Truth's Light

The Truth's Light was a space exploration vessel tasked with charting the Bajic Sector. It and its crew were the first to survive an encounter with the deadly spaceborne creatures known as the scree.

During the course of its search for clear or stable paths through the Vergesso Asteroids, the Truth's Light discovered a large number of derelict spacecraft drifting lifelessly among the asteroids. The crew boarded one of the less-dilapidated vessels and tried to ascertain what had happened, but what they found turned up more questions than answers. Destroyed equipment and walls that had been scorched by blaster fire hinted that some sort of battle had taken place. However, many breaches in the hull and the absence of any of the supposed combatants mystified them. They moved on, recording information and images of the various deserted vessels that they had encountered&mdash;at least one of which still contained formerly valuable cargo, which led them to discard the possibility that pirates were responsible for the starship graveyard. As they prepared to leave the system weeks later, the day-to-day business of the Truth's Light was broken by alarms and the sound of thudding on its hull. The ship's sensors relayed the news that the ship's hull had been breached and its captain ordered the crew to man the gunning stations. It was then that they finally saw what was responsible for the many derelict vessels that they had seen so many weeks before: a large group of black and blue insectile creatures had attached themselves to the hull and were trying to enter the ship. The gunners of the Truth's Light tried to fend the creatures off, but could only hit those which had not yet attached themselves to the hull.

Recognizing the seriousness of the situation, the captain accelerated the Truth's Light to lightspeed. Upon reverting back to realspace in a nearby star system, the ship's crew discovered how close they and the Truth's Light had come to sharing the fate of the derelicts that they had found in the asteroid field. The damage that the creatures had caused to the ship was considerable. For instance, the creatures had been able to melt away the ship's hull in some places with a corrosive liquid. However, the insects, which would later come to be known as the scree, had detached from the hull of the Truth's Light after had made the jump to lightspeed.