Season One

On November 18th, 2122, the EAV Genesis launched on it's ten year journey to New Eden. Six years into the mission, the crew were brought out of stasis to chilling news. This is Season One.

Prologue: November 18th, 2122

On November 18, 2122, a WNN news crew was set to film the launch of the EAV Genesis from onboard the ship, with the Secretary of the Navy in attendance. Once the ship reached a safe distance from earth, the news crew and Secretary would take a shuttle back to Low Earth Orbital Station Seven and the Genesis would engage the full power of the solar propulsion engines and begin its mission.

Things did not go quite according to plan.

All of the technical members of the news crew were in fact Free State Revolutionary Force sleeper agents, and at a critical moment they managed to take the Secretary hostage just outside of the bridge. They demanded that most of the 100,000 civilians onboard be removed from stasis and replaced with their brethren, joining those that had already infiltrated the civilian populace. The ship would then launch and all of the crew go into stasis while the terrorist cell remained active for the duration of the trip to assure the crew did not retake command.

Due to quick thinking and quick reactions on the part of the crew and its command officers, the terrorists were neutralized without the Secretary being harmed.

The Secretary demanded that none of this be revealed to the public and that the ship launch according to plan, even though infiltrators could still likely be among the civilians in stasis, ordering the Captain to figure out who they were before bringing the civilian populace out of stasis upon landing at New Eden. Nothing, he declared, was going to delay the launch.

And so the Genesis launched from its home at Low Earth Orbital Station Seven, did a flyby over the sun as close as the shields would allow, in essence super charging the ship's engines, then set off for the cold of deep space with its crew finally entering stasis for the 10 year journey.

Episode One: January 9th, 2128

Select members of the crew, including command staff, were brought out of stasis four years early - still 3.6 light years away from the Epsilon Eridani system and New Eden. It was a nonemergency situation, the crew given time to dress and eat before being assembled in the Conference Room to receive a message from an unmanned craft of Giver origin. The message was not good.

According to the Givers, they sent the Signal in 2112 in the hopes that humanity would build numerous colony ships and evacuate as much of its population from the Earth as they could. The Givers were being hunted by a race they call the Devourers, a race of predators and hunters that feed solely on other sentient species or their own kind. On the verge of extinction, the Givers made a deal with the Devourers, giving them the location of an overpopulated planet on the brink of self extinction due to war and severe damage to their planet from pollution. That planet was Earth. It was their intention that humanity use the plans included in the Signal so that the human race would survive the inevitable Devourer onslaught. Instead, mankind only built one ship - and, it was revealed, only at a tenth of the intended size. Instead of carrying one million colonists, the EAV Genesis is only carrying one hundred thousand.

The Givers claimed that the Devourers would likely already have destroyed all civilization on Earth by the time this message was received, and that the Devourers had betrayed them, despite their agreement, and that the Giver species would likely be extinct, as well. They warned that the Devourers may pursue the Genesis if mankind back on Earth gave up their existence, and suggested that New Eden may not be safe in such a case. They gave the location of two other planets - one in the Alpha Centauri system back near Earth, and one in the Tau Ceti system, closer to New Eden. Each planet, however, had its drawbacks. They also gave the location of a wormhole that would take the Genesis to an unexplored part of the universe, completely unknown even to the Givers. Lastly, they gave the last of their technology - cloaking and faster than light travel - and all of their knowledge of the explored parts of the galaxy in the hopes that it would help mankind in their journey to find a new home.

As the crew could not be certain that any of what the Givers said was true, they sent a message back to Earth in the hopes of verifying some of the information and seeing if the Earth was truly lost. As it would take two days to receive a ping, indicating that the message had been received, it was agreed that they would look over all of the uploaded information and technology for the next 48 hours while awaiting the ping, then reconvene once they had more information to go on.

Episode Two: January 15th, 2128

The Genesis detected a weak distress beacon from a derelict vessel, the make of which was not in any of the databases provided by the Givers, making it a truly unknown and alien vessel. After scanning the ship revealed the presence of a contained singularity, an away team was sent to investigate.

The ship had only minimal power, and had been floating dead for approximately a year. The inside contained a dense growth of vines up the walls and plant matter that hung from the ceilings, thought to be some sort of organic life support system for whatever alien species created the ship. Exploration of the ship revealed that a fight had taken place between the entire crew and a single Devourer, with all sides left dead at the conclusion. The crew did not consist of a single species, but rather three different species - the first being a vaguely featureless, yellow-skinned humanoid not too unlike Grays of science fiction lore. Each of these had a second species living literally on top of and inside of its head - a crustacean like creature that had bored into the top of the skull and apparently puppeted the first creature. Whether this was strictly a parasite, or some form of symbiot was not immediately clear. A single Giver was also found among the crew with its own parasite/symbiot puppet master attached to its head. Lastly, a single Devourer male was found, also dead. Specimens from each of these species as well as the plant life within the ship were collected and taken back to the Genesis under strict quarantine.

The singularity was found near the back of the ship in what appeared to be engineering. The black hole was contained within a box made from a metal of unknown origin, a new element never before discovered. Whatever it is made of, it seems to contain the singularity inside of it. The box was not connected to anything else on the ship, making it very hard to determine what the purpose of the black hole might be. Upon deciding that it was safe to move, the box, like the alien bodies, was taken back to the Genesis for further study.

Episode Three: February 6, 2128

Commander Eisley ordered the ship to detour, altering course for 24 hours toward Tau Ceti. It was, she explained, a precaution: remote as the chances of pursuit were, neither she nor Captain Ramesh were taking any chances with the lives of the crew or the safety of their cargo. This little detour only delayed the inevitable, adding a day or two to the finality of the ship's destination and the great unknown that waited beyond.

On February 6th, 2128, the EAV Genesis reached the wormhole, visible only as a rip in space, a black hole with no hunger, pitch and dark against a backdrop of stars. Most of the awakened crew gathered on the bridge to see it and to watch the only test of the communications relay. They stood silent witness as Shuttle One was remotely launched into the wormhole and was devoured by it, and collectively held their breath as they waited for confirmation that it had reached the other side.

The relay worked. Less than a minute passed before telemetry was received from the little egg-shaped shuttle, transmitted back over a distance of more than 500 billion light years. The wormhole had launched it far, far away, to the distant side of the Corona Borealis Supercluster. Only a few moments after this revelation, given in the brilliant white starlight of these foreign stars, came a second. It came in the shift to red of the ship's Adam computer overriding the everyday Eve personality, warning that the shuttle's scanners had detected seven ships.

Two were of Parasite origin. Five were Devourer ships.

Adam confirmed that the Parasite ships and Devourer fleet were engaged in combat, and after brief consideration Captain Ramesh gave the order that sent this last seed of humanity away from its native galaxy. The Genesis followed Shuttle One through the wormhole, into the Corona Borealis Supercluster. Though it cloaked the instant it reached the very distant end of that tear in space, this lasted only long enough to navigate to a tactical position. Though cloaked, the Parasite ships turned invasive scans on the Genesis, but transmitted only one message: leave one alive.

The following combat was brief but brutal. Between the Earth ship and the Parasite vessels, four of the five Devourer ships were obliterated. The fifth was disabled, left to drift in space among the wreckage of its fleet. In the ensuing quiet, a second message was received from the Parasites, giving the crew of the Genesis 24 hours to prepare a delegation representing humanity to board the alien flagship.

Episode Four: February 7, 2128

24 hours is a long time. It was time enough for several more Parasite ships to join their sisters beyond the wreckage of the Devourer fleet, and long enough for the technical crew aboard the Genesis to have a breakthrough in decrypting the alien database retrieved from the derelict ship encountered in the Milky Way.

When those hours ran themselves out the human delegation boarded the Parasite flagship as instructed, and there had their first encounter with live, living, breathing aliens. These were tall, smooth, terribly spindly, with nearly featureless faces. On the heads of each were the crustacean-like creatures believed to control them, shiny scarlet red, chitinous and spidery, like a hand cradling the tops of their skulls. Their leader chose to introduce himself as Elvis Presley, and further indicated that his kind think of themselves as The Two. Moreover, they are telepathic, as he indicated by flashing information directly into the minds of the delegation.

What he proposed was an exchange. He offered a second black hole communications relay and a number of energy weapons like those they had salvaged from the derelict ship. More importantly, he offered up the location of a beautiful blue and green planet suitable for human colonization. Most striking, however, was the fragmentary footage of a broadcast The Two had intercepted, showing images of a visibly human race.

All they wanted in return was for the crew of the Genesis to secure a pair of live Devourers, one male, one female.

Presley explained that The Two were fighting a war of their own. They saw the Devourers as ideal soldiers, creatures that could be joined with in the same way their current kinds were. The Devourers had become wary of them however, and would kill themselves before permitting capture. Because the Devourers saw humans as food, not threats, they would not be so quick to destroy themselves, but could instead be subdued.

Amidst mixed reactions and feelings from the members of the delegation, Commander Eisley agreed. They returned to the Genesis to begin planning a hunt.

Episode Five: February 10, 2128

The first full tactical test of the Genesis Marines engaged a few days after the meeting with Elvis Presley, leader of The Two. A squad of fully armed and armored Marines set out to board the last remaining Devourer ship, crippled in the brief fight that began this awful bit of history in the making. Almost all of its systems had been disabled: weapons, shields, communications, and engines. Life support remained intact, but sensors could pick up only eight life signs remaining aboard and two of those were quite weak.

No hostiles met the entry team, and nothing swarmed them from the ducts as they made their way through the ship, seeking the faintest of the life signs. The Two had assured the crew that even these injured Devourers would be sufficient for their purposes, and two injured Devourers would be easier to capture than two fully functional ones. While prepared for a violent engagement, little could brace the Marines for what they found aboard the ship, a mangled and cannibalized version of "Giver" technology repurposed and redesigned by its new owners.

Tracing those life signs led to a vast chamber in the belly of the vessel that, afterward, could be described only as an abattoir: a slaughterhouse littered with the bloody, butchered remains of humans: men, women, and children. The Devourers had not come after the Genesis ill-prepared, but had brought an ample food supply with them. It appeared, however, that they had chosen to torture and kill their stock after the ship was disabled. It was here that the weakened life signs lay, two unmoving Devourers half-buried in the carnage of their last meal.

It was, however, a trap. The clever beasts had girded themselves in the remains of their own kind, which caused them to merely register as wounded by sensors. If there had been questions before about how dangerous and bloodthirsty the creatures were before, all were answered - and in blood. Several Marines sustained significant injury before capturing the pair, and a hasty withdrawal was made before the remaining alien predators could reach them to join the fray.

Mercifully, power armor prevented casualties. The Devourers were delivered to The Two, and the wounded Marines sent to the medical bay for treatment. The crippled vessel was then destroyed, along with its grisly contents.