ＡＢＯＵＴ ＭＥ

ａｌｌ ｔｈａｔ ｉ ｓｅｅ ｉｓ ｔｈｅ ｓｋｙ

I was born on a small planet, Rubos, at the far-flung edge of the Triangulum Galaxy, during the harshest part of its winter cycle. My family was enormous, like most of my people. There were nineteen of us kids, and I was lucky number thirteen. I had seventeen brothers and one sister. I like to jokingly say that she's the worst of us, but really, I mean that; it's justified, though, being the only girl in that household must have been horrific. I was raised more or less by my borough and would consider my childhood to have been a good one. As is tradition for Lepunid, I inherited my father's career. When I was of age, I enlisted in the Rubian Corps as a flight systems engineer. Though I didn't expect at all to do well in a rigid, militaristic environment, I actually thrived—the routine was good for me. I was assigned to the crew of a small scout ship called the ISV Hoplite and spent roughly fifteen years (time is a complicated thing for me, sometimes) flying missions for various agencies. I went just about everywhere. Things were good back then. Life was largely uneventful, which is something you really hope for as a service member; none of us get into it wanting chaos and violence. I know I didn't want to fight anyone, and when the crew had to, it was our last resort. One of the scariest incidents we did have, though, involved a brush with a particularly nasty solar ejection that left us adrift without power for nearly two weeks. I've never been more excited to take a hot shower in my life.

My crew’s selection for a Javelin Operations mission changed everything. If you’ve read my bio, you know how I feel about corporations. Learning we’d work for the system's biggest conglomerate left me nonplussed; I had a suspicion things wouldn’t end well. I should have resisted that assignment harder. Security protocols limit what I can share, but after that mission went catastrophically wrong, my relationship with reality hasn’t been the same. I’m lucky to be alive—if what I do counts as living.

I work for Javelin Operations now, part of their grand PROJECT HORUS initiative. The state I was recovered in defied explanation, and the fact that I continue to live does, too. I know the researchers are keeping me under observation, using me as a subject to study the long-term effects of radiation on carbon-based lifeforms. All of this probably sounds like nonsense to you. I'm sorry for that, and I wish I could say more. When I inevitably outlive this corporate project, maybe I'll write a big 'tell all' book that makes it to your system. What I can tell you is that my molecular structure has been twisted, altered by the anomaly my crew encountered on that mission. I was the only survivor, and I'm living with the effects of that every single day.

Working for JVO isn't so bad, though. I get to live on this colossal space station, slowly traveling across the system. Horus Station really is a marvelous feat of engineering. I've never seen or even imagined anything quite like it. Nothing we had back home could even come close to a vessel of this proportion. Think about the largest city you know, then put that on a self-contained station in the shape of a giant ring with a superstructure in the center. That's Horus Station. Population in the millions. Each lifeform here is for a reason, doing a job, all in service of this grand project. They found novel work for me as a courier and escort for one of their older mechanical suit models. I pilot the ISV Hermes with a robotic lifeform I met here on station, and he's become my best friend. I love Jules like a brother, and if anything good came out of all of this nightmare, it's him.

To kill time I dabble in broadcasting from the station a couple nights a week to share my passions for good stories, video games, and art with like-minded lifeforms from all across the local cluster. My hope is to inspire other lifeforms creativity, and I'd like to make some kind of lasting, positive impression somewhere in our super cluster before my star inevitably burns out. I don't know when that time is coming, or how to prepare for it, but I do know this: when it happens, it will be spectacular.