Before her, a thousand glittering stars lay spread across the dark blanket that was the void of space

Before her, a thousand glittering stars lay spread across the dark blanket that was the void of space. She leaned down on the hard window sill and placed her forehead on the glass, exhaling. A tiny cloud of mist formed on the window where her hot breath landed. It wasn’t always like this, she thought, as she stood in the diminutive room that served as the meeting hall, I was once part of something, I feel it. For a long time, she had been lost in the void of darkness surrounding her existence. It was all she remembered, the crew had found her, wandering around a deserted planet, the remains of her ship charred and gnarled around her.

She knew not where she came from, nor her reason for being there. She knew only her name. The Captain took her on, as an ambassador, for she spoke every language in the Alliance. That was eleven years ago, now, at twenty-three, she had just recently left the great ship Destiny Fighter. The beaten and war scarred battleship being a type of sad tribute to her spirit, fighting her way through her life. In over a decade, not even a splinter of information had broken through the dark chasm of her past, except the dreams.

Having studied at her Captain’s hand, being taught everything she wished to know, she had become one of the most intelligent soldiers in the Alliance. Even though she could not rightfully join the Alliance, her species being unknown, yet humanoid, she was adopted by the Captain, and given his last name.

For the first five years, she had tried to remember anything of her past, her race, her language, anything. But the languages jumbled in her head wouldn’t allow her to recall which one she was born to. The only clue she had to the past was a tattoo located on her left hand, given to her when she was young. It looked to be a globe, surrounded by dots, in intricate patterns, forming the strangest images.

Now, her past consisted of two thousand crew members, who knew her as well as she did, maybe better, a father who didn’t know her birthday, or her last name, a best friend that was a year older then her, the complete knowledge of seven thousand languages, and a tattoo.

She turned and sat down in a chair at the meeting table. Leaning back, she closed her eyes and sighed, imagining again the charred remains of her ship, the torn, battered clothing on her thin, pale and starving twelve year old form. Her hunger was getting the best of her, the smoke choking her lungs for days, she tried to remember what happened, but all she remembered was the screaming. Nothing made sense, the voices, the yells, the alarms, the lights, everything going off at once, and she remembered nothing but the appearance. Seven thousand languages in her vocabulary, and she couldn’t make out what they were all yelling about.

She found herself unable to breathe as she recalled the repressed memory of the smell of burning electrical wires, and the stench of molten metal. The grass was blackened with soot, and her face smudged with dirt. She couldn’t figure out why she was the only one left, why she didn’t die with the rest of them.

Gasping for a breath of fresh air, she jolted in her seat, seeing for the thousandth time, the faces of those who had died, she shook violently as if being thrown around, the faces of so many people flashed before her closed eyes. She hadn’t the strength to open them, to inhale, to move. She just shook as though some current were coursing through her blood.

Years had gone by since that day, when the Destiny Fighter had landed, and gathered her into its crew’s arms. They had nursed her back to health, the doctor, an extraordinarily beautiful woman, named Doctor Amanda Ronin, had cared for her cuts, scrapes and bruises, while the psychiatrist on board, a man named Doctor Malcolm Young, answered her questions. With the days that followed, it had been the crew that had held her when she cried, each loving her as a daughter. She recovered from the ordeal completely, with the exception of her memory. Dr. Ronin said that it may come back gradually, quickly, or not at all. Severe mental trauma and repeated blows to the head had caused a fluctuation in the brain, resulting in full memory loss.

Her biological traits were not found anywhere in the Alliance computer base, her species had never been encountered before. Her tissue samples showed advanced hemoglobin amounts, her immune system was strangely inclusive, and her respiratory and nervous systems were far more advanced then those of genetically engineered life-forms, yet she was completely humanoid.