2 Years Before the Fall of the Human Empire
System - Outer Rim
The Last Hope emerged from hyperspace in a remote, desolate system. Months of grueling travel and brutal battles were finally behind them.
Admiral Obra, who had reluctantly taken command after the latest Skrad ambush, initiated a full system scan. He couldn’t afford any more fatal mistakes—not after the last one cost so many lives.
Twenty of the longest seconds of his life ticked by. Finally, the sensors reported no hostile ships. Breathing a sigh of relief, he glanced at the crew of pilots and engineers gathered on the bridge. They were the last ones standing. The survivors.
Their weary, questioning eyes were fixed on him. He was the last of the leaders still alive. The only one they looked to for hope. The only one who could give them a shot at survival.
“Kevin, go check the cryo-chambers,” Obra barked, addressing Senior Engineer Kevin Fix-It-All. “Tandara, inspect the engines. We need to know if we can make another jump if we have to hightail it out of here.”
A short, grizzled old man shuffled off the bridge, muttering incoherently under his breath. Every step seemed to pain him. He’d never been a runner, and after the injury he sustained in the Zhak-1 system, his gait had become even more unsteady. His sons, Hans and Daryl, hurried after him, grabbing scanners from a table near the door as they went.
“Dora, check the reactor. I don’t want a repeat of what happened on Zhak-1,” Obra added, watching the old man hobble off the deck.
Taking a few steps toward the observation window, the admiral felt a sharp pain flare up in his leg again. Clutching his left thigh, he barely kept his balance before pulling out a stim-pack and injecting another dose without hesitation.
“That’s the eighth one in a row…” he thought to himself. “I hope I can hold out a few more days. We’re so close… Just need to land this bucket on a planet, and I can finally rest…”
A yellow star bathed the bridge in warm light, offering a flicker of hope to everyone present. In the distance, a tiny dot appeared—their new home. One final push toward the peace they’d dreamed of, far from the war that had taken so much.
This fight had dragged on for far too long. Humanity teetered on the brink of extinction—they couldn’t afford to lose.
Someday, their names would go down in history as the ones who saved an entire species. But right now, few seemed to care about that. They just wanted to survive. They just wanted to set foot on solid ground.
The captain’s thoughts were interrupted by a young man—Jack, the deputy chief pilot.
“Sorry to bother you, sir, but it looks like our autopilot’s toast. That last maneuver fried it, so we’ll have to plot the course manually. And I can’t focus with so many people around,” he said, sounding irritated. “So, if no one minds, I’d like to get to work. We’re still not on the planet, and we’ve got a few hours at sublight speed ahead of us.”
He strode quickly to the co-pilot’s chair, his gaze lingering for a moment on the pilot’s seat—the one where Adam, the best pilot Jack had ever known, used to sit. A pang of grief tightened his chest, but there was no time for memories.
The rest of the crew began taking their stations, while the onlookers cleared the bridge to attend to their own tasks.
Performing his usual quirky ritual—a light pat on the controls and a quick spin of the chair—Jack gripped the yoke and pushed forward, coaxing the massive ship into motion.
A faint vibration rippled through the hull, jostling those who hadn’t yet taken a seat. It seemed the gravity generator wasn’t in the best shape either.
The ship slowly picked up speed, heading toward humanity’s new home. For the first time in a while, it felt like those on the bridge could allow themselves a moment to breathe.
You’d think Obra might seize the moment to deliver some inspiring speech, but he wasn’t the type for grand words. He was a simple soldier, lucky to have survived the Battle of Blue Blizzard. He’d never wanted to lead civilians.
Truth be told, he’d never even interacted with them much—a fifth-generation military man who’d grown up on a base of the Great Human Empire.
So instead, he just walked over to the captain’s chair and sat down quietly, casting a glance over the crew who had become closer to him than anyone else ever had.
They weren’t soldiers. They weren’t special. But it was because of them that everyone was still alive. Ordinary folks from the provinces had managed to do what his old team couldn’t—outsmart the Skrads and escape a battle that seemed lost.
***
Kevin Fix-It-All stepped out of the elevator into the technical bay with his sons, surveying the hull that had taken a beating over the past few months.
“Looks like this rust bucket’s falling apart on the fly,” the old man grumbled, running a hand over the scarred metal.
“Aw, come on, she’s seen worse days! Remember when you told us about flying through a warp with the entire left compartment nearly torn off, barely holding together?” Hans exclaimed with enthusiasm.
“Yeah, and then we lost 30% of the crew,” Daryl muttered pessimistically.
A heavy silence hung in the air. Daryl always had a knack for killing the mood, even in the brightest moments. He got that from his father—an eternal pessimist, but also the best fighter pilot around, with hundreds of downed Skrad ships to his name. Hans, on the other hand, was an incurable optimist, the kind of guy who saw the glass as full even if it only had a few drops left.
“What’s done is done. We’re here to make sure stories like that don’t happen again. Let’s finish checking the cryo-chambers and give Tandara a hand,” Fix-It-All broke the silence, trying to hurry toward the system control panel, though his awkward shuffle looked almost comical.
“What could even go wrong with them? There hasn’t been a change in the last 30 cycles. We’re just wasting time down here,” Daryl said dryly.
“Actually,” Hans countered, “this is our main job: making sure all those people wake up in good shape with no complaints. Imagine this: you wake up, and the pinky on your left hand doesn’t work. All because some engineer who didn’t want to ‘waste time’ skipped checking if enough bio-supplements were getting into the bloodstream. I’d be pretty pissed at that guy if I were in their shoes.”
***
Reaching the engine bay, Tandara first checked the fuel levels in the reservoirs. They still had about 4.5 billion kilometers to cover to reach their destination, and in case of an emergency, maybe even more.
For a moment, her thoughts drifted to the “New Haven”—another human ship heading in the opposite direction. Ironically, she’d designed a big chunk of that vessel, but they hadn’t taken her aboard. After all, she was just an engineer, not some politician or the child of an influential family. She was the daughter of a simple farmer from the backwoods of space. Her father had died before she’d even turned one.
A quiet explosion from one of the jump engines snapped her back to reality. Without a second thought, Tandara bolted toward the source.
It looked like the electronics hadn’t survived the aftermath of the last Skrad attack—and had finally given out.
“Great,” Tandara thought. “Just freaking great. This is exactly what I needed right now.”
Quickly inspecting the other components of the first of the three engines, she rushed toward the spare parts storage, hoping to find something to patch up this “minor” issue. On the way, she nearly collided with Kevin, who was heading over to help.
“Hey, hey, kiddo. Where are you racing off to? You’re gonna get yourself hurt!”
Tandara shot him a fierce glare.
“More like I need to get to the storage bay. The voltage stabilizer on the first engine just said ‘see ya later.’”
Kevin barely caught a glimpse of the girl’s boots disappearing around the corner.
“Well, no way I’m catching up to her. Even in my prime, I couldn’t run like that,” he thought, heading toward the engine while dialing his sons on the communicator to wrap up with the cryo-chambers and meet him there.
***
Dora stood calmly at the reactor control console, running the basic diagnostic she’d done thousands of times since the start of her shift. It was a simple process—just press a few buttons, and the computer did most of the work. All she had to do was wait for the results and check for any anomalies. Something was always off with this ship, but somehow, it still got the job done.
So, as usual, Dora started the diagnostic, leaned against the wall, and began reading the next chapter of her favorite novel. Everything was going according to plan: start, wait, check, done.
A shrill siren shattered the silence.
Startled by the sudden noise, she flinched, and the book slipped from her hands, clattering onto the metal floor.
A ringing filled her ears, as if someone had flipped on an emergency alert inside her head. Noise. Vibration. Pressure in her chest.
It took Dora a few seconds for the ringing to subside and her brain to process what had just happened. Her blood boiled as she dashed to the console to figure out what was wrong, completely forgetting about the book she’d been reading.
“Damn it… not this freaking sensor again!” she muttered through gritted teeth. “Every sensor on this ship—no, it just had to be this one! I told them we needed spares, but no! Who’s gonna listen to Dora?”
“‘There won’t be any issues,’ they said. ‘The flight will be quick and smooth since there’s no combat in this part of space.’”
Yeah, right! Absolutely NONE!
She kept grumbling, trying to calm herself and gather her thoughts.
“Think, think… Where else could there be sensors?”
She nervously ran a hand through her hair, trying to focus.
Maybe she could pull one from the engines?
No, too risky. What if they overheat, and we don’t even know it?
What about the cryo-chambers?
Kevin would probably tear her apart. “The cryo-chambers are critical to our survival,” he’d drone on.
“And the reactor isn’t?!” she hissed through clenched teeth, though she quickly realized those sensors wouldn’t work anyway—they weren’t built for these temperatures.
Her heart felt like it might leap out of her chest and replace the damn reactor itself—then there’d be no more sensor issues.
Stop. Panicking was the worst thing she could do.
Dora closed her eyes. She knew exactly what to do in situations like this. Shut off one of her senses. Focus.
Deep breath in. Slow breath out.
Her father’s voice echoed in her mind.
“Panicking again? It’s just a small problem. Every problem has a hundred solutions. Just find them.”
And then it hit her like a bolt of lightning.
“That’s it!”
Her eyes lit up.
There was a temperature sensor on the first level of the greenhouses. Sure, it wasn’t designed for this kind of stress, but… she’d figure something out. She always did. She’d make it work this time too.
She had to move fast.