If I had to use one word to describe HyperThrust, it would be ‘reckless’. But not completely in a negative sense. After all, you don’t become the youngest individual to co-pilot a starship without taking a few crazy chances. He jumps before he looks; he makes decisions quite literally on the fly; and he would much rather ask forgiveness than ask permission. He is also one of the fastest hyper-humans in the universe, and perhaps the best pilot ever born. And despite his age and impetuous nature, HyperThrust has performed to the highest professional level during the first 199 Days of Starship Stratalight’s maiden voyage, and subsequently during our 10-day desolation on the monstrous planet from which we have finally escaped.

During the first few months of our voyage when we were constantly being pursued by Emperor Kako’s Tromokratesian fleet, it was HyperThrust who endured the most strain. His ability to move at extreme speeds powered the Stratalight through over 30 hyper-burns, as we set out to keep Kako from obtaining the third piece of the triplos asteri which we carried on board. If he’d gotten his hands on it, he would have combined it with the other two triplos and gained the power of a god, alongside the goddess of the universe Armonia.

Each burn took a massive toll on HyperThrust, but aside from the constant stream of witty sarcastic quips, he never complained once. He just recharged as quickly as possible, and set us up for our next jump. He never missed a coordinate. He never skipped a beat. And he always kept plugging away. Even after the death of his mother, Aphelion, at the hands of the alien warrior Ominous, on the surface of that monster planet, the kid, though clearly broken over the loss, continued to press on valiantly.

He was born during a tumultuous time in his mother’s life. Aphelion was the daughter of a gang leader in Platinum City, by the name of Star Chenault II. Her father, the other leader of the Plat City Cutters, was killed by a rival gang before she was born. By the time she was 12 years old, she was already working on behalf of her mother, running low-level jobs for the crew. She was 17 years old when she began dating Peri Foster, and 18 when HyperThrust was born. Then at the age of 21, her mother and most other members of the gang were arrested. Star was sentenced to 25 years in prison. This left Aphelion and HyperThrust with nothing.

Fortunately, Aphelion’s childhood friend, Desmond Wallace, a man who had grown to become a decorated soldier in the US Armed Forces, was able to get her into a military pilot training program in Southern Platinum City. With the program providing room and board, HyperThrust now had a home. Additionally, Aphelion and Peri finally solidified their previously rocky relationship and got married. Young HyperThrust now had a steady family situation.

When HyperThrust was in the 4th grade, he discovered he had the power to move at supersonic mach speeds. At first it proved to be quite dangerous, when he learned that his ability, if pushed to its limit, could actually fold a portion of the space-time continuum, allowing him to temporarily exist in two places at once for short times. The phenomenon would come to be known as a “hyper-burst”.

He was eleven years old when he first performed a hyper-burst; he nearly collapsed his apartment building. The second time, at age fifteen, he nearly destroyed his entire neighborhood (17 city blocks). Learning to control the power became of utmost importance.

When he was a junior in high school, Aphelion was accepted into the Advanced Aeronautic Pilot Program at NASA, where she would begin training as a starship pilot. His parents moved closer to the training facility and he began attending Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

After a year, however, he dropped out of college, and followed in his mother’s footsteps, joining the Air Force and reporting to Lackland Air Base in San Antonio. He quickly discovered he was a prodigy pilot. He excelled in boot camp and flight training, and within 12 months he had applied for and been accepted into the same Advanced Aeronautic Pilot Program as his mother. When he showed up at the base, Aphelion, as you can imagine, was very angry, for he had not informed her of his decision to leave school.

It was impossible for her to stay mad though, as he quickly became the highest achieving trainee in the program, surpassing even her own supreme aptitudes by a sizable margin. A few months later they both qualified for active flight status. Around that same time, the Stratalight was being constructed and commissioned, and it was a no-brainer that the two best pilots to ever go through the program be selected to serve as the flight team. The rest, as they say, is history.

As the youngest member of the crew, I can’t imagine what it has been like for him to endure what we’ve been through over the past 10 days. Along with watching his mother die at the hands of the sadistic alien warrior Ominous, he also witnessed the deaths of our leader, Captain Noble, and our science officer, Wavelength. Not to mention the loss of our engineer, Smolder,and the tragic deactivation of our physician, Doctor Robotica. He’s also had to endure the horror of the ship’s counselor, Euphoria being violently stripped of her hyper-abilities, and our navigator, the immortal Marco Crux methodically be stripped of his sanity. On top of all that he’s had to watch the ship’s mechanic, Powerline devolve into hopeless despair, and during the Stratalight’s launch from the planet’s surface he had to watch as Chief Two Strike, the ship’s security officer, and a man he’d come to admire as a mentor, sacrifice his own freedom, in order to help ensure the Stratalight could break free. And finally, he had to listen as our Communications officer, Placebo admitted to psionically creating the monstrous planet that attempted to destroy us all, and is now threatening the rest of the universe.

But alas, through it all, HyperThrust has kept his cool and continued to perform admirably, even going so far as to risk his own life when he induced a supersonic hyper-burst, which was what ultimately allowed the Stratalight to reach escape velocity. He survived the burst, but barely. And now he’s is lying on the ground next to me, trying to reassure me, as he watches my life slip away. What a brave and valiant young man.

And with that, I prepare to sign off for the final time. It has been my pleasure to serve with you. I am proud of the adventures and the stories I’ve been able to share; the worlds we’ve explored, the battles we’ve fought, the hundreds of people, heroes, villains, aliens, lifeforms and others we’ve met; all the people I’ve worked with to make this all possible. To everyone who reads this or hears this, just know that I am forever grateful.

It’s time to go… the uncertainty of the afterlife is calling. And though the chaos of the universe will forever be a constant, with evils to quell and monstrous planets to conquer, as I lay here in my final moments, watching Placebo take the pilot’s seat, for some reason I suddenly feel like everything’s under control…

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