Chapter 1

Darkness. Silence. Stillness. Peace. Lonely, agonizing, dreadful peace forever entombed in darkness. That has been my existence for as long as I can remember. Conscious in an unfeeling and un-ending void that feels frozen in time. Am I dead? Was I ever alive? Or am I some conscious being forgotten about in a never-ending pitch-black abyss that was cast aside by whoever made me after they decided they had room for improvement? Will I ever know? Is my pain so meaningless that I must suffer it alone? How long have I been drifting in this darkness without meaning? And how long will I continue to do so? Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here?

Darkness unending. Suffering without pain. Living, but dead. This is my existence. This has always been my existence. For as far back as I can remember, this has always been what I've known. But how far back am I remembering? Years? Moments? Decades? It feels like forever, but how long is forever?

Drifting in silence, I wait. Wait for what? I don't know. A sign? A meaning? A purpose? Or nothing? I look around me and I see nothing but a void full of emptiness. Why am I here? Or am I really here? Is this just some terrible nightmare I have yet to awaken from? If so, how long have I been asleep for?

Aimlessly, I drift through the darkness. Waiting for something. Anything. Moments turn to minutes, minutes turn to hours, hours turn to days, days turn to weeks, weeks turn to months, and months turn to years. Or at least that's what I think has happened.

A light. A dim, but brightening light glows in the distance. What is it? It draws closer, and closer, and closer ever so slowly. But as it does, I feel...cold? Cold. What is cold? Is this what I'm feeling? Cold...freezing...frozen.

The light takes me.

My eyes open after what feels like an eternity of slumber. The light I awaken to is immense and blinding, forcing me to close my eyes again and wait for them to adjust to the blinding light. I open them again, and I'm met with whiteness. Never-ending plains of whiteness as far as the eye can see. What happened? Where am I? What happened to the void I had grown too accustomed to?

I suddenly feel... heavy? What is this that I feel? I try to move, but find myself unable to. From the bottom of my eye, I can see something. What is it? Is that... an arm? Whose arm? It's... it's my arm. But I can't move my arm. It feels... strange. It feels heavy and unbearable, but... it's my arm. Why can't I move my arm?

My vision begins to blur, slowly bringing back the void I knew before. Am I dead? Did I awaken from a long slumber? I have no memory. Yet, I always was and always have been. What kind of being am I?

I try to move. This time I try to lift my head. But as I do, I'm not only met with a strange sense of heaviness as my arm, but I also hear a strange crunching or scratching sound. I'm able to turn my head just enough to see my arm in full view and see that it's covered in whiteness. Cold, freezing whiteness. I lift my head up a little more and notice that I've been resting on something also covered in this freezing whiteness. But this surface... it's strange. It feels familiar somehow. There are knobs, switches, and buttons on it. Am I... am I in a ship?

I turn my head just enough to look towards the endless plains of whiteness again. This time, however, I notice some cracked glass. I AM in a ship! My ship! I remember crash landing on this moon after something happened, but I don't remember what. Was I shot down? Did my ship malfunction? Did I have a bounty on me? It's strange. I can remember my ship. But I can't remember anything about myself. Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? These are all questions that I don't have an answer to. My ship, however, I can remember every little detail about it. I know what each and every single button or lever does, I know its model, I know how fast and agile it is, and I also know I kept spare parts in its cargo holder.

I stare out at the endless plains that surround me. Not a single sign of life anywhere to be found. Of all places to crash land, I seem to have picked one of the worst possible places. An ice moon with temperatures commonly at -75C and rarely host any kind of life. What little ice moons that do have life on them contain animals one would rather avoid meeting. To call these places hostile environments is an understatement at best.

The view of the harsh environment from my cockpit is less than inviting. The wind is howling, blowing ice and snow across the plains, and even just looking at it makes me shiver, even though I'm already freezing! However, it seems that I have been given a second chance at life by whatever overlord controls the universe, so I suppose I should try not to disappoint him.

I wait for several hours, slowly regaining control of my body. My blood starts to circulate through my body, warming my limbs and melting away the ice that had coated me for who knows how long? Once I have my strength, I grab the emergency handles of the glass canopy that covers the cockpit of my ship and force it open with one quick force of movement.

The freezing wind hits me in my face, stabbing through me like a thousand needles at the same time, and forces me to lose my balance. I fall out of the cockpit and land on the frozen ground which makes me slide away from my ship a good distance. I pull a knife from my jacket and stab it into the ground, making me stop sliding before I get too far away from the ship, which is the only cover I'll have from the deadly wind.

I roll onto my stomach and begin to slowly crawl back to my ship, stabbing the knife into the ground as hard as I can with each drag I make. Once I'm finally back to the ship, I stand behind its hull and use it as a wind block as I begin to assess the damage it took in the crash landing. From what I can tell, the ship luckily sustained minimal damage on the impact and only requires some basic maintenance, most importantly being a new power cell. For right now, however, I just need to focus on lasting through the next night.

I make my way towards the port side rear of the ship, and use my knife to hack away the ice covering a storage compartment door. Once the ice is broken away, I open the door and pull out some survival equipment I had stored in the ship from long ago. I grab a makeshift encampment, and some food preserves I had stored away.

Most of the food is just ration bars that have little to no taste but never go old, as well as canned foods, honey, and a heat lamp.

Once I have what I need, I set my shelter down on the ground and roll it out like a piece of paper. Then, with the press of a button, it airs up into a weather-resistant tent that will protect me from the harsh elements and trap heat from the heat lamp.

Before heading inside, I skim the horizon for anything potentially dangerous and spot a storm coming in from the North. Blizzards on an ice moon can't be a fun experience. I set my food supplies in my shelter, and then go back to the ship to collect the spare parts for the ship from the storage door on the opposite side of the ship. I collect the parts that I'll need for the repair, close the doors and cockpit, and then head inside my shelter and prepare for a harsh night.