The Walks

I walked along the catwalk, occasionally pausing to gaze, awestruck, into what had been empty space only yesterday. A spindly web of similar walks surrounded a volume of space in which a city-state like Singapore would have been comfortable. Underneath was a carpet of the fluffy, rolling white clouds that were a permanent fixture in this region. Above stretched a mixed azure-black expanse typical of my present altitude.

The Walks were quite amazing, but they were merely a backdrop for the repairs being attempted within their confines.

A Plethora-class starship was oscillating in and out of existence, alternately replaced by a view into the sun it was powered by and by a horrific crushing vignette of the black hole that had destabilized it.

The vessel wasn't what the old timers had imagined before the advent of gravitic delamination propulsion. A narrow metal pod maybe 100m in length was nestled in a kilometer-deep network of glowing plasmidic struts. These, in turn, tended towards a certain shape chosen by the architect; this example was a sort of large feline. The pilots all say there's a personality that comes with it, and, watching this one fight, I believe it.

The ship--creature?--relied on a kind of dimensional rift between it and a given star as a power source. It's fairly reliable, but when it goes strange it goes very strange.

In this case, the rift had impinged on the subspace corona of a gravitic singularity and the resulting relativistic geometry threatened to permanently relink the ship to the black hole instead of the sun. It was terrifying to watch: the ship's plasma scaffold would seem fine for a while, but then the rift would destabilize and the entire beautiful structure would sag inwards. A midnight-black point would appear near the center and the creature would struggle against the imploding darkness.

Over time, as the engineers and technicians reinforced one more linkage, the shape would stabilize, the black maw would diminish and fade, and then all would seem peaceful again.

Sadly, it was not peaceful. Every crew member onboard knew the risks. Each cycle was another chance for annihilation with guaranteed wear on the superstructure, so they strove for redemption. Protected by the aethereal confines of the Walks, the outside world carried on obliviously while reality itself threatened to implode for this little ship...