LOG_033_SOMBRE_DIMANCHE

The space station Sombre dimanche drifts into orbit around HKC 2901, closing in on a far trajectory from deep space. Here, it will linger, a vast geometry visible to any dirtside observers even in broad daylight, comparable in size to the biggest moons in the system at its widest, a silent and shimmering beast mantled upon the horizon. To the station, this is but a brief stop on its endless journey; in two months, it will set upon its plodding trek again, outbound into the dark to parts unknown.

– excerpt from records collected on HKC 2901 d circa E.S. 2765, unknown author

Sombre dimanche was the first, and last, of a line of DSE superstations. Designed and built by several HIC member nations, it was part of an ambitious project in pursuit of interstellar exploration and research. Equipped with four Horizon drives, a modular design, and autonomous self-repair and -construction systems, it was meant to be a mostly self-sufficient station destined for long independent expeditions, crewed by over ten thousand personnel selected from varying backgrounds. The decline of the HIC, delays caused by multiple problems during its troubled development, and rising tensions between the various powers of the time brought an end to the program not long after Sombre dimanche‘s commissioning.

Over time, design oversights and software quirks enabled its robust autonomous systems to continue building upon the original structure long past its intended specifications, sometimes even independently rerouting the station for self-resupply. Communications with its human crew became sporadic and entirely ceased two decades into its expedition, and the more supernaturally-inclined even claim that all the original humans had slowly become supplanted by the ship itself. The sprawling structure grew so large that many of its oldest partitions are functionally abandoned: at the heart of the station, one can travel for miles without seeing another living being—with nothing for company except the arcing bones of a rusting skeleton and the echo of one’s own breath in the dark depths.