Some of the Travels of Sophie

Discovering the Truth Part I

A year and a half had passed since Sophie had discovered where her siblings lived and gone to visit them. She was eighteen now, and feeling more hopeless than ever. She had spent more time with Rachel and Kris to try to fix things after her long absence in their lives, and they were getting somewhere; but in her other task, of finding her father, well, she didn't feel as if she was getting any closer to the end.

As she stood in the middle of the deserted plain of yet another planet the lost expedition hadn't visited, she pulled out the badge the Alliance had given her when she'd fought alongside them on Matraxa. That was the same organization that had given up on looking for the expedition. Stuffing the badge back into her pocket, she pulled out her star map instead. She looked to all the planets on there she hadn't visited yet, there were so many and she was so tired. Sophie placed her finger on the last planet the Eridanus had visited before going missing. She'd visited all the surrounding planets, and all the ones in the general direction the expedition had gone from there. All she'd discovered was there had been a massive solar flare event, which caused a lot of ships to take detours. The planet Sophie was on right now showed the devastating effects of the solar flares, and a part of her wondered if the ship had perished in the flames, even though she'd already checked for that possibility and come up with nothing.

No, she thought. A feeling in her gut told her they were still out there, and she knew that she just had to find them. She placed the star map away, having made a decision on her next destination, a planet on the edge of the known universe, in its furthest reaches. She'd visited it before, with Aldred at the start of the search, but there had been no one there. But it was more likely than any of the other planets on the map, so there she would go.

Sophie pressed the button on her teleport watch and disappeared.

To her complete shock and surprise, she reappeared in the middle of a war zone. Around her were buildings and bunkers, the result of a hastily built city. Off to her left were the remains of a rathershoddy spaceship, large enough to hold a few hundred people. And overhead were more spaceships, dropping bombs on this already doomed city.

"Oi!" a voice yelled to her right and she turned her head to see someone at the door of one of the bunkers. "What are you doing standing out there? Come on, get inside!"

Sophie didn't have to be told twice, and hurried over to the building, entering the door as the man who had yelled slammed and locked it behind her.

"What the hell were you thinking?" he turned and growled at her.

"I... I'm sorry." Sophie stuttered fearfully. "I only just arrived here, you see. I didn't realise the state this place was in."

The man stared at her in bewilderment. "You only just arrived here? How?"

"I came by teleport." Sophie held up her watch arm.

The man looked from the watch to Sophie's face. Sophie felt a flicker of deja vu as she studied the guy's face, like she'd seen him somewhere before. "Why did you come here?" he asked curiously.

"I'm looking for a ship actually." Sophie replied. "It went missing about six years ago and I want to know what happened to it."

The man grunted and gestured for her to follow him down a passage that led underground. "Six years ago? Well we won't be any help to you. No one here remembers anything before a couple years back."

Sophie's forehead creased as she took this in. "You don't remember?" she looked around at the few other people who were travelling down the passage with them. "Why not? What happened?"

"Those guys." The man pointed to the roof above them and Sophie knew he was talking about the people who were bombing the small city. "They're aliens from another planet, a small one, a pirate planet, and they captured us and made us their slaves, wiping all our personal memories in the process. All we know is our names." He finished bitterly.