It was completely our fault. It's easy to play the blame game here. The captain didn't bother to pay attention to all the protocols. The engineer was overconfident. The pilot slept for an additional hour because we seemed to be cruising smoothly. Most of us simply obeyed orders without questioning anything. I'm sure we all had that gut feeling at some point- some kind of intuition that could not be backed up by any scientific knowledge that the superiors had over us. We dismissed it most of the time. I dismissed it pretty much all the time. I didn't bother to do my own research or to stand up for myself when politics and hierarchy were all that flowed through most of our minds. Like most others, I dealt with it by gossiping and badmouthing others. Finally, some people took a stand. I wasn't one of them, but they couldn't be blameless either because, by the time they had worked up the courage to speak up, it was too late. In conclusion, it was not his or her fault; it was our fault. At this point in time, though time can't even exist in this black hole, we had fought and insulted each other enough to break from individual grudges and finally take responsibility as a team. We, Mission 12, f**ked up.
In the 1300s, the first Mission spacecraft landed on Earth. No one knew the team that piloted it- either it was operated remotely, the captain was invisible, or we simply didn't have reliable recorded information regarding the landing. The first travelers- again, we don't know much about them, but they had created manuals leaving instructions and advice- left Earth and moved to the Zoyanoid System. The Zoyanoid System was a star system like the Solar System consisting of binary stars Zoyan I and Zoyan IV, five habitable planets, and one moon for one of these planets. After a set amount of time, a team is made to travel back to Earth from Zoyan to bring new settlers. Initially, when the population and resources were low, this trip took place every few decades or so. Gradually, with a thriving population and a desire for secrecy, people became more hesitant about traveling back. It had been three hundred years since the last trip.
The information regarding Zoyan and our settlement was highly confidential. Even, we did not understand it fully. No one who left Earth was allowed to return or let others know where they were going. They were considered officially dead there, so no one on Earth knew about Zoyan. Nobody knew where Earth was in relation to Zoyan either. This is the strange thing. The alien technology used to create the Mission Spacecraft made sure that the ship worked automatically. The inscriptions inside the ship were all written in that alien language. Despite centuries of efforts, it has still not been deciphered. Our ancestors, through trial and error, only knew some minor maintenance requirements and controls like starting the ship. It was so strange how we didn't know the links between our two worlds or perhaps universes. Our night sky and the galaxies surrounding us were nothing like the ones in the Milky Way based on information from our ancestors.
I've wondered, growing up, why no one who had traveled on Mission 1-11 paid attention to the path they were taking. There were no records of unusual gravitational wave interferences, unusually high-massed objects, or unpredictable gravitational lensing effects. It was a smooth trip for the most part if all precautions correctly took place. When I was twenty-four, I had the opportunity to witness it myself as I was added to the crew for Mission 12. I and several others were last-minute replacements to make sure that we had enough staff on board. I knew I was extremely underqualified, but so were many others. I was technically a space pilot, but a very low-level one. Zindoras was the moon of our habitable planet Synares. Zindoras was somewhat viable with a sufficient atmosphere containing oxygen substitutes, but it did not have enough resources to be self-sustainable for major life forms.
The moon was used as a base for prisoners. My job was delivering goods crates from Synares to Zindoras. This was the only job I was qualified to do. I couldn't do interplanetary travel as I failed the exam that allowed me to travel at such velocities. I couldn't even transport people- only goods. I wasn't really even allowed to enter Zindoras. I basically was in free-fall until I had the clearance to eject the goods crates as they gracefully fell and parachuted to the planet's surface. I wasn't even capable of doing this job properly, to be honest. I had received several warnings because the goods did not land in the precise allocated spot. Even if it was a meter away from the location, it was a big deal for some reason. It's not like the prisoners had access to it or people couldn't walk, but whatever the reason was, I was almost fired until Mission 12 came up.
