For most of his life, Zenith had known he wanted to be a pilot. Exploring the endless, dark expanse of stars and planets was an adventure he hungered for, and meeting other space-faring folks and races far different than himself was a joy completely inaccessible at home. He’d been lucky enough to grow up in a family where he’d been able to learn about this stuff – his father was a government scientist and his mother served as a freighter pilot after all. He’d seen the facilities they worked at, watched ships blast off into the sky, and heard his parents tell stories of the various encounters they’d had working for Blackwood. His mother would often tell him about the pilots she dealt with flying in "security ships" along with her – heavily armed, fortified, agile, powerful, single-manned ships that were flown by only the most elite and talented of pilots. Being one of those pilots was a dream of his.
At home, his father had maintained a proper flight simulator for Zenith’s mom to run scenarios on if she wanted to. After expressing serious interest in being a pilot to his parents, they let him practice flying in the simulator in his free time after school. He spent a lot of his time in the evenings on the simulator for quite a few years, moving from basic freighters to patrol ships, all the way up to those security ships of the pilots he envied. Even in the simulator, those craft were exhilarating to fly. The sheer power and capabilities of those machines being enough to get Zenith’s heart pounding. He split his time between the simulator and sports with his friends. Ultimately, though, he felt "right" home behind the stick.
When he was finally old enough, Zenith convinced his mother to enroll him in pilot’s training. As much as she’d pretty much encouraged his interest in being a pilot to begin with, opening with wanting to "fly security" immediately resulted in a bit of pushback. Those security pilots had a real dangerous job, but Zenith knew this plenty well. His mother’s concerns (largely from her own unfortunate personal experiences) were eventually faltered by his persistence, quickly resulting in Zenith’s first lessons in flight school.
Flight school was a proper struggle for him at first. The training was a lot more than Zenith had ever expected, primarily with the physical requirements. Being a pilot in the first place meant you had to be able to defend yourself if you got boarded by pirates. Zenith was quite fit to begin with, but the standards Blackwood had for pilots, especially ones aspiring to be security like Zenith, were incredibly high. What he didn’t struggle with, however, was the simulation flight. He scored far above the other pilots he trained with, impressing his instructors enough that they’d give him special, accelerated training courses outside of the normal training regime. He was making quite a splash in his class, to say the least.
After rocketing through the ranks of flight school and impressing just about every instructor that met him, Zenith graduated into the security program directly. For a 19-year-old Valen, this was unheard of. Young Valen having access to a proper flight sim at home was pretty much unheard of in the first place, let alone using it like a game. Regardless, he took his practical tests and, of course, passed with flying colors. He was quickly assigned to jobs, running security in the ships he’d dreamed of flying as a kid. He’d be assigned with far more experienced pilots early on, something he’d learn later was more-so to "keep an eye on him" than to primarily train him. Eventually, he was let loose and flew solo more often. However, his dreams of meeting other races and "exploring the galaxy" were yet stifled by strict missions and direction from Blackwood.
When Zenith was off duty, he’d spend most of his free time learning useful things with his father. His father was part of the largest part of Blackwood’s research and development department, which was devoted to spacecraft and their components. Zenith was taught various useful techniques and skills for a pilot, such as how to create temporary replacement parts from scrap and how to repair major parts of the ship. His father would end up teaching him the ins and outs of his security craft and its systems, enough to be able to repair, alter, or disable just about anything on the ship if needed. Zenith kept up this routine for quite a while, eventually using those skills mid-flight to fix problems that would otherwise abruptly end a mission for most pilots.
By the time he was 21, Zenith began being assigned to high security transports alongside a flight school friend of his. Two ships were far more than would typically be needed to transport standard goods, so whatever was being shipped was certainly of great importance to Blackwood. Something they didn’t want intercepted, at least. He had a great time on these extended trips, passing the time by bullshitting with his friend over short-range encrypted comms. It was very rare that anyone would do anything but run when armed Valen craft were around, let alone two. No foreign kit came even close to the same level of firepower or armor. Firing upon a Valen ship would be a proper fool’s errand, something only lunatics would do. Regardless, he got to "supervise" his peer on these trips. Supervise is generous wording for what end up being entertaining, extended trips with a far more seasoned pilot than himself.
On a routine double-escort run to a Valen colony, far from Alpha (the Valen’s home planet), Zenith would run into one of the only few altercations he’d ever run into as a security pilot for Blackwood. A foreign craft called out over the radio in a tone and voice he wasn’t quite familiar with.
"VSEC-96, VSEC-92, you are illegally transporting goods through our territory." The craft lit up with lights ahead of the transport and its escorts, immediately obvious. It didn’t look like a Valen ship at all – pretty pirate-like and rough. "Your goods are forfeit. Leave now with your life." Zenith was quite surprised by the sheer gall this potential pirate had, and even more-so how stupid he was. Regardless, this craft in front of them didn’t have an identifying transponder.
"This is VSEC-96," his friend piped up. "You are aware you are engaging a Blackwood transport, correct?" Zenith could almost feel his buddy’s eye roll, smirking a bit himself.
"Yes, you are transporting Blackwood military cargo. Leave now or you will perish," the antagonistic mystery pilot proclaimed.
On a private channel, the transport’s pilot piped up. "We’re not target locked by these guys if you want us to make a maneuver."
"No, no, we’ll deal with this guy," Zenith replied. It was a bit concerning that whoever this was seemed to have a better idea of what was on that transport than he did. Regardless, he swapped back to the common channel and stuck to protocol. "There is no recognized territory of any nation or organization here, pirate. Power down your weaponry or we will fire on your craft. We will not hand over this transport."
"This is your final warning," the mystery pilot replied. Zenith’s ship alerted him to the ship’s energy signature spiking, suggesting their weapons had been primed.
"Disengage now or we will fire!" Zenith’s friend shouted over the radio. He was alerted to a sudden target lock on his friend’s ship (a handy part of the Blackwood military toolkit lent to the security team). However, before he could as much as react, the mystery ship fired a glowing-hot bolt at VSEC-96, the ship dropping off Zenith’s computers as it spun awkwardly at a skew angle out of the holding pattern with the transport. A loud alarm alerted Zenith to the sudden loss of comms.
Zenith was already on alert, springing into action and locking onto the combatant’s ship, taking a sharp evasive maneuver and firing upon it with just about everything he had. Whatever these guys had was far more than what he’d expected to encounter out here. The other ship spun and fired back more of those glowing hot bolts, missing Zenith’s ship narrowly each time. He was about to hit a button reserved for calling for backup in the rare scenario of this kind of altercation when his evasive maneuvers proved insufficient for this mysterious assailant. His engines and radio were blown out completely with a perfect hit at the rear of his craft, knocking his craft into a disorienting and uncontrollable spin as the ship, and himself, blacked out.
He woke up abruptly with his ship smashing into the transport just a handful of seconds after he’d been hit, the craft’s violent, tumbling spin converted into a far more manageable wobble. Zenith was still plenty disoriented, but at the very least the blast shields that had come down over his view of outside kept the dizziness to a minimum. Emergency systems had come online on the ship, maintaining the cabin and some basic instrumentation, as well as the short-range radio systems. He couldn’t see the transport anymore on his screens, nor was the ship responding to any pings he sent out. That meant that either the ship was dead, or his radio was just messed up. He couldn’t see his friend’s ship still either, although he thought he did when he saw the other Valen ship on the transponder map. He was still a bit dazed regardless.
Whatever was going on was confusing Zenith considerably. Either that, or he was just generally confused. It looked like there was a Valen military ship on the transponder, although it wasn’t one that should’ve been anywhere near them. There was a pirate ship with its transponder running too, which was something he’d never seen a single time on his screen before. He could hear some short-range comms over the radio, but trying to make out what was being said made the piercing ringing in his ears suddenly quite obvious. He then noticed how the rear of his head hurt, and then he glanced behind him and noticed he could see a hole in the ceiling behind his seat.
That weapon had punched a proper hole through his ship – a jagged one at that. It looked like a half-melted tear through the materials than anything else. Zenith’s ship was particularly pissed about the hull being breached, so he muted the alarms and quickly got to work fumbling around the deck of his ship to patch the hole. His emergency life support systems built into his flight suit were running perfectly fine, but whatever had happened had properly spun his head around. He dug out patch plates, pounded the holes flush and then slapped the patch plates over the sloppy holes in the ship. Zenith struggled back to his seat, strapping himself back in and sitting back, noticing the blood he’d smudged all over the place in the process of fixing the ship. The other ships had seemingly gone at this point too, leaving nothing in proximity identifying itself.
He wiped his hand off on his suit as he continued to fumble with the ship’s controls, switching back to his short-range, encrypted channel he’d been using earlier. Zenith called out a few things over it that weren’t particularly coherent, but nevertheless didn’t get a reply. His head pounded and vision twisted and dimmed. Zenith snapped back to coherence for the last time during this fog of his, recognizing something was quite wrong. He yanked the emergency kit out of the ceiling and slid out what were often referred to as "stabilizers." Like an epi-pen, but for "stabilizing" general medical emergencies. He slammed one into his leg, feeling no pain from it as the mental fog returned. The ship’s screens flashed red as it entered SOS mode, and then Zenith finally blacked out.
Zenith woke in the medical bay of a ship he didn’t recognize, surrounded by equipment he wasn’t familiar with. He could hear the idle hum of a pump running, glancing down to see that he was strapped up to some proper medical gear. He looked around, but there wasn’t much to see outside of a hospital bed and the curtains circling it. This was quite jarring and disorienting after having been in your own spacecraft just moments ago for the pilot. Zenith lifted a hand to look at himself, noticing that he was still quite bloody from whatever had happened on the ship.
"H-Hello?" Zenith asked to the empty room, straining somewhat. He noticed his head was a bit bandaged when his ears rubbed against the coverings. Zenith sat up, shortly after hearing a door open nearby.
"Looks like you’re awake," a voice replied. It didn’t sound familiar – not Valen at all. The curtains parted, an avian face greeting the canine. The Ventara had a metal clipboard with a few pieces of paper on it, tucked at their side. Zenith’s response was to be rather startled, backing himself up a bit on the bed. "Relax, you haven’t been captured."
"Where am I? What is this?" Zenith asked, still confused. He had a rather growing concern for his friend, especially given the horrible shape he seemed to be in himself.
"You’re at a science outpost. One of our research craft was in range of your SOS broadcast." The scientist approached cautiously. Zenith looked at him rather angrily, causing the bird to step back. "You’re not captured, I assure you."
"It’s protocol to relay our distress messages to Blackwood, not to interfere like you did." Zenith glared at the bird. "E-Even if you’re providing medical- eck." Zenith winced, feeling a sharp pain in his hand that he just now realized was in a tight cast. "You can’t properly care for Valen here, you know that."
"Well, you’d better hope we can." The bird sighed, sliding a piece of paper out of the clipboard and handing it over. Zenith hesitantly took it. Sure enough, the paper was a properly signed and coded response from a member of the Blackwood military force. The contents of this message? Pretty much a "do not resuscitate" order from Blackwood themselves, declaring him and his friend dead and for the ships to be scrapped by the research vessel. Supposedly the military had already arrived, which could explain what he saw on the transponder. If his memory served him correctly, at least. "They’re not coming back for you, it seems."
"I mean, I’m alive, right?" Zenith chuckled slightly. "Just send word of that."
"We did." The feathered scientist had a grim face. Zenith was impressed with himself for being able to read avian emotions as well as he could. Training paid off, he guessed.
"And? What did they say?"
"They assured us that you were dead again. Turn the page over, you’ll see." Zenith did, and sure enough the back of the page said that. He was immediately confused. "Your ships on our landing deck if you’re looking to go home still."
"Why… why would they deny that I’m alive like this?" Zenith looked at the scientist puzzled. The bird shrugged.
"Your guess is as good as mine. We’re not military here." The bird looked down at the other papers on his clipboard. Likely medical notes? "But chances are you’re not going to be welcomed back with fanfare and confetti. We’ve picked up loose pilots before, but usually their home base doesn’t assure us that their pilots are dead after we send evidence."
"Almost sounds like, heh..." Zenith paused, looking down at the paper again just to re-read it.
"Asking for a favor?" The bird raised a brow. Zenith paused for a moment.
"… Yeah. But why?" Zenith looked back at the avian puzzled.
"I don’t have the answers here, kid. If you saw something strange out there, you’d be better off keeping that to yourself. We’d rather not get in the middle of military affairs on this station more than needed." He shook his head. "You’re younger than you ought to be dealing with this kinda thing. Consider yourself lucky you got picked up by one of the more ethical scientific outposts."
"Sure." The Valen laid back in the bed, looking at the ceiling. He still wasn’t sure what to think. "Did you pick up the… other pilot?" Zenith wasn’t quite ready to start exchanging names with these people.
"No. The ship was still sealed up tight. Looked like it was in bad shape, though." The scientist gets up. "We haven’t got anything to cut through Valen steel with. Your ship was already unlocked for us, fortunately."
"Did you check for life signs?" Zenith looked over at the scientist, who nodded to him.
"We saw none, unfortunately. We tried to reach out over radio multiple times as well, but nothing. Sorry." The scientist stood at the curtain threshold. "You can leave when you like, but I’d recommend you give yourself some time to recover. We’ve used what was left in that emergency kit on your ship to patch you up, but that’s about all we’ve got that we can do for you. Again, sorry this happened to you, kid."
"Mm." Zenith distractedly nodded. He lifted his home planet’s message up again to look at it, still completely bewildered at their denial of his life in a formal, signed military message. The scientist pulled the curtains closed and left the room.
Zenith was left to deal with a now largely uncertain future. Not only was one of his close friends from flight school likely dead, but his home planet had, in effect, completely disavowed him for seemingly no reason. And what was with the ship transponders he’d seen after he was hit? Was he even remembering things right? How had his ship been so badly damaged in the first place? He had a million questions, all of which he’d be able to answer for himself with his flight recorder. He went to sit up and try and move, but just even making a simple movement like sitting up dizzied him and blurred his vision. Zenith lowered himself shakily back to the bed in defeat, as well as mild frustration.
The idea of Blackwood turning on him was a confusing one, and something he wouldn’t have a proper answer for until he could get up and back on his ship. To the rest of the universe, Blackwood was just a brand name, but to the Valen it was the backbone of their society. The very real chance that his fallback, his own government, could be the same people who made orders he’d read implying to execute him was insane. His own parents worked for Blackwood, but he’d never been told of anything like this happening. He’d surely never been warned of it, nor led to believe this kind of thing happened to anything but terrorists. For all the uncertainty and unknowns, a building, burning feeling of betrayal was the only thing he had to cling to.
For now, though, Zenith silently mourned his friend. He closed his eyes and sighed softly, struggling to maintain composure in the incredibly foreign place. It was hard to tell if he could trust that scientist, or if they were telling him the whole truth about those messages. He wasn’t fully confident he had a way off this space station, the condition of his ship, or if the occupants of this space station even planned to let him leave. At the very least, the Valen and Ventara had a scientific alliance. These likely weren’t pirates. Hopefully.
The heavy sadness of losing his friend twisted itself into a proper, soul-sucking dread. Never being able to go home and see his family again weighed heavily on his mind for the rest of the day, his only company the idle hum and churns of medical equipment at his sides.