Starcalled · Gabriel Alvarez

Book 1, Chapter 3: The Last Human

September 14, 2018·42 min·4 clips

A desperate battle aboard a dying starship leaves one pilot dead and another permanently blinded.

A battle is already underway. The Clement hangs near the relay and sheds pieces while Colonial starfighters and battlecruisers hammer the jump line. Three pilots run for what is left of control. Osborn seals the bulkhead, then pushes for secondary control before the Dranixide pods are gone, or the ship is. There is no spare minute here. Fuses need a reset, systems need a flush, and the hangar still matters because the pilots are supposed to reach the Lunar Base. Later, the language work turns into triage. Hol'Kari glyphs crawl across the notes, and the translator admits a battalion of xenolinguists might need twelve cycles. That lands badly. Idari is already under pressure, and the talk tightens around suspension, duty, pain, and a private errand still hanging loose. Sirenus Kron moves anyway. He asks about lower-deck construction, scans his tarsal claw, brings Larus online, and takes the lift under confirmed authorization. Deck 74 gives way to Deck 61. What started as procedure now feels like a breach with paperwork. On Adari, the sand shifts. The Varenian sits badly on its slender hull, hurt at the hammot-side atmospheric engine, while amber eyes watch from a stone archway. Elona Zoan wakes armed. High-security cargo comes off the ship, Commander Tighe checks a helmet map, and the repair window stays brutally short. Then the rooftops answer. Tower Watch spots three Hol'kari squads, drones fall back to Corbin, and warriors rise with glowing plasma pikes as the fight locks in.

As heard by us

A fast, tightly run chapter where every override feels immediate.

Book 1, Chapter 3 keeps Starcalled moving at a brisk clip, folding a starship battle, translation work, lift overrides, and cargo handling into one tight run of pressure. The chapter works best when it treats procedure as something that can go wrong in real time.

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Why you'd press play

You want sci-fi that opens in a starship battle and keeps the pressure on.

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