"Galen was disappointed"

Galen was disappointed. He had spent weeks trying to come up with the clever fake title “Fleet of Stars” so he could put his ship registration as “FoS 322,” but no one had gotten the whole joke of what FOS meant in other contexts. Somehow. None of his crew, no one he met, no one he fought. They all just went along with the idea that he was from the “Fleet of Stars.” It had been weeks.
Well, of course his crew didn’t truly buy it. They knew of their true mission, their true meaning. They were for the Federation, trying to end a war with the Constellation's Collective, with the not-so-secret mission of gathering Collective war strategies and plans, then sabotaging them. So far, they had done damn well, but had to change their ship’s formal registrations so the Collective - now in control of most of the galaxy around them - wouldn’t find them. Their old registration had been compromised, after all.
His crew was smart. His crew was effective. But GOD did they miss some of the most obvious things. Sure, maybe the joke wouldn’t be too obvious at first, but they had made 34 FTL jumps since the registration change, and NO ONE had made even the slightest smirk at the acronym.
Well, whatever. Fleet of stars it was.

The jump completed. Galen had gotten used to the side effects of sitting in the captain’s seat when completing a jump. You’d think that it’d be easier to complete the jump without any motion sickness when sitting in the chair of the most important crew member. And that’s where you’d be wrong.
After regaining consciousness from a few modified shots of adrenaline, Galen regained his senses. He looked up to see CHx03 - his humanoid robotic crewmate - walking towards the trash and carefully dropping the syringe down the chute.
CHx03 was… weird. She was the third recreation of CH, who was some old robotic dictator now working for the Federation as a commanding general. It was weird to not only have CH working alongside Galen, but to see how different the new iteration was. For one, the original CH had no sense of humor as shown in the few press interviews they gave, but CHx03 was surprisingly witty for a robot (even if she didn’t get the whole FOS joke). And even with the more likeable feature, CHx03 still worked as efficiently as any mindless device.
“CH, combat or no?”
“No hails, Starlyte.”
“No ships around?”
“None on scanners, none giving us hails. One distress beacon from nearby planet.”
Galen never told his crew his real name. His last name, Starr-Herlyte, was from Oracha X, some planet about 230 light-years from earth. And BOY was it crime ridden - to such a point that if you left the planet without proper licensing, you’d either be shot down, or worse, arrested. So he just opted to be called “Captain Starlyte,” as most wouldn’t question the difference. There are more people than planets, after all, and such an assumption could be dangerous.
“Yeah, I remember we jumped to some distress.” Galen laughed. “No collective ship to shoot out of the stars?”
“No, captain. None to shoot into stars, either. Just us, and the nearby system. No civilization in sight.”
This… was unusual. Usually when a distress beacon wasn’t near anything important, there were many things that could have happened - Pirate ship attack in the middle of nowhere with civilians needing help, pirates luring innocents into a trap, someone in need of fuel in the middle of nowhere - But nothing?
“...where’s the beacon coming from  then, CH?”
“Nearby planet. It seems the system is hardly explored - all the planets are simply named. The beacon’s coming from ‘green looking uninhabitable fluffball.’”
“Federation base under siege? Collective base run out of supplies? Refugees lost?”
“None of the above. Just the signal from an abandoned S-class ConsortiAM Co. ‘Traitor Freighter.’ The solitary confinement prison ship class.”
Galen Sighed. ConsortiAM had some security issues in certain sectors, but it must be getting worse. S-class ships were the strongest non-privatized ships in circulation, and usually they had more than just one ship when under transport. Something must have been different with this shipping procedure.
“Well, I’ll go down, CH. Keep the clone bay on full power.”
“You got it, Starlyte.”

It feels weird to beam down to a planet in a full MHR suit. There’s always a sense of fear that “most hazard” does not mean “all hazard” and the resistance will do nothing on the new place. Or, even worse, that your suit will teleport with a second’s delay of you arriving, or that you’ll teleport in completely different places. The panic is almost always irrational, as it always seems to work, and the few times it doesn’t there’s just an active clonebay you’re attached to.
The planet was… well, it felt like any other planet under a MHR. Bland. Cold. The fake atmosphere inside the suit was still warming up, as the original air had to be purged before the system booted up.
The ship loomed before Galen. It was about a kilometer long, with a bridge sitting atop the back, near the engines. The ship was at an angle,  nose in the ground. Well, what was left of the nose - Galen knew the ships were supposed to be three kilometers. Something went wrong with this one, that was becoming increasingly clear.
Entering the ship wasn’t that hard. A huge crack in the hull, about halfway down what was left of the nose, was in just the right place where Galen didn’t have to climb too much or use the teleporter to jump up the possibly large area. The breach brought Galen to a hallway.
To his surprise, the ship’s lighting was at full power. At least, it was as soon as he entered. The walls lit up, perfectly intact. Well, aside from the breach. Some crew even lay at the end of the hallway, their eyes staring up towards the ceiling, lifeless. Whatever killed these people was likely the change in atmosphere.
“CH, you still read?”
“Yes, Starlyte.”
“You have a scan of life forms?”
“Yes. One live, near cabin. No robotic registrations detected, no other life forms detected for 2450 kilometers.”
“So no other living lifeforms.”
“For your likings, captain, sure.”
Galen chuckled. Why couldn’t the robots just do the simpler thing? It just made him laugh how they could be so smart in so many senses, yet be so stupid in other. It also made him laugh that still no one had gotten the FoS gag.

Galen’s Heart jumped. He had hardly walked a meter away from the door behind him, and it had slammed shut behind him. A trap? What for? There was no reason to kill him - Unless for the thrill of the kill, he’d just respawn at the clone bay in a few minutes. His card would disintegrate if he was killed, and be rebuilt at the clone bay, with his new body.
“CH, check the ship’s power usage.”
“Yes, captain.”
As if in an airlock, the pressure must have been going down and the air supply must have been going up - Galen’s suit was lowering its power consumption due to the lacking need. The air starting to seep into the suit much harder to breath, but definitely breathable.
“CH, any results?”
“The reactor is out of juice, and the solar chargers are broken. However, energy is pulsating from the lifeform at alarming rates. Probably a native ‘abomination’ used to some form of tricking people in this fashion.”
“...and where is this creature now?”
“Headed your way, Starlyte.”
“Oh fuck.”
“It should be on your suit’s tracker. Keep that for better updates than what the ship provides.”
In a quick panic, Galen turned on his heartbeat monitor, forgetting that he needed to use his lifeform tracker in order to keep the location of a moving entity. The heartbeat monitor merely kept track of his heartbeat. He readied his plasma gun, watching the monitor furiously, waiting for it to tell him when the beast would hop around the corner.
But no beast hopped around the corner. Just a woman in a jumpsuit, who stumbled against the wall, incorrectly assuming her velocity and her capability to slow said velocity. In a flash of Panic, Galen fired, but his shot hit the wall before even coming close to the woman.
Well, it would have hit the wall if it wasn’t vaporized. The plasma shot disappeared. And, well, so did the rest of the room, as the ship blacked out, and Galen’s suit completely shut down. All lights came back on after a second, but the plasma he had fired was completely gone, and his MHR was out of power.
“CH, I don’t know what’s going on, but I need help.” Galen clambered out of his MHR, trying to keep some distance from the woman.
“Sor… ry, Robot HT-43 under name ‘CHx03’ curren...tly rebooting. Check… in soon.”
Galen looked up at the woman down the hallway. The jumpsuit was a bland purple-grey, and her hair was back in a small ponytail. She wore a white wristband with some writing on it that Galen couldn’t read from the distance he was at. But whoever this person was - they were in pain from whatever just happened, crumpled against the wall.
“CH?”
“Sir. Orders. Input needed.” Galen remembered why CH was so special with their fake emotion chip and empathy module.
“Prepared teleport and escort to medbay, CH.”
“Yes, Sir.” A second passed as the hallway was silently uneventful. “Order done. More?”
“...No, CH. Stay at ready for teleport.”
“Yes, Mr. Starlyte.”
Shutting off his comm for a minute, Galen turned towards the woman and spoke. “Now who… are you?” He titled his head at the last statement, as if expecting a response. Starlyte walked towards the woman slowly.
No response came, but after he made about 3 meters of distance towards the woman, her glare quickly turned to him. It stared into his soul, not with malicious intent, but with a dead gaze. Something of part anger, part fear, part hope, but none of which stood out above the rest. Galen stopped dead in his tracks.
“Would it help to say who I am?”
No response.
“Well… Can’t harm anyone to say, can it? I’m Galen.” He put on a smile, feigning his own concern with the whole situation. The woman closed her eyes, and after a second of no reactions, Galen continued his slow stalk down the hallway towards her.
“Do you know what’s going on with the ship, or is this a new energy pulse?” Galen’s concentration on his words made him forget to muffle his footsteps, and he not only startled the woman into glaring back at him again, but also gave himself a jump. He didn’t stop at her gaze this time, however.
Unexpectedly, Galen felt a pulse of some high-voltage electricity go through his body. While only for a fraction of a second, the pain pierced his heart, causing involuntary muscle movements. He was suddenly glad to have cleared his gut before going on the excursion to the surface - However, he was not happy with tripping face-first into the metal floor. Starlyte hardly broke his fall with his hands.
He slowly turned up, every movement taking more effort than usual. The woman was still watching him, but her eyes showed a different story now. Fear and hope still stayed - but anger was replaced with pity.
“Why won’t you talk?” Starlyte’s breathing quickened on this thought. It was hard to talk, as it must have pulled some muscle along the way. He lay back down, focusing on slow breathing.
To his surprise, a cold hand touched the back of Galen’s neck. His body suddenly jolted at the shocking temperature change, but he forced himself to adjust back quickly, not knowing what was going on - but when he adjusted back, the hand had pulled itself away. Galen turned up to see the woman, kneeling over him. Upon seeing Galen turn, she jumped a bit backwards, retracting her arms from any near vicinity.
Galen sighed, getting himself into a sitting position. The woman put her arms into a defensive position in front of her, as if expecting some special attack to come. Galen chuckled, and leaned back against the wall.
“Captain?”
“CH, now is not the time.”
“Sorry, Starlyte. But the teleporter is ready.”
“r-Right. Make sure it can handle two people.”
“On it, Captain.”
Galen turned off his intercom again, and turned to look at… whoever it was who was slowly lowering their defensive position. He reached out an arm towards her, his palm open in a calming gesture. As a short time passed, she stopped holding her arms in the X to protect her face, and carefully reached out to meet the palm.
“I’ll call you… Ahael?” Galen looked at her eyes. The dead gaze from earlier was filled mostly with hope now, but a tiny bit of fear remained. For some reason, the name Ahael felt like it fit perfectly. “Ahael. Yeah.” He smiled, and Ahael smiled back.
“CH, lock the teleporter. Get us back.”
“Captain, You’re not standing.”
“Neither of us are. Take the time to calibrate and get it to work.”
“Yes, Captain.”

Starlyte oversaw Ahael’s transport to the medbay. He almost told his crew to run medical scans, but then realized how terrifying machinery might be to her, then decided against it, and said to “keep her company.” He then went to attend the bridge.
“Nice to see you back, Starlyte.”
“Nice to be back, CH.” Galen took a seat at the captain’s chair.
“You enjoy the trip?”
“Not really. Too much stress.”
“That comes as a ship captain, does it not?
“...That is true… ...but usually in diplomacy. Not in boarding a ship alone.”
“You’ve done it many times before, Starlyte.”
“Not when the power goes out and I’m without a weapon.”
“Ah, yes.” CH shook her “arm” in Galen’s direction in agreement. “That hit the ship too.”
“Wai-It hit the ship?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“What was that pulse?”
“We aren’t sure, Captain. It originated from the ship. Same frequency as a reactor explosion.”
“That’s… weird.”
“It’s why I reset, Starlyte.”
“Oh, yeah. I remember that. Glad you recovered from that.”
“So am I, Captain.” Galen relaxed in his seat, letting the comforts of… “home” settle in for him. It was good to be back after such a different encounter. Sure, he’d face the Collective sometime soon again, but that was normal. It was like sleeping - Most people think it’s vital, but Galen never did it. And the collective always thought it could win, but it never did.
...was that the right analogy? Galen didn’t care. He was safe again.
“Captain… It’s… a bit random. But is your name, by chance, Galen?”
“That’s… an oddly specific question. Why do you ask...?”
CH stopped to think for a second, which was unusual for a robot. Even if they were built for fake emotion in their speech patterns, they were still quick with their thoughts. “You people call them memories. We call them data. The one main difference is people can interfere with our data, but not your memories.”
“So someone made me Galen to you?”
“I assume so.”
“Who would do that?”
“Whoever shut off my systems, sir.”
“What?”
“The memory came with the electrical damage dealt to my data storage. It hit new drives, however, meaning no ‘memories’ were lost. But some were gained. It was a bit delayed from the original electronic blast wave, but it was gained shortly afterwards.”
“Oh. Um. And one was Galen? I mean, had me as Galen? A memory?”
“Yes.” CH resumed her manual security encryption for a second before pausing again to think. “The ‘memory’ was filled with fear.”
“Fear?”
“I’d assume so. I’ve never experienced fear myself. But being the recreation of an old dictator gives you memories of people in fear. I spent an hour trying to map everything out in my neural networks to figure out what ‘fear’ truly feels like for your kind.” CH returned to her task as the conversation took a long pause.
Galen broke the silence. “And that feeling was in the memory?”
“I will never know for sure, but for simplicity’s sake, I will say yes.”
“What did it feel like?”
“Impending.”
“Imp-What do you mean?”
“Something was coming, but there was uncertainty of what it was.”
“But surely you’ve felt that before?”
“Not without my calculators to assure me the danger can be defeated, even if it takes everything from me. In the memory, everything told me I was about to die.”
Galen stood, glaring awkwardly downwards. He had never truly realized how much there was to teach CHx03 about the world, and living life as a somewhat organic being. Stunned, he turned towards the door, slowly moving himself out.
“I’m off to see the newcomer again. I feel she could use assurance.”
“I’m sure she’d appreciate it, Galen.”