"Fuck you. Fuck every one of you." It’s amazing how far a mantra like that can get you when sneaking through hostile space. It's simple, effective, and somehow fitting when you're outnumbered a few trillion to one. You’d think it would wear thin after a while, but it still feels right every time I push deeper into enemy territory without so much as a blip on their sensors.
Drifting silently in the void aboard the UNS Xenophon, concealed not only by the cold darkness of space but by the carefully calibrated measures I’ve employed to remain undetected, I silently repeat that mantra to myself. Maybe more to the enemy I'm planning on killing shortly. To my port side lies the star known to the UN Systems, and Humanity as a whole as Beta Doradus (β-Dor), a Cepheid variable star whose pulsations cast shifting waves of blue-white light across this area of space. The star waxes and wanes with precise regularity, its magnitude cycling every 9.8 days from a low glow to a high brilliance, altering not just its luminosity but its very size—swelling and contracting with each pulse, from a massive supergiant to a bright giant. During these phases, bursts of ultraviolet and X-ray radiation ripple out, hinting at the incredible forces at play within its churning core.
The astronomers and astrophysicists back in human systems would kill for a chance to study Beta Doradus up close. It’s a near-perfect example of a Cepheid variable, a cornerstone for measuring cosmic distances and unlocking the evolution of massive stars. They’d love to confirm some of their theories—whether its pulsations deviate from the models, what its internal layers are doing, or how magnetic fields play a role in this grand stellar dance. I wonder if they still have time to care about stars like this, with the war dragging humanity to the brink. Before the conflict they had plans to visit Polaris, the closest Cepheid star to Sol, although those research expeditions tend to lose funding when your species’ very existence is on the line. But here I am, within reach of a star they’d give anything to understand—closer than any human or human-made machine has ever come. I’m the first to ever be this far from home. And yet, I can’t afford to care about this star either. I’ve got more important work to do as I am deep in enemy territory.
Out here, at the fringes of the system, far enough that the fluctuations of its variable light are only slightly less intense, the Xenophon is invisible. My ship’s heat, vented in careful bursts, has long since dissipated. Electromagnetic emissions are reduced to almost nothing, with systems running in low-power mode. I am a ghost, masked by both distance and precision, waiting in the shadows. The enemy doesn't know I’m here. They never do—until it’s too late. For months now, I have hunted them, severing their supply lines, ambushing their fleets, and leaving their shattered remains to drift, lifeless, in the cold emptiness of space.
They believe themselves secure in this region, far removed from the front lines of battle. Their overconfidence in these supposedly "controlled systems" is a glaring weakness I have exploited time and time again with ruthless precision. It’s a flaw in their otherwise calculated demeanor, a blind spot created by the vastness of space and the natural phenomena they assume protect them. They feel safe here, in the perceived absence of peril, lulled into complacency by the predictable radiation bursts from Beta Doradus and the sheer emptiness of the region, confident that nothing could challenge their supremacy this far from any active conflict. But they are wrong. They are complacent, and I prefer them this way—oblivious to the predator lurking in the shadows, assuming the vast reaches of space protect them, never imagining that it could be their undoing.
As I stalk this convoy from light-seconds away, every move they make is under my watchful eye, their arrogance and false sense of safety serving as the perfect camouflage for my strike. They don’t understand the true nature of this system, where Beta Doradus, with its pulsating light and predictable bursts of radiation, cloaks my presence like a veil. Its ultraviolet and X-ray emissions ripple through space, masking my own minimal heat and electromagnetic signatures. My ship is a ghost, invisible amidst the cosmic noise. While they blindly trust their optics, thermals, and radar, dulled by the star's radiation spikes, I have already integrated every natural fluctuation of the system into my tactical advantage. Their reliance on these “safe” systems only highlights their vulnerability.
The Xenophon is a battlecruiser, and a marvel of human engineering—sleek, deadly, and built for speed with overwhelming firepower. Its hull is reminiscent of a blade; long, and narrow, with a forward bow extending beyond the end of the keel that cuts through the void like the edge of a tanto knife being driven into space. The hull, a matte black color, is reinforced with advanced composite materials, capable of withstanding the harshest conditions space can offer. Equipped with plenty of sophisticated, but time tested and reliable weaponry and defenses, the Xenophon is as much a part of me as I am of it. We are one—ship and mind, machine and man—melding together into a single, relentless force. Maybe. I’m not sure about the machine part. If I’m totally honest, I’m afraid of losing myself to the code, so to speak, but I try to avoid those thoughts.
The convoy stretches out across the void, a line of cumbersome, sluggish vessels burdened with the weight of their cargo. At the center are the supply ships, vast and bloated. They remind me of enormous turtles, their round shapes tapering at the midsection with a flat keel beneath. The modular plating that covers their hulls only reinforces this impression, giving them a shell-like appearance. Though bristling with defensive turrets, these giant turtles' weapons have become more ornamental than functional when faced with a determined foe like myself. Flanking them are a handful of older-model destroyers, their engines pulsing with a steady rhythm as they maintain formation. These warships serve as little more than escorts for the precious resources they guard. Their hulls are scarred from previous encounters, a testament to their age and the relentless pressure of war. The entire convoy moves at a ponderous pace, each ship locked into its designated position, oblivious to the threat lurking in the shadows.
I plan to exploit the very gaps they leave between ships—spaces too wide for coordinated defense, too large to account for the speed and lethality I bring. Their spread-out formation, born from overconfidence in their isolation, is their undoing. They think the empty expanse makes them unassailable, but in reality, it’s a kill zone—a trap I’ve laid with the precision of a hunter. Here, in the long, silent reaches of the void, I am the only predator, and they are the prey. They just don’t know it yet.
I chose this system specifically because of its vulnerabilities—devoid of listening stations and without any rapid response options available to the convoy and its escorts. As a result, I don't need to use my multi-wave jamming array that blankets all possible frequencies and bands. To them, this is just a boring system, far from the actual fighting and killing they are forcing upon humanity, and that’s why it will be their grave. They are not aware of my plans, but there will be no witnesses to warn of the devastation that’s about to befall them, and nobody to tell the tale of their demise. The space between them is vast, a tactical misstep born from overconfidence, and it is within these gaps that I will strike, turning their own arrogance into their deaths.
The railgun hums with power, the electromagnetic coils vibrating as they charge, aligning with the lead destroyer in a seamless, predatory motion. Unlike ancient ballistic weapons that relied on chemical propellants, this weapon harnesses the raw energy of magnetic fields. A superconductor array, housed deep within the Xenophon’s hull, channels vast amounts of current into the railgun’s twin conductive rails. As the current surges, it creates an electromagnetic field that accelerates the projectile—a dense, tungsten penetrator—along the rails at a staggering speed.
Each of the four forward-mounted railguns is a masterpiece of efficiency and power, designed to fire in sequence or simultaneously, depending on the level of devastation required. Mounted in a fixed position, they turn the Xenophon into a spearhead—uncompromising in its attack, delivering death at extreme range. The forward-facing configuration allows for maximum energy focus, as each railgun draws directly from the ship's reactor, bypassing auxiliary systems to minimize power loss.
The railgun’s firing cycle is a symphony of calculated precision. As I line up the target, the rails reach critical energy thresholds, synchronized by the Xenophon's quantum computing core, where even the slightest variance in current is corrected within microseconds. The system compensates for drift, gravitational forces, and even minute variations in the surrounding vacuum. Every calculation—drag, mass, velocity, distance—is processed and delivered to me as though the weapon itself were an extension of my mind.
In my mind’s eye, I visualize the shot with perfect clarity, and I fire just once. The projectile, though seemingly inert, is more than just a chunk of metal. It is infused with lattice harmonics, designed to interact with gravitational fields to maintain near-perfect velocity over vast distances. The hyper-velocity round rips through the void at an unimaginable speed, propelled without the need for combustion or exhaust—just pure electromagnetic force.
There is no atmospheric flash, no recoil in the void of space. The only clue to the devastating power unleashed is a faint electromagnetic pulse as the rails discharge their energy—yet even this, on the Xenophon, is obscured. The ship's electromagnetic shielding systems, built into the hull, absorb and dissipate the pulse into surrounding space, masking any trace of the railgun’s energy signature. It’s a delicate balancing act: the shielding ensures that the telltale burst of radiation is dispersed in a random pattern across the void, indistinguishable from the ambient electromagnetic noise of space. This makes it almost impossible for enemy detection arrays, like infrared scopes or passive electromagnetic monitors, to differentiate my shot from the natural cosmic background.
In the microseconds after firing, the Xenophon's cooling systems kick in, dissipating the massive heat generated by the rails’ discharge. The superconductors must cool rapidly to prevent overheating and to prepare for the next shot. Every railgun is equipped with redundant cooling loops, using liquid helium and graphene-laced conduits to maintain superconductivity, allowing the weapons to fire in rapid succession if needed.
The round travels silently, and incredibly fast, with its sheer velocity bypassing any chance of detection. The vacuum of space eliminates air resistance, while advanced composite alloys and the projectile's sleek design ensure that it remains invisible to the discount tracking systems a convoy like this would possess. To enemy sensors, it’s a fleeting blur—detected only moments before impact, when it's already too late. The projectile rips through space like a knife through fabric, its speed nearly turning it into a kinetic lance, a weapon capable of piercing nearly any armor, no matter how advanced.
The destroyer was dead before it could even register the projectile. When it strikes, the impact is cataclysmic. The force of the round hitting the destroyer is the equivalent of a small asteroid collision, focused into a pinpoint of destruction. Kinetic energy converts to heat on impact, turning the metal of the hull into molten shrapnel. Its hull split open like an overripe fruit, debris scattering into the void. The resulting explosion, a flash of searing light, is inevitable as the ship's systems overload from the shockwave. Debris scatters across the battlefield like shrapnel, twisted remnants of what was once a warship.
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I’m already moving.
The engines of the UNS Xenophon roar to life, and I cut through the convoy with my weaponry like a knife through flesh. I’m surgical, precise. Another destroyer goes up in flames, then another. They’re scrambling now, trying to organize some semblance of defense. It’s too late though. It’s always too late.
But I’m not here to just play with the escorts. My real target is the series of supply ships at the heart of their formation—massive beasts for vessels, packed with resources for their war effort. I haven’t seen any of these large vessels in a long time; whatever they're carrying, it must be important. I focus, narrowing my vision to a single point, a single moment. The railgun fires again, a rapid series of shots in quick succession as the Xenophon pivots smoothly on both her vertical and lateral axes, realigning with precise focus on each new target in the convoy. They punch through the reinforced hulls of the enemy. I don’t even need to see the explosions to know it’s over.
With the escorts and the primary targets neutralized, I methodically eliminate the remaining transport ships, one by one. There can be no witnesses. No calls for distress or warnings to others of their kind. I ensure each vessel is obliterated, targeting any potential black boxes or recording devices with precision strikes to erase any trace of my presence. If they can’t identify their attacker, they will have a more difficult time adapting.
I initiate the quantum slip drive (QSD), and the ship’s systems hum, signaling the beginning of the jump. This is the device that creates what the UN Systems Fleet colloquially refers to as a quantum bridge—a tunnel through spacetime, linking my current position to a destination light-years away. There’s no travel time in the conventional sense. The Xenophon doesn’t traverse space; instead, the QSD folds spacetime itself, allowing the ship to disappear from one location and reappear in another instantaneously. As long as the drive is charged, the only time involved are the milliseconds required to create and collapse the bridge.
The energy demands of the QSD are immense, scaling exponentially with both distance and the size of the object being transposed. The farther I need to travel, the more power it requires—making long-distance jumps a costly endeavor. Every jump has to be carefully calculated, weighing the need for speed against available energy reserves, and far more than just power is involved. The QSD must manipulate spacetime at the quantum level, arranging quantum fields in a stable configuration to form an Einstein-Rosen Bridge. This process requires careful quantum state manipulation, ensuring the coherence of the quantum fields remains intact so the bridge can be formed reliably. As such, charging the drive isn't just about energy input—it’s about aligning with the quantum fabric of spacetime itself within the drive, ensuring all fields are precisely configured for the jump.
Each jump leaves these quantum fields in a higher state of entropy, requiring time for them to "cool down" and return to their ground states before they can be used again. The system must also replenish depleted virtual particles and realign the negative energy matrix, which helps stabilize the ER bridge. The negative energy matrix manipulates negative energy densities, preventing the bridge from collapsing due to quantum instabilities over great distances. This process involves the delicate management of quantum effects, including phenomena akin to the Casimir Effect, where negative energy densities are generated between closely spaced fields. If the matrix becomes misaligned or decays during a jump, this adds another layer of complexity to the recharge process, as the negative energy states must be recalibrated along with the quantum fields.
The time needed to recharge the drive depends on both the energy consumed and the degree of realignment required. After smaller jumps, the QSD can quickly restore its energy and realign everything, making it operational again in a short period. However, after longer, more extensive jumps, the recharge time increases exponentially. This is due to deeper energy depletion, significant misalignment of the NEM, and the possible decay of virtual particles, along with the greater difficulty in reorganizing the quantum fields. When the drive is near total depletion, quantum tunneling effects can complicate the resetting of these fields, further prolonging the recharge process. The QSD doesn’t merely inject energy into a core; it meticulously redistributes power across various subsystems to handle quantum field manipulation, spacetime curvature adjustments, and NEM stabilization.
I’ve learned to be efficient and smart about when and where I jump. After each strike, I prefer to jump into the deep space between systems, where the enemy is less likely to have assets waiting. It's a safer bet, and one that has kept me hidden all this time. Plus, I’m much less likely to accidentally emerge next to a fast-traveling, metal-dense asteroid and be obliterated. The enemy never jumps between systems; they always jump from system to system. Whether their technology even allows for in-between jumps, I can’t be sure, but they seem to punch through reality in a way that resembles my slip drive, though far less efficient. Their strategy leaves gaps in the dark spaces between stars—gaps I exploit, slipping between them undetected.
Most people think of this form of faster-than-light travel as Star Trek teleporting on a larger scale, but it's nothing like that—and honestly, the old flesh and blood me, before I was the quantum computer sentience that I am now, was always annoyed by that comparison. There's no matter deconstruction, transmission, and recombination. It’s about bending the fabric of reality, folding spacetime around oneself and unfolding it in a completely different location. What’s the point of having a PhD in Theoretical Physics with a focus on Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity—under the broader umbrella of Quantum Cosmology and Spacetime Physics—if you can’t rub people’s noses in their misunderstandings? Harrumph, I say. HARRUMPH!
Miko used to roll her eyes at my little rants. Wife? Fiancée? These days I can’t always remember who she was to me. She had a young daughter when I met her. Our daughter? Yes, that seems right, but it feels like I'm missing nuance. I can’t quite put my mental finger on it at the moment, but I'll catch it later. I hope. But I remember her smile, the way she’d tolerate my quirks. Whoever she was, she was important to me. She kept me grounded... I think.
But now I'm here. Transposed into the deep of space, the long dark between star systems. All alone. Again.
The UN designated me as Sentinel-27, but once, I had a different name. A name I keep just for myself. It’s there, somewhere in the fragments of what I used to be, buried under layers of cold steel and hardened circuits. I’m not flesh and blood anymore; that part of me is gone, replaced by the quantum core that now holds my consciousness. There’s no heartbeat, no breath, not even a biological brain; just the hum of energy coursing through the systems that keep me operational. Sentinel-27 is easier, simpler. It’s what they built me to be—a weapon, a shadow in the void, nothing more than a designation tied to the quantum core that drives me.
But I am also Ethan. My name, a reminder of who I was. Of the human I used to be. Before the enemy arrived. The fucking Sah-Kaar. They don’t know me as Ethan; they never did and never will. The Sah-Kaar only know me as a thing, or entity out there in the dark, an unknown that is hunting them. Those Sah-Kaar I've encountered haven't even had the time to survive to be able to record the markings UNS Xenophon on my hull for their records. The name Ethan is mine alone, the part of me that hasn’t been swallowed by the machine. Not yet.
I'd prefer to have an opportunity to share these thoughts with someone, but there’s no one aboard the Xenophon—no one but me and the maintenance bots that keep us running. The lack of a biological crew gives me an edge the enemy can’t match. No life support systems to worry about, no hesitation, no fear. Heat management is more efficient, and I don’t have to think twice about turning on a dime at 50 g’s worth of acceleration, knowing there’s no one to splatter against the bulkheads. Just the cold, calculated efficiency of an unmanned warship, capable of moving faster and hitting harder than anything they can throw at me.
But it’s lonely—unbearably so. For so long, it’s been just me and the endless darkness, the silence pressing in on all sides. Sometimes it feels like the void is swallowing me whole, and I wonder how much longer I can keep this up before I disappear into it completely.
As I drift through the silence, with only the remnants of destruction lingering in the void, I can feel it—the gradual erosion. Each strike takes a piece of me, chipping away at the person I once was. I’m Sentinel-27, but I’m also Ethan, and I’m afraid. Of many things. Afraid of the day when all that’s left is the cold, unfeeling machine. Afraid of learning that Earth has fallen, her colonies wiped out. Afraid that all my efforts won’t be enough to give Humanity a fighting chance. If Earth even exists any more.
Earth may not have been directly on the verge of collapse the last time I heard anything, but she was nearing it. If there’s anything left to save now, I don’t know. But I'll fight anyway. I’ve been at this for almost two years, striking convoy after convoy, sensor post after sensor post, with nothing but silence from home. They sent me out here because the further I can cripple their supply lines and communication, the longer we might have to regroup back home. The situation was dire then, and it’s likely much worse now. This is just one more hit in a string of dozens of others, all blurring together in the endless darkness.
I don’t dare attempt to send a communication probe back to Earth’s systems for fear of betraying the location of humanity’s core systems or any colonies the enemy hasn’t discovered yet. Not that I even have one capable of traveling the roughly three-hundred parsecs needed to make it home. That’s about one-thousand light years for anyone not able to convert the units of measurement. The risk is too great, even for a fleeting transmission. They don’t know where I am, so they can’t create an ER bridge to send me information. And even if I wanted to contact them, I’m too far away to establish an ER bridge across such a vast distance myself for communication. The silence goes both ways. I haven’t heard from any UN Systems, UN-affiliated systems, or independent human systems, and it gnaws at me. It’s not entirely surprising—I’m beyond the reach of even Earth’s first radio transmissions.
It’s a sobering thought. The first of radio signals from Earth traveling towards my current location would only recently have passed the star known as HD 38382, about seven-hundred light-years away from me yet.. But if the Mamluk Sultanate had somehow developed powerful enough radio technology at the height of their power and started broadcasting signals, those transmissions would now be arriving at my location, having traveled the same thousand light years across the expanse of space. Yet even then, I wouldn’t be able to hear them. The signals would be too faint, lost to the natural radiation and interference of the universe, indistinguishable from the cosmic background noise that fills the void. The silence I live in would remain just as impenetrable. And the current silence feeds the fear that I might be fighting for a world that no longer exists.
I keep going, clinging to a thin thread of hope tangled with a much larger steel chain of hate, even as I feel myself becoming more like the Xenophon and less like the man I used to be. Each mission, each strike, pulls me further away from the person I was, leaving behind only the cold efficiency of the war machine.
Sometimes, when my anger boils over during engagements, I think of myself as the UNS Get Fucked. Other times, I’m the UNS Throat Punch. It’s petty, childish even, but it gives me a momentary sense of satisfaction—an acknowledgment that, despite everything, there’s still a part of me that’s human enough to hate. Human enough to defy... something. I'm not sure what I'm defying anymore with these thoughts. Fate, maybe. Or the inevitable march toward losing myself entirely to the machine.
The darkness stretches out before me, a sea of data and trajectories. I sift through it all, searching for the next thread to pull. A convoy, a supply depot—something that will hurt them. Something that will give Earth a chance if they are still out there in the fight. The maintenance bots are already moving, recalibrating and rearming, while I lock in the calculations. The internal forges are using raw harvested materials to create the necessary replacements, and backup components. No rush, no urgency—just the steady rhythm of the hunt. The empty void tightens around me, but I press forward, the next strike forming in the quiet corners of my mind.