Eli activated the Alcubierre envelope and immediately set about cracking open the locked program. He'd never been gifted with patience for new things in boxes. Besides he had about three weeks of travel time with nothing else but recorded media to kill. He was understandably annoyed when he got it open on the third day in. The program was labeled Variable Optical Life Detection Operations Systems, or VOLD.OS. and apparently after browsing it's manual, could use any telescope array to find extant and hitherto unknown types of life.

Having opened the sealed program, he was left with little else to do to kill time. Perhaps actually read the information on the systems he'd been sent to survey? He scoffed at that. It took the enjoyment out of entering a system and feeling the layout with his sensors, discovering where the planets lay, the asteroid fields congregated and the other interesting quirks of a system. Rather he set about designing a remote piloted body, something he could use next time he found a new life form, and maybe something to do more delicate tasks with like greeting aliens.

He started with basic human measurements, 6'1" with wide shoulders. But rather than have it be obviously droid from a distance, he covered it in a suit fashioned after the astronauts of old, a spherical helmet, mirrored visor with projectors to show his V.A. when the visor was up. A large backpack to house the battery. Small ion thrusters to use in vacuum, just in case he needed to use it for something in a vacuum.

After spending about a week drafting and tweaking, he had a workable blueprint for use, then used some remaining materials he set it to be assembled. However he still had a week or so of time left to waste. He settled in to just waiting and listening to the pitter-patter of particles on the spacial envelope, and thinking of aliens with glowing eyes.

*Thunk!*

Jarred away from his daydreaming, the gentle noise of debris and particles had turned to a steady droning hiss. He'd lost track of time and was now traveling through a field of large debris, possibly asteroids. If he didn't disengage the drive, the chances of the envelope failing from stress and smearing him acro-

*Thunk, Thunk, ZIPPP*

A brilliant flash of light amid a ripple in space illuminates a seemingly endless field of asteroids, heralding the arrival of a white hull appearing just beyond the rocks. Momentum carried it further in, smoke and sparks streaming from a three metre wide gouge in its smooth surface.

"Oh fuck, nononononono!"

Streamed from Eli, as he drifted further into the field. His forward engines had been disabled by whatever had punched through him like cheap gift wrap. Twisting with internal gyroscopes, he tried to get his rear engines inline to cancel his momentum. Milliseconds too late however, as a thunderous crunch of tortured metal echoed through his hull. A rock the size of an elephant came from below and collided with his right side crushing it several feet inwards. His coolant canisters ruptured and started boiling off, one of his arms had been twisted around itself and fuel lines to thrusters on the damaged side were pinched off.

Hurriedly, he put as much power as he could into his gyroscopes,burning any remaining thrusters above their tolerances to stabilize his velocity relative to local space. A tense few minutes of twisting, turning, and braking left him adrift. Green plasma leaked from his bay, smoke from smouldering electronics in the gouge that scarred his top, mixed its grey with the green before dissipating.

"Fuck I should be dead. How bad a shape am I in?" Eli exhaled, trembling fear settled in, a slow realization of how close to destruction he'd come. Warnings and alarms rang in his mind, half of which signaling his core might be damaged. Half of his remaining thrusters were slag, his rear engines were functioning with some scrapes but fuel was draining rapidly.

The communication array was fried, the refinery/assembler had managed to escape almost unharmed. His battery bank was fine but the M:E generator was totalled. Whatever had broken the alcubierre envelope had tore right through the center of it, almost exactly. As he looked through his battered body, the VOLD.OS program started up, taking control of the telescope array and several remaining sensors, it scanned the asteroid field, paused, then intoned in grey emotionless voice.

-Life forms detected-

"Oh you've got to be kidding me I've barely any sensors left to see with." He thought, "First something nearly scraps me, and drops me out of jump, now I've got a faulty program that's set to autorun, telling there's something living out here in the middle of nowhere."

As he drifted, complaining, a sibilant voice reminiscent of buzzing insect wings and stones scraping together spoke from his wrecked comms ringing through his hull.

"We have found you, white messenger, you will be ours. We thank you for showing us where the Jewelled ones are, please remain here while we attend to them. We shall return soon for you."

As the last word was spoken, a great shape that didn't seem to register properly on Eli's sensors slipped away.

" What the hell was that? "