The night sky was an inky black, pollutants clouding the spectacular stellar display of the Maelstrom that could be seen from less industrialized worlds. Nikolas shifted his bag from his shoulders, taking out an elongated steel object. He flipped a switch at the bottom of the device and pointed it towards a rubbish heap as its miniature generator flickered to life, illuminating the scrap in a bluish glow. A deep, creaking noise came from somewhere above the smog. Normally Nikolas would have ignored a noise like that in a world full of factories, but he knew that the power was out in this neighborhood due to another bombing by eco-terrorists. He moved his gaze to the oily clouds. With a groan, a large white shape sank down out of the sky. The length of several factories, it gave off a rapidly diminishing blue glow that made the carefully parted hairs on his head stand, as if an electric storm were coming. He tapped his light five times with each of his fingers in an effort to repress the fear that was snaking up his spine. A shout came from somewhere in the distance, and he knew that others had seen this machine. He thought it might have been a Tellerite warship, but it was certainly too large, and there was no visible weaponry. A resounding crash signaled the impact of the unidentified craft. Nikolas winced as two more sections of the city lost power. The ship lay unmoving now, sticking out from the ground unnaturally. A small, oblong metallic capsule fell out from the side of the craft. Muffled voices could be heard coming from inside. They spoke English, but their accents were different from those of any of the people he had ever met. The front of the capsule crumpled outwards, and two men stepped out. They were dressed in segmented white armor that seemed hastily pulled on. "Hello." The taller man straightened out once he noticed Nikolas. "I am Jonathan Doe of the exploratory vessel Wanderlust. What world is this?" "Saaste, sir," said Nikolas, "But who are you? And what is that?" He pointed a grimy finger toward the ship. Its color, once brilliant white, had faded to a dull grayish shade in the thick, greasy air. "That is a standard Corps joint exploration-peacekeeping starship, fitted with prototype short-distance jump boosters. It seems like the engines weren't as short-distance as we first thought. We didn't expect to be out of the Agrippa Nebula until Aphelion Beta at least." Nikolas blinked in confusion.
Here's the basic explanation of the setting of Impact: About 300,000 years from now humanity set off for a heaven-like dimension in an enormous ship called the Ark. The Ark was several times she size of Earth. It used a jump engine, basically a teleportation device, to get there, but was severely damaged. Most of the crew and passengers died, but two sections of the ship survived: A section of the ship's museum dedicated to inventors and the military/medical section. These two parts of the ship fell through time and space several billion years. They crash-landed on opposite sides of the galaxy that will be formed when our galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy collide and form one enormous elliptical galaxy. Calling this galaxy the Maelstrom, these two sections of the ship formed seperate civilizations in time. The museum section formed a society that worshipped inventors as gods, their cities and planets a mixture of advanced and early 1900s technology. The different 'religions' often engage in petty conflicts. The military section formed a high-tech society called the Corps that desires to unite the galaxy under their rule. They are not 'bad guys' and their government is fair and similar to the democracies of today, but they have no right to colonize the entire galaxy.
This is amazing... The vocabulary is astounding. Perhaps paragraphs would make it easier to read, but even without them it was simply captivating...
No. It's a short story that fits into the sci-fi genre, not a story that's sci-fi and happens to also be short.