Reaching For New Worlds

Chapter One - Home - My First Mission

   What do you call home? I call my home the universe. Krytonia II had been my home for over 10,000 years, before the Second Great War came. Out of the billions of people on our four planets, I was the only non-Krytonian.
   You see, I'm a symbiont. Symbionts are kinda like little worms, insects, basically anything that can take control of someone or something. I was created on Krytonia II by a group of scientists called the "New Future Scientists of Krytonia II". They were part of the University of Krytonia II.
   They made me in the form of an old type of worm that used to live on Krytonia Prime, the Us'luug, or ugly worm for short. I have a regenerating cellular structure and basically, I cannot die. It is nearly impossible for me to die, but there are ways. My main mission is to study planets and civilizations around the galaxy and the universe. I am from Galaxy NGC-45, by human standards, but there we called it NHC-51. New Horizons Constellation - 51.
   The amount of memory I can store is amazing. You see, I can store up to 500,000 Terabytes of memory, which is more than anyone has ever been able to hold. The small, metallic, round brain I was given is posatronic. I'm not the happiest worm about it, but hey, I can't change what the Science Ministry wanted to do for me. Oh right, the Science Ministry, they are the ones who commissioned me for these missions.
   My first journey they'd given me was to explore my home in a host. My first hosts name was surprisingly, Jem'Dente. He was a surprisingly interesting host at the time. He was fun, kind, and witty, but nonetheless, very intelligent. Jem'Dente was a man of great pride and honor. He'd taken on the weight of having me as his symbiont and I was very appreciative.
   When studying my home, I realized that life was going to be hard, considering I barely knew my own language. Out of the four planets we had, the first one I visited aside from Krytonia II was Krytonia IV. This was a prison camp for the mentally deranged, the murderers, everyone who had committed a crime or who posed a threat to our solar system's security. I remember the looks on their faces as I walked by. They were all truly fine with being there. We never hurt them, never hit them, always fed them, treated them right, but in the end, it wasn't enough.
   Next was Krytonia III, the military world. This is where all the military matters were handled. The Krtonian Space Corps was here, which I signed up for. The Space Corps automatically accepted me, which was actually supposed to be the main reason to have my job.
Last was Krytonia Prime. This planet is the economical and government world. This was probably the hardest planet to visit. There were security checks everywhere, I usually failed them and had to explain who I was to them because my symbiont had a posatronic brain.
   Overall, my journey around my solar system was only the start. After my time of being in the Space Corps for a while, I became an admiral. I was able to make decisions with the Grand Admiral's permission and what I wasn't expecting was him to sneak up on me one night outside the front of the Space Corps H.Q. I might've accidentally punched him in the nose.. Krytonian noses are huge so... it hurt him pretty bad. He fired me after that, but I never got discouraged because he brought me back in after he declared war on the Voulnic.
      Home was always a difficult piece of science to understand. I never could understand why it rained glass, sideways sometimes. Yes, that actually happened. We had a weather control system to prevent it but sometimes it would fail and it'd still rain glass.
   Out of the millions of things I could've done, the stupidest was request the weather control system be turned off so I could experience pain for the first time. Big. Mistake. I ended up getting glass put of places I'd didn't know glass could go. It was the most painful experience of my life on Krytonia II. I was wearing a protective mask to protect my face, so that was fine.
   The next dumb thing I did was go to Krytonia Prime and see what acid rain felt like... It was also very painful. It rotted away my skin like something I'd never seen before.. It melted my clothes and just destroyed the trees around it. Thankfully, I wasn't in a residential part of Krytonia Prime.
   I was interested after all these experiences to say the least. Hundreds of people were telling me about the various storms that used to pound and destroy our worlds, and how they stopped it. Many of these people were meteorologists and scientists in the Science Ministry.
   Let's see... What did I do after that? Right! I signed up to be a diplomat. I felt that I could make a difference, since my planet's name was feared through most of the quadrant. Ah yes... You might wanna know about that. Well you see, my people were given the titles of "Oppressors" and "Murderers" and not to mention "Occupationists". It was hard to understand why at first.. But I figured it out.
   My system had conquered thousands of systems and even occupied planets. If there was a resistance, they'd make a demonstration out of normal citizens who weren't part of it. I wasn't the happiest person to hear about this. The fact that my people had a reputation like this was atrocious and absolutely sickening. Eventually, though, they gave up on occupations, conquering, and killing. We had officially grown past that stage, or so I'd hoped.
   That's right, they started again after I was reinstated as an admiral in the Space Corps. We occupied a planet named "Rangaria". This was a very peaceful planet, but my government said they either start giving us their resources or we would occupy their world. Well, they chose the hard way. I can still remember the looks on people's faces as I walked up and down the hallways of nearly destroyed ships of the enemy.
   I remember all the blood, all the screams and yells in pain. It was all so... Horrifying. I never in my life has experienced something like this. The blood, the anguish... all the loss of life. Overall, just from the start trying to occupy their world, they lost five million people... Five million! I can't believe I ever had fired on them! I can't believe I ever even gave the order to execute people...
   I was put in charge of watching the occupation. I forced those people to work, and work, and work! But most of them couldn't survive that... Am I a bad man for just following my orders? Have I committed genocide? Of course the people of the planet stayed alive, those that weren't fighting back. After about fifty years of having an occupation, I insisted we pull out. We left that place dry, desolate, and even torn apart. The last man I'd spoken to from that planet said this, "Why have you done this to us? Now, we will never prosper. You should've just killed us when you had the chance!" And then he spat at me...
   That man has left a scar on my heart and he heart of every host I've ever had. Sad thing is, I actually had to host one of their people to survive. My people were evil... So evil! I was just a pawn most of the time. By the time in which we'd decided that enough was enough, I was already being briefed to go to my next mission. This time, a mission of exploration.
   Finally, a mission I was made for! I was so excited to finally be able to get my own mission. I'd of course be alone, but I'd have my colleagues just a communications console away. I would've left the Space Corps had my mission been different. I was going to plan on leaving if that first occupation had lasted any longer. What was the main reason for it anyway? Was it a way to show me how violent my people were? Was it a way to show me JUST how awful my culture used to be?
   The first mission of exploration... How to describe it? It was... Exhilarating to say the least. I was always looking forward to something like that. Of course, it was a nebula not far from my home planet, but it was something. The nebula was a beautiful blue nebula that expanded almost two-hundred light years!
   The surveying was easy considering I had been created to know everything on nebulas, spacial anomalies, and even the types of stars and planets. Upon finishing my survey and returning home, I hit an ion storm. This knocked my engines, communications, and weapons offline for about a week. I sat there trying to fix my ship, but nothing would work. I was a sitting duck.
   It was a most interesting experience to say the least. I'd never been alone like this before, so I was starting to get a little scared. Another week passed until I was eventually able to get my engines back online, but my weapons and communication was still offline, not to mention my navigation. I was only going off memory and suddenly I feel a tug.
   What was this tug? Could it be a rock? Could it be a tractor beam? No... It was an enemy ship. An enemy named the Frandoans. I was doomed...