18APR3025
Let’s get one thing straight—I do not believe in ghosts.
I do, however, believe in horrible mistakes coming back to haunt me, which feels functionally identical at this point.
I’ve been holed up in this asteroid belt for the past three days, running dark, keeping my thrusters on minimal output, trying to convince myself that whatever was on that cargo pod isn’t still out there looking for me.
Except now I’m pretty damn sure it is.
See, I haven’t picked up any new proximity alerts. No ship signatures. No radio pings. Nothing. But you ever get that feeling that you’re being watched? Yeah. That.
At first, I told myself it was just paranoia—probably a side effect of breathing too much recycled air and surviving exclusively on ration bars and regret. But then… things started happening.
The First Sign: My Nav Systems Keep Resetting
The Rust Rat is held together by hope, duct tape, and pure spite, so random glitches aren’t exactly new. But this? This is different.
Every time I try to plot a course, the numbers scramble like someone’s actively deleting my destination. I’d chalk it up to another failing system, except I’m locked out of manually correcting it. The console refuses to take input, and every time I try, it boots me back to a blank screen.
It’s like the ship doesn’t want me to leave.
The Second Sign: Footsteps
I swear on every busted component in this ship—I heard footsteps.
Not the usual creaks and groans of an aging hull under stress. Not some loose plating shifting in the vents. These were slow. Measured. Like someone was just casually walking down the corridor.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Scootch, are you sure it wasn’t just your own footsteps echoing?”
First off, how dare you? I may not be an expert in a lot of things, but I do know what my own damn footsteps sound like. Second, I wasn’t walking. I was locked in the cockpit, where I have stayed since all of this started.
I sat there, wrench in hand, not moving a muscle, waiting for the sound to happen again.
It didn’t.
The Third Sign: The Airlock Log
This is where I started to seriously lose it.
At 0100 ship time, I decided to do a full systems check. Mostly to convince myself that nothing weird was happening, but also because if my ship was failing, I needed to know before it turned into an explosive failure.
That’s when I saw the airlock activity log.
It cycled. Two hours ago.
I did not open the airlock. I did not even leave the cockpit. And yet, my systems are telling me that the outer hatch opened and closed while I was sitting right here.
Which means one of two things:
The ship’s systems are completely fried, and it’s throwing out false logs.
Something got on board.
Guess which one my gut tells me is the truth?
The Final Straw: The Shadow
At 0400 ship time, I sat in the cockpit, gripping my wrench like it was the last thing keeping me alive, waiting for the next thing to go wrong. I figured if I was going to lose my mind, I might as well be awake for it.
Then the emergency lights flickered on.
Not for long—three seconds, max—but long enough.
Long enough for me to see a shadow move across the far end of the cockpit.
I turned. Nothing. No one. But my skin crawled with that deep, gut-level certainty that I was not alone.
That’s when I decided: enough of this.
The Escape Plan (or Lack Thereof)
I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t want to know what’s happening. I just want out.
So I did the only thing that makes sense:
Spooled the jump drive.
Pointed the Rust Rat at literally anywhere else.
Initiated the fastest FTL jump this ship has ever attempted.
Which means one of three things will happen:
I successfully escape, and this all becomes a fun story to repress forever.
My ship, held together by sheer defiance, rips itself apart in the attempt.
I jump straight into a worse situation.
At this point, I don’t even care which one it is.
If this is my last log, assume I died screaming.
Scootch
Quote of the Day:
"Nothing is scarier than something that shouldn’t be there."
