ENTRY 009
SURVIVAL LOG
BEGIN DICTATION:
This morning, I awoke inside Varek's Refuge, climbed forward into my pilot's seat and prepared to lift off. With the launch thrusters fueled and warmed up, I eased back on the stick, and felt my ship rise from the ground. With that, I pointed her nose in the air and went slicing through the sky.
There was enough of a cloud cover that my view forward was obscured for a time, but soon enough the Refuge broke into the clear and raced through the ever-thinning air of this world I'd called home for the past week or so.
And then ... well, my ship cleared the atmosphere and millions of tiny lights flickered into view, and I found myself with tears running down my face. I was back among the stars, which I'd come to fear would never happen again.
But now what?
I keyed the control that I hoped would still bring up the map of our Euclid Galaxy, and sure enough, it flashed on my HUD almost instantaneously. The view was puzzling, though. The map told me I was in the Heinff XV star system and that I had just left the surface of Wakuc 73/U4. Neither the star system nor the planet were anything I'd ever heard of before.
So, I punched a few more keys to call up a companion program that, I hoped, would give me a reading on where in Euclid I was now. The answer was impossible - and devastating: I was in the Gamma Quadrant, 704,459 light years from the Galactic Center, and perhaps twice that far from my home world of Eden, in the Alpha Quadrant.
I confess I wallowed in despair for a bit, but then I noticed an insistent beeping in my ears, and cleared the galactic map so I could see ahead. I saw a familar icon in the upper right of the viewer telling me there was a space station nearby.
So, with a deep breath, I locked on to the station signal and prepared to engage my pulse drive to take me there. If there was a station, that meant there was life and civilization here.
And something else, too.
Hope.
END DICTATION
My approach to the space station that, I pray, contains some answers to this cosmic mystery.