Lucas arrived at the Imperial Guard Port and while he was on the way to his ship, he met his friends and after a short greeting he continued his walk. When he arrived at his ship he was greeted by Lieutenant Ariana.

“Welcome, Commodore. The crews are reading for a briefing on the bridge,” greeted Lieutenant Ariana.

“Great, let’s go then.” Lucas and Lieutenant Ariana walked to the bridge and there his crew was waiting for him. Other than Lucas and Lieutenant Ariana, there are 3 more crews on the ship. Lieutenant Sarah Roseman, Sub-Lieutenant Max Brawn and Sub-Lieutenant Bianca Lorien.

Lieutenant Sarah Roseman was responsible for communication and commanding the vessel when Lucas was absent or he was not on the bridge; she was this vessel’s second-in-command. She had bright red hair just touching her shoulder. She had a bold personality and was always attentive to the vessel’s crews.

Sub-Lieutenant Max Brawn was an engineer for the ships and a weapon operator. He was a nerd, his thirst for knowledge and peculiar personality sometimes weirded out Lucas. He was knowledgeable of all matters of technical know-how and Lucas always relied on him if he needed an opinion on a technical subject.

Sub-Lieutenant Bianca Lorien was a navigator for the ship and the doctor for the vessel. Sub-Lieutenant Bianca Lorien was Lucas's cousin; it was coincidental that she was assigned to his squadron. Her white-coloured hair, a trait of Lorien, reached just below her shoulder. She was an excellent doctor, and her knowledge of health and medicine is incredible. She was once a subject of jealousy by Princess Sophie because of Bianca’s closeness to Lucas.

The Imperial Recon Guard’s recon ship is usually manned with a small number of crew, at minimum 4 people are enough to man the ship and all the crews are expected to carry multiple tasks and cover others’ posts if needed. The ship was also equipped with an AI that could operate independently without someone commanding or on the ship. However for the AI to be able to do that, authorization was needed or if certain conditions were met to activate the protocol.

“Good day, everyone!” greeted Lucas to his crew. He sat on the captain’s seat on the bridge. “I assume all of you have read the mission details, so I will just recap it. We are tasked with investigating the pirate base and after we discover their location we will call back up to subjugate the pirate.”

“Who are we going to call for backup?” asked Lieutenant Sarah

“I prefer we call the local force, however, if they can’t do it, we will call back up from the Navy's HQ,” answered Lucas.

"Okay, sir!"

"More questions? None? Alright, prepare for takeoff everyone," ordered Lucas to his crew.

All the crews went into their positions and Lieutenant Sarah notified the ground crew for the all-clear. She then contacted Control for clearance.

"Control, this is Falcon 1, we are requesting takeoff."

"Falcon 1, Control, you are clear for takeoff," said the controller

"Clear for takeoff, Falcon 1."

The ship immediately took off and flew into space. After they arrived in Earth orbit, Sub-lieutenant Bianca plotted their course.

"Lu- Commodore, I have plotted our course," said Sub-Lieutenant Bianca

"Thank you, Bianca. Prepare for hyperdrive." The ship's hyperdrive was turned on and soon after that, they were in travelling hyperspace.

Everything was normal for them with the usual routine they had done as always. However, when they arrived at the outer layer of the Empire and when they were about to engage their hyperdrive, something happened. The system controlling the hyperdrive malfunctioned and resulted in an uncontrolled hyperdrive. Soon, every screen module malfunctioned. They did everything to fix the problem, however, one by one they fell unconscious. leaving the ship on hyperdrive unsupervised.

"Lucas, wake up!" Lucas heard a familiar voice shouting at him. "Lucas!"

After a few more shouts from the voice, Lucas was able to regain consciousness and open his eyes, It was blurry, but he could make out the outline of someone he knew, "Lucy?"

"No, It's me, Bianca!" Bianca helped Lucas sit up,

"Aghh! What happened?" Lucas asked Bianca as he felt pain in his head.

"I don't know, we are still figuring it out, here take this, it should lessen the pain," Bianca gave Lucas a drink and he drank it.

"Is everyone okay?"

"Yes."

"Lyra, what did you discover?” asked Sarah to the ship's AI.

“First, we are on uncharted territory and we are well outside the Galactic Empire Zone of Coverage,” explained Lyra. The Empire’s Zone of Coverage was the name of an area in which the Empire could actively monitor and communicate with a ship, if a ship went outside the zone it wouldn’t be able to communicate with the Empire's traffic controller. For a military ship, that would mean they won’t be able to contact their Headquarters directly. To be able to contact the Headquarters again, they had to move inside the Zone of Coverage or they had to relay their message through a ship within their communication range and that ship had to be inside the Zone of Coverage.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“No way, even the planets at our maximum sensor range are uncharted,” said Sub-Lieutenant Bianca.

“That’s correct, even with the ship’s advanced sensor the systems around us are not charted within Empire’s database. Next is our most critical problem, the ship’s engine is dying. The long duration and excessive use of the maximum speed of the hyperdrive made the engine core in a critical state and low on power, we won’t be able to do hyperdrive again,” explained Lyra.

“What?! We can’t leave this system then!” said Sub-Lieutenant Max. He was in disbelief.

“Yes, even if we try to fix it, there is only a slim chance we made it to the next system. With current conditions, the engine core will be able to power this ship for 65 years and after that, the backup generator will be able to maintain the ship for another 15 years.”

“Damn it! Why the fuck does this happen, Lyra do you know what happened?” asked Lieutenant Sarah with anger.

“From my diagnosis, someone put a virus inside the ship’s mainframe to cause the malfunction and turned off the failsafe as well as me. I also detected contaminated air inside the ship when I was able to regain control of the ship and cleaned the air as soon as possible. The cause of the contaminated air came from the engine room, I've blocked off the ventilation system from and to the engine room.”

“Who did that?” asked Lucas.

“My analysis pointed out to a person who did maintenance on the ship back when we were on Earth. I concluded that the person was the one who did it since it matched the time when the virus was injected into the ship. I’ll show you the video.” said Lyra. Then Lyra showed a video of a group of people doing maintenance on the engine room, then the video zoomed in to the person who was connecting a device to a wall-mounted computer located in the engine room. He did something in front of the computer and disconnected the device then immediately left the ship.

“Huh, why did they do that?” said Ariana, nervously.

“My bet is an attempt of assassination. Their target probably is me,” said Lucas.

“Bastard, whoever is that, I’ll kill that person,” said Lieutenant Sarah.

“Well, you need to be at the Empire for that to happen.”

“Commodore, what– ”

“Luxas, I detected a planet with life forms on it!” shouted Sub-Lieutenant Bianca interrupting the conversation.

“What?” Lucas was taken by surprise by Bianca's shout.

“Look.” Bianca showed the planet to the rest of the crew. “There are a lot of heat waves, some massive, some small. But, this area here could not be scanned by our scanner, I don’t know why.”

“Good job, Bianca!” praised Lucas. He unconsciously patted her head. Bianca was surprised and she blushed.

“It’s nothing much,” said Sub-Lieutenant Bianca. She looked embarrassed and excited at the same time.

“Alright, let’s go near that planet and send our reconnaissance drone. Lyra brings us closer to the planet” ordered Lucas.

“Yes, Commodore,” answered Lyra. She took control of the aircraft and flew it to the orbit of the planet. The recon ships had 10 reconnaissance drones available to use, and Lucas ordered 6 drones to be used to scan the planet.

To their surprise, they found a civilization on the planet with the dominant race being a humanoid.

"What the fu..." said Sub-Lieutenant Max with surprise.

"They looked like a human. No, they are human," said Sub-Lieutenant Bianca in awe.

They looked at the people of the planet.

They did indeed look like a human, Lucas thought, but how did they arrive here to an uncharted territory?

"Lyra, are you sure they are human?" asked Lucas.

"From the features of the body, I am sure they are human. For deeper analysis, I recommend DNA testing," answered Lyra.

“Are you asking us to abduct them?” said Lieutenant Ariana.

“No, the best course of action is to approach them to gather the sample. But, abducting them is within the acceptable method,” answered Lyra.

“So, this planet is habitable for us. I am worried about the native fauna though,” said Sarah worriedly. The faunas of this native according to their observation are mostly hostile and ferocious.

“I believe we have enough firepower to defend against them and we are all well trained, nothing to worry about,” said Sub-Lieutenant Max.

“I agree with Sub-Lieutenant Max. My analysis projected we can defend against most of the native fauna. However there is one more problem, it seems the creatures of the planet can use some sort of peculiar technique to defend themselves,” explained Lyra. She then showed a video of a group of people fighting against a huge wolf, the wolf was ferocious.

Some of the people used a sword to fight against the monster, some used a bow and arrow. However, there was only one person who fought without anything, he was seen moving his mouth and his hand pointed to the wolf then a fireball came out of nowhere. Everyone was surprised when they saw it, it looked like magic, something that came out of a work of fiction. Lyra recommended they study the phenomenon further.

“Alright, we should land on the planet and explore it. We will make contact with the local civilization and then we will see what we can do further,” said Lucas.

“Yes, sir!” said everyone.

“Get into your station. Search for a suitable landing site and then we will land there, make sure the places are well hidden, I don’t mind if it is located in the middle of nowhere because I don’t want to scare the locals,” ordered Lucas. Everyone immediately went into their station and with Lyra’s help, Bianca was able to find a suitable landing spot.

“Lucas, I found a spot,” said Sub-Lieutenant Bianca. She showed him the spot.

“That is a great place, we will land there. Prepare to descend into the planet, and activate stealth mode.” The ship then started to descend from orbit to the planet.