Ardent

Chapter 1

30140325 - Personal Log - Captain Aliyn Flynn

I still can't get his face out of my mind. His eyes are penetrating enough to tear past your layers and see every ounce you wished to hide from the outside world. Strange eyes, violet—I've seen nothing like them in my lifetime. A voice like silk, impressive enough to steal my breath and leave me gasping for air when I awake, sweat damp on my cheeks. The touch of his fingertips, grazing my skin with a tenderness and a touch of something more, like a spark igniting in its wake. I don't know who he is, or why I dream of him, but I remember when it all began. It started when we brought that derelict ship home after that salvage trip last year.

Her name is Ardent, and she is mine.

The renovations to her are almost complete. The result transcended what I could ever have hoped for the piece of junk we lugged back. She was nothing more than a shell back then, filled with broken debris and the dead memories of those who left her behind. They scavenged anything of value long before we arrived to find her floating idle and eerily in space, orbiting a planet we always knew to be inhospitable to life.

I remember being mesmerized by the angry surface of the frozen gas giant Plenare, which loomed before us as we neared the tiny heat signature on our radar representing our prize. It was a faint blip, like a beacon in the daunting emptiness of space. The planet was intimidating in its massive size, the swirls of noxious purple gas creating depth and shadows that were deeper than we could imagine. The distant star Plenare orbited shone brightly, its dwindling size giving away the massive expanse of space that loomed between it and its purple child.

Plenare's gravitational pull was phenomenal, and we had to approach our salvage with caution to avoid losing our prize altogether. The giant pulled asteroids, space debris, and dust into her orbit with ease. Avoiding a direct hit from any of these took careful planning and dedication.

I was not about to allow space rocks to prevent me from getting a salvage from the most dangerous and unpredictable region of space in this system. Plenare's violent orbit likely caused the ruin of the spacecraft. There were always rumours of ships going missing in that area of space, only to be found in ruins, or never seen again. Some say Plenare is alive, cognizant, but how can a planet be sentient? It must be rumour and paranoia.

We experienced none of the rumours, getting our salvage and exiting the system with nothing more than a few well-executed flight maneuvers—well that and some colourful language. An asteroid three times the size of your ship coming head on is enough to make you change your pants.

At this point, the only thing left to complete is to connect the main life support system to the rest of the ship. Since she was nothing more than a shell, she was easy to outfit with the most current technology. Despite her age and history, she has that 'new-ship' smell. We've decorated her with many favourite artifacts gained over years of salvage. She is full of memories of our past, and we hope to fill her with many of our future.

Her maiden voyage is less than a week away, and I've been scrambling with the preparations for her launch. We're to move beyond our former classification of a salvage vessel and into a more investigative role. Some strange activity in Plenare's system has prompted an investigation, and since we returned unscathed, that duty has fallen on our shoulders. All we have to direct us is this old book someone found on a mission conducted two years ago on the other end of that system.

Upon being put under contract by Local Intelligence, a government organization on Earth, we were told it was an investigative mission. Only one survivor returned in a ship that was barely functioning. He died clutching the book to his chest a week after his return. Local Intelligence halted all exploratory missions to Reso, declaring it unsafe for travel, although that sure as hell didn't stop mercenaries from attempting it. The government kept the book hidden because no one had heard of it until now—until we returned alive.