Eridani

The crown jewel of the Eridani system burned against the blackness of space. 40 Eridani A shone a brilliant red-orange as it rotated happily in the Auriga constellation. It was a type K, an average aging star along the main sequence, smaller and cooler than Sol. It hiccuped, kicking a stream of high energy plasma away from it in a flash of light so bright that the Kongai starcruiser T'fari's main optical systems overloaded seven light-minutes away, forcing a course change to turn away from the flare.

Sixteen years later, a new light surrounded both the flare and the star, without warning and without wavering in intensity. The controller at the Eridani starport looked down at his console when the amber alert lights started flashing. Three power spikes in rapid succession flashed on his EM sensors. The first one was the T'fari's shields going up. The second was the biggest energy wave he'd ever seen in his sixty-two years of service. The third, not surprisingly, was the T'fari's jump engines coming online, a yellow jump point into hyperspace forming twenty-thousand tezlov off their port bow.

He stood, looking up and out of the viewport. A bright speck of light winked into existence and began growing larger and brighter, larger and ever brighter. In a remarkably detached, deadpan tone of voice, he communicated the only thought in his mind to open space as the entire station was immersed in the pure, white light of the approaching wave.

“Not again.”

He sat in his chair and checked his readings one more time. Confirming the imminent
arrival of the wave, he looked up, and for one brief moment, just as the T'fari's jump point closed into a twinkle of light, it seemed to him that the universe itself gave him the cosmic equivalent of the wink and the gun. Then, the jump point, the station, the planet, the entire Eridani system improbably disappeared without trace.

Only three living souls saw what used to be a decent getaway within five jumps of all the major tourist areas in the sector, be replaced by a satellite map of the city of Akron. They all walked in the room at the same time.