Prelude | The Everlight Protocol

The derelict ship should have gone unnoticed. 

It drifted in a graveyard of shredded metal and shattered asteroids. Wires trailed behind it like a tangle of exposed guts, spilling into a cloud of golden dust – the remains of its lower solar wings. 

Two of its four life support rings still rotated, inertia keeping them spinning long after the station’s systems had failed. The hull was filled with an eerie silence, its windows blacker than the space around them. Not the hissing breaths of a life support system. Not the hum of an engine.

The SS Moros looked abandoned. Utterly ruined. The site of a common tragedy for space stations caught in the Sulvine Belt’s unpredictable gravitational tides and shifting debris fields. 

But the Navigator knew better.

Beneath the noise of space – the heartbeats of flickering stars, the low chatter of comms inside the closest outpost, the churning radiation of a nearby Illunaris Arc, the shifting of celestial bodies – was the faint, localized pulse of emergency systems. Systems that clung to an unseen source of backup power now on its last legs.

If the Navigator hadn’t left its crater, where it grieved the loss of its own world, and turned its gaze to the stars at exactly the right moment, it wouldn’t have heard a soft “blip, blip, blip” of an outdated emergency beacon. 

The SS Moros would have drifted out of range, dragged by the steep flow of the Sulvine Belt, to its quiet doom. Metal crypt, the citizens of R-39 called it. False hope, the Eldren Navigators had warned. But the Navigator had to intercept it, save it.

The ship is a rigged spaceship. Four rings, six solar wings, modular, the Navigator noted as it drew close. There is significant damage to its exterior. 

It scanned the surface of the spaceship, recording the long, irregular gashes in the hull. Only half of the ship’s fourth ring – the one closest to where the solar wings should have been – remained. The other half was…not at the scene.

Then there were the scorch marks, which blackened the dull silver of the vessel; dozens of its windows had been shattered and its glass melted down to dust. Supplies and cargo floated out of a gaping hole in the ship’s hull, where her systems indicated the inter-ring accessway would be. 

The Navigator cocked its head, an internal program running through the possible encounters that would lead to such extensive damage, but its conclusions were incomplete. 

No life signs transmitting. 

Karhu’s voice vibrated through the Navigator’s mind. Thousands of thread-like tentacles snaked around the body of the SS Moros, stabilizing it. The bulbous dome of Karhu – an Eldren Navigator and titan jellyfish – rose over the remaining life support rings, shifting colors as he spoke. Sulvine belt unstable.

Turn back.

We must investigate.

The Navigator pressed forward, slipping into the damaged hull, iridescent wings illuminating the corridors. Emergency power is online. It is feeding a source.

The great jelly trembled with disapproval, translucent flesh darkening.

Idris did not approve.

Idris did not disapprove.

Unlike its Eldren kin, who had lived in the R-39 system for thousands of years, the Navigator did not worry about going against the will of Idris. The Ever Father of the system had always allowed the Navigator to make its own decisions. Had encouraged it to question its existence and to think independently of the Pantheon of Numëthen. Thus, the Navigator would not turn back now. Not when it had finally found a purpose beyond grief.

Floating through the corridors, the Navigator searched for the inter-ring accessway. The space station did not bear any resemblance to the blueprints the Navigator had downloaded.  Metallic shrapnel, jagged shards of glass, ripples of clothing clotted the corridors. Sigils were carved into the support archways, drained of their original magic. 

Based on the scorch patterns, a fire had erupted in the mess hall and burned through the oxygens lines that ran under the floor panels.

You delay the inevitable. Let us return.

We must see this through, Karhu. It is our duty –

A hint of green among the gray interior caught the Navigator’s attention. It moved closer and plucked a rigid object from the clutter – it was a tome, fashioned from frayed cloth and pulped paper. The Navigator traced the lettering splayed across its cover: Elydren. The Navigator’s programming didn’t offer a translation. 

As if sensing the Navigator’s unease, Karhu rumbled, What have you found?

Unfamiliar words, the Navigator explained.  Ancient words far older than I.

The Navigator flipped the tome open but froze, its systems humming with unease. Blood. Crimson streaks marred the delicate pages, seeping into the fibers. No—its eyes flicked around the corridor, widening to record the horror before it. Blood wasn’t confined to the book. Smears and splatters decorated walls and consoles, trailing toward the inter-ring access hatch. 

The door hung crooked, jammed in its frame. Securing the tome into its pack, the Navigator gripped the edge of the hatch door and peered through the crack down  into the shadows below.

Down, down, down into the pitch throat of the unknown. 

Accessway located.

· ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · 

Without waiting for Karhu’s response, the Navigator wrenched the door off its hinges and shot up through the accessway. Light from its wings doused the pitch and conjured death, illuminating a gathering of bodies floating below. An impulse to recoil jolted through the Navigator as it bumped into one of the corpses – a female in a ragged sweater with locks of long, black hair. Then more bodies. 

Backing away until its back was against the wall of the shaft, the Navigator conjured a ball of light and sent it ricocheting from one end of the accessway to the other. Dozens of mangled bodies flickered into existence.  Flesh contorted, charred, slashed. Limbs torn off, shattered and scattered throughout the narrow space. Mouths gaping, lips blue, as if still desperately sucking for oxygen. And their eyes…Boiled. Bloodied. Blackened with frozen obsidian tears that clung to their hollowed cheeks. 

No bioshells, Karhu said quietly, viewing the carnage through the Navigator’s thoughts. No life.

There is always a chance for life, the Navigator reminded him, pressing deeper into the accessway. I am proof of this. We are all proof of this.

A series of warning systems went off in the Navigator’s programming. The emergency beacon, now in range, transmitted an endless stream of alerts. 

Warning: low oxygen! 

Warning: hull breach! 

Warning: fire in hull segment 2! 

Warning: unusual energy field detected! 

Warning: accessway door malfunction! 

Warning: solar panels are offline! 

Warning: contagion exposure detected!

But, one-by-one, the Navigator disregarded them. Refused to acknowledge them.

It and Karhu had traveled for several days at the speed of light. If there were no survivors aboard this vessel, the Navigator would take the bodies back to Tenebris  – a world that was already a vast, barren graveyard. If unclaimed, the Pantheon of Numëthen would study them – there was much that the Eldren Navigators did not understand about the homo cosmiens who now lived among them in R-39. 

But the Navigator had no desire to dissect the intricacies of their deaths. It would let them rest for all eternity beneath the silver starlight and lavender fields of Tenebris.  It, like the other Eldren Navigators, had lost everything when it fled its dying world. R-39 was all any of them had anymore.  It was their spark, their light, their purpose.

Bursting through the lowest hatch and throwing out its wings, the Navigator came to an abrupt halt. With a flourish of its wrists, balls of light flickered into existence and floated around the room. Its systems sparked with an unknown reaction. There, tangled in its bent rings and a web of cables, were dozens of cryo-containers. The room was intact. Whatever happened in the hull and third ring did not appear to find its way here, where the survivors must have put themselves into cryo-sleep. 

The Navigator found the source of the emergency beacon and switched it off. Its eyes fell on the frosted window of one of the containers. So little power was left in the emergency reserves that the tubes were dimly lit and it could barely make out features through the glass. 

Scan and render a visual, the Navigator commanded its programming. Then peered back down at the bodies within the tubes. It had seen homo cosmiens on Arboros and Galene before, though they preferred to be called Cosmari. Nomads. Refugees. Star children and evolved. But these beings were different. 

Pink. Pallid. Frail. A sickly figure to them. Bony and long, yet smaller than their evolved descendants. A slight point to the tips of their small ears. There was no trace of neural nodes or other body modifications. Leaning closer, the Navigator detected a faint murmur of vital signs–the nearly inaudible and irregular thumb of a heart. Alive, but for how long?

Running diagnostics to determine extent of damage to cryo equipment.

The Navigator tubbed a cable from its wrist and felt around the base of the display, sensors honing in on the outdated jack port. It tapped into the equipment’s system, data scrolling quickly across its visual field. 

Twelve cryotubes are offline and nonviable. The rest show extremely low temperatures. Unable to determine if cellular damage has occurred. 

Life?

It appears so. The cryotube is sustaining basic life functions, but they are running off emergency power. There is not much left… The Navigator trailed off, gazing around the space and taking in all the cryotubes.

What is it?

How do they still have power?

There were so many cryotubes crammed in the small space. There were elder kin and younglings—all children in the eyes of the Eldren Navigators of R-39. Even to the evolved humans who now lived there. Too many for emergency power to sustain this long, especially since their vessel did little to protect them from the outside. It was unsophisticated, barebones, a patchwork of shells from other ships.

The Navigator searched its databases for more information about the survivors of the SS Moros, but there was little information about them. No place of origin, no point of destination. The only clue were two labels attached to the ship’s registration: Dregs of Humanity, Useless Cargo. 

What does this mean? 

The Navigator tipped its head, puzzling over a myriad of interpretations. None made sense. It transferred the files to Karhu.

They were not worth the risk, Karhu rumbled. They did not fit.

But they needed help—

They were not wanted.

They were left behind, the Navigator realized. No one came back for them. Why?

Space can be a cruel place, Karhu replied, with all the wisdom of thousands of years.

Idris did not leave me behind, the Navigator pointed out, eyes glowing at the memory. 

When the Navigator’s world had ended after centuries of civil unrest, Idris had found it floating aimlessly and took care of it. Fixed it. He had given it a home on Tenebris and a name of its own: Melantha. Night flower. 

Like those of your homeworld, Idris had once said. They bloom in the darkest, coldest worlds in the cosmos. But their evening glow is the most beautiful – the warmest, steadiest light that brightens the pitch of space. Their seeds are delicate, stolen by the gentlest waves of solar wind to faraway worlds, where they adapt and take root once more. 

Since the death of its world, the Navigator had not been so useful, plagued with system irregularities because of its damage, but Idris swept in and found a use for it, believing it would adapt to this new world like the night flowers of its home. The Navigator would find a use for these remaining beings, too. 

I will not leave them behind. 

When the Callista III arrived, the Navigator carried the cryotubes onto the medical transport vessel, with all the care of a parent ushering a sleeping, dreaming youngling. For the first time, it caught sight of an unexpected future unfolding before it – a bright paradise of technological advances, magical evolution, and welcomed peace. 

The losses of the past would be replaced with wondrous gains.

Within 200 hundred years, Aurora Noctis would be founded. Within 500 hundred, the Oriel Towers would be erected, terraforming Tenebris into a celestial haven rich with life. Within 1000 years, those frail homo cosmiens would become everything R-39 thought they would not: useful, powerful, beautiful night flowers capable of adapting to even the darkest, coldest worlds. 

The Navigator would also evolve, learning from the homo cosmiens. Taking their form. Speaking their language of feelings. The humans would come to love it, and it would find a purpose again in that. The Navigator did not know precisely of this future, but it would look back on this moment one day and call it hope. 

A hope that bound them all together. 

Hope that propelled them towards shining prosperity.

And a hope that doomed them.