Chapter 2:
Chapter 2 - The SV-Eclipse (2)
Bored in deep space - Novelisation -
Bored in deep space - Novelisation -Chapter 2 - The SV-Eclipse (2)
The silence that followed my declaration felt heavier than the silence before it. I just named a planet. A ball of mud and rock and god-knew-what-else, millions of kilometres away in the ass-end of the cosmos. It was the most absurdly profound thing I had ever done… in both lives to be honest. I named it as a joke; it was supposed to be a gesture of pure, defiant nonsense in the face of a bullshit crisis I never asked for. I’d done it so many times in the game, slapping a nonsensical name on a newly discovered planet in an unmapped region of space for a laugh. Yet… the ache in my shoulders from the earlier tumble, and the dried sweat on my brow told me this was no game. I was playing for keeps.
Turn Seven. The name tasted of irony. The game I’d been playing before all this: ‘Stellar Hegemony’ -- the one that was supposed to be my last little victory before sleep -- the name was a direct reference to that. Turn Seven, the other players called it. It was often the point in a new game where your fledgling empire finally hit its stride, when you got your second colony ship and started to really expand. A turning point. I could only pray to the vacant void that this new name would be predictive, and not just a monument to my own pathetic sense of humour.
“Fine,” I said, my throat dry as I came to a decision. I pushed myself off the console, my legs still feeling like they were made of someone else’s borrowed muscle. “Calliope… Plot a course. Take us to ‘Turn Seven’.”
The synthetic calmness was back in an instant, the hum of the ship shifting subtly, its timbre changing as though a massive, unseen gear had been engaged. “Course plotted. Navigational subroutines engaged,” she announced, the lights on the console flickered in a sequence I was already starting to recognise as activity. It was as though I had been in the belly of a large leviathan and these blinking lights were the movements of its nerves. “Autopilot is now locked. ETA: seven standard hours, thirteen minutes.”
“Seven hours, huh?” A lifetime. My eyes drifted back to the captain’s chair. The leather straps dangled from its sides like the limo tentacles of a dead creature. With a sigh that seemed to drain the last of the energy from my body, I trudged back and collapsed into it. My hands moved with a grim familiarity, pulling the harness over my shoulders and chest. The click of the buckles locking home was a grim punctuation on my current reality. If the journey so far had been anything to go by, I wasn’t taking any chances.
The groaning, shuddering lurch I had steeled myself for never came. Of course it wouldn’t, why would it? This was a spaceship, not a bus. Instead, there was a gentle, almost imperceptible push, a feeling of deep, resonant power that vibrated up through the soles of my boots and settled in my bones. It was a constant, steady thrum, the sound of a purposeful engine doing its job. Outside the forward viewport -- of which I just realised had been there all along -- the field of black, pinpricked stars began to shift.
“Propulsion systems are operating at one hundred percent efficiency, Captain,” Calliope reported, her ghostly voice echoing in the humming bridge. “In-atmosphere landing capability remains within optimal parameters. Atmospheric entry and planetfall on Turn Seven is calculated to be a safe endeavour.”
“No, don’t say that.” I groaned. My head fell back against the hard rest of the chair with the sterile light of the bridge washing over my face. A lengthy, tired sigh. “You’re just asking to tempt fate.”
“What do you mean, Captain?”
“It’s nothing, Calliope. Just reminiscing about an old acquaintance. His name was Murphy. Prickly little guy he was.” I ran a hand over my face, massaging the bridge of my nose. “Always going on and on about his laws.” I shook my head. “Look, just… take it slow. Nice and easy. We’re in no rush so prioritise safety.”
“Command understood,” the AI replied, her tone utterly flat, betraying no understanding of my sarcasm or anxiety. “Navigational thrust reduced by twenty-five percent. We will arrive in eight standard hours and fifty-one minutes,” she recalculated.
An extra hour and a half for a slower, safer approach. It was a price I was more than willing to pay for the peace of mind. I watched the stars crawl past the viewport, a silent, distant caravan of light. My entire world had been reduced to this chair, this bridge, this tin can hurtling towards a forgotten ball of rock named after a simulation game. A wave of profound, lonely weariness washed over me, a ride which threatened to pull me under. The adrenaline of everything had finally weaned off, leaving behind a hollow ache and a mind so full of numb static it was almost painful to form thoughts. Sleep… Yeah, sleep would’ve been nice, but there was something before that; I needed to know more about my flying prison -- the SV-Eclipse.
“Calliope,” I said, my voice barely a whisper against the ship’s low-frequency thrum. I leaned my elbow against the armrest, my face resting against the back of my hand. “I seem to be suffering from a temporary case of amnesia due to that unsanctioned Fold Jump. Remind me again about the specifications of this ship. My ship, the SV-Eclipse.”
“Query acknowledged. Accessing ship schematics from the central database…” the AI’s voice chimed, a calm, unfeeling metronome to the ship’s low-frequency grumbling.
The holographic display shimmered, the lonely image of Turn Seven dissolved into a constellation of blue lines and geometric forms. They quickly coalesced into a three-dimensional rendering, slowly rotating in the space between my chair and the forward viewport. A vessel took shape. My vessel -- the SV-Eclipse.
I winced. It was… uglier than sin. Completely antithetical to the pristine and ordered image of the future I held in my mind.
The SV-Eclipse was a behemoth of brutalist engineering. It was a rectangular monolith carved from gunmetal grey plates and slathered with swathes of utilitarian black and glowing blues. It wasn’t so much a ship as it was a flying cargo container with aspirations. Vaguely rectangular, yes, but with bulky, stubby wings jutting out from its midsection that looked less aerodynamic and more like someone had slapped industrial shelving onto the sides. The engines at the rear were a cluster of massive, belching thrusters, held on a chassis that looked like it was designed by someone who’d only ever heard of the word ‘grace’ in a dictionary definition for something completely different.
It was exactly as I imagined, and somehow it exceeded my expectations. Repeating an earlier sentiment: function over form, and then beating that form with an ugly stick until it forgot what fun even was. If a 21st century garbage truck and a Soviet-era apartment block had a child, this would no doubt be its depressing spawn. You’d get shot for painting racing stripes on this thing because that would be a waste of perfectly good paint. The ship even had small scratches and dents along it as if it was attempting to tell me a story -- a story of a long, hard life. There’s so much I didn’t know about it, but I was starting to figure out just what kind of vessel I now commanded: a blue-collar workhorse.
“SV-Eclipse. Class: Interstellar Hauler,” Calliope began, her synthesised voice droning over the image with detached pride. “Manufacturer: Hyperion Drive Yards. Registry: Outer Rim Commercial Guild. Commissioning date: 15287 Standard Cycles ago.”
Numbers flickered to life next to the holographic ship projection. “Ship specification: length, two hundred and ten metres. Beam. Eighty metres. Height, fifty-five metres. Gross registered tonnage is approximately twelve thousand metric tons. Primary purpose is long-range transport of raw materials and finished goods between established colonies and frontier worlds.”
From the readings, about seventy percent of this ugly leviathan was storage… which made sense. Of course it was. I wasn’t some dashing space explorer or a military captain; I was a space trucker. If I wasn’t in the midst of a life or death struggle I’d have made a groan. A delivery man whose cargo hold was probably filled with something mundane and profoundly important to a colony on the other side of the galaxy… well, sorry about that. Blame the asshole who forcefully tractor-beamed my spaceship from dark space. I’m sure whoever was missing their iPhone… 462 could wait another month for someone else to deliver it to them.
The schematic zoomed in, peeling away layers of the hull to reveal an interior layout that was just as no-nonsense as everything else. There was no soul to this thing. The ship was a vertical loaf of functional rooms. The bridge, where I was currently, was the crown jewel of this space garbage truck. Directly behind it was a single set of doors leading into my quarters. I leaned off the side of the chair and looked behind, and there it was, my quarters. Or at least the door to it. The door was as grey and boring as the rest of the ship -- I would’ve continued to labour under the misapprehension it was the door to a storage closet if it wasn’t for this schematic.
Below the bridge and my quarters, accessed through either an open elevator -- or in the case of emergencies, an open hatch with a metal ladder -- were the rest of the ship’s facilities. A small section for a phantom crew, maybe two or three extra rooms. A small dining area with what I could only guess was some kind of food… vending machine, alongside a single table and two chairs. A bath and shower room. Some kind of medical room, with a bulky machine that was probably a futuristic auto-doc. The rest of the ship was a narrow series of grey corridors and storage compartments, with a large, cavernous cargo bay taking up the majority of the vessel’s aft section. It was as if a warehouse could fly. I could walk the entire length of the crew access sections in less than five minutes. Claustrophobia? If you looked it up this ship would be the first result on google.
“The crew quarters are… Spartan,” I muttered. “Good thing there is no crew; it’d be cruel to keep hamsters in such a confined space.”
“Design philosophy prioritises durability and ease of maintenance over creature comforts, Captain,” Calliope clarified. “All modules are constructed from reinforced titanium composite and feature replaceable, standardised components to facilitate self-repair in remote locations.”
“Of course they are,” I sighed, rubbing my temples. “It’s the Toyota Hilux of spaceships.”
I studied the holographic projection of the ship’s interior before me, particularly my quarters. A single bed. A desk. A sonic shower. Honestly, it wasn’t too much different from my old apartment. Different eras yet the same living arrangements… somehow the thought was both comforting and horrifying. This was my life; Noah Lee, age 26, Captain of a 12000-ton space brick. Great.
“I have no data for Toyota Hilux,” chimed my robot companion.
“Yeah, I would be surprised if you did.” I scoffed sarcastically to myself. “It’s a joke from the 21st century; you wouldn’t get it.”
“... Understood, Captain,” she replied after a brief pause. It could’ve just been me, but she almost sounded offended. It was probably just me. I’m tired…
“Anyway,” I said, trying to shift topics. “What were we transporting before we were forcibly torn from our route? Is the package still intact?” I asked with a small dose of hope, perhaps there might be something useful within the haul for me to salvage. “And who were we delivering for?” I paused. “I want everything about this journey, Calliope. Show me the flight logs, from start to finish.” It was doubtful, but on the off-chance there was anything even remotely resembling a clue about why I was put in this situation, I wanted to know.
“Query accepted,” the AI responded. “Manifest review in progress… Accessing flight data recorder logs…”
A new panel opened up on the hologram besides the ship’s schematics. It was a log, but not what I expected. The entire list of entries was a chilling, uniform red.
---
[LOG_001: ROUTE_INITIATED. DEPARTURE: TAU CETI PRIME. DESTINATION: NEW CYPRESS COLONY.]
[LOG_002: TRANSIT VIA ESTABLISHED SPACELANE 44-B. FOLD DRIVE INACTIVE.]
[LOG_003: ROUTE NOMINAL. ETA: 21 STANDARD CYCLES.]
[LOG_004: EXTERNAL BYPASS DETECTED. FIREWALL BREACHED. SOURCE: UNKNOWN.]
[LOG_005: AUTOPILOT OVERRIDDEN. SOURCE: EXTERNAL COMMAND.]
[LOG_006: UNSANCTIONED FOLD DRIVE ACTIVATION SEQUENCE INITIATED. COORDINATES: DARK SPACE – SECTOR GM-78.]
---
As the flight logs flickered up, my stomach did a slow, cold roll. Red logs. Red was bad. Red was the universal colour for ‘you are completely screwed’. I stared at the ghostly text, each line another nail hammered into the coffin of my hopes and dreams. A hack. An override. Someone, or something, had taken control of this flying brick and tossed it into the void like an empty soda can.
I took a deep breath. Closed my eyes. Paused. “Continue,” I said, the word feeling like sandpaper in my throat. I had to know. I had to see the end of this digital suicide note.
Calliope’s unblinking, unfeeling monotone continued to fill the bridge, each word a chip of ice against the ship’s steady hum. “Final log entry: Structural stress exceeding tolerance. Emergency power rerouting. Life sport at thirty-seven percent and falling. Fold Jump event horizon achieved. All navigation systems offline…”
Then, the AI paused -- a digital gulp. The silence stretched, thicker than before. It wasn’t the calculated pause of a machine sifting through data; it was the quiet before a storm. Another line of text flickered to life beneath the final red entry. This one was different. It wasn’t a log. It was a raw data packet, a ghost in the system, flagged with a garbled, corrupted identifier that shimmered in and out of focus.
---
[DATA_BURST_//? SOURCE_TRACE... INCOMPLETE... TRIANGULATING... TRIANGULATION FAILED... ESTIMATED ORIGIN: PLANETARY BODY, LOCAL_STAR_//?]
---
I froze. The fine hairs on the back of my neck stood as I felt goosebumps along my arms. My eyes stared unblinkingly at the hologram. The hologram shifted as a faint, beeping light appeared on the simple wireframe diagram of this distant and supposedly uncharted system. The indicator wasn’t on the star, nor floating in the empty void around it. No… the indicator was right on top of the single, blue-green marble, the only planet in this entire star system. The place where I was currently headed. The place I had just named.
The pieces were slowly clicking together with a horrifying, audible snap in my mind. The hack wasn’t from some rival corporation or a rogue pirate fleet hiding in an asteroid belt. It wasn’t a random act of cosmic vandalism… It was a lure.
“Calliope,” my voice was a low, tense whisper laced with a sudden, profound dread. “Are you telling me that the… the signal, the override command that flung us out here… it came from there?” I pointed a trembling finger at the hologram, at the unassuming blue dot that had suddenly transformed from a desperate, last-minute sanctuary into a carefully laid trap. This planet that wasn’t even supposed to be colonised or settled… there was someone -- or something -- there that lured me here on purpose.
“Affirmative, Captain,” Calliope confirmed, the blinking lights on the hologram pulsed with a steady, mocking rhythm. “The unsanctioned command originated from a single, powerful burst transmission. Signal decay and the chaotic nature of the Fold Jump have corrupted ninety-eight percent of the data packet, making a full trace and content analysis impossible. That said, Turn Seven is the only planetary body in this system, therefore logic dictates that the transmission came from there.”
The AI delivered this cataclysmic information with the same placid tone it used to report fuel consumption. To her, it was just a fact, a data point. To me, it was a death sentence… or perhaps worse. I wasn’t a shipwrecked sailor who had stumbled upon a deserted island. No, I was a moth, and someone on that planet had just flicked on a very big, very dangerous light, knowing I’d be drawn to it. I sank back into the captain’s chair, the leather harness creaking in protest. My mind raced for answers and solutions. Do I turn back? In this damaged hulk? We couldn’t even repair the Fold Drive for another forty-five days, and even that was under the assumption we had the spare parts to fix it, which we definitely didn’t. Was it better to sit here and wait? Wait for what? For a rescue? For whatever sent that signal to get impatient and come find me?
“So…” I said to the empty bridge, the words tasting like a bitter medicine. “This isn’t an accident.” My cynical brain, usually a source of dark comfort, was now screaming in alarm. “We’re not lost. We were delivered.”
There was no other logical explanation. Someone on that planet wanted the SV-Eclipse specifically.
Why?
Did they want the cargo I was transporting? Or was it the ship itself they were targeting… either way, they didn’t ask nicely. They reached out with a digital hook and reeled us in, nearly tearing the ship apart in the process.
My gaze fell upon the cargo bay indicator in the schematic, which now taunted me with its sheer size. Seventy percent of the ship. What was inside that was so important they’d risk tearing a hole in reality to get it? Rare minerals? Advanced weapons? Or was it something far worse? And why me? I wasn’t even supposed to be here -- just a ghost in someone else’s body. Or perhaps it wasn’t another body… perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence I found myself in this place, in this body. Was the phenomenon of me waking up in this body somehow related to me being kidnapped?
So many questions, yet no answers.
I was being toyed with. We were rats in a maze, and the cheese was sitting on a planet that didn’t even have a name until I’d just given it one.
“Son of a bitch…”
The silence that followed my declaration felt heavier than the silence before it. I just named a planet. A ball of mud and rock and god-knew-what-else, millions of kilometres away in the ass-end of the cosmos. It was the most absurdly profound thing I had ever done… in both lives to be honest. I named it as a joke; it was supposed to be a gesture of pure, defiant nonsense in the face of a bullshit crisis I never asked for. I’d done it so many times in the game, slapping a nonsensical name on a newly discovered planet in an unmapped region of space for a laugh. Yet… the ache in my shoulders from the earlier tumble, and the dried sweat on my brow told me this was no game. I was playing for keeps.
Turn Seven. The name tasted of irony. The game I’d been playing before all this: ‘Stellar Hegemony’ -- the one that was supposed to be my last little victory before sleep -- the name was a direct reference to that. Turn Seven, the other players called it. It was often the point in a new game where your fledgling empire finally hit its stride, when you got your second colony ship and started to really expand. A turning point. I could only pray to the vacant void that this new name would be predictive, and not just a monument to my own pathetic sense of humour.
“Fine,” I said, my throat dry as I came to a decision. I pushed myself off the console, my legs still feeling like they were made of someone else’s borrowed muscle. “Calliope… Plot a course. Take us to ‘Turn Seven’.”
The synthetic calmness was back in an instant, the hum of the ship shifting subtly, its timbre changing as though a massive, unseen gear had been engaged. “Course plotted. Navigational subroutines engaged,” she announced, the lights on the console flickered in a sequence I was already starting to recognise as activity. It was as though I had been in the belly of a large leviathan and these blinking lights were the movements of its nerves. “Autopilot is now locked. ETA: seven standard hours, thirteen minutes.”
“Seven hours, huh?” A lifetime. My eyes drifted back to the captain’s chair. The leather straps dangled from its sides like the limo tentacles of a dead creature. With a sigh that seemed to drain the last of the energy from my body, I trudged back and collapsed into it. My hands moved with a grim familiarity, pulling the harness over my shoulders and chest. The click of the buckles locking home was a grim punctuation on my current reality. If the journey so far had been anything to go by, I wasn’t taking any chances.
The groaning, shuddering lurch I had steeled myself for never came. Of course it wouldn’t, why would it? This was a spaceship, not a bus. Instead, there was a gentle, almost imperceptible push, a feeling of deep, resonant power that vibrated up through the soles of my boots and settled in my bones. It was a constant, steady thrum, the sound of a purposeful engine doing its job. Outside the forward viewport -- of which I just realised had been there all along -- the field of black, pinpricked stars began to shift.
“Propulsion systems are operating at one hundred percent efficiency, Captain,” Calliope reported, her ghostly voice echoing in the humming bridge. “In-atmosphere landing capability remains within optimal parameters. Atmospheric entry and planetfall on Turn Seven is calculated to be a safe endeavour.”
“No, don’t say that.” I groaned. My head fell back against the hard rest of the chair with the sterile light of the bridge washing over my face. A lengthy, tired sigh. “You’re just asking to tempt fate.”
“What do you mean, Captain?”
“It’s nothing, Calliope. Just reminiscing about an old acquaintance. His name was Murphy. Prickly little guy he was.” I ran a hand over my face, massaging the bridge of my nose. “Always going on and on about his laws.” I shook my head. “Look, just… take it slow. Nice and easy. We’re in no rush so prioritise safety.”
“Command understood,” the AI replied, her tone utterly flat, betraying no understanding of my sarcasm or anxiety. “Navigational thrust reduced by twenty-five percent. We will arrive in eight standard hours and fifty-one minutes,” she recalculated.
An extra hour and a half for a slower, safer approach. It was a price I was more than willing to pay for the peace of mind. I watched the stars crawl past the viewport, a silent, distant caravan of light. My entire world had been reduced to this chair, this bridge, this tin can hurtling towards a forgotten ball of rock named after a simulation game. A wave of profound, lonely weariness washed over me, a ride which threatened to pull me under. The adrenaline of everything had finally weaned off, leaving behind a hollow ache and a mind so full of numb static it was almost painful to form thoughts. Sleep… Yeah, sleep would’ve been nice, but there was something before that; I needed to know more about my flying prison -- the SV-Eclipse.
“Calliope,” I said, my voice barely a whisper against the ship’s low-frequency thrum. I leaned my elbow against the armrest, my face resting against the back of my hand. “I seem to be suffering from a temporary case of amnesia due to that unsanctioned Fold Jump. Remind me again about the specifications of this ship. My ship, the SV-Eclipse.”
“Query acknowledged. Accessing ship schematics from the central database…” the AI’s voice chimed, a calm, unfeeling metronome to the ship’s low-frequency grumbling.
The holographic display shimmered, the lonely image of Turn Seven dissolved into a constellation of blue lines and geometric forms. They quickly coalesced into a three-dimensional rendering, slowly rotating in the space between my chair and the forward viewport. A vessel took shape. My vessel -- the SV-Eclipse.
I winced. It was… uglier than sin. Completely antithetical to the pristine and ordered image of the future I held in my mind.
The SV-Eclipse was a behemoth of brutalist engineering. It was a rectangular monolith carved from gunmetal grey plates and slathered with swathes of utilitarian black and glowing blues. It wasn’t so much a ship as it was a flying cargo container with aspirations. Vaguely rectangular, yes, but with bulky, stubby wings jutting out from its midsection that looked less aerodynamic and more like someone had slapped industrial shelving onto the sides. The engines at the rear were a cluster of massive, belching thrusters, held on a chassis that looked like it was designed by someone who’d only ever heard of the word ‘grace’ in a dictionary definition for something completely different.
It was exactly as I imagined, and somehow it exceeded my expectations. Repeating an earlier sentiment: function over form, and then beating that form with an ugly stick until it forgot what fun even was. If a 21st century garbage truck and a Soviet-era apartment block had a child, this would no doubt be its depressing spawn. You’d get shot for painting racing stripes on this thing because that would be a waste of perfectly good paint. The ship even had small scratches and dents along it as if it was attempting to tell me a story -- a story of a long, hard life. There’s so much I didn’t know about it, but I was starting to figure out just what kind of vessel I now commanded: a blue-collar workhorse.
“SV-Eclipse. Class: Interstellar Hauler,” Calliope began, her synthesised voice droning over the image with detached pride. “Manufacturer: Hyperion Drive Yards. Registry: Outer Rim Commercial Guild. Commissioning date: 15287 Standard Cycles ago.”
Numbers flickered to life next to the holographic ship projection. “Ship specification: length, two hundred and ten metres. Beam. Eighty metres. Height, fifty-five metres. Gross registered tonnage is approximately twelve thousand metric tons. Primary purpose is long-range transport of raw materials and finished goods between established colonies and frontier worlds.”
From the readings, about seventy percent of this ugly leviathan was storage… which made sense. Of course it was. I wasn’t some dashing space explorer or a military captain; I was a space trucker. If I wasn’t in the midst of a life or death struggle I’d have made a groan. A delivery man whose cargo hold was probably filled with something mundane and profoundly important to a colony on the other side of the galaxy… well, sorry about that. Blame the asshole who forcefully tractor-beamed my spaceship from dark space. I’m sure whoever was missing their iPhone… 462 could wait another month for someone else to deliver it to them.
The schematic zoomed in, peeling away layers of the hull to reveal an interior layout that was just as no-nonsense as everything else. There was no soul to this thing. The ship was a vertical loaf of functional rooms. The bridge, where I was currently, was the crown jewel of this space garbage truck. Directly behind it was a single set of doors leading into my quarters. I leaned off the side of the chair and looked behind, and there it was, my quarters. Or at least the door to it. The door was as grey and boring as the rest of the ship -- I would’ve continued to labour under the misapprehension it was the door to a storage closet if it wasn’t for this schematic.
Below the bridge and my quarters, accessed through either an open elevator -- or in the case of emergencies, an open hatch with a metal ladder -- were the rest of the ship’s facilities. A small section for a phantom crew, maybe two or three extra rooms. A small dining area with what I could only guess was some kind of food… vending machine, alongside a single table and two chairs. A bath and shower room. Some kind of medical room, with a bulky machine that was probably a futuristic auto-doc. The rest of the ship was a narrow series of grey corridors and storage compartments, with a large, cavernous cargo bay taking up the majority of the vessel’s aft section. It was as if a warehouse could fly. I could walk the entire length of the crew access sections in less than five minutes. Claustrophobia? If you looked it up this ship would be the first result on google.
“The crew quarters are… Spartan,” I muttered. “Good thing there is no crew; it’d be cruel to keep hamsters in such a confined space.”
“Design philosophy prioritises durability and ease of maintenance over creature comforts, Captain,” Calliope clarified. “All modules are constructed from reinforced titanium composite and feature replaceable, standardised components to facilitate self-repair in remote locations.”
“Of course they are,” I sighed, rubbing my temples. “It’s the Toyota Hilux of spaceships.”
I studied the holographic projection of the ship’s interior before me, particularly my quarters. A single bed. A desk. A sonic shower. Honestly, it wasn’t too much different from my old apartment. Different eras yet the same living arrangements… somehow the thought was both comforting and horrifying. This was my life; Noah Lee, age 26, Captain of a 12000-ton space brick. Great.
“I have no data for Toyota Hilux,” chimed my robot companion.
“Yeah, I would be surprised if you did.” I scoffed sarcastically to myself. “It’s a joke from the 21st century; you wouldn’t get it.”
“... Understood, Captain,” she replied after a brief pause. It could’ve just been me, but she almost sounded offended. It was probably just me. I’m tired…
“Anyway,” I said, trying to shift topics. “What were we transporting before we were forcibly torn from our route? Is the package still intact?” I asked with a small dose of hope, perhaps there might be something useful within the haul for me to salvage. “And who were we delivering for?” I paused. “I want everything about this journey, Calliope. Show me the flight logs, from start to finish.” It was doubtful, but on the off-chance there was anything even remotely resembling a clue about why I was put in this situation, I wanted to know.
“Query accepted,” the AI responded. “Manifest review in progress… Accessing flight data recorder logs…”
A new panel opened up on the hologram besides the ship’s schematics. It was a log, but not what I expected. The entire list of entries was a chilling, uniform red.
---
[LOG_001: ROUTE_INITIATED. DEPARTURE: TAU CETI PRIME. DESTINATION: NEW CYPRESS COLONY.]
[LOG_002: TRANSIT VIA ESTABLISHED SPACELANE 44-B. FOLD DRIVE INACTIVE.]
[LOG_003: ROUTE NOMINAL. ETA: 21 STANDARD CYCLES.]
[LOG_004: EXTERNAL BYPASS DETECTED. FIREWALL BREACHED. SOURCE: UNKNOWN.]
[LOG_005: AUTOPILOT OVERRIDDEN. SOURCE: EXTERNAL COMMAND.]
[LOG_006: UNSANCTIONED FOLD DRIVE ACTIVATION SEQUENCE INITIATED. COORDINATES: DARK SPACE – SECTOR GM-78.]
---
As the flight logs flickered up, my stomach did a slow, cold roll. Red logs. Red was bad. Red was the universal colour for ‘you are completely screwed’. I stared at the ghostly text, each line another nail hammered into the coffin of my hopes and dreams. A hack. An override. Someone, or something, had taken control of this flying brick and tossed it into the void like an empty soda can.
I took a deep breath. Closed my eyes. Paused. “Continue,” I said, the word feeling like sandpaper in my throat. I had to know. I had to see the end of this digital suicide note.
Calliope’s unblinking, unfeeling monotone continued to fill the bridge, each word a chip of ice against the ship’s steady hum. “Final log entry: Structural stress exceeding tolerance. Emergency power rerouting. Life sport at thirty-seven percent and falling. Fold Jump event horizon achieved. All navigation systems offline…”
Then, the AI paused -- a digital gulp. The silence stretched, thicker than before. It wasn’t the calculated pause of a machine sifting through data; it was the quiet before a storm. Another line of text flickered to life beneath the final red entry. This one was different. It wasn’t a log. It was a raw data packet, a ghost in the system, flagged with a garbled, corrupted identifier that shimmered in and out of focus.
---
[DATA_BURST_//? SOURCE_TRACE... INCOMPLETE... TRIANGULATING... TRIANGULATION FAILED... ESTIMATED ORIGIN: PLANETARY BODY, LOCAL_STAR_//?]
---
I froze. The fine hairs on the back of my neck stood as I felt goosebumps along my arms. My eyes stared unblinkingly at the hologram. The hologram shifted as a faint, beeping light appeared on the simple wireframe diagram of this distant and supposedly uncharted system. The indicator wasn’t on the star, nor floating in the empty void around it. No… the indicator was right on top of the single, blue-green marble, the only planet in this entire star system. The place where I was currently headed. The place I had just named.
The pieces were slowly clicking together with a horrifying, audible snap in my mind. The hack wasn’t from some rival corporation or a rogue pirate fleet hiding in an asteroid belt. It wasn’t a random act of cosmic vandalism… It was a lure.
“Calliope,” my voice was a low, tense whisper laced with a sudden, profound dread. “Are you telling me that the… the signal, the override command that flung us out here… it came from there?” I pointed a trembling finger at the hologram, at the unassuming blue dot that had suddenly transformed from a desperate, last-minute sanctuary into a carefully laid trap. This planet that wasn’t even supposed to be colonised or settled… there was someone -- or something -- there that lured me here on purpose.
“Affirmative, Captain,” Calliope confirmed, the blinking lights on the hologram pulsed with a steady, mocking rhythm. “The unsanctioned command originated from a single, powerful burst transmission. Signal decay and the chaotic nature of the Fold Jump have corrupted ninety-eight percent of the data packet, making a full trace and content analysis impossible. That said, Turn Seven is the only planetary body in this system, therefore logic dictates that the transmission came from there.”
The AI delivered this cataclysmic information with the same placid tone it used to report fuel consumption. To her, it was just a fact, a data point. To me, it was a death sentence… or perhaps worse. I wasn’t a shipwrecked sailor who had stumbled upon a deserted island. No, I was a moth, and someone on that planet had just flicked on a very big, very dangerous light, knowing I’d be drawn to it. I sank back into the captain’s chair, the leather harness creaking in protest. My mind raced for answers and solutions. Do I turn back? In this damaged hulk? We couldn’t even repair the Fold Drive for another forty-five days, and even that was under the assumption we had the spare parts to fix it, which we definitely didn’t. Was it better to sit here and wait? Wait for what? For a rescue? For whatever sent that signal to get impatient and come find me?
“So…” I said to the empty bridge, the words tasting like a bitter medicine. “This isn’t an accident.” My cynical brain, usually a source of dark comfort, was now screaming in alarm. “We’re not lost. We were delivered.”
There was no other logical explanation. Someone on that planet wanted the SV-Eclipse specifically.
Why?
Did they want the cargo I was transporting? Or was it the ship itself they were targeting… either way, they didn’t ask nicely. They reached out with a digital hook and reeled us in, nearly tearing the ship apart in the process.
My gaze fell upon the cargo bay indicator in the schematic, which now taunted me with its sheer size. Seventy percent of the ship. What was inside that was so important they’d risk tearing a hole in reality to get it? Rare minerals? Advanced weapons? Or was it something far worse? And why me? I wasn’t even supposed to be here -- just a ghost in someone else’s body. Or perhaps it wasn’t another body… perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence I found myself in this place, in this body. Was the phenomenon of me waking up in this body somehow related to me being kidnapped?
So many questions, yet no answers.
I was being toyed with. We were rats in a maze, and the cheese was sitting on a planet that didn’t even have a name until I’d just given it one.
“Son of a bitch…”
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