Chapter 8
The Horizon was parked in the casino parking lot, so the walk from my room was short. The mid-morning sun hit her cargo ramp at an angle that made the composite hull shine like wet stone.
Taylor had called me on the wrist-com not more than ten minutes ago, asking me to meet her on the bridge of the Horizon. It didn’t sound urgent, but she wanted me to come alone, so at the very least, I knew it was sensitive. That, or she planned to kill me.
Anyway, that got me thinking about code words. A short phrase or word that would tell me to come alone without others hearing it. I didn’t want any misunderstandings or curious looks after all.
I walked up the ramp and into the dim interior of the cargo bay, my boots clicking on the composite flooring.
Sealed crates lined the far wall, stacked three high, each one tagged with a manifest number and a handwritten check mark.
Taylor had been thorough. The labels read everything from “HYDRAULIC FLUID” to “UNKNOWN ORIGIN – DO NOT OPEN,” which was reassuring in its honesty.
The ship’s interior lights were running low, enough to navigate by, strips of blue along the floor and ceiling that pulsed in a slow, steady rhythm.
The cool air hit my skin through my shirt, and I caught myself enjoying it.
Living without proper climate control does that to a person.
It made me miss Emma even more. You start appreciating the little comforts, like a ship’s air conditioning.
I made my way forward through the narrow passage that connected cargo to the main deck.
The corridor was tight, shoulder-width in places, the walls lined with conduits and access panels.
Horizon wasn’t built for comfort; she was built to move cargo fast and survive whatever tried to stop her.
The design showed in every rivet and reinforced joint.
The bridge door hissed open when I pressed my palm to the scanner.
Taylor stood at the primary console, her back to me, her blonde hair catching the strobe of data scrolling across the main display.
She didn’t turn right away. Her hands moved across the interface, tapping commands, pulling up windows, dismissing them, her fingers precise and unhurried.
When she finally glanced over her shoulder, her green eyes tracked me for a half-second before returning to the screen.
“Captain,” she said. Her voice carried its usual flat cadence, neither warm nor cold.
“Taylor.” I moved to stand beside her, close enough to read the displays but not crowding her space. “You called.”
“I did.” She pulled up a new window, this one darker, the text amber against black. “As you are aware, I’ve been auditing Horizon’s systems. I found this.”
The screen showed a file directory tree, most of it grayed out. One branch glowed active, labeled CAPT_LOG_ARCHIVE.
“Captain’s log,” Taylor said. “It’s kept separate from the main computer. Isolated storage, non-volatile, designed to survive catastrophic system failure. Similar to a black box on an atmospheric aircraft, but with significantly more capacity.”
I nodded. “Makes sense for a starship.”
“Precisely.” Her fingers moved again, and the directory expanded. “The file is partially corrupted. The portal storm that brought Horizon to this reality appears to have damaged several sectors. What remains is fragmentary but coherent.”
She dimmed the console lights with a gesture.
The bridge darkened, and the main display flared to life, projecting a grainy, flickering image into the cramped space above the consoles.
The quality was rough, what you get from equipment that’s been through hell and kept recording anyway.
Colors bled at the edges. Static crawled across the frame in white-hot threads.
A woman’s face filled the projection. Dark hair, mid-thirties but looking no older than twenty-five. The metadata tag read Captain Reyes. She looked tired. Behind her, I could make out the blurred shape of a command chair and the glow of instrument panels.
Her voice came through in bursts, cutting in and out.
“…dropped out of hyperspace right on top of us. Sensors tagged the hulls as known designs, but the signatures were wrong; modified. Captured ships. Mechanari, if the sector warnings were right.” A hard breath.
“They’re launching pods. Point defense is engaging.
ECM is cutting through everything. We need a minute to spool the drive. ”
The image jumped. A second channel opened beside her: another bridge, crowded. A man in the command seat was surrounded by women. Two blondes, a redhead with a heavy chest, and two in the background with their breasts on full display. Max’s voice was calm and short.
“Horizon, this is Ghost. I’ve got you. Keep your distance and turn. We’ll cover while you spool. Go.”
Reyes nodded once. “Copy, Ghost.”
The channel with the Ghost stayed open long enough for me to see the other ship’s weapons light up, then the feed from Horizon’s own cameras took over.
A boarding pod came in fast. Point-defense lasers stitched it apart before it reached the hull.
Warning lights flared across the bridge.
Someone shouted that ECM was degrading fire control.
The call with the Ghost cut.
A single bright point appeared ahead of the ship where nothing had been. Blue energy bloomed outward in slow, heavy swirls, the same blue that had covered the Earth. Reyes ordered evasion. The deck cameras showed the light swelling. A broken transmission from the Ghost cut through the static:
“Reverse thrust—reverse—get out of—”
The light swallowed the view. The log ended.
The bridge lights came up slowly, returning to their steady blue pulse. I sat there with the afterimage of that swirling blue still in my eyes, knowing I had watched the moment this ship was torn out of its own universe and dropped into mine.
Taylor pulled up a new side-by-side display: the log footage on the left, a forensic analysis on the right. Text scrolled, comparisons highlighted in red and green.
“The way they fought matches the Mechanari tactics in the source material I have,” Taylor said. “Kill the crew, keep the ship. That’s consistent.”
She paused, studying the last frozen frame.
“The other vessel never registered properly on sensors. Cloaked, or close to it. At best, there’s a dark shape moving through the fire. Not enough to identify. The records call one ship the Ghost, but there’s nothing here that confirms it was the one featured in the Mega Space core material.”
I stood there for a moment, letting it settle. The console lights kept cycling: blue, white, amber, across the bulkheads.
“So we know the attackers,” I said. “And we know someone intervened. Beyond that?”
“Beyond that, speculation.” Taylor’s voice stayed even.
“I have the files. I don’t have proof that the ship that saved them was the same one in the records.
Only that a fast, unseen force cut the Mechanari apart long enough for Horizon to be pulled into the storm.
Though it seems their intention was for the Horizon to escape by use of the hyperdrive. ”
“What does it mean for us?” I asked. “Practically. Here, now.”
Taylor didn’t soften it. “On this Earth, very little. The Mechanari are not a known local presence. No portal storm has delivered a confirmed Mechanari vessel or entity to Southern California, based on Stingray Arms’ monitoring data.
” She paused. “Portal storms continue. Anything could come through at any time. The log does not indicate an active threat here.”
She closed the analysis window with a tap.
“The primary value of this discovery is the origin connection. Horizon, Ira, and related species all thread back to the same source universe. The Mega Space RPG. This confirms the pattern and strengthens the working theory.”
She flagged the file with a gesture, adding a note that glowed briefly before fading. “I’ve marked it for Ira’s review when she returns from Overwatch. She may have additional context.”
She turned to another console, pulled a compact data slate, and held it out.
“This is everything I have on Mega Space, Mega Fantasy, Mega Apocalypse, Mega Earth, and the related source material. Ship profiles, race files, tactical summaries, the lot. You can load it on your wrist-com. It may give you answers, or at least better questions. It may also be useful for tactical analysis if anything else from those files shows up here.”
I took the slate.
“I don’t know if Stingray Arms has shared any of this with other humans,” she added. “I’ve seen no indication either way.”
I nodded. The weight of it sat across my shoulders, not heavy enough to buckle under, but present. Another piece of the puzzle, sliding into place with a click that was neither comforting nor alarming. Information. Information that changes what you know without necessarily changing what you do.
“Good work,” I said. “I’ll want to talk more about this. Later, when we’ve both had time to think it through.”
Taylor returned to her console to resume her work. “I’ll be here.”
I left her to it, stepping back through the narrow corridor toward the cargo bay.
The cool air followed me all the way to the ramp, and I stood there for a moment before descending, looking out at Catalina under the afternoon sun.
The harbor lay calm below, the Sea Hunter’s hull visible at anchor, the Chesapeake’s masts rising rough and unfinished against the sky.
Another ship. Another captain. Another story, playing out somewhere I couldn’t see.
I started down the ramp, my boots hitting the tarmac with a solid thud that echoed in the empty air.
* * *