[SYS-RECLAIM: Deep Relay Intercept / Signal Code Fragment – Origin Unknown | Alleged Source: Exile-Class Colony Vessel “Ouro”]
Signal Status: Delayed Transmission
Timestamp: Unavailable
Content: Crew Message, Encrypted Personal Log
Don’t know who’s still listening. Maybe no one.
We were part of the third wave. Left Sol during the dust riots, after the food crashes started. Told us we’d be terraforming before the sun cooled. Said we were the chosen few. Smart ones. Survivors. Didn’t mention the part about not coming back.
They said Carinae-5 was viable—thin air, heavy metals, something about microbial promise in the ice caps. Wasn’t a lie, not exactly. But it wasn’t ready, and neither were we.
We cannibalized two of the support ships just to keep life support stable.
Water’s worse. Asteroid mining’s a blood sport with our neighbors—ships slamming into rock too fast just to beat them by a couple minutes. One team rigged their drills to explode if someone tampered with them again. Didn’t even bother hiding it. Just painted the casing with the words: "THIS IS HOW WARS START."
And maybe they have. Just slower than we expected. No guns in orbit, not yet—but power hoarded, water priced like gold, maps redrawn in the dark.
Most of the navnet’s gone. Whole sectors missing, scrubbed like they never existed. Some say it was sabotage. Some say the Null Signal did it. That it came through the network like rot through fruit, erasing coordinates, languages, even ship names.
Some of the old-timers say we were never meant to make it back.
We used to track a dark object near the galactic plane—non-reflective, no heat, no gravity wake. Just a hole where there shouldn’t be. Last year it lit up. Like something detonated inside the void. Then it moved. Bent the stars around it like glass under pressure.
We don’t point sensors that way anymore.
And then there’s the song.
Not on speakers. Not over the relay. In your head. Just… humming. Not a melody you’d know. Just a deep, endless harmony.
You hear it first when you sleep. Then you stop waking hungry.
Stop noticing the cold.
They say it’s beautiful.
They say it means we’re close to the end.
But me? I still run the engines. Still trace the old jumps. Still watch for signals, even if they’re centuries dead.
Because I remember Earth.
And I want her to remember us back.
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