Print Jones, Cassidy and Mitch, were suiting up for EVA. Curious, I wondered at the sight, the Fortunate Son was going too fast for an effective EVA repair job, thought what they would repair I couldn’t imagine. I walked in and grabbed Mitch’s attention. The youth, couldn’t be more than twenty seven, spun around and beamed.

        “This is something else, huh?” He hooted.

        “What is? The Sac Xiang Giang jut popping up with a grappler? I guess it’s pretty crazy," I answered.

        “No, man, Captain Lo just ordered a full mechanical mobilization! So, obviously, we’re the best guys for the job.” Of course. The mechs were in a separated bay above the main corridor, added on as an afterthought to the design. And then it dawned on me that these men were going to die. The grappler and the Sac Xiang Giang were well armed, and most definitely had suits of their own. Nguyen didn’t even care anymore!

        “Mitch, this is just asking to get fucked up, you have to understand that! This is nuts!” I said, knowing full well that Mitch couldn’t do anything else even if he wanted to. Nguyen wanted it done, and so it would be. Most of the Fortunate Son’s crew members were fiercely loyal to Nguyen Lo, even above their company. These were dead men. They finished suiting up and Mitch asked me to seal his helmet and gloves. He threw on some armor plating and flicked on his headlamps, as did the other two, and they ascended the ladder, a diagonal through the hull of the ship, into the decompression chamber. I heard the hatch click shut and continued down the corridor. Floating was always a favorite of mine, even though it was disorienting. Larger ships usually had gravity rotation systems , but a ship like the Fortunate Son, small and utilitarian, didn’t have to have, and often couldn’t afford, one of these complicated devices. Nguyen Lo Junior had overseen the Fortunate Son being built, had designed it from his head, just for this last hunt. We were going to find an ancient BetaFlux Node, one of millions that made up the FluxNet power and communications relay system which failed in 2188, causing the Dark Age. And in that node was the map to Earth. The actual map. Six years ago, Nguyen Lo, when he was my friend, not my captain, had explained it to me during our active wartime service aboard the Sac Xiang Giang:

        “It’s like this: when the Network crashed, so did all of the relevant data on the computer systems connected to it. So for almost two hundred years, we lived in the dark. We didn’t have good doctors, governments, laws, really. Ships were treasured artifacts since no one could build ‘em. Well, a few could, but they were untouchable. Lived out in the belt. Anyway, when the Colonial Unions formed and began uniting all of the colonies under their banners, they found backup systems on Albion. Albion, see, never stopped being advanced. So, by extension, neither did New Orange or Zhong . That isn’t important, either. What IS important, very vital, is that on these backups, the location of Earth was gone. Totally wiped. In fact, most information on Earth that wasn’t correlated to vital systems data was gone. So someone wiped out our knowledge of the homeworld. Isn’t that weird? Isn’t that just… so weird?” Nguyen rattled off as I monitored the feed, numbers and codes and shipnames dancing to and fro. Big op, big battle. It was hectic, I was sweating, the ship was dark. And Nguyen, well, he was thinking and talking.

         “That is weird but-“

         “The data’s in the BetaFlux nodes. Or one of them. I think I know one that has a map or a locator or some sort of vectoring system to find the key nodes that contain backup data. Now, now it might not be there, see, the data. Maybe they all got wiped, too. But… I don’t know, I think we can find it. Earth. It might take a long time, but… the payoff, Al. The fucking payoff!” Nguyen flung his arms in the air excitedly, his eyes dancing in the glow from the screen. I didn’t get it, or course. I never got it. But now, after the first Wars, just after