First Reply The Last Light of Meridian

[John Crass]

"Unexpected Awakening."

Tags - OPEN



[CRYOSLEEPER // DERELICT VESSEL // UNKNOWN SECTOR // BROADCASTING...]

"—ergency override. Vital signs detected. Cryopod—function nominal. Subject—"
"—signal unstable—d/ma-ERROR-n registry mismatch—"
"This is Colonial Sleeper Vessel Solace of Meridian. Automatic distress—requesting recovery protocol—"
"—repeat, survivor identified. ID: CRS-0X9810-017-EXO—"
"—malfunction. Malfunction. Malf—"

Silence.

A low whine of failing grav-plating echoed across the dark corridor as dim emergency lights flared in weak amber hues, flickering across rusted bulkheads and dust older than civilization. The vessel was massive—kilometers of dead metal drifting at the edge of nowhere, its engines long since cooled, its hull scarred by time, radiation, and entropy. A cryoship, long forgotten. A generation ark from a history no one remembered.

And somewhere deep inside, a single stasis pod hissed open.

A wave of hyper-cold steam poured out as the seals decompressed, and a body collapsed forward, soaked in cryo-fluid, coughing up remnants of chemical stasis like sea-foam. Fingers clawed at the deck, trembling, slick. Breathing ragged. The suit sealed around his body re-inflated with a gasp of re-pressurization, and the golden visor of the sealed helmet tilted up for the first time in centuries. He rolled to his side—alive, shaking, not understanding why.

Inside the pod bay, thousands of other capsules remained dark. No lights. No life. Just corpses. Or worse—nothing at all.

"—[error]—repeating sequence—"
"…only survivor... only survivor... only surv—"
"Caution: memory degradation detected. Subject may experience temporal dislocation, identity dissonance, or acute existential panic."
"Welcome back, Citizen. Please await your assigned orientation officer."
"No orientation officer detected."

John Crass staggered to his feet.

His boots thudded against the deck like thunder in a church. Every breath echoed inside his helmet, the HUD flickering with ancient, ghost-code runes he couldn't read. Pain spiked through his limbs—muscle atrophy, nerve confusion, weight he hadn't felt in generations. He didn't remember his last thought. Didn't remember how long it had been. Just the endless drift.

Above the ship, the emergency beacon continued to flicker—haunted, incomplete—broadcasting a half-coded pulse into the void.

The corridor ahead was cracked and cold. The doors were sealed in rust. He moved anyway. His fingers reached to the data-wristband fused to his arm. Still dormant. Still blinking red.

'Void be damned.' John thought to himself, as he tried to make sense of the senseless.

 

[Melissa Bloodscrawl]

Arrived in: Hammer Class Blastboat

Wearing: Venture Suit

Armed With: Obsolete Blaster SMG, Heated Vibrodagger, Nightsister Energy Bow Pistol


Melissa had been out here on separate business, but was deeply worried about her brother. Ever since his trip to Odessen he had come back...changed...

A little more obsessed.


She was out here to pick up something from a dead drop when her ship came across a distress signal.

Obeying the House Bloodscrawl Family directives to safeguard the innocent, Melissa had diverted course...and found a heavily damaged sleeper vessel drifting in space.

She flew her Blastboat around the wreckage, looking for some place suitable to dock. She didn't need to breathe, unlike most beings, but she nonetheless found a Hangar with half functional life support.

And only one life sign

Melissa set down in the Hangar, whose security systems were lowered to facilitate rescue, and stepped off the vessel in a skintight metallic golden catsuit that eerily reflected everything around her, lightly armed and set about looking for whoever was still in this hellhole...

She headed for the Pod bay...

John Crass

 

[John Crass]

"Unexpected Awakening."

Tags - Melissa Bloodscrawl



The corridor was colder now.

Each step John took sent small echoes through the derelict ship, swallowed by dust and silence. His breath was shallow inside the helmet, the air thick with chemical sterilizers and age. The pod bay receded behind him, and for a moment—just a moment—he almost turned back. But there was nothing waiting for him there. Just death. Just failure. Just a thousand unspoken names sealed in frost and black metal. He kept walking, hand dragging along the wall like a tether to reality.

Then it hit him—fast, sharp, and cruel.

He remembered the pen first. Cold in his hand, trembling fingers signing a contract he hadn't fully read. The recruiter's voice was calm, synthetic, promising a new world, a better life, a future beyond war and collapse. "You'll sleep through the worst of it, Mr. Crass. Wake up to something new." Then the white walls. The chamber. A deep hum like a lullaby made of machines. The glass sliding down over his face. A whisper of gas, the color of sky, and the weightlessness.

Just the sealing of a tomb disguised as a dream.

He stopped walking. One gloved hand slammed into the bulkhead to steady himself. His legs threatened to give, muscles quaking from cryo atrophy and the weight of remembrance. The suit whined around him, slow to compensate. 'Why am I alive?' The question bit down in his skull. He remembered… the woman beside him in line. Blonde. Nervous. Kept clutching a photo. He remembered the pre-launch tests. The lights going out mid-interview. The way no one came back from Med-Bay after pod assignment. But most of all, he remembered the silence before his pod closed. It wasn't supposed to be silent.

Then—he saw it.

Painted high on the crumbling wall of the corridor, half-obscured by time and corrosion, was a familiar symbol. Unrecognisable to others, known to himself. What swelled within him was obvious.

Pride.

He wasn't alone. He hadn't been abandoned. The mission was still intact. The system still worked. The banner still flew. That symbol was a beacon, and it said what no voice had: you are still a citizen. His shoulders straightened as he passed beneath it, fingers grazing the wall near the ring at its heart.

The corridor ahead opened into a decompressed shuttle arm, exposed to the stars through shattered viewport glass. A rescue dock? Or what was left of one. Then—a sound. A hiss. Doors cycling open, not far off. Movement. Light catching metal. For a split second, he froze, pulse hammering in his throat. Someone else was here. Not just a shadow, not just a glitching panel, but something real. He gritted his teeth, hand hovering near the side of his utility belt—empty.

He was blistered from the gate.

Still, he stepped forward, just enough to be seen. His golden visor reflected the hallway's dying lights, and his voice crackled through the ancient vocoder embedded in the helmet's collar.

"...Who are you?"

His voice came out rough, wary—like a question asked of a ghost. Because in his heart, he wasn't sure if anyone real could still be out here. Not after what he'd seen. Not after the Solace of Meridian turned into a crypt.

But if they were real—if she was real—then maybe he wasn't the last of his people.

Not yet.

 

[Melissa Bloodscrawl]

Melissa walked with precision. The air functioned but her bio sensors registered a staleness to it.

She sensed she was getting closer to the life sign. Her Dovin Basal heart registered a distortion in gravity ahead and she made her way to it, keeping her weapons holstered. She likely wouldn't need them. She was a weapon without them.

It was heading to her. She steadied herself, coming across a man in an old suit and helmet.

"Who are you?" He asked, his body reflected with strange clarity on her catsuit.

"I'm Melissa. Melissa Bloodscrawl." Melissa answered. "I was out in this system on business when I detected a stress signal on this ship. Are...are you the only one alive? Your life sign was the only one I picked up. I came to conduct a rescue if at all possible. Are you injured?" she asked of John Crass , keeping her hands away from her weapons

 

[John Crass]

"Unexpected Awakening."

Tags - Melissa Bloodscrawl



The voice hit him like a memory that didn't belong.

Melissa Bloodscrawl. The name meant nothing. But the way she said it—calm, rehearsed, efficient—it sounded real. Too real. Not a hallucination. Not an echo of a training sim. John took another step forward, his body aching under the full weight of gravity and time. He stared at her reflection in his visor—shimmering gold-on-gold—his own strange, time-lost image warped in the metallic curves of her skintight suit. Her posture was perfect. Controlled. Like she belonged here. Like she wasn't waking up in a grave.

"…The only one?" he asked, barely above a whisper, not because he didn't hear her—but because saying it louder might make it final.

That was when the second wave hit him. Not the pain. Not the cold. The silence. The kind that lives in bones. It bloomed behind his eyes, behind the helmet, behind the blinking red of his dead data-band. A thousand capsules—sealed and dead. He hadn't checked them all. He remembered now: the freezing mist over the observation glass, the static overlays on the cryo-readouts, the audible absence of a heartbeat where there should've been a chorus. The medical AIs had gone silent.

The colonists were gone. All of them.

He staggered back half a step and leaned against the wall, fingers curling into a rust-slick groove on the bulkhead. "They said we'd arrive in a new system. Said there'd be terraformers, ground teams, support crews. We were supposed to wake up… on a new world." He forced a breath. "I don't even remember if we made it halfway." The memory cut like a dull blade—signing the forms, loading into the cryochamber, the serene hum of launch clearance from some orbital ring he couldn't name. It had all been clinical. Sanitized. Promised. A future delivered by sleep.

He turned back toward her, something desperate burning behind the gold of his visor. "This isn't the destination. There's no one here. No signal from orbit. No timer, no ping from command." His voice cracked at the edge. "No fucking welcome party." He looked past her now, through the shattered viewport in the docking ring—into the stars beyond. The wrong stars. He didn't recognize a single constellation.

"What sector of space is this?" he asked, more directly now. "Designation, chart tag, stellar ID—anything. I need to know what system we're in. What quadrant. Which way back to home."

He didn't say which galaxy. Not yet. But the thought was beginning to crawl into the back of his skull. Like a tick. Like a glitch in the simulation.

He just needed her to say something that made sense.

Because nothing else did.

 

[Melissa Bloodscrawl]

Melissa tried to take it slow for John Crass

"You're the only life sign I detected. Everyone else appears to be dead. I'm very sorry..." Melissa said, trying to show some empathy and compassion for his situation.

"I don't have any idea who sent you out here. Your ship is unfamiliar to me..." she continued. "It's pretty obvious the vessel suffered catastrophic damage in transit. It doesn't look like it was attacked. I saw signs of possible asteroid damage. Gravitational Warp damage also. Maybe you were pulled into some sort of wormhole..." she theorized as she continued to answer questions

"You're in the Unknown Regions, Close to grid N-5 near a planet designated M2934738." Melissa answered carefully.

"It's relatively close to the Rishi Maze..." She added softly, keeping her distance, trying to appear as nonthreatening as possible. "Your ship is old. It's an adrift wreck. Looks like it's been silent a long time. Your gear...it looks pretty archaic...do you know how long you were in suspended animation?" Melissa asked.

"Regardless...you can't stay here. The life support on this vessel is close to failing, and I lack the means to repair it...it's not safe for you to stay here. I have a ship, though..."

 

[John Crass]

"Unexpected Awakening."

Tags - Melissa Bloodscrawl



John didn't respond at first.

He stood still, helmet tilted slightly, processing every word. Unknown Regions. N-5. Planet M-two-nine… The coordinates meant nothing. No system markers. No gate designations. No relay signals. Even the Rishi Maze, whatever that was, didn't register in his training or star maps. His entire gut clenched around the implication. He hadn't just missed his landing window. He hadn't just been pulled off course. He was gone. Whatever galaxy he was supposed to wake up in—whatever support network was meant to intercept his vessel, deploy terraforming kits, activate surface comms, begin the colony rollout—none of it existed here. The Solace of Meridian hadn't arrived late.

It had arrived somewhere else.

His fingers twitched His body ached for direction, for clarity, but every answer Melissa gave only carved the truth in deeper. The rest of the cryopods were dark. The ship was wrecked. His people—gone. The mission—broken. There were no fallback protocols for this. No AI onboard to navigate a misjump like this. And even if there were… it had failed. They hadn't sent anyone. No one had even noticed he was missing.

"I don't know," he finally said. His voice was dry and low, almost a whisper through the helmet's worn-out vocoder. "I don't know how long I was out. No internal timestamp survived power loss. Cryo logs are scrambled. My databand hasn't synced with anything." He held it up, still blinking faint red. "It's not supposed to do that." It was a statement meant for himself more than her. He let it drop back to his side. A wrecked databand was the least of his problems. "I don't even know what the year is."

He took another slow step forward, letting his boots ring gently off the steel deck. As he passed under one of the corridor lights, his visor reflected Melissa's shape—her form clear, polished, new. It looked advanced. Sleek. Synthetic. But that wasn't what struck him. What struck him was the way she spoke about transit damage like it was just "asteroids" or "warp distortion." No fallback AIs. No black-box tethering. No autonomous nanowall repair signatures in the hull. No bio-integrated gear, no live haptic response from her weapons. Everything here looked advanced—sleek, smooth, almost ornate—but it functioned like the past. Like a museum exhibit trying to act modern.

"My gear's not archaic," he muttered, more to the air than to her. "It just works differently. I was built for a system that maintained itself. Not for salvage. Not for patchwork. Not for—whatever this is." He looked around the corridor, letting the rust and wear and slow collapse of the Solace sink in. "We didn't design things to last a few decades. We designed them to last forever."

Silence passed between them. Not hostile. Just weighty. Like something sacred had cracked open and was slowly spilling out.

He looked back at her. Not directly—never fully, not yet—but near enough. "If life support's on the edge, I'm not going to argue. I've already overstayed my welcome." His voice was steadier now, the fatigue receding into something cold and methodical. "If you've got a ship, I'll take the ride. But I need more than air and food. I need a place to think. A place to work through this." He hesitated, then added quietly: "I don't think I've even started understanding what this is yet."

As they began walking, he turned his gaze one last time toward the corridor behind them—the fading lights, the sealed pods, the wreckage of futures that would never be lived. There was only one rite for such a place. His voice came down softly.

"Burn bright."

And he turned to the uncertain future.

 

[Melissa Bloodscrawl]

"My family has a space station outpost close to the edge of the Maze. I could take you there. It's got all the amenities you'll need for survival." Melissa assured him. "It's clear you've been asleep for a long time. A very long time..."

Melissa escorted him back through the hangar, realizing this ship didn't fit any known profile. Was his species some uninitiated society that hadn't discovered Hyperspace travel?

Was his species even from this Galaxy?

She could figure it out later, she decided, organic databases already calculating how best to ease him into what was clearly going to be a dizzying experience.

She soon led him to the Hammer Class Blastboat, with its wings folded up. It was clearly bristling with weapons that were likely totally unfamiliar to John Crass

"It's not the fastest or most agile of ships, but it's one of the toughest to bring down in its size range..." Melissa said, putting off her Dead Drop Pick Up in order to deliver him to safety. She entered the vessel and waited for him to get aboard,closing the hatch and directing him to one of the seats in the cockpit. She got in her own seat and began activating the controls, lights flickering on. It was a totally alien looking configuration, most likely, to her passenger. He claimed his stuff was built to last forever, but who knows what his exact experience with tech was. His accent was unfamiliar also. She registered his body language as being completely unfamiliar with where he was and he seemed totally unfamiliar with her kind of gear.

How far behind were his people, exactly?

"Okay, I've marked the location of the vessel and it's likely drift pattern..." Melissa explained to him. "Once we arrive at my outpost, I'll send a salvage team to tow your vessel in so you can properly investigate it and give the crew proper final respects, if your civilization has such traditions. But I promise you, I won't let your past drift off aimlessly into the dark. You'll get whatever closure I can possibly help you get."

She activated the engines and the ships wings unfolded as she pulled out of the hangar.

She punched in the coordinates, activated the hyperdrive, and the stars streaked into infinity as they entered a Hyperspace tunnel.

"It should be a few hours until we arrive at our destination..." Melissa explained genty to her passenger.

"Can you tell me your name? What planet you're from? Every single little bit helps."

 

[John Crass]

"Unexpected Awakening."

Tags - Melissa Bloodscrawl



John stepped into the vessel like a man crossing a threshold between centuries. The air smelled different—processed, pressurized, somehow too clean—and every surface gleamed with alien precision. The ship was angular where it should've been soft, reactive in strange ways. As he followed Melissa through the entry corridor toward the cockpit, his boots tapped quietly on the deck plating. No sync interface. No welcome handshake from the local systems. Just inert lights and unfamiliar hums. He felt like a ghost occupying the skin of a world that didn't know he was dead.

He didn't sit at first. Just stood beside the co-pilot seat, bracing himself on a curved support strut as the blastboat's engines rumbled to life. His eyes flicked over the controls in front of him—primitive by his standards. Nothing was modular. No neural threading. No smart-fluid overlays, no adaptive UI. Just hard panels and tactile inputs. The kind of layout reserved for manned transports long before integrated feedback systems replaced muscle memory. Crude, he thought—but functional. Brutally functional. And in a way… honest. It made him feel ancient. And it made the world around him feel younger than it thought it was.

When she spoke about recovering the Solace, about salvaging the wreck, something in his spine stiffened.

"No," he said quietly. His helmet turned slightly toward her, the golden visor catching the cold blue light of hyperspace. "You don't go near that ship. Not until I clear it."

He held up the damaged wristband again, fingers curled tight around it like it might spark back to life if he demanded hard enough. "The ship's core systems ran on AI. Not low-tier nav software—true synthetic cognition. We used big-grade cores on cryo-vessels. They were designed to self-govern and self-repair across centuries, sometimes longer." He paused. "If they're damaged—or fragmented—or isolated too long—they can turn. Not always. But sometimes. Protocol breakdown. Threat misidentification. Reflexive lockdown loops. Smaller cores especially—they don't just think—they interpret."

He let that hang in the air for a beat.

"If one of them's still alive in there, and it sees your salvage crew as a threat to mission integrity, you won't get a warning. You'll just lose the crew. And then you'll lose the recovery vessel. If it's dormant, I'll keep it that way. If it's still thinking it will either break itself free or detonate the fission bomb it's tied to," He finally sat, slowly, the fatigue catching up to him again. "I'll talk to it. They were designed to trust us."

It wasn't bravado. It was caution born of lived experience. He had seen a AI misclassify a ground team as a pathogen vector once. During training. They'd lost the entire deck. Atmosphere purged, lockdown protocol engaged. Fifty-seven people reduced to a post-mortem incident log and a black-box review.

Melissa's next question came gently: his name, his world. Her voice was polite, but her posture told him she was trying to understand what he was. Maybe who he was. Maybe if he was something she could trust. He didn't blame her.

"John Crass," he said after a long pause, the name like dry ash in his mouth. "Designation CRS-0X9810-017-EXO." He exhaled slowly. "I was born on a station orbiting a core world. Doesn't matter which—what mattered was that we were selected. Screening, aptitude, bio-readiness. Whole process. I passed. So they put me in the rotation for colony deployment. Long-haul cryo. One of the last before the outbound grid was finalized." He stared at the hyperspace tunnel outside the viewport. The stars bent in ways his mind wasn't ready for. "The mission was supposed to seed a new world. Terraform it. Live in peace."

He leaned forward slightly, forearms on his knees.

"It was supposed to be the start of something permanent."

He didn't say the word failure. He didn't need to.

He sat in silence for a while after that. Then quietly added, "If your station has a working datalink… I'd like to run a scan for sector relays. Or any grid signature. Even a dead one." He didn't expect anything. But if there was even a sliver of signal—of proof he wasn't the last one awake—he had to know.

Because if there wasn't, then this wasn't exile.

It was extinction.

 

[Melissa Bloodscrawl]

Melissa listened to the explanation John Crass gave.

"I see, John. Very well then...I'll leave its clearing to you..." Melissa replied. "Thank you for warning me. The outpost we are going to has full Holonet Access as well as a map of the known Galaxy. If that cannot orient you as to where you are...I am not certain what to tell you other than my sincerest condolences for the loss of your crew." she explained. "They were very brave to go into deep space in such a manner...most races regard that method they chose as extremely dangerous. Hyperspace Travel greatly shortens the length of journeys these days. It has for millennia..."

She tried to be delicate about it. But she knew full well he wasn't going to get good news.

"If you can't find any of your people or planet, you're welcome to use our outpost for as long as you like to get on your feet. We have plenty of room to spare..." she assured him.

Melissa headed into the back while the ship was on autopilot. She came back with a fruit ration bar, and a small box.

"I don't honestly know if you're capable of eating this..." She admitted, handing it to him. Based on the stories her brother Nathan had told if being the only survivor of the Castle Bloodscrawl Massacre, she felt she had a hunch that Crass was going through similar traumas. He needed something concrete to anchor him. Something definite.

She opened the Box and showed him a strange pistol with a grip big enough for his gloved hands to use and pull the trigger on.

"I don't want you feeling totally helpless but there is a high possibility of you panicking at the wrong moment..." she explained. "This is an Ionised Stun Pistol. It's painless and Non-lethal. Good for organics as well as, um..." she trailed, looking for a word he might be familiar with.

"...automatons...* she added a second later.

"It's also so that in case you don't feel safe but don't want to risk taking a life, you can use this. It should be relatively simple for you to operate..." she explained, carefully pointing out how to load it, hold it, and fire it correctly, in clear, concise instructions, all without taking it out of the box in order to avoid spooking him. "You'll have plenty of chances to practice with it when we arrive."

 

[John Crass]

"Unexpected Awakening."

Tags - Melissa Bloodscrawl



John sat quietly for a moment, his hands still gloved and resting on his thighs, the ship's hum a low vibration through the deck and his bones. The lights overhead were sterile and steady, casting no shadows—clinical, like everything else here. Controlled. Predictable. But none of it made sense. The way the stars had stretched into streamlines, the flicker of the tunnel outside—it was wrong. His suit's inert sensors weren't reading any transit stress. No compression waves. No inertial resonance buildup. Just... motion. Constant, unbroken, fast—but unearned. Impossible.

"This isn't hyperspace," he muttered finally, more to himself than Melissa. Then, louder, "Not as I knew it. Not as it's supposed to be."

He looked up at her, visor blank but voice clearer now. "Hyperspace was a bypass. A cheat. A side-step. A topologically exotic medium—not-quite space-time, but not entirely separate from it either. You enter it to evade geometric constraints—what you'd call 'distance.' We used it when we had to... but only for tactical maneuvers. Long-range warships. Emergency jumps. Not this." He gestured vaguely toward the view outside. "It wasn't meant for this kind of travel. Too risky. Unstable. You don't build colonies on shortcuts."

He glanced at the control panels again, lips tightening. "The Solace—our ship—didn't use hyperspace. It moved through realspace. Sub-light, yes, but it wasn't limited by fuel. Propulsion was modular—an anti-matter lattice suspended in fullerene shells, mixed with heavy hydrogen isotopes in an energy-stable foam. It's safe. Dense. Contained. You need fuel for jumps, but not for deep drift. Once you're moving in realspace, you coast. Our cryoships were designed to travel for centuries. Maybe millennia. We sent them out during expansion phases, before permanent networks were established. They were engineered to endure."

He paused, staring out the cockpit's viewport again—into the blur of alien physics around them.

"I think I've been asleep for tens of thousands of years."

It felt hollow, even saying it. The number didn't feel real. But it was the only conclusion that made sense. If what she said was true—if this galaxy had relied on hyperspace for millennia—then the Solace had been moving long before that. Long before anything here had even learned to call it 'hyperspace.' He didn't say it aloud, but it all looked… primitive. Sleek, sure. Decorative. Efficient in ways he hadn't expected. But the principles behind it—manual targeting, tactile controls, visibly exposed power cells—they were centuries behind in concept. The Solace had no flight stick. No gunner station. Just intention, navigation, and execution.

His train of thought was broken by the soft shuffle of footsteps. He turned slightly as Melissa returned from the back, offering him a ration bar and a small box. He accepted the ration bar wordlessly, turned it over in his hands, then set it aside. He'd try it when the nausea faded. The box, though—that made him pause.

Inside was a weapon. Not unfamiliar in concept, but alien in form. It looked like a power tool. A compact U-frame chassis, heavy rubber grip, black matte body with clean red markings and blue glow around the muzzle. KEPLER-332, it read. A standard serial—corporate, military, maybe both. Ionized. Non-lethal. Meant for restraint, not war.

He stared at it for a few seconds too long before finally nodding. "Thanks."

His voice was quiet, edged with something harder than gratitude. "That was a smart call. Giving it, but not handing it over. I appreciate the trust. And the caution."

He didn't pick the weapon up right away. Just studied it—eyes tracing the glowing coils, the capacitors, the etched label on the side. "It's clean work. Functional. Redundant power failsafe. Analog trigger with smart current control. Built to be idiot-proof. I can work with that." A pause, then, softer: "Feels weird, though. Holding something that wasn't made by a machine that already knew your hand size before you touched it."

Finally, he reached in, gently, and lifted the pistol from the box. It was heavier than it looked. Well-balanced. He let it rest in his palm for a moment, then set it down beside him on the seat.

"It's not the worst way to start again, I guess."

He leaned back, closing his eyes beneath the visor for the first time since waking.

 

[Melissa Bloodscrawl]

"The methods you speak of...they definitely have not been employed for millennia..." Melissa explained. "Hyperspace travel used to be used in such a manner. Then we developed beacons once more networks got established. Then the units eventually miniaturized. Some Hyperspace Capable ships don't even use fuel, and many colony ships larger than the one I found you on don't do real space either. There are still risks, but all in all, Hyperspace travel is much safer than it was in your day. But we don't use A.I. the way your species seemed to. A.I. is used for other stuff. It's still in ships and whatnot but rarely to the degree of which you speak. It's mostly people calling the shots due to how efficient Hyperspace travel got."

She felt a deep sense of sympathy welling up in her. She decided not to mention she was an organic A.I. He had enough on his plate. She would tell him later.

He noted the engineering of the pistol. Melissa nodded.

"There are much more effective weapons out there. Unfortunately, the kind of custom work you mentioned is rarely done without a commission of sorts. A lot of weapons out there are made for the masses. Made to function a long time too. As numerous as the stars themselves." she said.

As he laid back to rest, Melissa let him and then focused on piloting...

Hours later.

They came out of Hyperspace, the ring shaped Isk-Ibbot-Series Luxury Station in orbit at a safe distance from a star.

"John?" she called out softly. "We're here..."

Melissa transmitted friendly codes.

"These stations are relatively small scale but they can get much closer to stars than where they currently are..." Melissa said to John Crass . "My family greatly prefers these stations for this very reason. They can even go into Hyperspace, and they are absurdly hard to bring down for a vessel in its size range..."

The vessel soon docked and Melissa got up, leading him out into the hangar. There were humans and all sorts of Aliens, from Twi'leks to Rodians, to Ithorians.

And droids...

One of which was a House Io Mercenary Unit that defected from its previous faction to her current one after a devastating Civil War. It walked up to them both, having been in the process of guard duty.

"Ah, Melissa! You're back early!" The Droid said in its simulated Fett Clone inflection. "Something go wrong with the Drop?"

"Someone else will have to take care of it, I'm afraid. I found this survivor on a heavily damaged colony ship of an unfamiliar design. He was the only survivor, Marcus." Melissa answered.

"Was his ship attacked?" The Droid named Marcus asked.

"No. It's real space Propulsion. Guy was in cryosleep, from the looks of it..." she trailed. "That ship was insanely old by the looks of it.

"Real Space...and Cryosleep during the journey... that's beyond old school..." The Droid noted, facing John.

"My condolences, sir. Hopefully you'll get back on your feet. The Galaxy has changed since your day...try to remain optimistic..." it advised. "Survival is a choice you make. You just gotta want it, in the end..."

The Droid resumed it's patrol.

"John, You'll be staying in the guest area of my penthouse. I'm afraid all standard quarters are currently occupied..." she explained. "I'll show you how to use the Holonet terminal there, and you'll be able to access the map..."

Melissa led him through spacious hallways. He would see people moving crates on repulsorlift carts, technicians conducting repairs.

Then they entered her penthouse .

Just the lobby alone was vast and spacious, with abstract sculptures lining the sides. A row of Bacta tanks could be seen in one corner, currently empty. Simulated natural lighting.

The walls were lined with weapons, from swords to blaster rifles...to even a few Lightsabers, their hilts resting on stands, inactive.

Melissa went to her work desk, where the Holonet terminal was, pointed out the controls and how it all worked before turning on the map and explained how to search the grid coordinates with the controls as concisely and efficiently as she could for him.

The Galactic Map was large and glimmered softly from its holoprojector.

"Does anything look familiar?" she asked him.

 

[John Crass]

"Unexpected Awakening."

Tags - Melissa Bloodscrawl



John followed in silence, the hiss of the blastboat's hatch opening behind him like a seal breaking on the world's oldest tomb. He stepped out into the hangar with slow, cautious movements, his bootfalls soft against the polished deck. He didn't remove the helmet. Not yet. Not here. Every part of him was screaming to keep the suit sealed—whether against microbes, radiation, or just the unknown. It was more than armor. It was identity. It was the only thing he had left from his world.

Then he saw the first alien.

His stride faltered. His breath caught in his chest. A Twi'lek, strolling past with a technician's harness, blue skin and head-tails swinging casually over her shoulders. Behind her, a Rodian barked something into a datapad, followed by an Ithorian lumbering past with serene calm. They were… wrong. Wrong shapes. Wrong biology. Not just adapted humans. Not bio-engineered variants. Completely separate evolutionary trees. He staggered one step to the side, catching himself on a support beam. It wasn't fear of violence—it was existential. These weren't from anywhere. They weren't even from the same origin point. No records. No classifications. Not even in the fringe xeno-databases.

Melissa said nothing, which he appreciated. The droid—Marcus—approached, issued its condolences, and wandered off again. It didn't even register. Synthetic life was normal. Expected. But these… creatures? They were real. Independent. Integrated. And everybody else just walked past them like it was normal. He'd spent most of his life in simulations and training under the idea that the universe was populated by human expansion and its offshoots. This—this—was proof he wasn't just off-course. He was in another galaxy altogether.

And it was tiny.

As he followed Melissa through the station's halls, the scale of it hit him—not in grandeur, but in absence. There were a few thousand people here, if that. And they were proud of it. A luxury station, she'd said. Private. Mobile. Capable of entering hyperspace. He tried not to laugh. The smallest civilian support station back home—the smallest—was designed to host twenty million. Full ecosystem integration, climate zones, orbital elevators, and megacity substructure rings. This place was a boutique airship by comparison. Comfortable, sure. Secure. But dwarfed by anything they ever produced. His own colony ship had been considered small, and it still held the cryo-coffins of millions.

He didn't take off the helmet when they entered her penthouse. He didn't even slow down to admire the architecture, though he did note the tanks in passing. Medical, perhaps. And then the walls—covered in weapons. Swords, rifles, tools of violence that had evolved without automation or precision targeting. He saw strange metal hilts mounted on stands. Some kind of symbolic relics? Religious objects? Maybe elite sidearms. He didn't ask. Nothing here tracked with what he knew. The world was upside down.

Then she activated the map.

John approached it slowly, almost reverently. It hovered in place, glimmering, filled with data tags, hyperlane connections, territorial borders. A whole galaxy, laid out like a glowing spiderweb of fractured empires and sectors. He leaned in. Looked closer. Not a single coordinate, not a single sector name, not even the star patterns matched. He began typing designations into the terminal—grid IDs, relay nodes, standard naming codes from the cartography protocols. The system blinked back static. No matches. The map was blank to him. And he to it. He pressed one gloved hand to the edge of the terminal, staring down at a cosmos that had no memory of him. A galaxy that didn't even know he'd arrived.

The silence wrapped around him. His voice wouldn't come.

Then—a chime.

His wristband, long dormant, flared to life, casting red and white diagnostic code across his HUD. A faint vibration buzzed along his arm. The blinking red shifted to amber, then blue, then green. A soft tone—authorization granted. Internal clock sync error. System time irreconcilable. Latency threshold exceeded. Then it displayed a code he hadn't seen since basic orientation.

[OMEGA PROTOCOL: ACTIVE]
Classified Memory Node Unsealed.
Standby for command authorization.

John's stomach turned to lead. His breathing became shallow. No. Not here. Not now. He moved quickly, thumbing the override key on the inner wrist, forcing the interface to dump power and sever live processing.

The band shut down with a soft click. The light died.

He turned away from the map, posture tense. "Nothing," he lied, flatly. "None of this matches."

He didn't elaborate. He couldn't. Protocol: Omega was top-tier clearance. Data sealed by them for last-line contingencies. Colony-failure. Civilization-failure. The kind of files they said would only ever activate if the network fell, if contact was lost, if they collapsed into silence. And now, here he was, in a galaxy filled with strangers and phantoms, standing in a penthouse full of swords and alien sculptures, staring at a map that might as well have been a hallucination.

He turned back to the terminal and slowly stepped away. His voice, when it came, was quiet. Hollow.

"Thanks for letting me look."

He didn't sit. He didn't rest. He just stared at the window.

He had traveled across the darkness between stars for ten thousand years.

He was completely alone.

 

[Melissa Bloodscrawl]

Guessing he didn't get good news she observed silently as he thanked her for letting him look.

And then he just stared out into space, looking through the window.

Melissa stayed silent, at first, knowing on instinct he was completely alone. He needed to process that.

Finally, she spoke.

"I know you must feel absolutely alone..." she said. "But this doesn't have to be the end. You can...you can still find purpose of some kind. We would be willing to train you in modern ship systems and navigation, John. Modern weapons. You'll need that kind of training to survive out here. It's a dangerous galaxy. There's always a couple of wars going on, somewhere...and not every faction out there is as friendly as mine is...we can even upgrade your suit...I'm not sure what it's made of or what's already in it, but I wouldn't want to risk it against some of the firepower I've seen..."

She walked up slowly to him, going to his side.

"John? We need to examine your physiology non-invasively to figure out what you need to be immunized against. There's probably a whole host of pathogens out there that your body isn't equipped to handle. I don't want to be negative, especially at a time like this...but you may need to consider cybernetic implants based off current tech to compensate for your immune system's weaknesses. I promise you, the examination won't require opening your suit or anything, and it won't involve needles..." she promised John Crass .

"There are ways forward, John. You can make a life for yourself, however long you have left in your natural life span." she assured.

 

[John Crass]

"Unexpected Awakening."

Tags - Melissa Bloodscrawl



Her voice was soft. Like someone talking to a man on the edge of a rooftop, gently reaching out without sudden moves. He didn't blame her for it. Hell, he appreciated it. But the words hit dull and heavy all the same. Purpose. Training. Cybernetics. Upgrades. Everything spoken as if this was salvageable. As if this was a course correction. But it wasn't. It was a collapse. And the ground had already given out beneath him.

He kept his eyes on the stars. Not because they meant anything—he didn't recognize a single one—but because they were the only constant. The one truth. Light that had traveled long and far, like him, only to land in a place that didn't care it had ever been cast. He let her finish before he spoke.

"I have my reason to live."

His voice was quiet. Measured. No hesitation, no emotion, just the tone of a man holding something too fragile to speak aloud. PROTOCOL: OMEGA. The last fallback. Data encoded in quantum lattice, buried behind layers of biometric locks and neural permissioning, now ticking silently inside the system embedded in his bones. It had come online when the ship confirmed no signal. A contingency. Something reserved for total systemic failure—for extinction-level events.

And he couldn't tell her a damn thing about it.

"I appreciate the offer," he added after a moment, "but my suit's non-negotiable. It was designed to function indefinitely in deep-space colonization scenarios. It monitors immune response and environmental vectors. Generates tailored counter-pathogen vaccines on a rolling algorithm. I've had two prophylactic pulses since we docked—one for atmosphere, one for biopresence." He tapped the inside of his forearm gently. "The system does a full spectral sweep every ten minutes. It's smarter than I am."

He turned slightly toward her—not fully, not intimately, just enough for acknowledgment.

"And I'm not taking it off."

The last sentence had weight to it. Finality. That suit wasn't just armor. It was a line of continuity. The only connection he had to the people who'd built him, trained him, launched him. The only shell he had left from the world that no longer existed. And whatever lay under the suit—whatever fragile body he still had left—was not something he was willing to expose to a universe that had moved on without him.

"I know you're trying to help," he said. "And I'm grateful. But I'm not ready to be remade into whatever this is. I need time to figure out how to function in your world without becoming something else entirely."

He let the silence hang after that.

She meant well. That much he believed. But there were rules he couldn't break. Not even now. And beneath every calm, controlled word he spoke, one thought whispered louder than the rest:

The mission isn't over.

 

[Melissa Bloodscrawl]

"Very well then..." Melissa replied to John Crass .

"At the very least, we have data tapes with audio for you to examine to at least get ready for some of what you're about to see out there. There is a spare room in this penthouse for guests. And like I said, you can stay as long as you want." she reassured.

"Y'know, there are a ton of small vessels that my family salvages all the time that would suit a spacefaring sort like you perfectly. Tough ships designed to withstand the rigors of deep space exploration..." she continued, going over to a wall panel, hitting a switch and hidden doors slid open to reveal the guest bedroom .

"I hope it's comfy enough..." she said. "It's got a basic refresher, Holonet access, Food storage, a basic footlocker. Everything a person needs to think out their situation."

She then remembered the blaster she had given him

"Or...if you aren't tired... perhaps you would like to learn how to use that Pistol I gave you? Trust me, the sooner you can shoot back, the greater your chances of survival." Melissa asserted. "That pistol will get you out of a lot of basic jams, but as you go on, you'll want something with greater punch. We have a wide variety of weapons here beyond stun guns. Energy Blasters, sonic weapons, melee--it all depends on your needs. But one word of warning..."

Melissa went over to two of the lightsabers resting on stands. One was simplistic with engravings, with a silver color, the other was a dark metal with three claw like blade guards around the emitter.

"No matter what you do, never try to use standard energy blasters on anyone using one of these..." She said, activating the silver hilt first and a blade with a white core and blue aura snakes out with a snap hiss.

"This is called a Lightsaber, John, and it may well be the deadliest melee weapon ever created in our galaxy. They can cut through almost anything. It's blade is pure energy, contained in a special field that loops the energy back into the hilt on a microscopic level. Blows from it are normally fatal if hit in the chest, and it's more than capable of amputating limbs. The blade can deflect blaster shots, and the people who use them are very dangerous, and are often specially trained to do so. Now... here's the caveat...the ones with blue, yellow, or green blades? They are...ninety-nine percent of the time... friendly. They would never hurt an innocent person, and often don't like hurting anyone if it can be helped."

She then flashed the other blade, and it had the same white core as the first, but the aura was blood red."

"Any time you see someone with a blade colored this specific shade of red? Run." she emphasized. "Don't try to fight. Run. Or hide if running isn't possible. I know this seems like a bit of a tangent, but it might save your life down the road. You don't want to provoke anyone who knows how to use these if you don't have to." she finished saying to John Crass .

 

[John Crass]

"Unexpected Awakening."

Tags - Melissa Bloodscrawl



John stood still in the doorway, visor angled toward the guest room as the hidden panels slid open. The space was more luxurious than he'd ever been allowed during his training rotation—well-lit, clean, furnished like someone expected peace to last. He clocked the layout quickly: single entry point, minor blind spots behind the storage locker and under the bed frame, no auto-seal on the hatch. But otherwise functional. Safe. More than he could've hoped for.

He gave a small nod, a simple acknowledgment of Melissa's hospitality. "It's enough," he said quietly. "Any decent room is enough, same as any decent ship. Long as it runs, long as it keeps pressure. You spend enough time in a cryo-tube, your standards change fast."

His gaze drifted toward the wall where the pistol still rested in its open box. The KEPLER-332. Red accents. Blue glow. "And I've already been optimizing," he added, voice lower. "My suit started mapping the weight, recoil profile, energy dispersion pattern the second I picked it up. Grip calibration's done. Target alignment overlay is running. Won't be pretty, but I can hit center mass if I need to."

Then she said the word that made his stomach twist.

Lightsaber.

He turned slowly as the first blade activated—blue-white light searing through the sterile air with a snap-hiss. It crackled faintly, a line of pure plasma held in place by some kind of containment field. Elegant. Stable. The power source had to be micro-scale. But what held his attention wasn't the science. It was the implication.

"You fight wars here with melee weapons?" he asked, disbelief soft but unmistakable. "Against energy rifles and projectile cannons? You bring… a sword?"

He stepped closer, watching the shimmer of light arc across her face. "I don't care what the field matrix does—anything that brings a person that close to kill you isn't a weapon. It's a statement. That blade? Where I come from, it'd be scrapped on contact with kinetic fragmentation. You'd take a flechette burst to the wrist before you ever got into range. Why build something that has to be in the wound to be effective?"

He gestured with a gloved hand to the plasma halo. "And the color. You're telling me the color tells me who wants to kill me and who doesn't?" His voice was calm, but the sarcasm bled through, sharp and subtle. "Back home, we learned not to rely on flags, uniforms, or broadcast signals. Everyone can fake a color. Everyone lies. Hell, your average smart-skin field gear could mimic friendlies in under three seconds. What you're describing sounds like a religion. Or theater."

He turned away from the blade, folding his arms. "Don't misunderstand. I believe you. I've seen crazier things in the last forty-eight hours than energy swords and color-coded ideologies. But I don't get it. I don't get how you survive with rules like that."

He went quiet for a moment, then exhaled through his nose.

"But I'm not in my galaxy anymore. Doesn't matter what makes sense to me. Just what gets me through the next encounter." He looked at her again, this time more directly. "If you're serious about teaching me to use that pistol, I'll learn. And if you're offering a ship, I'll take one. I need to move. I need to start charting what's out there. Mapping failure patterns. Scanning for signals."

He didn't say it—PROTOCOL: OMEGA. But the purpose that lived behind his words was unmistakable.

"I may not trust your weapons. But I trust speed. And speed is life."

 

[Melissa Bloodscrawl]

"I know, I know, it sounds ridiculous on the surface. But melee duels happen all the same. More than you might think. Most societies lack the sophisticated targeting and feedback technology your species seems to use. And the ones who wield these are especially dangerous. They have...other abilities that supplement their use. And while Flechette type weapons can work on the ones who use them it isn't always effective. Sonic weapons will bend around the blades though, and a high enough fire rate or energy shots with enhanced kinetic force such as maser-based weapons called Charrics can knock the blade out of their hand. But never try to use ordinary blasters, is all I'm saying. And even if you have a weapon that can get around such defenses, you're best bet is to never get in a fight with a Lightsaber User at all..." she said to John Crass , shutting the blades off and returning them to their rests.

"Oh, and one more warning about those blades... unless you have special cybernetics or training, in all likelihood, you won't be able to use one yourself. The blades are technically weightless, but generate intense gyroscopic force that requires special training to compensate for, and can be found in only specific areas, from specific trainers. They are fairly valuable though in the right markets if you happen to find one lying around for whatever reason. But enough about that. Let's get you into the shooting range..."

Melissa would lead John through the spacious passages to the indoor shooting range. Their were full color holographic targets depicting Imperial Stormtroopers wielding E-11 Blaster Rifles. She took a copy of the blaster John had from a nearby locker.

"The state of unconsciousness lasts fifteen minutes at maximum." She explained. "It's designed to let you either run or find some way to further restrain who you shot.

She fired, and the holographic Stormtrooper staggered back and dropped after three blasts.

"Blasters often work by using special gas called Tibanna that gets converted into energy by internal machines in the weapon. Your model can use a special gas called Visium or, a rechargeable Power Crystal such as the one in your own pistol. The power crystal holds more ammo, but it it takes longer to swap out than a Visium cell and is more expensive..." she explained, handing him some of the Visium cells and power crystal cells so he could swap and see the difference in reloading times.

She fired at a few more holographic Stormtroopers, and each one simulated being actually shot even though the greenish-blue bolts passed through them.

"You try." she said to John.