You’re what?” Exclaimed Eli, smacking his hands against the armrest of his chair in an otherwise quiet room.

We were sitting in his office and I finally had plucked up the courage to tell him that Alice and I were expecting a baby.

“I —I told you not to fucking do that Alex,” he continued, this time more hushed and through gritted teeth.

“And why did you choose to tell me here, at my work?”

He looked over my shoulder, nodding his head and giving a wave as a colleague walked past the office door.

“Well you’re never around anymore are you. I’ve tried stopping by your place but you’re always here!” I replied rather defensively.

“Keep it down would you.”

He put his hands up to quiet me down before shuffling out from his desk to go and shut the door.

I could already tell his mind was racing and that the strongest thought would be how could I be so stupid? And he was right.

That New Years Eve, when he first told me of what was to come, came with a warning — don’t have a child.

“Okay so what’s your plan?”

I looked at him slightly bewildered.

“Your plan—“ he sighed.

“You know. The one where I said don’t have a kid unless you have a plan. So what is it?”

“I - uh - don’t have a plan.

“We…we only found out Alice was pregnant right before the announcement.”

I stumbled over my words remembering it as soon as he said it, and by the look on his face it was obvious that he one hundred percent thought I was an idiot, an increase from probably ninety percent. It was scrunched up in disgust, like a sour taste that was hard to swallow.

“You can help us out though… can’t you?” I said shamelessly as I scrambled to fill the silence.

Eli’s sour expression turned into more of a deadpan, but emphatic stare.

“You can’t be serious Alex.”

He placed his shaking head into the palm of his hand with only a defeated scoff filling the room that had fallen silent again. That told me all I needed to know. That I had asked a favour Eli couldn’t deliver.

…

My radar alerts started to ping as I sat running diagnostics on the fighter. I tried my best to ignore them because they were telling me what I already knew — that I was surrounded by objects.

As for damage, it was minimal with only minor damage to the hull and thrusters, more than likely from the battle before the jump. But out there minor could turn into major real quick.

A debris field is what I was faced with on system arrival. Masses of twisted metals from perished ships, organic materials like asteroid belts as far as the eye could see — a graveyard of sorts.

Preliminarily scans started to feed back to the craft with my system maps being updated rapidly. Humans were in this system or had been at some point otherwise it would only be mapped via my travel throughout it.

My console updated showing it was the Atlantis System, made up of several planets, each with their own satellites in orbit as well as a ridiculous amount of active probes traversing all over the place. It appeared like a massive net of communications and survey assets just flying around everywhere. One point of interest stood out amongst the cluster of labels that filled the screen. It was highlighted with special attention drawn to it.

Space Station Atlantis.

There was a massive distance between us, with the space station being a few planets deep into the system whereas I was on the furthest reaches, and that was without taking into account the debris fields which to me looked like a huge barrier that had a definitive inside ‘edge’.

“Okay all I gotta do is make it through this debris field then I can start slingshotting my way to Atlantis,” I said, trying to pep talk myself into how easy it would be.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

…

Hours turned into days and I had made such an insignificant dent into the debris field that it was laughable. I was legitimately laughing in frustration to the point where I felt I was going crazy.

I tried thrusting the debris out of the way, shooting the debris, even tried yelling at it but nothing seemed to work.

I just floated there for days without moving, just holding onto a slither of hope that whoever was in the Atlantis system were able to pick up my arrival and would come to my rescue, bailing me out of this never ending nightmare of scenarios I kept falling into.

It was then that I heard a harsh beep from the radar.

“Yeh. Yeh. Debris. I fucking know,” I cursed at the ship as I floated around in my ever increasing depressive state.

It beeped again.

And again. In quicker succession.

“Wait.”

I pushed myself over to the console in a panic. It wasn’t a debris alert but rather a ship alert. It must have been on the perfect angle to get picked up between all the shit that surrounded us.

“Shit.”

It wasn’t a known Miltech or human craft either as far as I could tell and was flagged as such on the screen - possible hostile craft.

It pinged again, its trail moving from the outside of the debris field and pushing in. It was moving with speed, making easy work of it.

Here goes nothin’.

After pulling myself back into the seat and harnessing up, I turned the fighter and started manoeuvring around the space junk the best I could to intercept the unknown craft.

Caution went out the window in my desperation. I was clipping, and in some instances hitting debris head on in a bid to make it across in time. I refused to check the diagnostic panel for damage, I was certainly inflicting damage on the fighter but couldn’t risk any hesitation at pushing on.

It wasn’t a long wait before I could lay eyes on what was plowing through the graveyard of debris. It was a huge ship, unknown to me as it looked nothing like the transporters that humans were on but it did look like it was specially built for just this task.

It had fanned out domes across its three exposed front side areas that perfectly displaced all the crap that laid in front of it without incurring any damage to its hull.

All I had to do was get behind it and let it do all the work.

…

“Woohoo. Fuck yeh,” I shouted in excitement as the unknown ship finally breached the inner edge of the graveyard with me coasting behind it.

Thank you unknowns and god speed.

As I was singing the unknown ship well deserved praises for plowing a way through for us I reversed thrust to lower velocity and drop behind them not wanting to risk being picked up now we were out.

As the distance between me and the unknowns increased I saw a heap of coloured flashes of light zipping through space before a horrifying sight unfolded before me.

The huge unknown ship started to separate like it was being disassembled piece by piece. It became unrecognisable as it grew wider and spread further apart.

“Woah what the shit,” I quietly said in shock.

The unknown ship, the one which had been my saviour, got absolutely obliterated without any hint of what was coming. And what just so happened to be passing by at that moment? A cluster of the probes. Did they do this… Were they sent this direction on command?

“Miltech Fighter AC-55. Disengage thrust and weapons,” commanded an unknown voice over my hijacked comms.

With zero hesitation I complied. I was absolutely shitting myself that I was about to suffer the same fate and was about to get cut down into a million pieces.

“AC-55, We’re transport locking with your craft and escorting you to Space Station Atlantis.”

After some back and forth discussion over comms once I picked up the courage to talk to them I found out that I was being transported by a sweeper.

Sweepers were designed to undertake two jobs. Sweeping the debris fields aka graveyard for threats and intrusions, and salvaging.

There were apparently hundreds of these craft patrolling and working their way around the system, going between the outer edges and the space station.

After what felt like forever, and a dropping conversation with the sweeper crew, we arrived at the space station.

If you took a city, made it space-worthy and plonked it somewhere in the universe, that is what the space station Atlantis looked like — a sprawling cityscape in space joined by a network of tube shaped thoroughfares instead of roads.

The transporter that had built the Atlantis Station was unique. It didn’t carry random passengers plucked from a lottery like the others, instead it carried leading specialists, materials and equipment to build something this significant.

It had long protruding walkways lined with airlocks that stretched out into open space from the station, it was one of many space docks around Atlantis, reminiscent of huge docking piers back on Earth.

It was there, after a short interrogation followed by debrief on how exactly I ended in the Atlantis system that I was assigned a guide I guess you could say, Layla.

Layla was a neatly dressed young woman that was pulled from a nearby office, handed a slate and directed over to me.

“Alright come with me,” she said with a sigh and rolling her eyes.

She clearly wasn’t impressed with her new task of being my guide or being seen with a disheveled looking man that’s been stuck in a small fighter for days on end.

As Layla was walking me out of the space docks, I saw an advertisement on one of the screens. It was for the science and exploration arm of Miltech and showed a snippet of an interview with their lead climate discovery scientist.

He was an old man, probably in his seventies with a luscious grey scruffy beard though the hair atop his head had receded.

Even though the advertisement was muted, there was something about the man that was familiar. His facial expressions, his demeanour told me so.

“I know him.”

Layla let out a small laugh.”Who? Doctor Wilson?” She asked.

“Eli Wilson?”

“Uh yeah. How do—“

“I need to see him. Now,” I said, abruptly cutting her off.

She paused for a moment, glancing over to the screen before back at me.

“If you’d follow me I’ll take you to your room and then take you to see Dr Wilson. If he wants to meet you, that is.”

The way she spoke was as if Eli was some higher class of person and who was I, just some lowly traveller that stumbled on Atlantis and wanted a meeting with some science nerd overlord? How dare I! Well, that’s what I assumed she thought anyway.