Written By Jack L.

Special thanks to:

[REDACTED] aka Drawberry

Plasma rounds can be heard ricocheting off his spacecraft’s shield, as Jonn Walker boots up the HUD’s integral camera, and begins his first and last Star-Log.

“Star-Log…ughh, zero…one?”

Jonn shudders to himself, brushes the long, brown hair from his filty face, and whispers under his breath “Damn…already fucking this up…”

“This is…” Jonn’s voice picks up as he continues his story “uhhh, my first Star-Log, I’m Jonn Walker. My father-”

Jonn is cut off by several direct hits to his ship’s hull and wings. Shaking the ship and showering him in sparks.

“Christ! That shield isn’t worth a goddamn! Anyway, where was I? Oh, my dad’s body was found out in deep space eighteen Earth Months ago.” Jonn pushes forward with his story in spite of the rapidly encroaching gunfire. “His ship and crew were missing. All that he left to me was this damned treasure map.”

Jonn swipes the HUD screen and pulls up a Star Chart, connected along points like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle between Jump Gates.

“Polaris…Vega…Thxos-Asktra…GaleXXX-18…Vehlg-[Ekgorg]…Bvlorex-5…etc...etc… until you get to Nekrarzys--” Jonn’s composure begins to crack, and he starts to panic as the plasma rounds chew through his ship. “If you follow Nekrarzys just right and hit the edge you’ll find an unknown Jump Gate! This leads to a lonely little system, with a lonely little rock… in the Goldilocks Zone--”

As Jonn’s ship lurches, he is thrown from his chair as his harness snaps he relays his latest development with a fire in his eyes and fear in his voice: “Exiting the thermosphere, entering the stratosphere now. My father was obsessed with this world, Paradise-One he called it…so I thought I ‘ought to explore it--”

Jonn’s ship experiences a catastrophic failure as a wing flies off its rivets, out of the cockpit he sees the alternating pattern of the expanse of space, the purple sky, the planet’s surface, then sky again, and space once more. Jonn’s visage ignites in the glare of the sun and the flicker in his eyes.

“Fuck! I’d just hoped I’d find the others, or the ship. I guess this is really the end!” Jonn depresses a button on his helmet, causing the plexiglass panels of his face-shield slide out, they dovetail into each-other “Earth date: 2/4/2412 C.E. Galactic date--!” Jonn isn’t even able to choke out the end before his ship’s transition is blasted to pieces, and he’s hurled from his craft.