Man or Machine

[thisDerius]

835. A.S. - Planet New Tokyo.

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I did it.

After years of silence and uncertainty, I finally reached out to Sanae Miyasu—and against all odds, she agreed to meet me. Tonight, I’ll finally sit down with her, face to face. I don’t know how this meeting will go, but it’s a chance to lay the groundwork for something meaningful. A step forward. Maybe even a fresh start.

Getting here, though? That was another ordeal altogether.

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Before leaving Liberty, I made one final stop in Ontario—specifically, to investigate the anomaly near Planet Sunbury. Something about it had been nagging at me for a while now, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something important. The closer I got, the more bizarre the readings became. Something—something on the planet’s surface—activated an artifact. Whatever it was, it created a force field around the entire planet, sealing it off. The energy signatures were unlike anything I had seen before, fluctuating erratically, defying any standard classification. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the planet was being contained—or worse, protected from something outside. But from what? The data made no sense. My instruments struggled to interpret the energy fluctuations, and even my AI’s analysis couldn’t pinpoint a logical explanation. I recorded as much data as I could, knowing that someday, I’d have to return. This mystery isn’t over. Not by a long shot. With nothing else left for me in Liberty, I set course for Kusari.

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I knew from the start that getting into Kusari wouldn’t be easy. Liberty space was under heavy patrol, and the border regions were infested with pirates, mercenaries, and all manner of lowlifes. The standard trade routes were being watched, and I wasn’t about to risk being spotted, not with the Bastion already flagged in multiple jurisdictions. So I took another route. A worse route. Alaska. I should have known better. I should have remembered. I spent years operating in that system, knew its dangers, its secrets—but time had changed it. The Alaska I knew was gone. Weapons platforms. Heavily armed checkpoints. Mines stretching for kilometers, an endless field of death. I had no choice but to push through.The moment I entered the system, the Bastion’s shields were put to the test. Every automated turret, every patrol, every damn kill zone in the sector seemed to light up as soon as I entered range. My ship—one of the fastest of its class—was barely able to dodge the barrage of plasma and railgun fire. The old navigation routes I remembered were gone, replaced with a labyrinth of death. At some point, survival became pure instinct. That’s when I saw it—the Supergate. I had no time to think, no time to reconsider. I was running out of options, and with my ship taking damage, I had to take the risk. I activated the gate. The Bastion was pulled into the vortex. And then—silence.

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When the jump completed, I found myself somewhere unknown. My star maps registered nothing. My instruments were struggling to calibrate. The system’s name? Earhart. I drifted in the vast emptiness, scanning my surroundings, searching for anything familiar—but all I found was a massive structure at the system’s center. It was alien, towering, an enigma of metal and energy. Around it, floating platforms—not just stabilizers, but heavily armed defensive turrets. I barely had time to analyze it before the first shot came. One blast—and my shields were gone. Another would have ripped me apart. I dodged, banking the Bastion hard, evading the deadly accuracy of those defenses. The only thing that saved me was distance. The turrets had a range limit. If they didn’t, I wouldn’t be writing this log. But the questions remained. What the hell is Earhart? Who built that structure? And more importantly—why? There were several other structures scattered across the system, each one equally strange, equally unreadable. But my ship was too damaged to explore further. I was running low on options, and I had to find a way out. That’s when I detected a nearby jump hole. No clear destination. No indication of where it would take me. But it was my only way out. I took the jump.

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The jump hole spat me out into Sigma-13. Familiar ground. Safe—at least compared to what I had just survived. I didn’t stop. My ship was in no condition for more surprises. I moved straight for the Honshu jump hole, pushing the Bastion’s engines as hard as I could. From there, I crossed into New Tokyo, leaving the nightmare of Alaska and Earhart behind me. For now. In hindsight, I was lucky. Several jump holes within Earhart read as completely unknown, offering no data on their destinations. A blind jump into any of them could have led me somewhere worse—somewhere I wouldn’t have returned from. But the one I took? It was different. Unlike the others, this one showed Sigma-13 on the other side. That was my way out. My only way out. And I took it without hesitation.

Once I reached New Tokyo, I finally sent my message to Sanae. She responded. Positively. Tonight, we meet. I don’t know what to expect, but for the first time in years, I feel like I’m moving toward something bigger than just survival. I just hope I’m ready.

End Log.