DeepSpace: Zeta-13 and the Cycle of Anomalies (Ea)(Com)

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A long, long time ago, Zeta-13 was abandoned when some sort of cosmic event caused it to become a center of anomalies that make the improbable and impossible happen; because of that, Zeta-13 and the space around it were abandoned without further research.

No one truly knows what happened to cause it to become like this and no one seemed to ever care enough to find out. It was fated to be a no-go zone forever, forgotten to time and space, like many things in the universe.

However, after so many years of being abandoned, one of its anomalies somehow restored the communications center and replied to the original distress signal from when Zeta-13 was abandoned all those years ago.

It drew in many captains from the sectors around it, and in the end, of all those who received it, only eleven captains made it to the space station that orbited above Zeta-13, each one hoping to claim it and the potential treasure it holds within.

Having flown through a mess of anomalies just to get here, each Catpian now thought they knew the risks of being here, but they could never be prepared for what was to come; truly no one could have been.

The space station vanished in an instant, sending them all falling to the ground. Luckily, they were caught by their ships. Unluckily, the next anomaly happened moments afterward, merging each captain with their ship.

Now each one was waking up on the surface of Zeta-13 and realizing what had happened to them. Some are confused, some are annoyed, and others are happy with the changes and powers that came with their new bodies.

Now each of them has a shared goal: reach the center of Zeta-13 and hopefully make getting a new feminine body and losing their ship worth it, all while being worried about the next potential anomaly and what it could do to them.

At least they have one thing in their favor: they happened to arrive at the end of Zeta-13’s rotation period, which, while not known to anyone alive in this day and age, greatly influences the way the anomalies occur on the surface and the space around it.

Zeta-13 completes one rotation about once every year, and the anomalies that occur in the space around it change in number and frequency depending on where in its cycle it currently is. At the start of its cycle, anomalies are relatively low.

The sector of space around Zeta-13 and the desert area outside of the center of the base have nearly no anomalies early on in the cycle, but as the cycle goes on, the anomalies slowly start to occur more and more, all while becoming more powerful.

Towards the end of its cycle, the anomalies are nearly constant and powerful enough to alter reality without cause or warning, as the captains experienced firsthand. The captains arrived at the very end of Zeta-13’s cycle, meaning the anomalies were as bad as they could get.

Which was why the space station vanished and the captains merged with their ships, and why the captains currently feared what else the anomalies were capable of. Fortunately for the captains, Zeta-13’s rotation completed while they were unconscious.

So now this sector of space was calm and quiet, and there were little to no anomalies occurring around Zeta-13 or the desert that surrounds its main base. Of course this poses a new problem for the captains that find themselves stranded here.

Having been merged with their ships, they have no way to leave Zeta-13 even if they claim it as their own. They would need someone with a ship to come and pick them up or to follow the distress signal and arrive here on their own.

That, however, can’t happen now that a lot of the anomalies have died down. The center of Zeta-13 itself still has anomalies, but the one that made the original distress beacon from the fall of Zeta-13 activate again was gone.

It somehow powered the communications station in the control center and sent that very old message out. Without it being powered and sent out, no one else even knew how to find Zeta-13, never mind know that a bunch of people were trapped on it.

So for now, each of them were stranded on Zeta-13, and no one was coming for them. If they wanted a chance to get off of this place, they would have to bravely travel to the center and find the communications station and hope they could get it working again.

Of course brave would be an understatement. The center of Zeta-13 is unaffected by the rotation cycle when it comes to anomalies. The anomalies work very differently there, as the closer you get to the center, the smaller the anomalies become in size.

When you first step into the entrance of the massive center base, the anomalies can be as big as a kilometer, but as you get closer and closer to the actual center of the base, the place with the three most vital buildings, they shrink down to less than half of that.

That may not sound so bad, but as the anomalies shrink down, they start to occur more frequently and in much greater volumes. It can be so bad in certain places that you can’t even walk down a corridor.

At the same time, on the outskirts of the base, you can walk or even fly around them with ease. Traveling the center is extremely tricky and dangerous, and being able to react well and quickly is vital here.

If the captains can navigate through these anomalies, they will make it to the true center, where the three most important buildings lie and wait. The first of those buildings is the control center, which is where each captain strives to get to first.

This building allows whoever gets there first to claim it as theirs and gain control over all the base’s operational systems. The second building is the main reactor, which supplies energy to Zeta-13 and makes everything work.

It also stores other types of energy gathered by the robots and drones that once worked here, as well as some other resources, though none as strong, valuable, or even as powerful as the custom-built reactor that's installed.

The final building and possibly the most important building, is the laboratory. Zeta-13 was originally built because a team of scientists had discovered some sort of incredible power in this area and wanted to learn more about it.

However, perhaps from their meddling, or because it was going to happen one day anyway, they caused the first anomaly to occur right in that lab. The very first anomaly caused the research team to vanish, with no trace. As the anomaly vanished, it triggered another anomaly to occur.

That continued to repeat and get more intense as Zeta-13 got closer to completing its cycle. Having lost the main team of scientists and Zeta-13 becoming more dangerous, those that remained had no choice but to abandon it.

Perhaps the captains can find out more about what really happened there or even a way to stop the anomalies, or perhaps they can’t be stopped and the captains themselves are walking towards something that could make them vanish like the original scientist.