The Pisces Project

Reach for the stars. That was the promise. Reach for the stars and go further than anyone has dared dreamed possible. It wasn’t enough to travel faster than the speed of light. That was old news. We’d been visiting around the western spiral arm for decades. We’d visited alien worlds; met alien species. We’d made friends. And we’d made enemies. But that wasn’t enough for industrialist Preston Faulkner. He had a dream. He wasn’t content with the Milky Way galaxy. He wasn’t to do what no one dared believe possible. He founded the Pisces Project – an ambitious project to reach the farthest stars. The first Pisces missions – the Corona Deneb – never made it out of the solar

It was the largest ship ever built, though it was more engine than anything. Captain Wyatt McKenzie and his carefully selected crew dared to ride the newly redesigned Jump Drive ship far beyond the known galaxy. And the Jump Drive worked; better than anyone could have hoped. But it also failed. The amount of energy required to power the great drive proved to be too much and the Aurora Nova found itself far from home with no way to cross the endless light years to return home. McKenzie and his crew continued to explore their new home…always looking for the way to repair the Jump Drive and return home…

“Thank you, Duchess.” Slowly, he stood up and frowned. There had to be a good reason he called for a meeting so early in the morning but as he gathered his things to head to the showers, he couldn’t figure out what it was. Of course, time was a dubious concept on board the Aurora Nova. The ship was 14.7 million light years from home so adhering to the Earth’s rotational schedule was mostly for convenience and a semblance of normalcy. A few minutes later, he’d shuffled down the dimly lit hall connecting the crew’s quarters to the shower room they all shared. Some had balked at the idea of a communal rest room but for space and conservation purposes, the bean-counters won that debate. The lights flickered on as he entered. “Shower. Hot.” He said as he stepped into the glass-lined stall as the shower heads burst into life, filling the small room with billowing steam as it did. It was a tight fit, not really built for someone over six feet tall but he made do. Water was, of course, a concern. They were three months into what was supposed to be an eighteen-month mission. Now that the Jump Drive offered no hope of returning them home, water usage was a huge