VITAL INFO

CALLSIGN: CMDR Luna Hellmoon NAME: She tends to avoid giving a straight answer. ORIGIN: A number of ports of call on Earth-like worlds have citizenship records, including Irving World | Asphodel, Makenouchi | Bento, and even Earth | Sol. AGE: Uncertain. Biometrics would suggest twenty-seven years old. HEIGHT: 163cm WEIGHT: 56kg DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Vivid red eyes; eclectic curio collection; troubling chitinous knife

OCCUPATION: Teller of truth, of stories and of lies; giver of advice, prophecy, warnings and succor ACTUAL OCCUPATION: Part-time miner, part-time scout, part-time armed security, part-time delivery of freight and data, part-time hazardous salvage and search-and-rescue specialist LIKES: Camaraderie, new experiences, mutual aid, rumors and mysteries, legal recreational chemicals, music, flowers DISLIKES: Cutting-edge technology, monotony, authority, crowds, bland food, 'those who don't mind their own business.' STRENGTHS: Flexible, adaptable, creative, charitable, supportive, patient WEAKNESSES: Opinionated, judgmental, and moody; cryptic mannerisms; habitually commits minor legal infractions

BACKGROUND

Let me tell you a story.

The funny thing about stories is that they are only as reliable as their narrator, only as believable as the audience is credulous. This one is about a person, a pilot, a handful of ships, a scattering of stars and a bouquet of flowers.

Let me tell you about a war.

When we do not understand, we venture. Sometimes it is a question. Sometimes it is a statement. Sometimes the statement is an overcharged heavy plasma accelerator round. Sometimes - usually - we speak with humans. Sometimes - uncommonly - we speak with someone or something we know cannot fluently communicate. Sometimes - rarely - we do not even know with whom we are speaking. Insects and cephalopods and bacteria and fungi and cyborgs and fluffy space kittens from the other side of the galaxy sometimes speak back, and sometimes they can only venture. Sometimes questions. Sometimes statements. Sometimes statements (overcharged, heavy, etc.)

Let me tell you a lie.

Depending on who you ask, the first concrete contact with the Thargoids occurred sometime in the 29th to 32nd centuries. A couple of things then happened, and our second war with them concluded within the past year. Several of the most loaded statements recorded by humankind were sent by them into our Bubble and subsequently (explosively) refuted. They tried to steal from us - steal us, perhaps as we have from them - and we stole us back, digging out survivors, detaining them for study.

No one fully understands in the first place what happens when someone is abducted and then recovered from Thargoid claws (our ventures thus far include such questions as the Proteus Wave). What happens to someone's physiology? Their memories? Their spirit? One day we may find the right phrasing, the proper questions to venture, and discover that the Witchspace into which we have all been creeping is, in fact, creeping back into us.

The lie here is that some of those recovered are anything besides securely contained and strictly monitored. There is no chance that a commander of some renown from the Pilots' Federation made a friend with one of those rescuees, arranged for their exfiltration from their facility, and got them into a Sidewinder.

This is where the lie concludes. Now, let me tell you about a pilot.

My memories are real.

I would not know how to fly without them. I would not have been drawn to the rescue ship at Luyten's Star by heartfelt duty if I lacked them. Officially, I am only a recent inductee into the Pilots' Federation, but I settled for the first time into the pilot's seat as if it were my lifelong home and struck out into the black as soon as I could obtain clearance to launch.

My memories are real, but there are no ruins of bloody chitin splitting the surface of Earth's first moon. There are no wreckages of wormhole gates or spiky alien corvettes threatening inhabited systems. No ichorous cybernetic horrors or fluffy space kittens to be found.

There are only... flowers.

News of a war had long ago reached me, so-called 'filthy xenos', and the concept ignited something in the back of my head: fear, excitement, adrenaline, questions. My memories are real, and all of them told me to do what I have always done. Protect.

Mars High alongside the Shotgun Bride, Titan Cocijo on the wing of The Sol Exception. They pulled me out of an alien pod and couldn't keep me from venturing back into the encroaching gardens, and each statement I made granted me means to invest in ever more eloquent phrasing. Eagle to Cobra to Diamondback to Krait to Chieftain and then, with a bright and unearthly resonance, Cocijo fell and the war ended.

I didn't know what to do from there.

My gut told me to stick with the navy, but I'm with the Pilots' Federation, not the Federation Federation, a privateer allowed nearly unrestricted travel and license to any gear they can afford. I had flown mining escort before, but I had no obligations and needed no permit to branch out. Instead of combat in the rings, I sought cargo, and then connections, and then the galaxy began to unfold. The Indigo Fixer, the Gray Wolf, the Scrapper, the Green Fairy - won't you give them my regards if you ever see them? Heaven's Lathe and the Center, Alexandrite and Monazite, Alioth and Deciat. New sights, new perspectives, new joys, even new boredoms.

It is nice, every so often, to see for what I have fought.

As with many independent pilots, I was wary of the Empire with its lawful slavery and the Federation also with its lawful slavery, and in the Alliance trying to bridge the gap, only Councilor Kaine struck me as the most genuine. To what end? Under Kaine, I was in the company of many good, dedicated, passionate people struggling with border skirmishes and questioning their ideals once the Brewer Corporation announced its colonization initiative.

Every group has its dissidents. Kaine with the Alliance, I with Kaine, and with a civilization as broad and grand as the Imperium, Aisling Duval and her fleet. At first I had thought the princess to be a puppet, or the kind of controlled opposition I now believe Nakato Kaine to be. However, it is not by discontent and proselytization that I came to a revised conclusion.

The story is a little bit funnier than that.

My memories are real, and they lead me to crave freedom. There is serenity to be found alone in a planetary ring, a certain comfort to be found in the Empyrean Straits while giving the navigation computer of a ten-year-old ship a slap to get it to unfreeze, even an eerie peace to surveying an alien ruin that begins to come alive during the approach, but none of these are the truest freedom. When the question turned to how do I become the fastest thing alive, my path led to Gutamaya. I enjoyed flying the Imperial Eagle, but it felt incomplete. If I wanted the real deal, I would need to be recognized by the Empire.

This was before I had developed a respect for them.

There are (or were) a handful of outposts that had found infamy in the Pilots' Federation for, seemingly under the Empire's nose, operating as a specialized network of data exchange that by (alleged) necessity required rapid updates. Any independent pilots that enlisted to help them were fast-tracked permits and provided channels to 'legitimately acquire' rounding errors from the Imperial shipyards. For the sake of the ship that became my beloved, the Imperial Courier, I did, appropriately enough, a bunch of courier work.

The Brewer Initiative changed all that. New Imperial offices were established governing colonization, a closer look was taken at operations in backwater stations, and the network was, in essence, restructured. Part of that restructuring was a look at every independent pilot recorded in their databanks, in the unlikely case that anyone had been awarded honorary royalty in error.

The truest freedom may be speed, but nothing is faster than information.

We draw near, finally, to the present.

Yes, they caught me. Yes, I am potentially in a lot of trouble with the Empire. I've spent the past month leveraging every contact I have, calling in favors from friends. In the end, I reached an agreement with an agent of Princess Duval: they'll let me off the hook, but I have to start acting like an Imperial.

At this point, I am still operating in Alliance space.

I need a plan.

I've drifted off Kaine's radar before, most significantly on an excursion to Sagittarius A*. Following the launch of the Trailblazers, a prominent fleet of explorers are planning a grand hauling expedition to establish a hub in the vicinity of Orion.

My plan is to lie low there for a while.

My vessels will be making less frequent appearances in the Bubble, especially outside of Imperial space. I've arranged for another commander to behave as if she is the captain of my base of operations.

But none of this is the reason. I was not persuaded by fellow pilots, not coerced by the Empire, not repelled by discontent with conflicting Alliance interests, not even swayed by Her Highness's notorious elegance.

Shortly before going dark, I paid a visit to Cubeo, just out of respect, and during my fly-by of the system's third body--

I cannot say I heard it. I received no transmission. No sound rose over the rasp of my scout ship's outsized thrusters.

I felt a song I recognized but could not name, one I have felt nowhere else in the galaxy. A song of connection, of hope, of passion, of happiness, of salvation. The melody and the words are on the fringes of my mind, the tip of my tongue. The journey to discovering its meaning can naturally begin nowhere else but here.

My memories are real.