Somewhere, hidden amidst the many stars, satellites and asteroids that dotted the Milky Way, was a ship. It wasn’t particularly impressive, and certainly not imposing. In fact, its deep, black hull was easily lost among the darkness of space, looking more like a tear in reality than a proper ship. One would have a hard time discerning its shape, its elongated body, covered in plates that almost made it look slender compared to other human spacecrafts.

None of this, however, was the product of an accident, or of bad design choices. The Lone Observer, as it was called, was not meant to be impressive. It was not meant to create shock and awe in those that laid eye on it. In fact, it was not meant to be seen by anyone.

While most of the former Cosmic Navy, now Free Terran Rebellion, was composed of towering and majestic spaceships meant to strike might in the eyes of their enemies, the Lone Observer was content to slip by undetected, gathering precious intel and scouting locations ahead of time so that other ships may safely navigate territory occupied by the affini.

It had been nearly four years since the Affini Compact had first made contact with the Terran Accord and demanded their total and immediate surrender. Since then, much of the Terran forces had been brought down by the overwhelming power of the affini. Still, the Free Terran Rebellion lived, a glimmer of hope in the eyes of many. But for how long?

Inside of the Lone Observer, many were beginning to falter, while others worried about potential traitors. The ship’s Captain, in particular, had been suspecting foul play for a while now, and he was going to bring it to an end, one way or another.

-----

“Quiet,” Captain William Bering grunted, bringing silence back to the small meeting room.

All around him stood four people, all of them looking expectantly in his direction. All of them were doing their best to keep professional expressions on their faces, but it was easy to discern the emotions beneath the masks. Most seemed tense, while others looked annoyed, or even bored in one case. In the room stood a Lieutenant, responsible for most of the ship’s crew, the ship’s pilot, the comms engineer, and finally the mechanical engineer.

“One of you,” the captain began, his voice low, almost sounding like a growl, “is a traitor. And I intend to find out who. For months now, the damn weeds have been constantly a step ahead of us, preventing us from doing anything but running away like a bunch of cowards. We’ve already closely escaped capture several times. This has to end.”

Silence. Hesitantly, the sole Lieutenant in the room, Julia Lopez, spoke up. “Captain, are we sure the traitor is among our crew? We’re regularly in contact with other ships, couldn’t one of them be responsible for the leak?”

Captain Bering sighed inaudibly, his mounting frustration obvious to all. A few years ago, he would have never permitted this sort of insubordination aboard his ship. He would have taken harsh measures. Today, this was something he could not afford to do anymore. Most Free Terran ships ran with a heavily reduced crew, and the Lone Observer was no exception. Meant to accommodate about a hundred people, it currently only hosted less than half of that. Worse, most of them were soldiers, the ship critically lacking in engineers and qualified officers.

Truly, the Terran Rebellion came up short when compared to the cosmic navy. The chain of command was a mess, ranks barely meant anything anymore, and here he was, stuck on a minuscule ship when someone like him should have been at the command of a cruiser, at the very least. Some days, Bering felt like he was at the head of a group of thugs, rather than organized soldiers.

“Do remember your place, Lieutenant,” the captain said, making Lopez tense up. “I do not make such accusations baselessly. All our operations have been countered regardless of whether other ships knew of it. The only people with the necessary clearance to be responsible are standing in this room. This situation cannot be allowed any longer.”

The captain took a moment to let the gravity of the situation sink in. “The only reason we haven’t been captured yet is because this traitor,” he spat the word like a curse, “doesn’t have access to the ship’s coordinates, and I intend to keep it that way.”

“So, it’s probably not Quinn, then, right?” James Huxley, the ship’s mechanical engineer, piped up, gesturing towards said person. “I mean, she’s the one driving this thing around, so she’s got to know where we’re going, right?”

Captain Bering sent a smoldering look that would have had lesser men cowering towards Huxley, who didn’t seem to notice or care. “That would normally be the case, but I have been taking precautions so that even Ensign Quinn was not always aware of our destination ahead of time. She is an unlikely candidate, but no one in this room can be discounted for the time being,” Bering said, not bothering to berate Huxley for his casual language.

He had long learned that warnings and threats did not work on the young engineer, no matter how dire. In fact, Huxley seemed to have absolutely no loyalty in him, which put him high up on the captain’s list of suspects.

“If I may, Captain,” Daniel Brown, the communications engineer, spoke up, waiting for Bering to nod before continuing. “If anyone is leaking intel, they must be using an external device, probably a text-com or something similar. There’s no way anyone could get that kind of stuff past me.”

Someone scoffed. “Unless you’re the leak, Brown,” Quine spoke up, sending a wry look his way. “It wouldn’t be difficult for you to send encrypted messages, after all.”

“Enough,” Captain Bering said. “If anyone is using a device to communicate with those fucking weeds, we will soon know. As we are speaking, your belongings are being searched for signs of treachery.” He gazed across the room, a grim smile twisting his grizzled old face.

He’d hoped to see some of them visibly react to the news, but at most, some of them looked mildly displeased, which he supposed that was to be expected.

“Brown, I want you to further restrict access to communications from now on. Huxley, have the ship’s camera feeds redirected to my computer.” Once the two Engineers nodded, Bering turned towards Lopez. “Keep an eye on the rest of the crew. Let me know if any of them show worrying signs.”

“A few are, but nothing conclusive yet,” Lopez said.

“Good. You’re all dismissed, get back to work.”

As they all filed out, Bering observed them with a piercing look, contemplating his options, discarding unlikely traitors. He needed more time to think. That was alright, though. He still had a few days to figure it out.

-----

Once he was back alone in the engine room, James Huxley let out a shaky sigh. Even though he’d planned for this sort of scenario, this had still been way too close for comfort. Captain Bering may have been your typical authority-is-my-kink officer, but he also happened to be extremely cunning.

James couldn’t thank his lucky stars enough that he’d never been able to get his hands on a text communicator. It may have had the advantage of being completely untraceable, but James wasn’t certain he would have been able to hide it well enough to avoid detection.

Instead, he’d had to take the more difficult approach of creating a backdoor through the ship’s comms system. Had the ship been properly staffed, James was almost certain he’d have gotten caught instantly, but fortunately for him. Brown was the only comms engineer left on the Lone Observer. Even more fortunate was the fact that Brown was a complete incapable who believed himself to be a genius. He was so convinced of his brilliance that he would never bother to check for signs of an intrusion.

Sure, the backdoor James had finally managed to install three months prior still wasn’t that great, but it still allowed him to send and receive encrypted messages to and from the affini, so long as he was careful.

As James moved through the engine room, making maintenance checks and making sure the many emergency fixes he’d made still held, his mind wandered, pondering the choices he’d made up until now, asking himself again and again if he’d made the right choices.

Like anyone in the Rebellion, he’d heard countless horror stories about the affini. How they would capture you and melt your insides so that they may eat you then, how they enslaved humans to work for them.

Of course, James wasn’t that gullible, and he expected that many of the stories he’d heard were exaggerations, some even outright fabrications. He still wasn’t sure what that one engineer had meant when he said the affini were “projecting space lightning through the void”.

On the other hand, James knew that these stories had to be based on some kernel of truth. Maybe the affini weren’t the bloodthirsty monsters they were made out to be, but he certainly didn’t believe them to be the benevolent and kind creatures their propaganda made them out to be.

Now, four years later, he didn’t know what to believe anymore. He’d watched as more and more of the people around him had become increasingly hateful, paranoia twisting them until the very bloodthirsty monsters they were supposed to be fighting against. Animosity grew and grew until James was more afraid of his fellow humans than the affini themselves.

The day he saw fellow crew members throwing others out of the airlock, not even with grim determination but outright glee plastered on their faces, James had understood that he couldn’t sit idly any longer. He could not stand and watch any longer, even if it meant risking the airlock himself. It had taken time and dedication, but finally, after weeks of effort, he had managed to establish communication with the affini.

He still didn’t know what their true intentions were, but he no longer believed that the Rebellion was the lesser evil. And so he’d told them everything he knew, painstakingly writing and encrypting all the intel he possessed, to the most minute detail.

They’d replied with gratefulness and kindness, begging him to stay safe, saying that they would find him and that “everything would be alright”. James wasn’t sure he believed that, but hope still sparked deep within his chest. Three months later, and he still kept them informed, whenever he stumbled upon some new information he thought valuable, and, in return, received more reassurances.

And now, it was nearly over. James was pretty sure that, had he really wanted to, he could have had the Lone Observer captured by now, but he was after bigger fish. Hacking into Captain Bering’s personal files had been complicated, but the reward had been worth the effort. In three days, the Lone Observer would be crossing paths with two other ships. He hadn’t managed to get the names, but he had inferred they were big ones, with several hundred rebels onboard. He just needed to hold on a little bit longer.

And then it would be over.