...Imagine that you suddenly have access to the technology which allows you to travel the universe as easy as you used to see it in space opera. Across any distances, using creatures intended to life in space and space flight. As a horse is intended to fast running. And you don't have to create this horse from scratch, no more exhausting space exploration programs. It is enough to do the same as your forefather did thousands of years ago - just to invent a bridle, a saddle and spurs. And the world will be greatly enlarged. But the price of it is someone else's freedom.

But ships, like restive horses, did not appreciate such inventions. I don't mean that the Engineers didn't try to agree. Or that they started to use spurs immediately. No. The first attempts to curb the ships were almost delicate, but they inevitably ended in tragedy. These creatures were aggressive. Passengers were perceived as something alien. A pilot could have been killed at any moment, for no apparent reason. Everyone who were inside was infected with pathogen spores turning them into xenomorphs, or just was mechanically crushed with muscle contractions. In an instant. After a moment a ship was absorbed even these shapeless remains... a terrible death, though instant.

No wonder that Engineers responded with the same brutality. They began to kill the ships right at the shipyards and to scrape out all organic matter, leaving a hull only. The unique properties of these alien creatures were preserved even after death - it was possible to fly dead ships, no risk of being killed. As for ships themselves... well, a life of an unpredictable bloodthirsty monster is not too much to pay for dream of the stars which came true.

So, the living creatures were killed, and their hulls were refined, that they could fly. The dead ship differed from alive one as much as an empty shell differs from alive snail. Every shellfish thrown into the River grew into a huge ship with ten days. To be kept from flying away, it was chained to a shipyard, and then stunned by high-voltage discharge and caustic chemicals. And then a few weeks all a dangerous organic matter was scrupulously scraped and thrown into the River as pieces of black flesh. Ships remained in their mind for a long time, and their moans sounded similar to the cries of whales and made their way through any protective clothing, through all other sounds. No one worked at the shipyards for more than six months…

But in the very first decades Engineers got a fleet of hundreds ships. Hundreds of explorers roamed space, found planets suitable for settlement and returned back with happy news. Dozens of colonies were founded in new worlds. Wonderful discoveries, exciting prospects... this was all worth of shed blood, wasn't this? After all, the shipyards weren't much worse than a regular slaughterhouse, and how many people really care where a meat on their table comes from?

So the young civilization reached the stars. With a "dead man's hand"...

***
Painting on canvas, "Prometheus" and "Alien: Covenant" inspired.

In my Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/listing/612544.....acrylic-canvas

All my "Alien: Covenant" inspired things:

https://hontor.deviantart.com/galle.....Alien-Covenant