Tis All But A Dream...

Posted on Wed Oct 28th, 2026 @ 3:24pm by Lieutenant Cassian Massy

1,089 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Looking in all the wrong places.
Location: U.S.S. Dreadnought | Cassian Massy | Dream State

The stars were wrong.

That was the first thing Cassian noticed, though he couldn't quite explain why. They stretched beyond the observation windows in long, brilliant streaks of white and blue, as though the Dreadnought were travelling at a speed far beyond anything her engines could reasonably achieve. There was no familiar shimmer of the warp field, no subtle vibration beneath his feet, no distant hum of the ship's systems. Only silence, and the endless ocean of light beyond the glass.

He stood alone on the bridge.

The familiar curve of the command deck surrounded him, consoles glowing softly in the dim light. The command chair sat empty, and the forward viewscreen displayed a field of stars that seemed to go on forever. Everything appeared perfectly normal at first glance. His station was where it should be. The duty consoles were active. The tactical display showed the ship's position.

Yet something was missing.

The usual bustle of the bridge crew had vanished. No officers exchanged reports, no one called out sensor readings, and no distant conversation drifted from the command well. Even the familiar sounds of the environmental systems were absent. The bridge was a perfect imitation of the place he knew, stripped of the life that made it real.

Cassian glanced towards his operations console.

The display was filled with information he couldn't immediately make sense of. Ship systems, personnel records, power distribution, environmental controls, everything he would normally monitor as Chief Operations Officer. But the figures were changing too quickly, rows of numbers and status indicators flickering in and out of existence before he could read them.

One alert remained steady.

LIFE SUPPORT: NOMINAL.

He frowned.

There was something unsettling about that particular message, though he couldn't have said why. He reached towards the console, intending to pull up a diagnostic, but the moment his fingertips brushed the surface, the display went black.

A single line of text appeared.

CREW COMPLEMENT: 1.

Cassian stared at it. Then, somewhere behind him, the turbolift doors opened.

He turned sharply, expecting to see one of the bridge officers stepping onto the deck. Instead, the entrance revealed only a long corridor, stretching much farther than the ship's architecture should have allowed. Its lights faded into the distance, each successive panel dimmer than the last, until the passage disappeared into complete darkness. He knew he should remain on the bridge. He had a duty station to attend, systems to monitor, and a ship to keep running. Even in the strange stillness of the dream, that instinct remained stubbornly intact.

But something down that corridor was calling to him. Not a voice, exactly. More a feeling, a tug somewhere beneath his ribs, as though a part of him recognised something that his conscious mind had yet to understand. He stepped towards the turbolift. The moment he crossed the threshold, the bridge disappeared. He was standing in a place in a field, he could guess where....

Velis III.

The sky above him was a bruised shade of purple, heavy with smoke and clouds. The air shimmered with heat, and the distant silhouette of a city rose against the horizon, its skyline broken by collapsed structures and the dark scars of destruction. Somewhere far away, a siren wailed, its mournful cry echoing through empty streets.

Cassian looked down at himself. His uniform was intact. No blood stained the fabric, no fever dampened his brow, and his hands were steady. He felt perfectly healthy. More than that, he felt as though he'd never been ill at all.

Yet he remembered being here.

Or at least, he remembered the reports, the crisis, the desperate efforts to keep the Dreadnought functioning while the crew worked to help a dying world. He remembered the weight of responsibility, the relentless stream of information, and the knowledge that every decision could affect the lives of thousands. He just couldn't remember how he'd arrived on the surface.

A figure stood at the end of the street. Cassian couldn't make out their features. They were little more than a silhouette against the haze, motionless beneath the flickering glow of a damaged streetlight. "Hello?" he called.

His voice sounded strangely muted, swallowed by the empty streets. The figure didn't respond. He took a step forward. The siren stopped.

For one impossible moment, the entire world fell silent. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath. Then, from somewhere beneath the ground, came the low, familiar rumble of starship engines. Cassian looked upwards. The Dreadnought hung in the sky above the city, impossibly close, her immense hull blotting out the stars. Her running lights glimmered along the length of the vessel, and the familiar silhouette of the Valkyrie-class ship offered a reassuring sight against the devastation below.

But she wasn't moving. She hung motionless above the planet, a silent guardian unable to reach the people who needed her.

A new sound broke through the silence. A steady, rhythmic beep.

Cassian tilted his head, searching for its source. It was faint at first, almost lost beneath the distant rumble of the ship, but it grew more distinct with every passing second.

Beep.

He glanced back towards the figure.

It had moved closer.

Beep.

Another step, and he might finally see its face.

Beep.

Something tightened in his chest. Not pain, precisely, but an unfamiliar pressure, as though an invisible hand were trying to draw him backwards. He looked up at the Dreadnought again, and for the first time, he noticed that the ship's running lights were blinking in time with the sound.

The figure spoke at last. "Cassian." His name drifted through the empty street, carrying an unmistakable urgency.

He knew that voice. He was certain he knew it. But when he tried to place it, the memory slipped away, leaving only a vague sense of familiarity and a growing fear that he was forgetting something important.

"Cassian, you need to wake up." The street began to dissolve.

The buildings blurred at their edges, the sky fractured into streaks of light, and the enormous silhouette of the Dreadnought faded into the darkness. Cassian reached out instinctively, trying to hold on to something solid, but his fingers closed around nothing.

For the briefest instant, he felt cold against his skin.

Then warmth.

Then the unmistakable sensation of being somewhere else entirely, somewhere enclosed and distant, where his body seemed impossibly heavy and his limbs refused to answer him.

The rhythmic sound continued.

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