.'' Ensign Paull shifted his weight from foot to foot as he listened to yet another officer lecture him on a subject he had failed in the academy. `` The problem with this phenomenon,'' Captain Harris continued, `` is that while the body of a cryothermally frozen subject does not age, and the brain does not process new memories, the mind itself has a sense of time. And when we are woken up, we remember.'' 
 
 `` Time is so strange,'' he whispered, lost in memories too twisted to be forgotten. `` Six years of travel to a backwater battle can turn to six millenia of torment. Have you any idea how long a second can stretch, with nothing to counteract it? ” 
 
 Ensign Paull could find no words. He looked away, straight into the haunted eyes of the tenth member of the crew. Silent tears tracked sluggishly down the woman ’ s face, and she reached up slowly to remove her headphones. “ Will you not tell them, sir? ” she asked, voice gone hoarse. 
 
 
 The captain ’ s voice shook when he spoke. “ Shall I tell them of the fire? Blazing white heat and scorching red heat, searing flesh crackling like pork? Shall I tell them of the crucible upon which our souls were burned? Thousands upon thousands of us, alone in our torment, united in our misery. For all eternity we traveled like that. Until the navicomps found their marks, and we launched for our attack.'' 
 
 The Skamapsi had been, in truth, a peaceful race. At one point in their evolution they had captured an asteroid into orbit around their planet. They had launched a small probe to inject a DNA-encoded message into the asteroid; it was the hope of the intellectuals of the time that genetics was the one true language of the cosmos. It was an irony of galactic proportions that the message of peace they slung into the farthest reaches of the galaxy resulted in the decimation of 90 % of the human race. 
 
 Humanity, however, regardless of their forgiveness of their own good intentions, had little patience for the intentions of others. The counterattack was swift and lethal. The Delrari, ancient enemies of the Skamapsi, were glad to aid the human's efforts. But even the twenty-five thousand years of Universal Civilisation could not have been prepared for the force that was unleashed when humans were initially awakened from their first cryosleep. They did not ride forth to war alone, on their steeds of plastisteel and titanium. Every blighted soul that had ever gone wailing to their eternal misery rode with them, and each of them cried out for blood. 
 
 `` How many times have humans extinguished a world?'' Ensign Paull asked the question directly to his cup of caffa. Captain Harris continued watching the strange designs the distant stars made on the viewscreen. His ship streaked across the sky more quickly than any physical particle. Ancient humans had predicted a picture of red and blue shifts when a ship reached near-light velocities. They were mostly correct, but they had no way of predicting the beauty quantum shifts would create at superluminal speeds. `` At least once for every star in the sky, son.'' 
 
 The ensign, struck dumb, looked out at the stars streaking past - so many, so damnably many. But the captain was not finished. `` We landed on that rock like the legions of Hell, and like those legions we took it. When blasters failed us we tore into their flesh, teeth sinking into flesh and ripping free shards of bone. We ravaged them, and drank their blood like wine, and not a one of us left standing at the end of that day could tell you from whence that madness came. Nor where it went to once the day was done. Streaked with blood and gristle we looked at each other and blinked free from chaos, but never too far... and from there we went our separate ways. And so we continue to this day.'' 
 
 Ensign Paull flinched as the medic pushed the standard issue med injection into his arm. He looked at the captain he had thought he'd known earlier in the day, and was n't sure what he was looking at. He had heard of the cryo sickness, that it caused muscle atrophy and insanity. He had not heard that the sickness had been a day to day occurrence. He knew he should n't ask the question, but at this point he was bordering on giddy. `` Sir, what happened in cryosleep?'' 
 
 `` You will know in moments,'' the captain said. The emotion in his voice could have been sorrow, had it not been beaten down by time and fashioned into a blade of death. `` It is the natural state of matter.'' He balanced his empty cup precariously upon the edge of his chair, and took up the syringe laid bare by the innermost desire of humanity's reach into the stars. `` Once I thought that time was our cage,'' he murmured, as the needle entered his vein and delivered a liquid chill, `` but I wonder now if it protects us. There are things outside time's reach that... imperil reason.'' The sound of his deep, slow, steady breaths almost drowned out those of his bridgemates - one, at least, who sobbed in her state-approaching-sleep. `` We will conquer, son. You must remember that. No matter what odds we may face, no matter what horrors we must endure...'' But if the Captain had ought else to say, the ensign had no ears for it - his seat of plushsoft cushioned his sleep, and he drifted away unheeding of the wisdom of age. And the grey plexisteel of the Nautilus I hurtled unheeding for the heart of Delrari I, carrying its bevy of Human warriors. 
 
 *This was a collaboration between me and u/daervikus which we had quite a lot of fun with. Hope you enjoyed!
