Kael Voss was certain he was dead. The reactor explosion on Asteroid K-17 had been a beast of fire and fury, ripping through the mining rig's core like a plasma blade through steel. He'd been at the heart of it, recalibrating the faulty core when the alarms screamed. His last memory was the blinding white flash, his crew's shouts drowned out by the roar, his body disintegrating in the heat. So why was he now floating in a black void, staring at a glowing blue interface that pulsed like a living heartbeat?
[System Notification: Welcome to StarCore, Player K-001927. Initializing Respawn…]
"What the hell is this?" Kael's voice echoed in the emptiness, rough and sharp from years of shouting over mining drills. He tried to move, but his body felt wrong—weightless, like he was nothing but code suspended in a digital sea. His heart thudded in his chest, too real for a dream, and a faint metallic taste lingered on his tongue. The interface flickered, static crackling across its edges like a broken holo-screen, then displayed new text:
[Character Creation: Kael Voss. Class: Novice Spacer. Stats: Strength 5, Agility 7, Intelligence 8, Charisma 6. Special Trait: ERROR – Unlocked Ability Detected.]
"Unlocked ability?" Kael muttered, his pulse quickening. He'd played VR sims back on K-17—cheap escapes from sixteen-hour shifts in the asteroid belt—but those were clunky, pixelated games, not this… whatever this was. His skin prickled as if the void itself was watching him. Before he could process it, the darkness dissolved like smoke, and he materialized on a rusted space station orbiting a crimson nebula that churned like a cosmic wound, its tendrils glowing with eerie light.
The hangar was a chaotic sprawl of noise and motion. Holographic billboards towered over the crowd, flashing ads for starship upgrades—Quantum Thrusters, 5,000 StarCredits! Plasma Cannons, 3,000 SC!—while players in sleek exosuits bartered for glowing weapons and shield cores. Kael caught his reflection in a cracked viewport: same scruffy black hair, same gray eyes hardened by years of scraping ore, but his miner's jumpsuit was gone, replaced by a patched-up spacer outfit, all faded leather and frayed circuits. A wrist-mounted holo-device hummed on his arm, its screen displaying his meager stats and a blinking objective.
[Objective: Complete Tutorial – Dock at Nebula Outpost Alpha. Reward: 100 StarCredits.]
"Great. I'm a noob in some cosmic arcade," Kael grumbled, rubbing the back of his neck where a faint ache lingered, as if his body remembered the explosion. But something was off. His holo-device sparked, glitching with a burst of static, and a hidden menu flashed across his vision: [Debug Mode: Override System Lock. Access Level: Admin.]
Admin access? In a game he'd never heard of? Kael's miner instincts kicked in—when you hit a rare ore vein in the belt, you don't question it; you dig. He tapped the menu, and a flood of code streamed through his mind: starship schematics, weapon mod blueprints, even NPC behavioral scripts. His fingers tingled, like the system was rewriting his nerves, whispering secrets it wasn't meant to share. He blinked, trying to shake the sensation, but the code lingered, a puzzle begging to be solved.
"Hey, Novice! Move it or get spaced!" A gruff voice cut through the hangar's din. A player in a gleaming mech-suit shoved past, nearly knocking Kael into a stack of cargo crates. The player's tag glowed above his head: [Commander_Zorak – Rank #3]. Kael glanced at the leaderboard dominating the hangar's ceiling, a holographic display of StarCore's top players. Zorak's name blazed near the top, credited with thousands of kills, a custom destroyer ship, and a kill-death ratio that screamed untouchable.
Kael clenched his jaw and moved on, weaving through the crowd of players haggling with NPC vendors. He approached a docked starship, a beat-up junker called Rustfang. Its hull was a patchwork of rust and dented metal, barely holding together, but it was his ticket to the tutorial. The interface prompted: [Pilot Tutorial: Launch Ship? Y/N] Kael hit "Y," and the cockpit hatch hissed open, revealing a cramped control panel cluttered with flickering gauges and exposed wires.
He climbed in, the seat creaking under his weight, and ran his hands over the controls. They felt solid, real, not like the sims he'd played back home. A voice—smooth, feminine, and laced with a spark of sarcasm—crackled through the cockpit's comms. "Novice Spacer K-001927, I'm Aria, your assigned NPC co-pilot. Ready to fly this scrapheap, or are you still gawking at the scenery?"
Kael froze, his hand hovering over the throttle. The voice wasn't robotic like the AI assistants on K-17, which droned safety protocols in monotone. This one had life, a edge that felt… human. He glanced at the co-pilot seat, where a holographic figure flickered into existence: a young woman with silver hair tied in a loose braid, violet eyes sharp as laser sights, and a worn pilot's uniform that glitched at the edges, like her code was fraying.
"You don't sound like a normal NPC," Kael said, buckling into the pilot's seat. His eyes lingered on her, curiosity tugging at him.
Aria smirked, leaning back in her holographic seat like she owned the cockpit. "And you don't look like a normal player. That glitch in your system? It's screaming 'anomaly' louder than a supernova. Care to explain, miner boy?"
Kael's stomach twisted. How did she know he was a miner? Before he could press her, the station's alarms blared, red lights strobing across the hangar. [Alert: Pirate Raid Incoming. Defend Outpost Alpha or Evacuate.]
The viewport shook as plasma bolts slammed into the station's shields, cracks spiderwebbing across the reinforced glass. Outside, sleek black ships marked with crimson skulls swarmed the nebula, their weapons glowing like hungry eyes. Players scrambled to their ships, shouting over the chaos, but Zorak's mech-suit was already blasting off, his destroyer carving a trail of ion fire as he left the novices to fend for themselves.
"Tutorial's canceled," Aria said, her hologram flickering like a candle in a storm. "Launch now, or we're space debris."
Kael's hands flew to the controls, adrenaline surging like it had back in the mines when a drill hit a gas pocket. The Rustfang roared to life, its engines coughing like a dying miner's lungs. He piloted toward the nebula, dodging debris as the station's shields buckled behind him. His holo-device sparked again, displaying: [Debug Mode: Unlock Weapon Mod – Plasma Overcharge.]
"Plasma what?" Kael muttered, but he tapped the option without hesitation. The ship's cannons hummed, glowing brighter than any starter junker should. He aimed at a pirate scout weaving through the nebula and fired. The bolt tore through its hull, reducing it to a shower of glowing scrap in a single hit.
Aria's violet eyes widened, her hologram leaning closer. "That's not standard issue. What are you, Kael Voss?"
He grinned, swerving through a missile barrage, the Rustfang's frame groaning. "Just a miner with a knack for breaking things."
The nebula's crimson clouds swallowed them, sensors flickering in the interference. But Aria's voice dropped to a whisper, barely audible over the engine's whine. "Kael, this isn't just a game. StarCore… it's real. And you're not supposed to be here."
His holo-device flashed red, the text searing into his vision: [Warning: System Anomaly Detected. Admin Lockout Initiated.]
Through the nebula's haze, a shadow loomed—a massive ship, its hull carved with alien runes that pulsed like a warning. It turned toward the Rustfang, its weapons charging with a hum that shook Kael's bones.