Sylen was sitting in the co-pilot seat of their old, rusty cargo ship, traveling through the chosen strand of the Astropath. The stubby, heavy vessel was being carried away by the mysterious flow between stars effortlessly, just like a fallen leaf on the top of a river. Gazing into the cosmos, she could see the twirling, bright blue light before her, looking like water when it gets flushed through a drain. The walls of the Astropath, the fabric of space itself, made visible to the naked eye, lit up the cockpit in a fluctuating blue hue. She grew up in this ship, traveling through hundreds and thousands of systems, but whenever she looked out midway through a journey, she was just as amazed as the first time her conscious mind comprehended the wonders of nature.

Her eyes were glued to the blue, flowing manifestation of reality, barely paying attention to the occasional chimes, beeps, and boops coming from the main panel before her. The old but still expensive dashboard now acted as her footrest. Laying back in the faded, brown leather seat, she was wearing an old black boot and loose, gray cargo pants, its multiple pockets filled with different, small tools, fixing up the constantly breaking down machines in the ship's belly. On top, she had an unzipped brown leather jacket, only wearing a dirty tank top under it, gently curving around her breasts.

"I hope Pa brings some coffee when he comes back!" She stretched with a moan, licking her young, healthy lips, gulping loudly at the thought.

Besides herself, there was only one other soul on the ship, her grandfather, Miyon. To this day, she never asked what happened to her parents or when she lost them, as whenever she tried to bring it up, her grandfather's ears would droopy, and his tail would slowly drop downwards before falling completely silent. Even after 17 years, she just couldn't press on when she saw him like that, dropping the topic immediately.

"Haahh…" She let out a sigh, reaching up, scratching her own, sharply standing ears covered with the same colored fur as her hair, shining in a rusty color, just as their ship's exterior. Blinking, her emerald-colored eyes reflected the blue light from the outside world.

She was, alongside her grandfather, what now the rest of the galactic community called a mutant. Neither belonging to the race of beastfolk and neither to the now-extinct humans. She was the descendant of a race that came into being due to the mix of the two. She may have attributes of the people of Wulfhaarn, the ears, the tail, and sharp canines, hiding behind her lips… but besides that, everything else was human-like. Their skin came in multiple colors, just like her ancestors', hers being fair and white, spotless, something the Wulfhaarn called abnormal and disgusting.

Mutants. The abominations. The cursed. Every species with any human-like genome were branded, even if they did not show it on the surface like Sylen's kind. It was enough to find any genome in their species related to humans. They were ostracized in almost all facets of life; in some systems, they actively pursued and hunted them to this day. They were killed or, worse, sold into slavery if they wandered into the wrong part of the Galaxy. They had to live like nomads, salvage everything for themselves as most of the time, no station let them close, or if they did, very few wanted to deal with them. This was what their kind inherited from their ancestors. From the Humans.

"The glorious Hegemony of Men!" Sylen murmured to herself, remembering the old tales she read on the data shards she had as a young girl. The stories from thousands of years ago, where Humanity was the dominant race in the Galaxy, conquering more than 80% of it, deterring any other races from standing in their way. She didn't know if it was done by force, diplomacy, or a mix of both, but she knew the words of humans were absolute. You either bowed under their rule, or you were made to bow.

Nobody knows what happened back then, but one day, the Hegemony collapsed like a sand castle. It happened way too fast; to this day, it is still a mystery what caused it. Only in a decade, all humans throughout the Galaxy were gone, not even their corpses remaining. As if somebody or something hunted them to extinction. Those species living together with them also shared their fate as in every colony, no intelligent beings remained, only their empty cities, stations… and planets. Their traces were eradicated entirely, not just the bodies but most of their knowledge and history. As if they were struck from existence, from both past and present. It was such a sudden and colossal culling that the Galaxy needed more than 3000 years to repopulate itself and wake up from the vacuum it left in it. By then, some species believed their Gods' anger caused it, seeking retribution and wiping out those accursed Humans. Whatever it may have been, the fact remains that no humans have been sighted for the past 5.000 years ever again. In their places, new empires rose up, kingdoms and confederacies, and they would never admit it. Still, they built themselves up by relying on technology left behind by their most hated enemy. Soon many previously subservient species, spared from extinction, rose up, taking their share of the emptied-out Galaxy.

As no humans remained to "punish," they started to take revenge on the next closest of kin, The Mutants. Those species came from the marriage of a human and another alien lifeform… and there were many of them to choose from. Plenty as the human genome was so adaptable, they interbred with thousands of other species! Some were hunted to the same extinction as the humans before them, and some were 'spared,' pushed into lifelong servitude. The only reason they could still be found free and alive, traveling and populating some parts of the Galaxy, is thanks to the fact that they founded their own empire, the Neo-Hegemony. They managed to take control of some previously high-tech human colonies, deep-space factories, and research stations established at the far end of one of the Galaxy's spiral arms. They managed to re-learn their use and build a home for themselves where they could be safe. By now, their collective had numbered 9 fully populated worlds and around 100 massive stations, letting their numbers grow past the 30 billion mark, finally rising to the same level as some of the most minor intergalactic groups in the Galaxy. A safe haven for the offspring of Humanity.

Their ship had the Neo-Hegemony's emblem on its side, the image of a blue planet with a silver moon orbiting it. It was the fabled homeworld of Humans, its name long lost to the annals of history, now only called 'Home.' Few know what it really looks like or where it is on the galactic map, but there is one thing everyone knows. It existed somewhere amongst the stars, waiting to be rediscovered. It was… it was just… lost. Nobody knows how or why, but no Astropaths lead to it. Every year a few new Astropaths were discovered, leading to new systems in the Galaxy, yet none was the homeworld of Humanity. Which should be impossible in theory. Yet no matter how many years went by, nobody could find the fabled planet of the Humans, where who knows what kind of wonders remained to this day, ready for plunder!

"The Astropaths are nature's law manifesting in real space. They are impervious to all machinations. We can only tap into them and let them carry our ships from point to point, traveling between the stars. They only flow one way, and no beings in the universe can manipulate them otherwise!" Sylen whispered, her eyes wandering to the blinking dashboard under her legs, repeating a quote from a scientific book she once read, studying navigation and learning how to help her grandfather pilot their ship. "Yet all these paths leading to 'Home' were gone! Where are they now, then? They can't be destroyed; not even supernovas could damage them!" asked a question she asked so many times yet never got an answer for, only weird looks. "Haahh… if it even existed at all!" she shook her head, stretching in her chair.

"Existed what?" Miyon asked as he walked into the cockpit, carrying two mugs in his hands. They were filled with steaming, freshly brewed coffee.

"Pa! Thanks!" Sylen jumped up, taking one away with a happily wagging tail behind her. "Nothing, I was just mumbling to myself! How's the haul?"

"We are running out of our reserves!" He sighed with a smile, watching her granddaughter happily slurp on it, making his graying tail wagging behind him. He wore a big, faded, orange mechanic overall decorated with unwashable stains and patches. His belly was big and bouncy, and his graying, bushy beard reached right down to his chest. It was just as unkempt as his thick, wavy hair and pointy ears, but under it, he was smiling proudly as to what a fine young woman his granddaughter had become. "When we get back into our borders, we will spend some of our cash to fill it up again!"

"The salvage this time should pay out a lot! That find of the old cruiser was money in the bank!" Sylen grinned happily.

"I was just checking on the data banks we recovered!" He nodded, sitting in the pilot's chair, leaning back leisurely, and enjoying his brew. "Most of the data is damaged, exposed to the elements of the moon it crashlanded on! But! There are still pockets of intact slates that can be recovered from it! This could be anything, schematics, Astropath maps, whatever! So it could fetch a good price! I leave it as it is, untouched. We can auction it off that way more easily!"

"We should repaint the old rustbucket from the money, Pa!"

"Nah, it is good as it is! A shinier ship is just a brighter target in the dark! The old girl wears her age as a badge of honor!" He laughed, rubbing the console before him with a happy grin.

"If nothing else, could we upgrade my room a little? Maybe a bigger screen? A more comfortable bed?"

"We can… look at some upgrades after we've docked in!" he chuckled, looking at his baby girl, sitting in the co-pilot seat. Sylen wanted to say something, but then the ship suddenly shuddered again and again. "What the?!" Miyon shouted, quickly strapping himself in, and even if Sylen was struck with fear, she followed suit immediately, flicking dials on her side of the dashboard.

"The Astropath! It is… it… it is falling apart!" Sylen exclaimed. She was running the measurements repeatedly, but the results were the same. They still had 4 hours before it should return them to normal space. Yet, right now, at that moment, it was falling apart by itself!

"Impossible!" Miyon replied, unable to think of anything else as this was simply an impossibility. Yet it was happening right before their eyes.

The blue fabric of space started to stop its spinning, its whirlpool-like movement finally halting completely before it began to unfold, just as if someone was straightening out a braid, separating different, interwoven strands, one by one. Ultimately, their ship shuddered one last time before reentering reality, popping out from nowhere in an empty space. Looking around, there was nothing here, no stars, cosmic dust, planets, rocks, or a black hole. They were in a completely empty part of space.

"We exited the Astropath, 14.6 lightyears away from our initial destination." Sylen gulped, reading the computers' initial scannings. "We are… stranded… Pa." She looked up from her little monitors, turning towards Miyon.

"We…" his beard trembled, wanting to say something to calm her down but unable to find the words. It was that moment when the computers beeped once again, drawing their attention.

"There is a lifeform before us at 400 meters!" Sylen read it, tapping the screen. "It says…it is alive…?" She repeated the words displayed on it with disbelief.

"Probably the impact… from… falling out from the Astropath damaged the scanners," she answered her grandfather, trying to find his own words just in time to feel the ship shake and start moving once again… by itself.

"What's happening?!" Miyon yelped out, now truly afraid, trying to turn off the engines, but they were already off!

"We are getting pulled in!" She grabbed onto the control wheel at her side, but no matter what she did, the ship refused to react, slowly flying forward.

"To where?!" Miyon asked, desperately trying to start the engine but without success.

"F-forward Pa… 320 meters… 224… 154… 67… 32…" The ship slowed down and stopped at the 4-meter mark. "We… stopped."

"I can feel that." Miyon nodded, unbuckling himself and standing up, looking out towards the ship's nose.

Their flying home was a bulky bird called the Dawn. It was around 800 meters long and half of that in height, with just as big of a belly as Miyon had to carry around, ready to stuff itself with as much cargo as possible. From far away, it looked like a big, rusty, overfed fish. Their cockpit was at its front, protruding forward like a little bump on its head. In reality, there were no windows on it, only cameras that projected the image from the outside world into the cockpit itself. It was also one of their escape pods as the whole "bump" could be ejected with a violent force to let them escape.

"Do you see what I see, girl?" Miyon gulped, looking forward without blinking.

"Huh?" She flinched, standing up and flicking on the ship's lights, shining a solid beam before them. "Kyah?!" She screamed, jumping backward as a body was floating outside in the empty darkness. It was a man, very much humanoid in appearance, wearing a torn, white robe and a tight, ruined overall around his body, looking as if it was damaged in some kind of scuffle or brawl. His black, long hair was spread out behind his body, and he looked utterly frozen. Which was understandable and expected.

"Now I am sure that the scanners are broken… that thing is not alive!" Miyon sighed, finally looking away.

"What should we do, Pa?" Sylen gulped, turning away from it, pressing a button, making the cameras zoom out so she could finally stop looking at it so closely.

"Nothing. A body is not our business! Who knows what kind of infections it may carry! Dormant, in that frozen body of his! Leave it where it is! Not our problem!" She snorted, already trying to ignore it.

"Y-you're right!" Sylen nodded, as she had not thought about it that way.

But, as in the past few minutes, everything happened again by itself, completely ignoring the two. Their ship lassoed the frozen body with its tractor-beam, pulling it towards its own, opening its mouth.

"What the hell is going on today?!" Miyon cried, truly shedding some tears as he felt himself going insane!

"The ship! It… the forward hatch is opening up! It is pulling the body in!"

"Whhhyyyyy?!" Miyon moaned, sounding like a dog's whine, echoed by Sylen's whining sounds. A few minutes later, everything went back to completely normal as they heard and felt the hatch reseal itself, the monitors displaying a straightforward sentence "Recovery completed."

Corty

Thank you for checking this story out! I am not a native English speaker so any mistakes, pointed out, would be appreciated and fixed asap! The release schedule is: 1 chapter/weekdays. Hope you are going to like it!

 

PS: This is a slow burning story, there are going to be chapters that are only focusing on world building or dialogue between characters. I am not in a rush, neither should you aim to speed-read it:) Thank you for your understanding!

PPS: Take it as a fantasy story in space, not as a scientific/educational exercise.