The Crew

Genre: Science Fiction, Cosmic Horror

Eddy Taylor’s The Crew follows the voyage of the starship Shedia during its long migration from a ruined earth in the far future when it is intercepted by an enormous superstructure the passengers begin referring to as ‘The Spire’. As the Shedia reaches the superstructure, famine and internal politics exacerbated by a creeping wave of madness threaten to wipe out the last survivors of humanity.

Preview

Entry 3504-26073095

We’ve called it ‘The Spire’. A twisting monolith in the middle of space, directly in our flightpath. We’ve been running on auxiliary power for almost a year and now this thing appears. Without warning. Avan reckons we’ll collide with ‘The Spire’ in eight days unless we alter our trajectory, which I’ve already begun calculating. But the scale of the thing makes such calculations more complex than the rest of the Crew might expect. Preliminary scans suggest the rough shape, like two scaled tails coiling around each other both approximately six hundred by four hundred by twelve hundred miles in diameter. To put that in perspective that’s more than three hundred times the size of the Shedia. Light years from any solar system and yet there it is. Completely stationary. No propulsion or speed or its own gravity as far as we know. Over a century with only the occasional asteroid or passing nebula to keep us entertained and now this? And we can’t even investigate; it’d take too much time. So, we go around and leave whatever this thing is to the void of space, likely never to be seen or heard of again. Potentially the first real proof of alien life and we just pass it by. For centuries we looked to the stars for something, anything like this and now that we’ve found it, we just swerve out of the way. I’ll finish my calculations within the hour and pass them over to Avon for approval, then adjustments will be made and that’ll be all. Anything we might learn about this spectacle will be pulled from the long-range sensors, maybe some pictures from the windows as we pass it by for scientists and scholars to drool over for a few centuries. Nothing more. Survivals a bitch.