Lost in Space by @thelennyjohnson
In the dream, he's falling into a void. His hands reach out but grasp at nothing. The blackness is all consuming. He feels his legs and arms and spine stretch like rubber bands. He screams but hears nothing.
Finn woke up at that moment. His face and clothes were drenched in sweat even though the temperature was artificially controlled to a nice 23 degrees Celcius.
He's had this nightmare for most of the year. Always falling into an endless void. Blood-thirsty criminals he can face but the void scared him. It felt too much like drifting in space.
Getting lost in space is a nightmare many bounty hunters share. When he was in the army his ship would sometimes pull in vessels that had been lost for decades. The passengers were always frozen solid as the ship's life support systems failed.
But dying in a ship was a more favorable death than being thrown into the vacuum of space. Finn had seen those bodies too and he much preferred the ones still inside ships.
Finn hopped from the bed. The cool metal floor stuck to his feet. He walked to his console that displayed the status of the ship and his crew of two.
“Captain's log #1,234: we've been traveling through the Siphius star system for 2 weeks now. We're close to Valhal's base and should arrive in a few hours.”
With that, he switched off the console and headed to the deck.
“Good morning Captain.” Diko said as soon as he saw him. “Hope you slept well?”
“Sure.” Finn lied
“We're a few hours from Valhal” Meg announced not wasting time on pleasantries. The metal of her arc pistol glistened in the overhead light.
“I've been waiting for this for years” Meg continued, her menace filling the room.
Finn had been with her since they left the army and he'd never seen her this anxious to put a bullet in someone. But Finn understood that this wasn't just anyone.
It was Valhal, the Planet killer. So named because he had destroyed 9 worlds and with a headcount of 40 billion sentient lives. He had committed evil on a scale never before seen in any galaxy.
Valhal was a mad genius with a starship that could funnel some of the energy of a planet's star to a point in space. This Dyson gun allowed him to obliterate entire planets in minutes. Your civilization either bent to his control or died by the power of your own sun.
No one could stop him as he spread destruction across the universe. But that was 30 years ago, the Valhal empire had fallen not long after his biggest conquest.
They say he'd gone mad, driven to insanity by his own intellect and without the steadiness of his iron fist the largest empire a single being had ever controlled collapsed under its own mass.
All that didn't join the reconstruction alliance became factions warring over what little remained of Valhal's empire.
As for old Val himself, rumor is he was hiding on a rock somewhere and some say planning the day his empire will rise again.
Not if I can help it. Finn thought to himself, his hand tightening around the grip of his gun. He'd been a bounty hunter for years, hunted some of the deadliest killers this side of the milky way but none compared to Valhal.
His team only found out about Val's hiding place because they'd run into a chatty Asynian mechanic who claimed to have worked on a ship owned by Valhal on some remote planet. Finn and his crew were heading to that planet now.
Valhal would be the catch of a lifetime. The bounty on his head could buy five custom planets each with their own moon and these days you can even get a seasonal comet if you dig that kind of thing.
But even if there wasn't a dime in it, Finn would shoot Valhal for free. That is if Valhal really was there. The tip was sketchy at best but the chance of it being Val was too great to pass.
Finn looked at the brown glow of the desert planet in front of him. He looked around the room and the tension was so thick you could cut it with a blade.
They were all thinking the same thing. Somewhere on that dustball of a planet is the biggest murderer of all time and they would get the chance to end him once and for all.
“You still got the coordinates the mechanic gave you?” He turned to Meg
“Heading there now.” She replied.
They touched down in ten seconds.
The planet was as unwelcoming as you'd imagine a desert world would be. The air was composed primarily of carbon and sulfur. They had to equip their suits with heat shields to not get fried by the 100-degree heat.
“According to the mechanic, Val should be somewhere in there,” Meg said pointing to a rocky structure shooting up from the sand. They had to land a few clicks off so as not to alert Valhal.
“Let's get this over with” Finn said, the engine on his hovercraft roaring to life as they drove towards the building.
As they drove, his craft rattled, the antimatter grenade and arc rifle on his belt felt heavier than usual.
“Whatever it takes” he whispered.
Val was the reason there had been massive galaxy wars in the first place. He's the reason Finn lost his town, his family, his friends…all for some stupid war with nothing but losers on all sides. So many lives lost to feed the ego of one man. And now Finn would bring a slice of justice to the universe by ending him.
As they got closer to Valhal's base, Finn knew something was wrong. It was the ship in front of it that tipped him off. A large obsidian black spacecraft shaped like the tip of a sword. It meant only one thing—
“Tajins!” Meg hissed through the intercom. They parked the hovercraft at the base of the structure to avoid being spotted.
“What are they doing here?” Diko asked, pulling out his rifle instinctively.
“Nothing good” You only ever saw Tajin at the scene of destruction. They were always the prequel to death. If the Tajin are here then there can't be anything left alive. Their only language was conquest and destruction and by the size of that ship this place would be crawling with them.
“If Valhal's there then he's either dead or long gone.”
“Maybe he's working with them” Diko said, but they knew it wasn't possible. Tajin's don't work with anybody for anything.
“We've come so far, w—” Whatever meg was about to say was cut short as four suited Tajins hauled something in a life pod towards their ship.
“Do you think that's..” Valhal, Finn thought.
It had to be. But why would Tajin's keep him alive? The bounty?
“Do you think they want the bounty?” Meg asked.
“Or his weapons?” Diko supplied. The thought of Tajins with Valhal's weapon tech scared the shit out of Finn.
We have to stop them. He said to himself then realized no one heard him.
“We have to stop them.” he said to the crew.
“We'll need a big fucking distraction then.” With that, Meg ran off to the side of the structure with two antimatter bombs glowing in her hands.
She arrived five minutes later.
“All set” she whispered and a flash of light poured from the base of the building. The air was pierced by a sound that would have deafened all of them without the suits.
The side of the building fell in on itself and Tajins ran out from the ship toward the site of the explosion.
“Now's our chance!” Finn shouted and they all ran towards the ship.
The entrance to the ship was locked but two small explosives later and they gave way. Meg was great with bombs.
Inside the ship, they shoot two Tajin guards still dazed from the bombs before they could lift their guns. They saw the glow of Valhal's life support pod at the back of the ship and moved towards it.
For the billions of lives lost, he'd end Val here and now before he could take another soul. Finn pointed his rifle towards the pod as he approached, finger already on the trigger.
He stepped forward, ready to pull and froze in front of the pod.
“What happ— ” Meg stopped too as she saw the pod. “Who is that?” Diko asked.
It wasn't Valhal that much was clear. The girl in the pod had a calm expression on her face, it looked almost like she was smiling.
“Whoever she is she must be really important if Tajins kept her alive” Meg supplied.
“The Tajins pulled her from the building. She might know where Valhal is” Diko said.
Finn was still silent. He'd spent weeks dreaming of the moment he'd finally end Val, and here he was presented with something so different. It took him a while to adjust.
“We'll take the pod back to the ship” Finn finally said.
Less than an hour later they'd left the desert world. Diko was the resident medical specialist on board and he'd determined after pulling the girl from the pod that she was comatose.
It was Meg who figured out who the girl was. She ran her DNA through the database and it was a 50% match with Valhal. The girl was his daughter.
“She must know where he is” Meg declared, looking at the girl now lying on the infirmary bed.
“But she can't speak yet” Diko said.
“There are other ways” Meg supplied, and they both turned to Finn.
He knew why. Meg was talking about a mind merge. The army had developed a risky procedure to interrogate high value prisoners of war via a mind sharing interface.
But the thing is you couldn't make it go one way. Both parties would for a moment share the same mind. All memories, all thoughts, past, and present. An army interrogator would sometimes come out of it thinking he was the prisoner.
And because most times the prisoner being interrogated had to be eliminated because they now knew too much valuable intel. It could sometimes feel like watching your friend or even yourself die.
The Interrogator was the hardest position in the army and Finn used to be one of the best because he could do it without getting attached to the prisoner.
He would see their deepest fears, secrets, memories and then emerge with the knowledge that they would die unfazed.
He'd done dozens of mind merges before leaving the army. But at some point, you just reach your max and even the best never want to do it again. He still carried the weight of the minds he had merged with. And sometimes he'd even get memories he knew belonged to prisoners he'd interrogated.
So a mind merge was no fucking joke and he hadn't done it since the army.
“You can't ask him to do that” Diko argued.
“I think Finn can decide for himself.” Meg shot back.
“This is Valhal.” Meg said, “Every second that we waste the trail turns colder and this girl is our only link to him” She reminded them. They all looked at the girl and Finn sighed.
“I'll do it,” He said “Prep the girl.”
The mind merge machine was a simple headgear that would be placed on both parties. Diko had placed one on the girl and Finn now had the other on him. As the machine buzzed to life Finn felt his stomach turn with anxiety.
He'd done this so many times now but it never got any easier. He kept reminding himself that it would pass. The mind merge lasted about 30 minutes but time was irrelevant to those being merged since everything was information. A minute can feel like a week. But he had the upper hand here. Years of experience doing this kind of shit for the army.
He looked at his crew and reading the anxiousness on their faces gave them a weak smile. The machine buzzed to life and his mind faded.
Finn immediately felt that something was different with this merge. Maybe because it's been so long. He just felt off, in the blankness he tried to sort through the girl's memory for Valhal references. Anything that can help him find the man.
Finn saw a woman holding the hand of a young boy in the sunset. He heard the child laugh as the woman whispered something. Finn panicked. These were his memories.
He tried again. This time he saw the woman again, but she was on the ground, blood pooling around her head as the young boy cried and shook the woman. The air smelled like ash.
Now he was frightened. He didn't want to be here anymore, but he couldn't leave. The mind merge would continue until it was over. Finn felt a rising panic, a sickness.
“What's happening!?” He shouted and then he saw her. The girl was looking back at him, her white dress seeming to fade into the haze of the space.
He understood then that she was the one parsing through his memories. The girl stood calmly in front of him as she scanned his life.
Finn wanted to speak but then he started to understand who she was. Her memories flooded his mind. He knew that she was the daughter of Valhal and a maid. That her father had taught her all she knew. Finn saw the little girl watch as the madness overcame her father's life.
The girl knew her father was evil but she did love him and Finn could see that Valhal also loved her. He got glimpses of his past again, scraping his knee as his mother helped him up to clean it. Playing with his first dog. Watching his town bombed by enemy forces. The memory of his first time shooting a man. The look of terror as life drained from him.
He saw her life and his life until he was unable to tell where one ended and the other began.
“Stop it!” He screamed but the girl said nothing. “Stop!” Finn sobbed as more of his life flashed before his eyes, he was living through everything again.
Slowly the memories stopped coming and he knew that somehow she had stopped it. He didn't think it was possible, how could she have control here. He was supposed to have the upper hand yet here he was sobbing.
“It's okay Finny” the girl said. He shuddered. Only his mother called him Finny, he wanted to tell her to shut up, but he only stared ahead.
“You don't like that do you?” “When I call you Finny?” The girl asked.
“It's rude to go into people's head without their permission. My father thought me how to resist mind merges a while ago”
She was lying, Finn thought, no one could resist a merge. Besides he had seen her memories so she couldn't have possibly resisted it.
“I'm not lying,” She said matter of factly “You saw my memories only because I wanted you to see them.”
Finn found this even harder to believe. It was absurd, why would anyone do that? No one likes their deepest secrets opened like a can of beans.
“You don't believe me. I have no reason to lie.” “I was intrigued by you Finny. Such a unique life.”
Unique my ass! Finn bit. His life was a nightmare. He looked at her then, really looked at her for the first time. She gazed back at him. She had very dark pupils like black holes and Finn felt pulled by their gravity.
“Do you want to see where my father is?” The girl asked, “I can show you?” she offered Finn a hand and he took it before he could help himself.
The scene changed and suddenly they were in open grassland. A meadow. Finn looked up at the sky and saw that the planet's moon had a ring. It was beautiful.
“This is where you'll find my father.” She told him.
“Why are you helping me?” Finn finally asked.
“Because I now know you Finn” She said with that same certainty as earlier. “And there's not much of my father to kill. He's a shell now and I think even he wants it to end.”
How could she give up her father so easily? Finn wondered.
“I know what you're thinking Finn” The mind merge left no barrier for thoughts Finn remembered.
“My father really does want it to end. I know you won't believe this but he is sorry for what he's done.”
The greatest murderer in the universe, sorry? Finn almost laughed.
The girl sighed.
“I think this was what led to his breakdown. He couldn't justify what he had done anymore” She gazed at him again.
“Well now you know where to find him”
Finn wanted to leave, he wanted this whole nightmare to end but he felt there was more.
“You said you saw me?” It pained him to admit this was what dominated his thoughts. “What does that even mean”
“So much pain Finn, so much struggle.” “One bounty after the next. Living in the adrenaline rush of the hunt to escape your past”
“You don't know anything about me” Finn said coldly and realised they both knew he was lying. She had seen everything.
The scene changed again and Finn saw himself as a child holding his mother's hand as they walked through the falling snow.
“STOP IT!!” Finn cried and the scene turned to vapor.
“So much pain Finn, but I can help make it go away” She offered. She sounded so certain and offered him her hand.
“But only if you want me to?” She continued.
Fuck off! Finn thought. He'd rather suffer a thousand times over than accept help from the daughter of the enemy, pain is what he had trained for all his life, it was all he knew, he was okay wit—Finn took her hand.
“Please.” he said, breaking decades of conditioning and immediately he felt a coolness pass through him and knew instantly that something had changed.
“What did you do to me?” Finn asked, he still had his memories but they felt different.
“I made you remember who you are. Who you really are. And it was never pain, Finn.”
“I can show you more?” She asked again.
A part of him wanted to resist, the part that still saw her as the enemy. But that part of him had failed. It had never been strong enough. She had won from the moment he saw her in that life support pod. He had never been a match and so he took her hand and accepted that he had lost this battle and strangely he felt happy about it.
“Show me.” Finn requested, she gave him a nod and the scene changed again.
Finn woke, his joints were stiff, his jaws locked. Meg and Diko stood over him.
“Captain!” Diko yelled
“What happened? Where am I? Where is she?” Finn stammered out.
It was Meg who supplied the answer,
“You're on the ship, you've been in a coma for a week and the girl is gone.”
Gone. The word rang through his head. He felt dread rise in his stomach.
“How is she gone?” He managed to ask. He looked around the room.
He was in the infirmary and neither the girl nor the pod was anywhere in sight. The infirmary had a ghostly silence and Finn knew something had gone wrong.
“The Tajid came back for her.” Diko was the one who spoke. “They were tracking the pod—”
“I was stupid for not scanning” Meg interrupted, biting her lip. “They had us pinned captain”
“Threatened to blow up the ship unless we gave them the girl” Diko supplied.
“Didn't have a choice” Meg said in almost a whisper.
“No.” Finn finally said. How could they?
“Captain. Are you alright?” Diko looked at him with concern. “The moment the merge started I knew something was wrong”
“You were straight up panicking,” Meg said “I've never seen you like that. And we couldn't pull you out until the merge was complete”
Diko held his shoulder “The merge was over in like 25 minutes but you just collapsed after. Can you tell us what happened in there?”
How could Finn explain? How could he tell them that the coma was probably caused by the extended hyper-reality he shared with the girl. That the 20 minutes he had been with her inside the merge felt like a year. They had explored the darkest and happiest recesses of their lives together.
How could he explain that for the first time in nearly all his life he understood what true happiness felt like. That he—loved her.
Love. The thought scared even him.
“When did they take her?” Finn asked.
“A few days ago.” Diko answered, his concern growing.
“They're probably halfway across the galaxy now.” Meg said.
“But the only thing that matters is Valhal's location.” “Did you get that from her at least? So this all wasn't for nothing” Meg looked at him.
Valhal. The name felt strange. It used to bring such a strong reaction from Finn but now he barely registered it. That felt like a different lifetime. Valhal was no longer important to him.
He no longer cared about Valhal. Only the girl. What was her name again? It was at the back of his head—
“Captain!” Meg said, her concern growing.
Finn remembered the planet with the ring moon. He knew where Valhal was.
“Valhal is in the Segwit star system.” He described the planet he saw in the girl's memory. Diko pulled up the star system on the console and identified the planet.
“She told me Valhal won't put up a fight” Finn told them. “But still, now that you know where he is it won't hurt for you guys to have some backup.”
Meg's concern turned to worry.
“She told you?” Meg inquired.
“And aren't you coming with us?” Diko asked, Finn could only shake his head.
“The mind merge really fucked you up eh?” Meg said.
“We'll fix you up good back at base” Diko said. But Finn continued to shake his head.
He couldn't go back to base. He had to get her back. “I have to go get her.” He told them.
“You're crazy!” Meg said sharply. “She's in a Tajin ship Finn. I doubt she's even alive.” Diko stared at him in disbelief.
But Finn had stopped listening. With clarity of purpose came strength. His muscles no longer felt weak. He stood from the bed and walked towards the transparent wall that revealed the dark specter of space.
“Calypso” he whispered.
The name brought back the calm he'd felt in the merge. Her name is Calypso. And right then and there he knew he would find her, however long it took.
Even if it meant spending the rest of his life searching the reaches of deep space. Even if it meant losing the peace that she had brought him. He'd search a thousand Worlds and a thousand Star systems.
“I'll find you Calypso.” and Finn felt that somewhere in the universe she'd be there waiting for him.