The Tale of the Ramble On
Title: The Tale of the Ramble On: a futuristic ghost story
Fandom: none, though there's a heavy Firefly influence
Rating: PG I s'pose
Notes: this is what comes from binging on Firefly. Well, this and an urge to talk in their parlance and swear in Chinese. ^_^
Also: if you have the song (Ramble On by Led Zeppelin), listen to it when reading this (it adds a whole other dimension!). :D if not, you can download it from the above link (WMA format @ mediafire)
A couple centuries in the future, they have a tale that gets told by old spacemen who’ve been out in the black maybe a bit too long. They say there’s a ship, a drifter, ‘round near the Cygni 5 belt that’s been abandoned for decades, a relic of the early days of space pioneering. Like any good ghost story, they say it has a tragic past.
Now I s'pose you'd be wanting to hear about this ship? Well, gimme a minute to settle down and get a drink. Let's see if I remember how it goes...
The ship set out from the old spaceyards of Delphi in the fall of ’83 (that’s 2183, to be exact) in a spirit of new discovery. In nostalgia for some of the culture of old earth, they named her after a song that had been popular some 200 years before-a song that had been written about a book, actually, one of the great Earth classics. The Ramble On, so the story goes, left Delphi with a cargo of supplies for the more remote moons and a host of passengers. This is the part where I’m supposed to say something like "and they were never heard from again," but that wasn’t the case. The Ramble On served a good eleven years of service, moving stuff from one end of the system to the other. Weren’t many willing to make the trip in those days, so folks came to depend on her and her crew for medicines and equipment and anything they couldn’t fashion or grow themselves. The crew had a joke, a gimmick: their signature move was, when they got into atmo, to start blasting that song-the one they were named for-from external speakers and on all radio frequencies, to let people know they’d arrived. The sound would carry for miles, and everyone knew the ship had come in.
Toward the end of her first decade of service, however, the crew of the Ramble On started reporting problems with the ship, phantom bugs and glitches in the equipment that no mechanic could ever pinpoint. Still, the ship carried out her duties as long as she could fly; people depended on the supplies she ferried and the crew wouldn’t let ‘em down.
But one day, they were late to an arranged drop, and no one had heard from the Ramble On in weeks. The ship never did show up. Search parties were sent out, of course, but nothing ever turned up; the only clue was an unverified report from a scavenger crew about a ship matching the description of the Ramble On, completely empty and all pods ejected. They said they found it by following this “eerie-ass music” they’d picked up from their equipment. There was no word as to where they’d found said relic, of course. Scavengers are notoriously tight-lipped about their finds.
And that’s the last anyone heard of the Ramble On for years, until the stories started coming in of a ship, a ghost ship out in the black, trundling back and forth in her deliveries. It’s said if you follow it a while, eventually it’ll disappear or lead you to destruction. Sometimes there’s no ship, just a tinny crackle over the radio of a long-forgotten song, a signal from nowhere in particular. Pilots go out of their way to avoid that section of space, sometimes adding parsecs and parsecs onto their travels.
I don’t blame them. It’s downright eerie. Yes, before you ask. I’ve heard it. Years and years ago, I had a captain who didn’t care about the stories and wanted to shave off some time on the way to one of Arcadia's moons. A fair number of the crew were spooked, but the captain didn’t listen. Sure enough, we started picking up a weak signal going through the Cygni 5 belt. They put it through the ship’s comm so everyone could hear it. This tinny little song playing all crackly over the speakers, echoing through the ship. I got goosebumps, let me tell you. The music slowly faded in for the better part of a quarter hour, then slowly, slowly faded out again, playing that blasted song over and over again. And then it was gone. I've never heard it again, but every so often when someone comes into port somewhere talkin' about ghost ships in the black and music from nowhere, I know the Ramble On is still out there, making her way through the stars with naught but that song to keep her company.
Fandom: none, though there's a heavy Firefly influence
Rating: PG I s'pose
Notes: this is what comes from binging on Firefly. Well, this and an urge to talk in their parlance and swear in Chinese. ^_^
Also: if you have the song (Ramble On by Led Zeppelin), listen to it when reading this (it adds a whole other dimension!). :D if not, you can download it from the above link (WMA format @ mediafire)
A couple centuries in the future, they have a tale that gets told by old spacemen who’ve been out in the black maybe a bit too long. They say there’s a ship, a drifter, ‘round near the Cygni 5 belt that’s been abandoned for decades, a relic of the early days of space pioneering. Like any good ghost story, they say it has a tragic past.
Now I s'pose you'd be wanting to hear about this ship? Well, gimme a minute to settle down and get a drink. Let's see if I remember how it goes...
The ship set out from the old spaceyards of Delphi in the fall of ’83 (that’s 2183, to be exact) in a spirit of new discovery. In nostalgia for some of the culture of old earth, they named her after a song that had been popular some 200 years before-a song that had been written about a book, actually, one of the great Earth classics. The Ramble On, so the story goes, left Delphi with a cargo of supplies for the more remote moons and a host of passengers. This is the part where I’m supposed to say something like "and they were never heard from again," but that wasn’t the case. The Ramble On served a good eleven years of service, moving stuff from one end of the system to the other. Weren’t many willing to make the trip in those days, so folks came to depend on her and her crew for medicines and equipment and anything they couldn’t fashion or grow themselves. The crew had a joke, a gimmick: their signature move was, when they got into atmo, to start blasting that song-the one they were named for-from external speakers and on all radio frequencies, to let people know they’d arrived. The sound would carry for miles, and everyone knew the ship had come in.
Toward the end of her first decade of service, however, the crew of the Ramble On started reporting problems with the ship, phantom bugs and glitches in the equipment that no mechanic could ever pinpoint. Still, the ship carried out her duties as long as she could fly; people depended on the supplies she ferried and the crew wouldn’t let ‘em down.
But one day, they were late to an arranged drop, and no one had heard from the Ramble On in weeks. The ship never did show up. Search parties were sent out, of course, but nothing ever turned up; the only clue was an unverified report from a scavenger crew about a ship matching the description of the Ramble On, completely empty and all pods ejected. They said they found it by following this “eerie-ass music” they’d picked up from their equipment. There was no word as to where they’d found said relic, of course. Scavengers are notoriously tight-lipped about their finds.
And that’s the last anyone heard of the Ramble On for years, until the stories started coming in of a ship, a ghost ship out in the black, trundling back and forth in her deliveries. It’s said if you follow it a while, eventually it’ll disappear or lead you to destruction. Sometimes there’s no ship, just a tinny crackle over the radio of a long-forgotten song, a signal from nowhere in particular. Pilots go out of their way to avoid that section of space, sometimes adding parsecs and parsecs onto their travels.
I don’t blame them. It’s downright eerie. Yes, before you ask. I’ve heard it. Years and years ago, I had a captain who didn’t care about the stories and wanted to shave off some time on the way to one of Arcadia's moons. A fair number of the crew were spooked, but the captain didn’t listen. Sure enough, we started picking up a weak signal going through the Cygni 5 belt. They put it through the ship’s comm so everyone could hear it. This tinny little song playing all crackly over the speakers, echoing through the ship. I got goosebumps, let me tell you. The music slowly faded in for the better part of a quarter hour, then slowly, slowly faded out again, playing that blasted song over and over again. And then it was gone. I've never heard it again, but every so often when someone comes into port somewhere talkin' about ghost ships in the black and music from nowhere, I know the Ramble On is still out there, making her way through the stars with naught but that song to keep her company.