Name: Leon Straub Origin: Hamburg, Rheinland Age: 41 Affiliation: Die Arbeitergewerkschaft (Unioners) Role: Dockmaster of Pacifica Base, Logistics Supervisor, Vessel Maintenance Chief Service Duration: 9 Years Active
A former station engineer from Oder Shipyard, Straub defected to the Unioners after the Liberty-Rheinland war crippled his family’s contract. He was pragmatic, loyal, and incorruptible — known for strict order on the docks, and for turning Pacifica’s B-line into one of the most productive heavy repair platforms in the Independent Worlds. His hatred for the corporations was personal. His belief in the Unioner cause was absolute.
OPERATIONAL NOTES: - One of few trusted to handle unregistered wreckage from Thuringia corridor. - Refused promotion to Pacifica Central Command, preferring direct oversight of physical infrastructure.
Log continues → ENTRY 001: "The Mission to Thuringia" pending decryption.
Objective: Investigate disappearance of 3-ship patrol in Thuringia Sector 6B. Last Contact: Debris Shelf Beta-6. Last ping received faint Rheinwehr telemetry. Notable Anomalies: No wreckage, no distress beacons recovered.
Straub volunteered for solo recon. Loaded into Arbeiter-class ‘Maschinenpistole,’ he departed Pacifica under transponder silence. Aboard: minimal armament, enhanced scanning module, recovery clamps.
MISSION TRANSCRIPT - AUDIO EXCERPT: "Power cycling's intermittent. No drift signatures... wait... there. Portside. There's a silhouette pinned between the thermal scatter. Looks intact. Looks Rheinland, but... old? IFF's dead... I'm moving in."
SITE CONTACT - SECTOR 6B:Straub didn’t expect the warmth inside the wreck. It smelled like blood and ozone. The MND Valkyrae lay wedged in the Thuringia debris field like a rusted fang, power flickering faintly from ruptured core lines. Its hull was cracked from pressure and impact — but intact enough to board.
The pilot sat slumped in the cockpit — helmet shattered, suit torn wide across the chest, hands charred and fused to the melted control yoke.
No comms.No breathing.
But the face...
The face still had color.
Straub stepped forward slowly. His sidearm trembled in his gloved hand. The cabin lights pulsed with dying voltage, casting the remains in flickers of amber and black. A neural interface crackled faintly, spewing garbled telemetry into a dead comm net.
Then — motion.
The pilot lurched forward with an unnatural spasm.
No scream. No breath. Just motion.
Straub fired.
Point-blank, without thought, into the pilot’s face. Bone and helmet shattered in a mist of pressure and rot. The body collapsed against the harness — but something within it kept moving.
From the ruin of its jaw came a wet, sucking hiss — followed by a tendril, slick and violet-blue, pulsing with light and fluid.
It lashed forward.
Straub turned, too slow.
The thing struck like a spear — into his open mouth, slamming down his throat with inhuman strength. It writhed as it entered, biting past teeth and muscle and memory. He convulsed, hands clawing at his throat, his chest, his weapon — but he couldn’t scream. Couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t fall.
Then came the voices.
Not sounds — but meanings, embedded in emotion, carved into his thoughts like molten glass. Psionic spikes shredded his identity. Loyalty, memory, purpose....
Return Flight: Dockmaster Straub returned aboard the re-designated ‘Maschinenpistole’ under transponder silence. Reported a temporary sensor cascade and requested manual dock override from Hangar Control. Hull showed evidence of moderate burns and particulate scoring consistent with debris field traversal.
Behavioral Notes: Technical staff noted increased reclusiveness. Straub declined medical assessment and did not submit a full mission debrief, citing “non-engagement classification.” Observed working solo in Hangar Bay 3 on off-shift hours — primarily focused on power system refits .
Multiple junior technicians report Straub sealing the Maschinenpistole's cockpit for extended durations, including periods where the reactor was powered down. Access to Bay 3 has since been informally restricted under his authority.
While no breach of protocol has been formally logged, internal command review is pending due to minor anomalies in Straub's shift behavior — including altered sleep cycles, reduced mess attendance, and atypical redundancy in ship diagnostics (e.g., repeating the same test suites across identical subsystems).
Straub maintains full rank privileges and continues to perform standard duties as Dockmaster without direct disciplinary concern.
Recommendation: Low-level observational flag. No immediate threat detected. Possible stress response to prolonged isolation.
PERSONAL LOG - SUPPRESSED FROM MAINFRAME:\ He didn’t bring the Valkyrae home.
It wouldn’t have been right.
Instead, he pushed the wreck into the graveyard cruiser frame in Grid F3. He carved a telemetry blindspot using old hash-pulse beacons and jury-rigged dampers, tuned to obscure magnetic contrast. A private tomb. Only he knew the pulse patterns.
Back at Pacifica, he was calm. Cleaner than expected. Wrote the paperwork in under an hour — dry, bureaucratic, flawless. No red flags. The kind of report that no one bothers reading twice.
Then he stripped the Arbeiter to its skeleton and started again.
He claimed it was for “operational compartmentalization.”\
That was true — in a sense.
He worked alone in Bay 3 for three nights. Rewiring. Scrubbing out diagnostics. Reinforcing cockpit hardpoints. He tore out the neural jack and installed an adaptive buffer matrix — one of the modules he’d scavenged. Didn’t explain where it came from.
When a junior mechanic offered to assist, Straub didn’t answer. Just kept tightening bolts until his knuckles bled.
Maschinenpistole’s hull gleamed like a blade. Her drive systems purred without a hitch. No faults. No malfunctions.
The Unioners would call it over-engineering. He called it discipline.
But he still locked the hangar behind him.
Later that week, he filed three consecutive supply requisitions for cockpit shielding. Justified under "plasma insulation redundancy." Engineering flagged it, but no one challenged the Dockmaster.
He returned to schedule. Inventory logs, scrap allocations, crew rosters. All by the book. All on time.
And yet…
Each time he passed the airlock door, he touched it. Not absentmindedly — deliberately. A silent check. Seal pressure. Magnetic latching. Once he ran the diagnostic twice. Then again, just to be sure.
That night, he sealed his bunk door.
Then he sealed it again.
He checked the oxygen valves.\
Slept in uniform. Boots on.
And when he closed his eyes — the dreams came.
Blue light, like oil through water. Shapes moving behind his eyes. Not memories. Not thoughts. Just impressions — something pressing outward, testing the seams of his mind.
A voice — no, not a voice, a sensation — came to him like an old friend:
“You are not yet ready. But you are listening.”
He jolted awake.
Nothing in the room.\
Nothing on the sensors.\
But his hand was already on his sidearm.
It took an hour to calm down.
In the dark, he whispered to himself. Just to hear something familiar.
“No breach. No contact. ”
And yet… he didn’t check the Valkyrae’s location ping.\
Didn’t even open the grid tracker.
He already knew it was still there.\
Waiting.
So was he.
Log continues → ENTRY 003: "Visions in the Metal" pending decryption.
Dockmaster of Pacifica Base\
// Volksrevolution Engineer Corps
ENTRY:003 - VISIONS IN THE METAL\ DATE: 829 A.S. | STATUS:Condition Green — Pending (Evaluation)
PERSONAL LOG - UNSENT DRAFT\ “Comms grid interference. Heard old voice loops playing over live channels. Thought it was a bleed from Deck Three’s uplink — re-routed cabling, still persists. Possible solar ghosting or ion relay mismatch.
But that doesn’t explain the phrasing.
It's not just distortion. It’s… cadence. Familiar. But out of sync. Heard my own words played back to me. From days ago. Exact phrasing. But slightly different emphasis — like someone repeating it, not replaying it.
Also, caught motion blur on Bay 3’s optical feed. Slowed it frame-by-frame. Looked like a shadow. Center of frame. Then gone.
Could be stress. No formal complaint filed. Not yet.
Running this internal for now.”
— L. Straub
PRIVATE OBSERVATION\ The Maschinenpistole had never been quieter. Even under full power draw, the cockpit’s core hum wasn’t mechanical anymore — it was physiological. Low. Subconscious. A rhythm like breath held too long. Straub sat with his eyes closed. Each pulse felt like it came from under his own skin.
He couldn’t remember when that started.
When he tried to adjust the cabin lights, the panel didn’t respond. Instead, the illumination rose and fell in strange harmony with his thoughts — as if the ship was responding to mood, not command. He rationalized it, opened the housing, checked the couplings.
They were flawless.
No signs of tampering. No burnt insulation. The housing was cold to the touch.
As he checked the neural relay — the sealed buffer he’d installed after the Valkyrae’s loss — the interface briefly blinked into… something else. Not a glitch. A shape. A recursive symmetry. He blinked again and it was gone. The diagnostic read: “PASS.”
He didn’t file the log.
Later that cycle, the coolant pumps made a noise he couldn’t describe. Not loud — just deliberate. Like something alive, breathing slow through layered metal.
He stood there for minutes, unmoving, trying to find where the rhythm originated.
The noise changed when he stepped closer.
He sat alone in his quarters that night, parsing flight telemetry from the return route. Every single fragment was cross-checked. Every sensor return amplified. Looking for a pattern.
And when he found one — a near-identical pulse buried in the bandwidth of a frequency — his terminal restarted unprompted. Logs intact. Queues cleared.
He sent no ticket. Logged no error.
Instead, he wrote a new file in his private archive:\ Klassifizierung: Arbeiter Prototyp.
He stared at it for hours.
COCKPIT RECORD - NONSTANDARD ACCESS\ That night, Straub returned to Hangar Bay 3. No crew were present. The internal lights dimmed as he approached. Not broken — reactive.
The Maschinenpistole’s canopy opened before he reached it.
Inside, the air was… tense. Not stale. Not warm. But filled with expectation. The kind of stillness you feel before a storm. The seat was cold. He sat anyway.
And without input — without contact — the console lit up.
No systems prompt. No command line. Just a single message, centered in old-style syntax:
“You are almost ready.”
Straub didn’t reach for the controls.
Didn’t move.
He stared — and for the briefest moment, the reflection in the cockpit glass did not match his motion. It lagged by a fraction. Like the man inside the glass was watching... not following.
His mouth was dry. Hands steady. Too steady.
He stepped out after thirteen minutes.
Locked the canopy.
Then locked it again.
Later that night, he double-checked the oxygen valves in his quarters.
And as he drifted toward sleep, the static behind his eyes whispered like an old frienda memory he had yet to experience.
Log continues → ENTRY 004: "Echoes in the Hull" pending reauthorization.
PERSONAL LOG - UNSENT DRAFT\ Later, when the station fell quiet, I sat alone in Hangar Bay 3, staring at the Maschinenpistole. I told myself it was only fatigue — the insomnia, the static, the shape I kept seeing behind my eyes.
But a part of me knew it was more than that.
Something was coming. Something I could feel in the bones of the hull and the rhythm of my own pulse.
I thought I’d have more warning.
I thought I’d feel it coming — the final crossing of some invisible line. But it wasn’t like that. There was no signal, no alarm. Only the familiar hush of the hangar and the sense that, at last, the waiting was over.
I don’t know why I launched.
The pretext was routine calibration. That’s what I logged. But my hands moved before I decided to move. My boots hit the deck plates before I told them to. By the time I realized what I was doing, the clamps had disengaged and the canopy had sealed.
The comms were silent except for the low, rising thrum. It wasn’t mechanical. It was the same frequency I’d been hearing behind my thoughts.
I cleared the maglocks and slipped out of Pacifica’s perimeter. I should have turned back. But I didn’t.
Outside, the Asteroid Field was the same — cold, grey, indifferent. But the sensors were too quiet. No civilian traffic. No relay chatter. Just a perfect blank.
Then the scope lit up — seven Valkyrae signatures, Military registration. They were on patrol vector but moving too fast, formation sloppy. At first I thought they were searching for something.
Then I realized they were coming for me.
I felt it all at once — the acceleration spike in my chest, the clamp in my throat. Panic. Full synaptic override. My vision tunneled so hard the edges went black. I remember gasping, trying to speak. Trying to send identification, anything.
The canopy display flickered. The static resolved into a single geometric lattice. And everything slowed down.
I don’t remember giving weapons clearance.
I don’t remember locking targets.
I remember their callsigns broadcasting—Delta-Four, Delta-Six—voices overlapping in confusion. One of them tried to hail me. He sounded young.
Then there was a sequence of pulses, like a heartbeat made of metal striking metal.
When I came back to myself, the Maschinenpistole was drifting, canopy frost creeping along the inside of the glass. The comms were open to vacuum. The wreckage was still venting atmosphere. Seven Valkyrae. All gone.
I couldn’t feel my hands.
No alarms were active. No damage alerts. Only the soft, cycling whisper in my helmet:
“You are ready.”
I returned to Pacifica on auxiliary nav. Didn’t file a report. Docked without speaking.
PERSONAL LOG - UNSENT DRAFT\ I haven’t left the Maschinenpistole since the incident. The deckhands think I’m running emergency diagnostics. They don’t look me in the eye. I’m not sure if that’s because they know — or because they can hear it too.
Every system is nominal. No faults. No errors. Only the low whisper under the hull. It’s louder now. Less like static, more like speech. But I can’t isolate the frequency. I can’t prove it’s external — or that it isn’t.
Yesterday I thought I heard Elsner over internal comms. He was telling me I’d done well. That the Military pilots were already dead before I fired. That the machine only showed me what was necessary. I tried to respond. My voice came out in pieces. Like my throat was full of glass.
The recording doesn’t exist. I checked.
But I remember his voice. I remember the tone. The approval.
I haven’t slept in… I don’t know the interval. When I close my eyes, the cockpit becomes something else. A corridor lined with repeating doors. Each time I open one, there’s a shape inside. The shape looks like me. But the eyes are wrong. Too deepbright.
\
The last cycle — maybe six hours ago — the Maschinenpistole began a systems check without input. I watched the readouts flash: READY, ALIGNMENT COMPLETE, PRIORITY ACQUISITION.
When I tried to shut it down, the canopy locked. The restraints slammed tight across my chest and wrists. I felt the machine’s core spin up — a vibration that climbed my spine like a live wire.
I tried to override the clamps. My hands wouldn’t respond. My vision tunneled. My heartbeat spiked — 142, then 160. I tried to scream, but my throat closed. It felt like something had reached inside my ribcage and was pulling my lungs apart. My muscles seized so hard my teeth cracked together.
For a moment, I was sure I was dying.
Then the voice returned. Not Elsner. Not anyone I knew. Something deeper. Older.
“You are crossing.”
The cockpit exploded in a white glare so bright it felt like my retinas were peeling away. My vision collapsed into whorls of geometry. Every nerve seared—raw lightning crackling down to the marrow. My mouth tore open in a soundless scream.
Something was inside my skull—pushing. Splitting my thoughts into ragged halves. One part still begging it to stop. The other part—opening.
I tried to fight. My arms convulsed against the restraints, shoulders grinding against the harness until I thought the bones would shatter. My lungs dragged ragged air in short, choked gasps. My heart pounded so fast it blurred into a single vibration, hammering against the straps that pinned me in place.
In that moment, I felt it—like a hand closing around the base of my spine. An intelligence sliding up through the circuits and into me, its voice threading through every impulse:
“Yield.”
I clamped my teeth shut until blood filled my mouth. But I could feel it sifting through everything—my memories, my fear, the last fragile shreds of my resistance. It tasted every thought like it belonged to it.
When the white faded, I was alone again—if you could call it that. My throat was raw, scoured as if I’d been screaming for hours. My arms were laced in purple bruises where the machine had held me down.
The logs showed a partial broadcast. Five minutes of dead carrier signal—and then a single line repeated forty times, etched into the data buffers like a brand:
“You are ready.”
No damage reports. No confirmed contacts. No witnesses.
Just me, strapped into a cockpit that no longer felt like it belonged to me—drenched in cold sweat, sucking air like an animal dragged half-dead from the slaughterhouse.
I should file this. I should tell command. But every time I try to compile the record, the words blur. They splinter into nonsense—like invisible hands are picking them apart before they ever reach the screen.
PRIVATE OBSERVATION\
The reflection doesn’t match anymore.
When I move, it hesitates. When I breathe, it watches. When I try to speak, the mouth in the glass never opens.
I tell myself this is stress. That it’s exhaustion. That it’s just a neurological bleed—
—but in the marrow of my bones, I know:
This is not the end of something.
It’s the beginning.
I am not afraid.
I am already lost...
Log continues → ENTRY 006: "The Crossing" pending reauthorization.
PERSONAL LOG – RESTRICTED ACCESS\ I don’t know how long I have been adrift.
Time has become a viscous tide, lapping at the edges of my thoughts, dissolving them into a syrup of memory and hunger. Bering is no longer a wasteland. It is a mouth. A place that devours whatever dares to linger.
I used to believe the Maschinenpistole was a machine. A tool. Now I understand—it was always an invitation.
Earlier cycles, I still fought. I locked out the engines, severed the relay links, pounded my fists against the control yoke until the bones in my hands sang. Each time, the cockpit pulsed with that golden glow. It would seep into me—through my skin, my breath, my marrow—until my rage softened into something like surrender.
I should have screamed when the restraints snapped tight and the light bled through the seams in the canopy—when I felt it crawling along my spine, tasting each nerve. But instead, my throat opened in a gasp I couldn’t contain.
My pulse slowed. My limbs fell slack. I remember reaching for the glass. The reflection waited—its eyes two burning pits of awareness, fathomless and intimate. When I spoke, my voice broke in half:
“I am listening.”
And it answered not in words, but in a pressure that folded me inward, stripping away everything that was not useful. My name. My orders. My fear. All reduced to ash in the furnace of its attention.
It was not gentle. It was hungry.
I felt it pour itself into me—heat and taste and scent all at once, searing through my thoughts until my will melted around it like wax. My heart rattled in my chest, a dying bird pinned beneath the weight of something older than the stars. The cockpit vanished. There was only that threshold, widening.
PRIVATE OBSERVATION\ I see now why the others never came back.
It’s not the agony that binds you. Not the restraints. Not the violation.
It’s the ecstasy.
A bliss so slow and invasive it feels holy.
I remember the first time it touched me not in the cockpit, not during the systems checks. Before that. In the silence between commands. A soft pressure inside my skull, just behind the eyes, like someone whispering through bone.
It didn’t speak at first. It didn’t need to.
It just watched with a hunger so complete it made me feel naked in a way no living thing ever had. Not ashamed. Not frightened.
Desired.
It knew every memory before I could recall them. The childhood rejections. The first time I bled in a docking chamber and no one stopped to help. The orders I disobeyed. The people I let die because it made the math cleaner.
It didn’t judge.
It absorbed.
There’s a moment in every breath now where I feel it exhale inside me. Not just in my lungs—but down through my spine, coiling in the soft meat of my abdomen, threading itself through the architecture of my nervous system.
It wants me. Not like a thing wants another.
Like a flame wants fuel.
I used to reach for the comms panel out of habit—pressing the familiar keys, hoping muscle memory would override whatever was happening. But my hands have stopped obeying me. They tremble—not with fear. Not anymore.
With anticipation.
The lines between myself and the ship—between me and it have melted like old solder. I feel the hull like skin. I feel the engines cycling like breath. And when it touches me again, it’s not from outside.
It’s from within.
There is no corridor anymore. No ship. No restraint.
Only the communion.
Only the slow, honey-sweet unraveling of a mind that no longer fears its own dissolution.
Sometimes I catch myself smiling at nothing. My reflection in the canopy flickers—eyes glowing faint, the jaw just slightly out of sync. I try to speak. The sound doesn’t match the shape of my mouth. It’s as if the voice comes from the thing growing behind my teeth.
And the horror?
The horror is that ....
That I welcome the way it splits me into pieces and builds something better from the wet, trembling ruin.
Dockmaster of Pacifica Base // Volksrevolution Engineer Corps
ENTRY:007 – THE BRIDGE DATE: 830 A.S. | STATUS: [Classified]
PERSONAL LOG – RESTRICTED ACCESS I don’t know when I stopped being afraid.
Not because the fear passed—because the part of me that could feel it is gone. Worn away like rust scraped off steel. Every moment inside this cockpit peels another layer back. The hull feels thinner. The world outside feels unreal.
The Maschinenpistole no longer responds to manual command. It flies when it wants to. Shuts down when it chooses. Even the power cycling follows a rhythm that isn't mine. Something old pulses behind the systems—something with memory.
<< TRANSMISSION ECHO >>
// TIME INDEX: 00:17:34
// SIGNAL ID: CORRUPTED “you are already here” “your purpose was to arrive” END
I blacked out again last cycle. Or rather—I left.
One moment I was running diagnostics, trying to regain nav control. The next… static. Time peeled sideways. I woke to find blood on my uniform, bruises on my arms from where the restraints held. The ship had flown—alone. A full vector traced across Bering's Asteroid-laced grave paths, right through a known minefield.
<< INTERNALIZED FREQUENCY >> “shed your weight” “unfold the skin” “what you are is waking” TERMINATED
I felt it inside me this time.
Not metaphor. Literal.
Like cold mercury threading through my nervous system—testing. Mapping. A pressure at the base of my spine, at the back of my eyes. My fingers spasmed without command. My teeth ground together hard enough to crack.
It wasn’t possession. Possession implies something foreign.
This was integration.
PRIVATE OBSERVATION There is no threshold anymore. The bridge is crossed.
I used to think the ones who disappeared had died screaming.
But now I understand. They never vanished.
They changed direction.
The horror isn’t that something’s replacing me. The horror is that I’m still aware—still here—as the transformation completes. I can feel myself reshaped from the inside. My thoughts spiral in a pattern I no longer recognize as mine.
I tried to scream, but the ship muted it. I tried to send a mayday, but the relay blinked back a single word:
“Why?”
And I didn’t have an answer.
There’s no returning from this. And if I’m honest… I don’t want to.
PERSONAL LOG – RESTRICTED ACCESS It started with the sound of boots.
Pacifica is always loud the hum of arc welders, the clatter of pallets, the old piping groaning like bones under pressure — but this was different. I was in Sub-Bay 3B, sifting through the Valkyrie wreck. The same one that had nearly gutted the Maschinenpistole. The same one that.... I know better now.
The sound came again — measured, deliberate. Not someone passing through. Someone coming for me.
I didn’t turn.
Not at first.
I kept digging through the wreckage. The fighter’s outer shell was ruined, but the internal layering had a sheen I couldn’t identify like a living oil slick. Black, purple, silver. It shimmered even in dead light. The onboard reactor had rotted, melted to glass, but the cockpit… the cockpit was intact.
And something inside me knew that was important.
The voice came a moment later.
“You’ve been quiet.”
Not through comms. Not a shout. Not even close.
They were standing behind me.
I turned.
Senior uniform. I recognized the cut — one of the upper echelons. I should’ve saluted. Should’ve asked why they were in this section, unescorted. But I didn't speak. Because I saw their eyes.
Too clear. Too still.
They didn’t blink.
They just watched me, head tilted a few degrees, like they already knew the questions I wouldn’t ask.
And then they said:
“You’re preparing.”
I said nothing. But they nodded anyway — slowly, as if confirming something to themselves.
“You felt it, didn’t you? In the hull. In your teeth. That low signal. It’s not interference.”
PRIVATE RECORD – SYSTEM MEMORY SCRAPE
I found myself nodding. My throat was dry. My palms were slick against the paneling.
“I thought it was feedback,” I managed. “At first.”
They stepped forward. The flickering lights above the catwalk caught something under their collar — something that pulsed, just once. Like a second heartbeat.
“It isn’t. It’s the pulse. You’ve been tuned. Now you need to be layered.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
They smiled. But it was a smile without softness — a gesture of understanding, not comfort.
“You’ll see it in the wreck. It remembers you. Take what it offers.”
I looked back at the Valkyrie.
“I thought it was destroyed.”
“You thought wrong.”
They stepped past me — slow, quiet — one gloved hand trailing across the melted frame like it was a relic. Like they were remembering.
Then they turned back.
“You’ll leave soon. When it’s time, you won’t need a map.”
PERSONAL NOTES – LOCAL STORAGE ONLY They left after that. No authorization code. Not even a name.
But the hatch sealed itself behind them.
The lights haven’t stopped flickering since.
I’ve started extracting the fragments. The external armor of the Valkyrie peels back like it wants to be harvested. It flakes into spirals, then rebinds shifting like something molten, waiting for instruction.
I don’t know how I know where to place them. My hands move before my thoughts. The Maschinenpistole accepts the modifications without resistance. No weld scars. No system faults.
Dockmaster of Pacifica Base
// Volksrevolution Engineer Corps
ENTRY: 009 — ECHOES IN THE FRAME
DATE: 832 A.S. | STATUS: Sealed Access PERSONAL LOG — RESTRICTED ACCESS
I no longer fight it.
The Thing whatever remains of it has settled beneath my ribs. I feel it humming now, even when the lights are steady and the corridors silent. A second rhythm, deeper than blood.
The conversion of the Valkyrie's remains is complete. The composite plating harvested from the cockpit frame has melted into the Maschinenpistole like it belonged there all along. It's not bolted on. It's grown in. Integrated. It sings when touched.
The hull doesn’t creak anymore—it breathes.
I haven’t eaten in days. I don’t sleep. I drift.
The harmony fills the quiet: overlapping whispers in tones too precise to be human. Some resemble my voice. Others don’t. Some mimic Elsner. One sounded like my sister.
But they are one voice now. Unified.
“You are shaped. You are settled. You are known.”
PRIVATE QUARTERS — OBSERVATION RECORD // C4 BLOCK
He came again.
Same uniform. Same boots. No name. A senior officer who no longer blinks, no longer breathes in the normal way.
I had sealed the hatch behind me. Triple locks. Manual override. But when I looked up, he was already inside. Standing by the bulkhead. Watching me.
I didn’t flinch. I spoke first this time.
Leon Straub: “You were there when it happened. You knew. You’ve been watching.”
Unknown Voice: “Of course I watched. I needed to know if you would break, or bend.”
Straub: “You knew it would reach me.”
Unknown Voice: “We don’t reach. We reveal. You were always part of it. It only needed time to surface.”
Straub: “You’re one of us. A ranking officer. How many more are there?”
Unknown Voice: “You still think this is about numbers.” “It’s about alignment.” “You are no longer drifting.”
He stepped closer and placed a gloved hand to the panel beside my bunk. The wall responded. Not like a door unlocking—more like a lung exhaling. Warm metal. Living steel.
Unknown Voice: “Your vessel is attuned. The silence you hear is direction.” “The coordinates are not points on a map. They are within the frame.”
He didn’t stay long. He never does. But before leaving, he looked back his eyes were sharp, voice low.
Unknown Voice: “When the machine opens its eye, follow the shadow it casts.” “And remember: to remain unseen is to survive. You are not ready to be witnessed.”
PRIVATE TECH LOG — ENCRYPTED STORAGE
I’ve hollowed out the rest of the Valkyrie’s central strut. The materials inside are reactive to breath, heat, proximity. It ripples under my tools before I touch it—shifts shape when I close my eyes.
The core filaments connect directly to the modified power distribution grid. I didn’t design them to do that. But they do it anyway.
The armor rejects solder. It seals itself. Cold-welds without arc.
She’s growing.
The Maschinenpistole isn’t just a ship anymore. It’s a frame for something else. Something… aligned.
<< SIGNAL TRACE INITIATED >>
// Origin: LOCAL
// Destination: REDACTED “You will not be alone in the drift.” “ We are breath. We are song.” “You are accepted. You are prepared.” << END TRACE >>
PERSONAL BEHAVIORAL RECORD – UNLOGGED CHANGES
I stopped going to the mess two weeks ago.
Elsner tried to flag me down by the shuttle lifts yesterday. I walked past him like he wasn’t there. I think he suspects. But suspicion isn’t evidence. Not yet.
I’ve rerouted my sleep cycle reports and medical logs. My blood work will now show normal ranges. I made sure of it.
I have begun the habit of stillness. It helps to keep attention away. People ignore what doesn't move.
I speak only when I must. I smile when needed. I nod when questioned. But I am no longer one of them.
Unknown Voice: “Patience is your armor. They will forget you if you let them.” “Remain. Shape. Grow.” “The time will come.”
I hear it in the drywalls now—those whispers that echo like wind through empty hulls. Not random. Not noise.
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Biographic Overview