The chronicles that define our origin, our code, and our return.
The evacuation of Pyro IV was supposed to be routine. The system had been under siege for days, pirate factions converging like vultures on the smoldering remains of an abandoned research colony. Convoy Echo-9 — civilian transports, medical haulers, and security escorts — broke orbit under a storm of plasma fire, engines burning white against the planet’s ash-choked sky.
At the edge of the formation, one transport faltered — a thruster hit, venting plasma. Its pilot’s voice cracked across comms, “Engine two’s gone, we’re dead in the water!”
That ship carried refugees. Among them, a boy named Reaper.
The escorts couldn’t turn back. The enemy line was closing too fast. But one ship did.
The RSI Perseus Firebreak swung hard through the debris field, rolling broadside to shield the crippled transport. Its captain never hesitated. He throttled forward, absorbing the barrage meant for others, positioning his hull between the convoy and annihilation.
For six minutes, he held.
For six minutes, the void became a wall of fire.
Each hit that should have shattered the Perseus only hardened its resolve. Return fire cut through the dark — deliberate, controlled, punishing. The gunship’s plating glowed red, burning from within, but it didn’t break.
When the transport finally cleared the engagement zone and jumped to safety, Reaper looked out the viewport just long enough to see the Perseus burning, rolling, and vanishing into the atmosphere of Pyro IV.
“They’re clear. Hold the line.”
The ship was never recovered. The site became a graveyard of drifting wreckage and scorched metal — the Firebreak, where one man chose duty over survival.
And the boy who lived carried that moment with him, long after the stars swallowed the rest.
The wreckage field of Pyro-IV was silent, not the empty kind, but the kind that listens back.
Reaper had spent three months combing the graveyard. Not because he was ordered to, not because it mattered to anyone else, but because he owed it.
He was there when it happened. Back at Caliban, his ship had been one of the last to escape the line, one of the few that made it through because another man refused to move. He remembered the static, the white glow on sensors, the final broadcast.
“Silence the guns.”
That voice had followed him for years, bleeding through the hum of engines and the quiet before missions. It wasn’t guilt exactly. It was weight.
On the ninety-third day, he found what he’d been searching for. The remains of a Perseus-class gunship, half-devoured by time. Scarring across the hull spelled a name nearly lost to frost and debris.
FIREBREAK.
The sight hollowed him. He’d seen the silhouette before, just long enough to know it was the last wall between him and death.
Inside, the ship was a tomb. No bodies, just shadows and frozen air. The command deck still bore traces of discipline. Restraints fastened, logs sealed, systems locked in perfect shutdown order — the way a true captain leaves his post.
Then he found the data core. It was faint but alive, a heartbeat wrapped in static. When he powered it, the logs came in fragments — short recordings, tactical memos, personal notes.
“Hold until their fear breaks.”
“No wasted movement.”
“A captain’s calm decides the fate of his crew.”
Reaper listened to every word again and again until they felt less like orders and more like instruction — a mentor teaching from beyond the grave.
He began compiling the fragments, transcribing lessons, sharpening them into something repeatable. What started as grief became design.
The more he listened, the clearer it became. Hot Shot’ hadn’t died for glory. He’d died for clarity.
When the final log played, Reaper sat in silence. He didn’t speak. He didn’t salute. He simply understood what leadership truly meant.
That night, he wrote the first lines of a new doctrine — one that honored discipline, loyalty, and the burden of survival.
He called it The Silence.
Noise kills clarity.
Clarity wins the fight.
Speak rarely.
Move deliberately.
Strike only once.
And beneath it all, a final note written in his own hand.
“For the one who stood when the rest of us ran.”
The hangar was quiet except for the echo of footsteps and the hum of the reactor core.
Rows of technicians moved in silence, their breath fogging in the cold air of the drydock. The ship before them was a clean slate of purpose — matte plating, recessed turrets, a design stripped of vanity. Every inch of it spoke of function, not pride.
The registry read RSI Perseus.
But beneath the forward gun batteries, Reaper had stenciled a name by hand. Each letter was painted with slow precision.
HOT SHOT’.
He stood alone before the hull.
Months of writing, planning, and refining had led to this moment. The fragments from the Firebreak had become something more than doctrine. They had become a framework for how to think, how to act, how to lead without hesitation or noise.
Reaper pressed his hand to the cold metal.
“You gave me time I didn’t deserve. I will pay back that debt, old friend.”
The systems came online, one by one. Engines rolled through startup checks, the reactor purred to steady output, and status lights began their rhythmic glow across the deck. The hangar crew moved efficiently, unaware of the weight of what they were witnessing.
On the bridge, Reaper stood at the command chair and looked out over the stars.
He didn’t speak to anyone.
There was no speech to give, no audience to impress.
This was not the formation of an army. It was the beginning of a promise kept.
The ship cleared the clamps, rose through the magnetic field, and drifted forward into the black. Its engines flared once, steady and white.
Reaper adjusted the comms console and opened a personal log. His voice was calm, deliberate.
“White Ghost Division. Activation complete.
Mission parameters: precision over power. Discipline over dominance.
No noise. No spectacle.
We move with intent.”
He paused, recording the final line by hand in the ship’s log.
Mors venit celeriter.
Then he closed the terminal.
The Perseus Hot Shot’ accelerated into the stars, leaving nothing behind but vapor and silence.
White Ghost Division was born.
