Starstrider

-Transmission Incoming-

Log: 2598 A.D.

Skipper: Iris Lenox

Coordinates: Orion System Blue

I’m not sure where to begin. This is pretty huge. We’ve kept this stuff secret for years it feels weird to just broadcast it now. I’ll start with my story, I guess? They say it ‘humanizes’ me. Which is a very robotic way to put it, ironically enough. I don’t want to stare at a screen the whole time so I’m going to talk to Winston here. He’s my snake. Yes, we get to have pets. The onboard life support is top-notch, the military's best. Although the toilet situation isn’t great, probably shouldn’t say that. Whatever, this beginning will get taken out anyway. The PR folks want us to be squeaky clean. “Heros of the world” and all that. Although from what I’ve heard on the wire, things are getting pretty bad back home. That squeaky clean image might not matter in a few years if we don’t get the job done. Well, shit. I’m fumbling this one, guess I’ll start over. New transmission incoming, scrub previous.

-Transmission End.-

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-Transmission Incoming.-

Log: 2598 A.D.

Skipper: Iris Lenox

Coordinates: Orion System White

Hello, world. My name is Iris Lennox, Starstrider 492, codename Medusa. Back in my hometown, they call us ‘Angels’. Something about self-sacrifice. I don’t know how I feel about all that. I just fell in love with the ships. When I was younger we would watch them from our backyard. My Dad got paid a ridiculous sum of money to let the government level our farmland. Acres of fields and trees, gone in a month, replaced with disgusting grey barracks and asphalt. I was around seven or eight at the time, too young to understand the power of money or how the world had become. Has become. He tried his best to make it up to me. He filled my room with plants and bought me my first snake. That one died a few years ago. Winston here is my second. Anyways, an entire wall of my room became a terrarium, a temple to a dying ecosystem. It didn’t make up for destroying our farm but it certainly helped me make it through the first few years. And given my current career I can’t fault him too much.

We were allowed to take the day off of school for the first test run. Mom and Dad figured it was the least they could do after letting us suffer through years of tractor smoke and jackhammer alarm clocks. We all gathered on the roof with our binoculars, hoping to catch a view of the launch. I was lying on my back, watching the clouds, when the rumbling started. We ignored it at first. Large equipment drove by the house all the time. My sister was the first one to see it, an enormous crack in the earth about a half mile away. I had just learned about volcanoes the week before, so when that pit spit a column of fire and smoke straight up into the air, I was sure we were dead. Until I heard my Dad laughing. He was hugging Mom tight and grinning like an idiot. He turned me around just in time to see the Skipper part the smoke. It went up and up and up for what felt like forever until, finally, the engines crested the top of the pit and focused their energy on the ground. The force of them hit the asphalt and sent a shockwave into us so powerful that my father had to catch me. Despite all of that power, I remember how slowly it moved. Like it was fighting for its life to reach the stars. The last thing I saw before the smoke overtook our home was a glint of rainbow light from the slits on its sides.

The memory of that little rainbow glint kept me focused throughout my teenage years. There was something beautiful in that machine. Something that I wanted to be a part of. I didn’t know where to start but I knew that the astronauts in the past had been good at math and science. So I studied as hard as I could. I took advanced classes. I studied the planets and stars. I searched online for every article referencing the Skippers that I could find. Which wasn’t much at the time, their mission, our mission, was still a secret. And every day after school I stood outside of the base and chatted with the guards. In hindsight, they should not have been talking to a teenage girl while protecting government projects. But luckily for me, they did. That’s where I first heard the term ‘Starstrider’. It’s what the military folks called the Skipper pilots. The scientists didn’t like it, they thought it made light of the seriousness of the job.

By the time I reached college the ads to become a Starstrider were everywhere. They had a special course at my college and I signed up at midnight the day it was available. I was the last one to make it in. We were the best and brightest, as they say. We were definitely the cockiest. Or craziest depending on who you ask. The job was reserved for fanatics, people with dreams much larger than Earth could hold. None of us had any idea what we were signing up for and the instructors had no interest in telling us. They put us through High-G training, computer courses, and psychology. We had bi-weekly sessions where they just put us in a room, alone, for four days with only non-electronic entertainment. That eliminated a surprisingly large chunk of the group. The ones who needed to socialize. The ones who were only in it for the fame. I grew up with plants and snakes for friends, it wasn’t easy, but I did okay. The semester ended and those of us who were left were given a decision. Return to college, or join up. I signed the paperwork right then and there on the instructor’s desk. My parents weren’t happy about it. Dad had saved up a lot of his government money to send me to school. And, despite him selling the farm all those years ago, he was still a farmer at heart. The idea of living without your boots in the mud was foreign to him. If anyone back home sees Earl Lennox, give him a hug for me. He hates hugs it’ll be hilarious.

Anyways, most of you already know the rest of this. My class started our training and the world’s governments started their PR campaigns. I’ve never been more sick of my own face. Starstrider movies. Starstrider games. I even saw a Starstrider welcome mat once. I still don’t know how I feel about people stepping on an image of my face every day. They made us out to be superheroes, but if I’m being honest, I wasn’t there to save the world. I just wanted to see the stars.

Which brings me to the meat of this transmission. We’ve been hiding something from you. The big men at the top didn’t want to tell the world until they were ready. I’m sorry to everyone I’ve kept this from but I didn’t want you to worry more than you already do. You were told that we are an expedition team. That’s only partly true. To be clear, we do search every day for a habitable planet. We send transmissions like this one in every language, human and machine, to the closest planets we find but so far we’ve got no response. There are a few promising ones but it takes us a while to investigate them in person and Earth doesn’t have that kind of time. It will have even less time when this message reaches you. So, with no planets to inhabit soon, what do we have left? Well, that’s the secret mission. Right now there are hundreds of massive ships in underground bunkers around the world. Those are our new homes. They’ve had them built for a while now but they didn’t have a fuel source strong enough. That’s where we come in. They don’t just call us Starstriders because it sounds cool, it’s also what we do. Our Skippers are outfitted with massive solar sails, that’s those awesome rainbow wings you see out there. We orbit a star and soak up the flares which is then converted into a reactor. We are farming stars, in a sense. I won’t bore you with the details of how we get from star to star right now. You’ll see it for yourselves soon enough. The Exodus ships are outfitted with the same black hole generators as our Skipper’s. Fair warning, you will puke the first dozen times. Everyone does.

So, that’s it. That’s our true purpose. I know it’s scary but so is living on a dead planet. If I could I would throw this all away just to see a forest again. I wish I could say that I’ll see everyone soon but I still have a few more stars to visit. The ships will be long gone from Earth by the time I’m done. Don’t worry Mom and Dad, I know what ship is yours. They have me coming back to refuel you and I’ll see you then, I promise. Um, good luck, everyone. I love you all. Winston says good luck too.

Transmission Ended.