Chapter 3:
Chapter 3 - The SV-Eclipse (3)
Bored in deep space - Novelisation -
Bored in deep space - Novelisation -Chapter 3 - The SV-Eclipse (3)
The eight hour journey to Turn Seven became a slow, torturous crawl through the theatre of my own anxieties. My heart pounded audibly against my ears, and every breath of that same recycled air felt viscous. The thrum of the engines, cracking floorboards, and groan of the ship’s aging skeleton, was no longer the mundane noise of a vessel in transit -- it became a countdown. I was a package being delivered, and the destination was a place I had foolishly named stamped the seal of approval myself.
The stars outside of the viewport, once a symbol of wonder and the infinite, now felt like a billion twinkling eyes watching me. Judging me. Each shimmer of their light was a potential scout, every suspicious nebula a hiding place for the thing that hooked me. The AI… was she in on it too? The universe was no longer an empty void, it had become an aquarium, and, I, its lone, single glistening fish swimming placidly towards the waiting net.
I couldn’t sleep -- how could I? Sleep was a vulnerability, a luxury I couldn’t afford when my future was hanging by a thread. Instead, I agonised over myself, spending the journey on my feet. Pacing around the bridge in a tight, repetitive orbit around the command chair as the tiny cogs in my mind turned. I examined every console, every switch, every flickering light, trying to force the knowledge into my head. The schematics, the power readouts, the environmental controls -- it was a language I didn’t speak, but I was desperate to learn the basics before my final exam.
Murphy’s fucking law. The cynic in me was screaming that the universe, having already thrown a curve ball the size of a galaxy, was winding up for a fastball follow up.
No. I refused to be prey. Not yet. My mind, stripped of its corporate fat and now lean and feral with fear and anxiety, became a star chart of information and conspiracy. They wanted the Eclipse. Why? The flight log said the hack came from the planet -- a planet that was supposedly undiscovered and unnamed. In other words, a metaphorical forest to bury a body or partake in illicit transactions. Something on Turn Seven had flung us -- me -- across the galaxy with a precision that defied both physics and common sense. That kind of effort required a target, a payload. What the hell were we carrying back there?
I breathed a deep, steadying breath. “Calliope,” I finally said, my voice hoarse from disuse and a rising tide of paranoia. I stopped my repetitive pacing and planted my gloved hand on the cool metal of the main console, leaning forward as if trying to intimidate the holographic display. “Scan the cargo hold. Full analysis. I want to know exactly what we’re carrying. Right now. Don’t leave out a single screw.”
The AI’s response was immediate, her calm a stark contrast to the frantic knot tightening in my gut. “Acknowledged. Initiating deep-level cargo manifest scan… Synchronising internal sensors with registry database…” A new window opened on the main CRT screen. “Scan in progress… Estimated completion in twenty seconds…”
I counted the seconds down in my head, each tick a hammer blow against my sanity. Sweat rolled slowly down the side of my face. This was the key. It had to be. Whatever was in that cavernous belly of the ship, it had to be the reason for all this. It had to be worth committing an act of Interstellar terrorism. My mind raced with possibilities as I waited for Calliope to give me the news. A shipment of the galaxy’s rarest element, a volatile power source that could ignite a star? A dormant alien weapon of unimaginable power? The schematics for a world-killer? The answers were probably more mundane, but the fear… the fear kept me thinking more and more wild and outlandish thoughts.
The twenty seconds felt like an eternity. Then, a soft, electronic chime. The scan was completed.
My eyes locked onto the screen, ready for a revelation that would explain my existence -- my circumstance.
---
CARGO MANIFEST -- SV-ECLIPSEREGISTRATION: ORG-78B-TAUDESTINATION: NEW CYPRESS COLONY
CONTAINER BLOCK 01 (40% FILL): TITANIUM COMPOSITE RODS (STANDARD GRADE). USE: CONSTRUCTION.
CONTAINER BLOCK 02 (78% FILL): PLASTICISED WATER. USE: COLONY AGRICULTURE.
CONTAINER BLOCK 03 (25% FILL): HYDROPONIC NUTRIENT GEL. USE: COLONY AGRICULTURE.
CONTAINER BLOCK 04 (100% FILL): STANDARDIZED PLASMA CONDUITS. USE: INFRASTRUCTURE.
CONTAINER BLOCK 05 (92% FILL): MULTI-SPECTRUM LED ARRAY UNITS. USE: INFRASTRUCTURE.
ADDITIONAL: ONE (1) CRATE OF NON-ESSENTIAL MAINTENANCE PARTS. ONE (1) PALLET OF PERSONAL EFFECTS FOR CREW OF NEW CYPRESS COLONY.
---
I stared at the list until the lenses in my eyes were burnt.
I read it again. And again. My mind refused to process it. This wasn’t a manifest of cosmic importance; not the rare element that all the major powers of a galaxy were desperately trying to get a hold of. No, this was a list of… stuff. Boring, mundane, bulk-purchased stuff. It was the contents of a Costco for a fledging colony, nothing more.
“That… that’s it?” I sputtered, turning away from the console as if I’d been physically struck. I stumbled back a step, my head shaking in disbelief. Titanium rods? Nutrient gel? Plastic water? Are you fucking with me? They flung a twelve-thousand-ton brick across the galaxy because they wanted some cheap lighting fixtures and farming supplies?
My paranoia, the finely-tuned instrument for the past two hours, suddenly found its strings cut; all the energy, the momentum of the investigation, left my body at once as I collapsed back onto the command chair. The immense, terrifying conspiracy I’d built up in my mind… all just figments of my overactive imagination. There was no secret weapon. No priceless treasure. No artifacts of immense power. Just… stuff.
“No… no, that can’t be,” I refuted the results. “You're missing something. Check if we smuggled anything that wasn’t on record. There has to be something, or… or it doesn’t make sense why we were targeted.” My mind was trying its hardest to salvage what was left of my grand theory. That one line repeated in my head over and over: there had to be a reason. There was never any such thing as altruism, and likewise, no one commits an act of this magnitude for no profit.
“The cargo scan is complete, Captain,” Calliope stated, her tone as unflappable as ever. “All contents match the digital manifest with 99.8% accuracy. The 0.2% deviation is accounted for by minor container scuffs and material degradation due to gravitational share stress. No unregistered bio-signatures, energy signatures, or anomalous materials are present in the cargo bay.” A brief, thoughtful pause. It almost felt like she was trying to soothe me, a digital pat on the shoulders. “Your query about smuggled goods has been logged. However, the conclusion is negative. The ship’s inventory has been accounted for and is entirely ordinary.”
If the AI’s precious calm was unnerving, this matter-of-fact declaration of utter mundanity was soul-crushing. I sank further back into the command chair, my limbs feeling like lead. My grand theory was a house of cards, and Calliope had just flickered it with a robotic finger.
They wanted the cargo… was my deduction, but the cargo was worthless. Not in a monetary sense, probably -- the colonists on this New Cypress colony would need this junk to survive -- but worthless in the grand scheme of cosmic power plays. Anything on this list could be acquired, legally or illegally, a thousand times easier than what had been done to the Eclipse. You could hijack a convoy, steal from a depot, bribe an official, heck… just pay for it even. You don’t invent a way to hijack a ship through this… Space Fold Jump… magic bullshit, for a few tons of water and agricultural gel.
My brain throbbed against my skull. Too many contradiction -- not enough sense.
“So…” I breathed, the words tasting of defeat. “They didn't want the cargo.”
Then… the ship? No. From what I understood, the SV-Eclipse was just a normal, regular vessel. It was a rugged and reliable workhorse, but it was hardly some amazing, state-of-the-art military prototype warship. If I learnt anything about simulated galactic economy from that stupid game, it was that you could probably buy several dozen vessels like the Eclipse with the budget for a military frigate. It definitely wasn’t the Eclipse they wanted -- that was too stupid. And if it wasn’t the cargo… then it must be me. The only question was whether they were after me, Captain Noah Lee, or me, Middle Manager Noah Lee from the 21st century…
I grimaced. In the first place, were we two different people? Or were we one in the same and it was just my memories that were scrambled?
Who was Noah Lee, the Captain? He could’ve been anything from a space truck driver to a spy, a defector, an ex-lover of some megalomaniacal space queen… Was my presence here -- in this body -- just a cosmic case of mistaken identity? Am I an unlucky understudy who’d been shoved onto the stage in the middle of the final act with no script and a target on my back?
My knuckles protruded a little as I gripped at the edge of the armrest. The sterile, humming confines of the bridge felt less like a command centre and more of a cage, a brightly-lit box hurtling towards an unknown fate. It wasn’t the ship. It wasn’t the cargo. That only left one terrifying variable… me.
I began to tap incessantly against the armrest with an agitated rhythm. A nervous tic. I needed answers. This body. This life. Who the hell was he?
“Calliope,” I said, my voice tight, cracking slightly from the strain. The tapping stopped, my hand clenched into a fist against the armrest. “Access the official personnel files. I want the complete and unedited service record for… Captain Noah Lee.” Saying my own name felt wrong, like wearing another man’s ill-fitting suit. “Everything. Childhood education, family history, work history, medical records -- everything. I want to know who exactly I am.”
The AI paused for a bit. “Understood, Captain. Accessing Orion Guild Central Personnel Database… Cross-referencing with public records… file located.”
The holographic display dissolved the image of the Eclipse and replaced it with clean, simple text. I expected a dossier, a file thick with intrigue, maybe redacted sections and mysterious gaps. Yeah… I was probably reaching, but there must’ve been something in here.
Instead… It looked like a poorly formatted resume.
---PERSONNEL FILE: LEE, NOAHRANK: COMMERCIAL HAULER (CAPTAIN LIC. CLASS 3)AFFILIATION: ORION GUILD (SUBCONTRACTOR)EARLY LIFE: BORN ON TAU CETI PRIME. SECOND-GENERATION COLONIST. PARENTS: ELARA AND DAVID LEE (DECEASED). ATTENDED TAU CETI CENTRAL EDUCATIONAL UNIT. GRADES: CONSISTENTLY AVERAGE.EDUCATION: COMPLETED BASIC EDUCATIONAL CYCLE AT AGE 16. ATTENDED TAU CETI VOCATIONAL INSTITUTE (730 STANDARD CYCLES). QUALIFICATION: BASIC FREIGHT HANDLING AND LOGISTICS. ACADEMIC STANDING: SATISFACTORY.EARLY CAREER: AGE 18 - Began employment with Hyperion Drive Yards, Section 7, Maintenance and Reclamation. POSITION: JUNIOR RECLAMATION TECHNICIAN. Notable events: two written reprimands for unsanctioned modification of company equipment. NO PROMOTIONS.AGE 22 - Left Hyperion Drive Yards. Acquired own independent hauler license.VEHICLE ACQUISITION: AGE 23 - Acquired vessel SV-Eclipse. Registration notes: Vessel salvaged from a corporate decommissioning yard by UNCLE TIBERIUS LEE (CURRENTLY RESIDING ON TAU CETI PRIME). State of vessel at acquisition: 'Poor'. Estimated 4,200 standard hours of labour invested to restore to operational baseline.CAPTAINCY RECORD (AGE 23 - PRESENT): COMPLETED SEVENTY-EIGHT INTERSTELLAR DELIVERIES FOR ORION GUILD AND AFFILIATED SUBCONTRACTORS. CARGO MANIFESTS: PRIMARILY RAW MATERIALS, NON-PERISHABLE COLONY SUPPLIES, AND MUNICIPAL INFRASTRUCTURE COMPONENTS. PERFORMANCE REVIEW NOTES: 'DEMONSTRATES ADEQUATE PILOTING SKILLS'. 'NOTABLE FOR EXCEPTIONAL PUNCTUALITY AND ADHERENCE TO SCHEDULED DELIVERY TIMES’. 'NO NOTABLE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OR AWARDS’.---
I sighed a lengthy, breathy sigh. This… wasn’t the life of a spy, a revolutionary, or a man with dangerous secrets; this was the life of a space trucker. A C-student who got a C-grade job driving a C-grade jalopy handed down from a relative. The only rebellious act on his record was two write-ups for fiddling with equipment he wasn’t meant to touch. I winced.
I leaned my head against the rest and closed my eyes. I massaged the bridge of my nose with an audible groan.
I peeked out through my fingers. There was one line of intrigue in that entire personnel file. Parents: Deceased. I sat back up and gestured at the holographic interface the same way I would a smartphone screen. I scrolled further down. “Expand on that,” I asked Calliope.
A new box of text appeared next to the main file, a brief summary of a tragedy.
---
INCIDENT REPORT: NYX-GAMMA COLONY TERRORIST ATTACKDATE: 6576 STANDARD CYCLES AGOSUMMARY: A SEPARATIST FACTION, DESIGNATED 'THE FRINGE BREAKERS', DETONATED A LOW-YIELD THERMAL DEVICE IN THE CENTRAL HABITAT DOME OF THE NYX-GAMMA MINING COLONY. LOSS OF LIFE WAS ESTIMATED AT 87% OF THE COLONY'S POPULATION. CASUALTY LIST INCLUDES ELARA AND DAVID LEE. NOAH LEE, AGE 8, WAS OFF-WORLD AT THE TIME, VISITING RELATIVES ON TAU CETI PRIME.
---
Orphaned by terrorists at eight years old. That information hit me with a visceral force. A sudden, phantom memory, not my own, flickered at the edge of my consciousness -- the smell of recycled colony air, the memory of a holographic picture of a smiling couple that felt both intimately familiar and completely foreign. The file offered nothing else. No follow-up, no counselling records, no dramatic arc of revenge. Just a fact, logged and filed away. Mere memories.
“Nothing.” I uttered. No covert ops, no stolen intel, no great injustice that would make him a target. His -- my -- most notable accomplishment was being punctual. He was just some background character in someone else’s grand story. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” I clicked my tongue in annoyance. “He’s… he’s just a guy.”
I’d lost all leads. If they weren’t after the cargo or the ship, and they weren’t after the man, Captain Noah Lee… then why? Why hijack him? Why fling a perfectly mundane delivery man and his boringly mundane cargo hauler into the ass-end of the galaxy? It was the sheer inefficiency, the wasted effort, that offended me most; there were vastly easier ways to kill me. This was literally shooting a cannon to swat a fly.
My mind reeled back to the corrupted data burst.
[DATA_BURST_//? SOURCE_TRACE... INCOMPLETE... TRIANGULATING... TRIANGULATION FAILED... ESTIMATED ORIGIN: PLANETARY BODY, LOCAL_STAR_//?]
Something was there. On Turn Seven.
… I thought for a moment.
Maybe I wasn’t a target; what if it was the other way around? My arrival in this… world? Galaxy? Universe? This strange alternate reality… What if that set something off and awoke something that was sleeping on Turn Seven. Something powerful, and since I was on the ship it just… grabbed me. What if my arrival in this body -- my soul or spirit or whatever consciousness that was my own being thrown into this body -- created some kind of paradoxical event; or flashed a spiritual energy signal like a beacon, not for some mysterious cosmic entity to specifically target me, but was awoken because of me.
There was no one on the ship to answer my question. Only the dull hum of the low-frequency vibrations echoed through the ship’s bridge. I was alone.
Or not. Calliope spoke, her calm voice cutting through the dog in my mind. “Captain,” she stated, a subtle urgency I hadn’t heard before bleeding into her synthesised monotone. “We are beginning our final approach to Turn Seven’s atmosphere. ETA: two hours and fifteen minutes.”
I just realised I spent hours sweating in my seat and getting nowhere with my conspiracy theories.
My head snapped, I glanced out onto the planet just beyond my viewport. My introspection was broken by the approaching reality. Turn Seven. The real Turn Seven and not the wireframe mesh that was the hologram. The planet filled the forward viewport, a swirling, living canvas of impossible beauty and terrifying scale. I lived my entire life on the flat surface of Earth, that I never quite understood the true scale of it. This was it. It was gargantuan -- a sleeping, untouched god. Vast, continents in shades of deep ochre and rust-coloured brown were smeared across its surface like a child’s finger painting, separated by oceans the colour of faded sapphire. I could see the weather at work -- massive, lazy spirals of clouds that were the purest, most brilliant white I had ever seen, boiling over the deep blue water. They swirled and churned in patterns too large for a human mind to truly comprehend, their majestic, silent dance a stark, indifferent rebuke to the chaos that brought me here.
My mind was instantly mesmerised. All worries, all thoughts, seemed to leak out.
I watched, my eyes squinting, searching for any sign that I wasn’t alone in this corner of the cosmos. There were none. No glittering constellations of orbiting lights, no pinprick trails of commercial liners, no geometric glint of an orbital station or defence network, not the starry lights of an earthbound city. The silence above and below this world was an absolute, perfect vacuum. The SV-Eclipse was the only speck of anything man-made in this entire, celestial hemisphere. As we drew closer, the magnified details only deepened the isolation: jagged knife-edge mountain ranges tore at the clouds; deep ancient canyons scarred the land like the footprints of a dead giant. There was no evidence of cities, of roads, of a single, solitary campfire. It was a world of pristine, untouched serenity.
Whatever had all the answers was down there.
The eight hour journey to Turn Seven became a slow, torturous crawl through the theatre of my own anxieties. My heart pounded audibly against my ears, and every breath of that same recycled air felt viscous. The thrum of the engines, cracking floorboards, and groan of the ship’s aging skeleton, was no longer the mundane noise of a vessel in transit -- it became a countdown. I was a package being delivered, and the destination was a place I had foolishly named stamped the seal of approval myself.
The stars outside of the viewport, once a symbol of wonder and the infinite, now felt like a billion twinkling eyes watching me. Judging me. Each shimmer of their light was a potential scout, every suspicious nebula a hiding place for the thing that hooked me. The AI… was she in on it too? The universe was no longer an empty void, it had become an aquarium, and, I, its lone, single glistening fish swimming placidly towards the waiting net.
I couldn’t sleep -- how could I? Sleep was a vulnerability, a luxury I couldn’t afford when my future was hanging by a thread. Instead, I agonised over myself, spending the journey on my feet. Pacing around the bridge in a tight, repetitive orbit around the command chair as the tiny cogs in my mind turned. I examined every console, every switch, every flickering light, trying to force the knowledge into my head. The schematics, the power readouts, the environmental controls -- it was a language I didn’t speak, but I was desperate to learn the basics before my final exam.
Murphy’s fucking law. The cynic in me was screaming that the universe, having already thrown a curve ball the size of a galaxy, was winding up for a fastball follow up.
No. I refused to be prey. Not yet. My mind, stripped of its corporate fat and now lean and feral with fear and anxiety, became a star chart of information and conspiracy. They wanted the Eclipse. Why? The flight log said the hack came from the planet -- a planet that was supposedly undiscovered and unnamed. In other words, a metaphorical forest to bury a body or partake in illicit transactions. Something on Turn Seven had flung us -- me -- across the galaxy with a precision that defied both physics and common sense. That kind of effort required a target, a payload. What the hell were we carrying back there?
I breathed a deep, steadying breath. “Calliope,” I finally said, my voice hoarse from disuse and a rising tide of paranoia. I stopped my repetitive pacing and planted my gloved hand on the cool metal of the main console, leaning forward as if trying to intimidate the holographic display. “Scan the cargo hold. Full analysis. I want to know exactly what we’re carrying. Right now. Don’t leave out a single screw.”
The AI’s response was immediate, her calm a stark contrast to the frantic knot tightening in my gut. “Acknowledged. Initiating deep-level cargo manifest scan… Synchronising internal sensors with registry database…” A new window opened on the main CRT screen. “Scan in progress… Estimated completion in twenty seconds…”
I counted the seconds down in my head, each tick a hammer blow against my sanity. Sweat rolled slowly down the side of my face. This was the key. It had to be. Whatever was in that cavernous belly of the ship, it had to be the reason for all this. It had to be worth committing an act of Interstellar terrorism. My mind raced with possibilities as I waited for Calliope to give me the news. A shipment of the galaxy’s rarest element, a volatile power source that could ignite a star? A dormant alien weapon of unimaginable power? The schematics for a world-killer? The answers were probably more mundane, but the fear… the fear kept me thinking more and more wild and outlandish thoughts.
The twenty seconds felt like an eternity. Then, a soft, electronic chime. The scan was completed.
My eyes locked onto the screen, ready for a revelation that would explain my existence -- my circumstance.
---
CARGO MANIFEST -- SV-ECLIPSEREGISTRATION: ORG-78B-TAUDESTINATION: NEW CYPRESS COLONY
CONTAINER BLOCK 01 (40% FILL): TITANIUM COMPOSITE RODS (STANDARD GRADE). USE: CONSTRUCTION.
CONTAINER BLOCK 02 (78% FILL): PLASTICISED WATER. USE: COLONY AGRICULTURE.
CONTAINER BLOCK 03 (25% FILL): HYDROPONIC NUTRIENT GEL. USE: COLONY AGRICULTURE.
CONTAINER BLOCK 04 (100% FILL): STANDARDIZED PLASMA CONDUITS. USE: INFRASTRUCTURE.
CONTAINER BLOCK 05 (92% FILL): MULTI-SPECTRUM LED ARRAY UNITS. USE: INFRASTRUCTURE.
ADDITIONAL: ONE (1) CRATE OF NON-ESSENTIAL MAINTENANCE PARTS. ONE (1) PALLET OF PERSONAL EFFECTS FOR CREW OF NEW CYPRESS COLONY.
---
I stared at the list until the lenses in my eyes were burnt.
I read it again. And again. My mind refused to process it. This wasn’t a manifest of cosmic importance; not the rare element that all the major powers of a galaxy were desperately trying to get a hold of. No, this was a list of… stuff. Boring, mundane, bulk-purchased stuff. It was the contents of a Costco for a fledging colony, nothing more.
“That… that’s it?” I sputtered, turning away from the console as if I’d been physically struck. I stumbled back a step, my head shaking in disbelief. Titanium rods? Nutrient gel? Plastic water? Are you fucking with me? They flung a twelve-thousand-ton brick across the galaxy because they wanted some cheap lighting fixtures and farming supplies?
My paranoia, the finely-tuned instrument for the past two hours, suddenly found its strings cut; all the energy, the momentum of the investigation, left my body at once as I collapsed back onto the command chair. The immense, terrifying conspiracy I’d built up in my mind… all just figments of my overactive imagination. There was no secret weapon. No priceless treasure. No artifacts of immense power. Just… stuff.
“No… no, that can’t be,” I refuted the results. “You're missing something. Check if we smuggled anything that wasn’t on record. There has to be something, or… or it doesn’t make sense why we were targeted.” My mind was trying its hardest to salvage what was left of my grand theory. That one line repeated in my head over and over: there had to be a reason. There was never any such thing as altruism, and likewise, no one commits an act of this magnitude for no profit.
“The cargo scan is complete, Captain,” Calliope stated, her tone as unflappable as ever. “All contents match the digital manifest with 99.8% accuracy. The 0.2% deviation is accounted for by minor container scuffs and material degradation due to gravitational share stress. No unregistered bio-signatures, energy signatures, or anomalous materials are present in the cargo bay.” A brief, thoughtful pause. It almost felt like she was trying to soothe me, a digital pat on the shoulders. “Your query about smuggled goods has been logged. However, the conclusion is negative. The ship’s inventory has been accounted for and is entirely ordinary.”
If the AI’s precious calm was unnerving, this matter-of-fact declaration of utter mundanity was soul-crushing. I sank further back into the command chair, my limbs feeling like lead. My grand theory was a house of cards, and Calliope had just flickered it with a robotic finger.
They wanted the cargo… was my deduction, but the cargo was worthless. Not in a monetary sense, probably -- the colonists on this New Cypress colony would need this junk to survive -- but worthless in the grand scheme of cosmic power plays. Anything on this list could be acquired, legally or illegally, a thousand times easier than what had been done to the Eclipse. You could hijack a convoy, steal from a depot, bribe an official, heck… just pay for it even. You don’t invent a way to hijack a ship through this… Space Fold Jump… magic bullshit, for a few tons of water and agricultural gel.
My brain throbbed against my skull. Too many contradiction -- not enough sense.
“So…” I breathed, the words tasting of defeat. “They didn't want the cargo.”
Then… the ship? No. From what I understood, the SV-Eclipse was just a normal, regular vessel. It was a rugged and reliable workhorse, but it was hardly some amazing, state-of-the-art military prototype warship. If I learnt anything about simulated galactic economy from that stupid game, it was that you could probably buy several dozen vessels like the Eclipse with the budget for a military frigate. It definitely wasn’t the Eclipse they wanted -- that was too stupid. And if it wasn’t the cargo… then it must be me. The only question was whether they were after me, Captain Noah Lee, or me, Middle Manager Noah Lee from the 21st century…
I grimaced. In the first place, were we two different people? Or were we one in the same and it was just my memories that were scrambled?
Who was Noah Lee, the Captain? He could’ve been anything from a space truck driver to a spy, a defector, an ex-lover of some megalomaniacal space queen… Was my presence here -- in this body -- just a cosmic case of mistaken identity? Am I an unlucky understudy who’d been shoved onto the stage in the middle of the final act with no script and a target on my back?
My knuckles protruded a little as I gripped at the edge of the armrest. The sterile, humming confines of the bridge felt less like a command centre and more of a cage, a brightly-lit box hurtling towards an unknown fate. It wasn’t the ship. It wasn’t the cargo. That only left one terrifying variable… me.
I began to tap incessantly against the armrest with an agitated rhythm. A nervous tic. I needed answers. This body. This life. Who the hell was he?
“Calliope,” I said, my voice tight, cracking slightly from the strain. The tapping stopped, my hand clenched into a fist against the armrest. “Access the official personnel files. I want the complete and unedited service record for… Captain Noah Lee.” Saying my own name felt wrong, like wearing another man’s ill-fitting suit. “Everything. Childhood education, family history, work history, medical records -- everything. I want to know who exactly I am.”
The AI paused for a bit. “Understood, Captain. Accessing Orion Guild Central Personnel Database… Cross-referencing with public records… file located.”
The holographic display dissolved the image of the Eclipse and replaced it with clean, simple text. I expected a dossier, a file thick with intrigue, maybe redacted sections and mysterious gaps. Yeah… I was probably reaching, but there must’ve been something in here.
Instead… It looked like a poorly formatted resume.
---PERSONNEL FILE: LEE, NOAHRANK: COMMERCIAL HAULER (CAPTAIN LIC. CLASS 3)AFFILIATION: ORION GUILD (SUBCONTRACTOR)EARLY LIFE: BORN ON TAU CETI PRIME. SECOND-GENERATION COLONIST. PARENTS: ELARA AND DAVID LEE (DECEASED). ATTENDED TAU CETI CENTRAL EDUCATIONAL UNIT. GRADES: CONSISTENTLY AVERAGE.EDUCATION: COMPLETED BASIC EDUCATIONAL CYCLE AT AGE 16. ATTENDED TAU CETI VOCATIONAL INSTITUTE (730 STANDARD CYCLES). QUALIFICATION: BASIC FREIGHT HANDLING AND LOGISTICS. ACADEMIC STANDING: SATISFACTORY.EARLY CAREER: AGE 18 - Began employment with Hyperion Drive Yards, Section 7, Maintenance and Reclamation. POSITION: JUNIOR RECLAMATION TECHNICIAN. Notable events: two written reprimands for unsanctioned modification of company equipment. NO PROMOTIONS.AGE 22 - Left Hyperion Drive Yards. Acquired own independent hauler license.VEHICLE ACQUISITION: AGE 23 - Acquired vessel SV-Eclipse. Registration notes: Vessel salvaged from a corporate decommissioning yard by UNCLE TIBERIUS LEE (CURRENTLY RESIDING ON TAU CETI PRIME). State of vessel at acquisition: 'Poor'. Estimated 4,200 standard hours of labour invested to restore to operational baseline.CAPTAINCY RECORD (AGE 23 - PRESENT): COMPLETED SEVENTY-EIGHT INTERSTELLAR DELIVERIES FOR ORION GUILD AND AFFILIATED SUBCONTRACTORS. CARGO MANIFESTS: PRIMARILY RAW MATERIALS, NON-PERISHABLE COLONY SUPPLIES, AND MUNICIPAL INFRASTRUCTURE COMPONENTS. PERFORMANCE REVIEW NOTES: 'DEMONSTRATES ADEQUATE PILOTING SKILLS'. 'NOTABLE FOR EXCEPTIONAL PUNCTUALITY AND ADHERENCE TO SCHEDULED DELIVERY TIMES’. 'NO NOTABLE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OR AWARDS’.---
I sighed a lengthy, breathy sigh. This… wasn’t the life of a spy, a revolutionary, or a man with dangerous secrets; this was the life of a space trucker. A C-student who got a C-grade job driving a C-grade jalopy handed down from a relative. The only rebellious act on his record was two write-ups for fiddling with equipment he wasn’t meant to touch. I winced.
I leaned my head against the rest and closed my eyes. I massaged the bridge of my nose with an audible groan.
I peeked out through my fingers. There was one line of intrigue in that entire personnel file. Parents: Deceased. I sat back up and gestured at the holographic interface the same way I would a smartphone screen. I scrolled further down. “Expand on that,” I asked Calliope.
A new box of text appeared next to the main file, a brief summary of a tragedy.
---
INCIDENT REPORT: NYX-GAMMA COLONY TERRORIST ATTACKDATE: 6576 STANDARD CYCLES AGOSUMMARY: A SEPARATIST FACTION, DESIGNATED 'THE FRINGE BREAKERS', DETONATED A LOW-YIELD THERMAL DEVICE IN THE CENTRAL HABITAT DOME OF THE NYX-GAMMA MINING COLONY. LOSS OF LIFE WAS ESTIMATED AT 87% OF THE COLONY'S POPULATION. CASUALTY LIST INCLUDES ELARA AND DAVID LEE. NOAH LEE, AGE 8, WAS OFF-WORLD AT THE TIME, VISITING RELATIVES ON TAU CETI PRIME.
---
Orphaned by terrorists at eight years old. That information hit me with a visceral force. A sudden, phantom memory, not my own, flickered at the edge of my consciousness -- the smell of recycled colony air, the memory of a holographic picture of a smiling couple that felt both intimately familiar and completely foreign. The file offered nothing else. No follow-up, no counselling records, no dramatic arc of revenge. Just a fact, logged and filed away. Mere memories.
“Nothing.” I uttered. No covert ops, no stolen intel, no great injustice that would make him a target. His -- my -- most notable accomplishment was being punctual. He was just some background character in someone else’s grand story. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” I clicked my tongue in annoyance. “He’s… he’s just a guy.”
I’d lost all leads. If they weren’t after the cargo or the ship, and they weren’t after the man, Captain Noah Lee… then why? Why hijack him? Why fling a perfectly mundane delivery man and his boringly mundane cargo hauler into the ass-end of the galaxy? It was the sheer inefficiency, the wasted effort, that offended me most; there were vastly easier ways to kill me. This was literally shooting a cannon to swat a fly.
My mind reeled back to the corrupted data burst.
[DATA_BURST_//? SOURCE_TRACE... INCOMPLETE... TRIANGULATING... TRIANGULATION FAILED... ESTIMATED ORIGIN: PLANETARY BODY, LOCAL_STAR_//?]
Something was there. On Turn Seven.
… I thought for a moment.
Maybe I wasn’t a target; what if it was the other way around? My arrival in this… world? Galaxy? Universe? This strange alternate reality… What if that set something off and awoke something that was sleeping on Turn Seven. Something powerful, and since I was on the ship it just… grabbed me. What if my arrival in this body -- my soul or spirit or whatever consciousness that was my own being thrown into this body -- created some kind of paradoxical event; or flashed a spiritual energy signal like a beacon, not for some mysterious cosmic entity to specifically target me, but was awoken because of me.
There was no one on the ship to answer my question. Only the dull hum of the low-frequency vibrations echoed through the ship’s bridge. I was alone.
Or not. Calliope spoke, her calm voice cutting through the dog in my mind. “Captain,” she stated, a subtle urgency I hadn’t heard before bleeding into her synthesised monotone. “We are beginning our final approach to Turn Seven’s atmosphere. ETA: two hours and fifteen minutes.”
I just realised I spent hours sweating in my seat and getting nowhere with my conspiracy theories.
My head snapped, I glanced out onto the planet just beyond my viewport. My introspection was broken by the approaching reality. Turn Seven. The real Turn Seven and not the wireframe mesh that was the hologram. The planet filled the forward viewport, a swirling, living canvas of impossible beauty and terrifying scale. I lived my entire life on the flat surface of Earth, that I never quite understood the true scale of it. This was it. It was gargantuan -- a sleeping, untouched god. Vast, continents in shades of deep ochre and rust-coloured brown were smeared across its surface like a child’s finger painting, separated by oceans the colour of faded sapphire. I could see the weather at work -- massive, lazy spirals of clouds that were the purest, most brilliant white I had ever seen, boiling over the deep blue water. They swirled and churned in patterns too large for a human mind to truly comprehend, their majestic, silent dance a stark, indifferent rebuke to the chaos that brought me here.
My mind was instantly mesmerised. All worries, all thoughts, seemed to leak out.
I watched, my eyes squinting, searching for any sign that I wasn’t alone in this corner of the cosmos. There were none. No glittering constellations of orbiting lights, no pinprick trails of commercial liners, no geometric glint of an orbital station or defence network, not the starry lights of an earthbound city. The silence above and below this world was an absolute, perfect vacuum. The SV-Eclipse was the only speck of anything man-made in this entire, celestial hemisphere. As we drew closer, the magnified details only deepened the isolation: jagged knife-edge mountain ranges tore at the clouds; deep ancient canyons scarred the land like the footprints of a dead giant. There was no evidence of cities, of roads, of a single, solitary campfire. It was a world of pristine, untouched serenity.
Whatever had all the answers was down there.
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