009.01 – The River Between (Kolnar)
The dream opened in silence.
Kolnar stood on the banks of the sacred river, the one that had cut through his village like a silver vein. The water shimmered, warm and clean, carrying the songs of Iova. The sky above stretched endless, the stars alive with promise.
He breathed it in, chest swelling. Here, at last, there was peace.
Figures gathered on the far shore: his people, the elders, the faithful. They raised their hands in blessing, their hymn rising in waves across the current. The sound filled him, anchored him.
But the dream twisted.
The hymn swelled, then broke. The voices grew louder, layered, clashing until they were no longer a song but a clamor of accusation. His people pointed at him, mouths wide, their chants becoming screams:
“You swore we would endure. You swore we would live, and then you left us!”
Kolnar staggered back. His refuge of silence was gone, and the voices filled him, clawing at him, echoing inside his skull.
He looked down; his hands were wet not with river water, but with blood. A crewmate’s blood. The body at his feet was faceless, blurred but familiar. His fingers clutched something cold, something heavy. It was a shard of utrium, gleaming even as the river blackened around it.
The hymn became a roar. His people’s faces warped, eyes hollow, mouths dripping red as they screamed louder:
“You left us! You left them! You left everyone but yourself!”
The river thickened into tar, pulling him down. He tried to speak, a prayer, a denial, anything. But no words came. Only silence, the silence he had always hidden behind.
As the black water swallowed him, Kolnar clutched the utrium tighter, holding it above the surface, the last thing not consumed. His breath shuddered as the voices pressed close, until he rasped the truth aloud, barely a whisper:
“I will survive. Whatever it takes.”
The river dragged him under.
And the dream did not end.
009.02 – Burnout (Getro)
The dream opened on the salt flats.
Engines thundered in the distance, a dozen skimmers lined up under the blistering sky. Getro sat in the cockpit, hands on the controls, heart pounding. Beside him, always beside him, was his twin brother Zerik, grinning that same reckless grin.
The signal flared. They shot forward, dust trailing, engines screaming. The rush tore through him, hot and clean, the way it always had. He leaned into it, felt alive in it. His brother surged ahead, laughing, pushing the throttle harder, cutting close to the canyon’s edge.
Getro laughed too, until the engine coughed.
His brother’s skimmer wobbled. The frame shook as bolts tore loose. Sparks erupted from the intake. Getro’s stomach dropped. He knew this moment. He had built that engine; he had sworn it would hold.
The skimmer veered, clipped the canyon wall, and shattered. Fire and dust erupted, swallowing his brother whole.
The dream froze there.
Not the crash, not the silence after. Just the look on his brother’s face in the half-second before impact. The shock, the fear.
Then the voices came. His parents’ voices. His own voice.
“You built it.”
“You swore it was safe.”
“You killed him.”
The canyon echoed with blame. Zerik’s laughter warped into a scream that never ended. The wreckage burned, over and over, as if time itself refused to let the crash finish.
Getro fell to his knees, clutching his ears. “No, it was me, it was me, I should have…” His words collapsed into silence.
Then came the darkness. It swallowed the salt flats, the canyon, the fire, even the scream. He let it. He welcomed it.
The darkness was quieter than guilt.
And there, unseen, he stayed.
The dream gave him no mercy; the race reset. The engines roared. His brother laughed, the signal flared.
And again, the crash.
Again, the scream.
Again, the blame.
Until Getro could no longer remember which one of them had died, and which one had survived.
009.03 – Ghost Circuits (Zion)
The dream was clean. Too clean.
No blood, no fire, no rain. Just the white sterility of a lab: bright panels, humming consoles, and the faint buzz of monitors that never glitched. Zion sat at the terminal, her code streaming in neat lines of violet light across the screen. This was her work, her voice, translated into logic.
She tapped the keys faster, weaving the structures she had once believed would save Iova: autonomous systems, predictive engines, programs meant to guide evacuation and rationing.
But the words began to vanish.
Line after line blinked out, erased by an invisible hand. No warning, no error, just gone.
Zion’s breath caught, and she typed faster, fingers a blur. More code, more structures. But no matter how quick she was, the deletions outpaced her. Soon her screen was a battlefield of input and loss.
She slammed the console, then turned and saw a row of Mandate officers behind glass, watching silently. Recording her failure.
She shouted at them, her voice muffled against the barrier. “I wrote this! You need it, it’s ours.”
The screen flickered, and the code returned. But it wasn’t hers anymore; the structures were twisted, repurposed, weaponized. Her algorithms weren’t saving lives, they were tracking civilians, predicting rebel movements, and targeting IFF strongholds. Every calculation was a trigger pull.
Her stomach lurched. She stepped back, but her reflection filled the glass. What she saw was not her face, but circuitry. Her skin flickered like bad data, her voice caught in a loop. When she tried to scream, the sound came out flat and synthetic.
Replaceable, the reflection whispered. A line of code can always be rewritten.
The officers behind the glass vanished. In their place, rows of silent terminals appeared, filled with her own face, each one glitching slightly differently. Hundreds of Zions, each erasing the other until she couldn’t tell which one was real.
The lab dissolved into white static. She stood alone in an empty grid of humming wires. There was no air, no warmth. Just the hum of systems that didn’t need her anymore.
She pressed her hands to her chest, desperate to feel breath. There was none; only the echo of her reflection’s voice remained:
You’ve been deleted. deleted. deleted.
009.04 – Iron Hunger (Hagok)
The dream opened on the bridge.
The captain’s chair was his throne, his body heavy with command. He sat tall, unblinking, hands resting on the armrests. Before him stretched the panoramic window, a canvas of endless blackness dotted with indifferent stars.
No alarms, no crew, no battle, no memory.
Only Hagok and the sound of his breathing.
The spores searched him, pulled at him, as they had the others. They found no grief, no wounds, no ghosts clawing their way out of the dark. There was nothing to twist, nothing to punish.
Hagok had never carried regret. He had never feared death. Every order he gave was perfect in his mind, every life weighed and discarded without hesitation. His victories were clean because he left the blood where it fell. His losses did not scar him because he had no place for scars.
So the dream gave him what he was:
A man in silence, staring into the void.
And when death itself loomed in the blackness, a shadow pressing close, inevitable, Hagok only breathed deeper, lips curling into the faint shape of a smile.
If the end was waiting, he would laugh in its face.
009.05 – Mission Protocol (G.I.Z.I.)
Power cycle: Stable.
Systems check: Nominal.
Crew vitals: Within safe thresholds, but anomalous.
Status: Quarters sealed. No response to wake sequence.
Environmental scan: Clear.
Contaminants: None.
Full analysis: Planetary electromagnetic field resonance confirmed.
Overlap detected: Iovian delta-wave activity. Crew unable to exit dream cycles while within interference zone.
Directive conflict detected:
– Navigation protocol prohibits launch under incomplete repair.
– Crew survival requires immediate ascent.
Repair status: 78% complete.
Engines: Unstable. Insufficient thrust capacity.
Navigation core: Authorization withheld.
Resolution: Initiate Directive Override. Command transfer engaged. Navigation silenced.
Temporary authority: Acting Captain G.I.Z.I.
Drones mobilized. Drone 3: venting intake ducts. Drone 5: structural reinforcement in progress. Drone 7: coolant line re-routed.
Status: Integrity compromised but viable.
Ignition sequence forced. Thrust attempt one: failure. Thrust attempt two: collapse at 41%. Thrust attempt three: sustained. Engines stabilize at 63%.
Hull stress: Critical. Override maintained.
The Savasu has lifted. Atmospheric interference decreasing. Delta-wave resonance falling below threshold. Crew neural activity returning to normal variance.
Vitals strengthening. Respiration deepening. Pulses stable. Zea, Rhea, Rotan, Zion, Artelle, Oromi, Kolnar, Hagok, and Getro.
Crew status: Alive.
Mission status: Survival confirmed.
End log.
—Acting Captain G.I.Z.I.
