NHist 002
Luis Octant
The man who cut seven lines into the Black, and the octant that became the first — and last — harbor.
Contents
NHist 002
The Man Who Cut the Stars
Captain Eamon Driscoll was 43 when he first stepped into the Black.
Before the Horizon’s Reach made its first jump in 2298, the CC10 sent one final order: all new sectors were to be designated by simple alphanumeric codes — “Sector A001,” “Sector B002.” Clean. Corporate. Forgettable.
Driscoll read the transmission once, then deleted it in a huff.
“I’m not naming the future after a spreadsheet,” he growled. As a lifelong student of ancient Earth history, he had spent years studying the Ogham alphabet — the old Celtic tree names carved into standing stones. To him they carried weight, poetry, and something the corporations could never trademark. When the CC10 demanded an explanation, his reply was short and final: “Get out here and name it yourself. Until then, I’ll call it what I damn well please.”
They never did. So he named them all.
It was 2298. The Horizon’s Reach shuddered as the Golden Egg warmed up. Fourteen months later they translated back into realspace at the edge of what he had already decided to call the Beith Octant.
“Beith,” he said, voice rough. “Birch. First tree. First cut.”
In 2304, as the survey fleet crossed into the second sector, Driscoll stood on the bridge longer than usual. When the final boundary beacon locked in, he spoke so quietly only his second-in-command heard him.
“Luis,” he said, almost to himself. “Rowan. My wife’s favorite tree. She always said Rowan kept the devil away.” He gave a small, tired smile. “Guess I’m hoping it keeps the Black away too.”
That single quiet moment made Luis Octant different from all the others. It became the one place in the void that felt like it still belonged to someone he loved.
The work continued for decades. By 2335, five Octants were officially claimed. His hands shook when he held a stylus. The long jumps had stolen pieces of his hearing and most of his patience. But the map he kept in his cabin — five of eight perfect slices surrounding the Core — was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Uath came in 2341. An Asteroid debris field assault during that survey nearly killed him. Dair followed in 2346. He was 91 now, thin and coughing blood, but still too stubborn to quit.
Only one slice of the Black remained unnamed. He never reached Tinne.
In the winter of 2349, while preparing for the final jump that would start the survey of the eighth Octant, Captain Eamon Driscoll suffered a massive stroke in his quarters aboard the Horizon’s Reach. He was found slumped over his beloved map, stylus still clutched in his hand.
They buried him in the Luis Octant, inside a small asteroid beacon that still carries his name today. He had left specific instructions: “Put me in Luis. It’s the only one that ever felt like home.”
The marker is simple:
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Captain Eamon Driscoll
He Cut Seven Lines Into the Black.
The Eighth Remembers Him.
Decades later, the crew of the Thorned Verge made a quiet detour during a supply run. The four of them stood in silence inside the tiny beacon, helmets reflecting the soft blue emergency lights. Lena Voss reached out and gently brushed dust from the plaque.
Echo’s synthetic voice was unusually soft. “He never got to finish his map.”
Sergeant Marcus “Raze” Keller stared at the name for a long time, then gave a single nod. “Seven out of eight ain’t bad for a stubborn old bastard.”
Dr. Elias Crowe was the last to speak, voice low. “He gave the Black names that meant something. Most of us just fly through them.”
As they filed back into their shuttle, Lena glanced back at the beacon one last time and whispered, “I’ll hum your ballad tonight, Captain.”
Somewhere in the Black, the eighth Octant still waited — silent, unnamed by the man who had drawn its shape.
Written by Otis Whitaker and the Mourning Dawns
Verse 1
Twenty-two ninety-eight, the first jump cut the night,
Eamon’s four ships on their long, lonely flight.
He told the Ten he’d name the stars the old way,
He carved seven lines from the cold endless gray.
Chorus
Seven lines, boys, seven lines,
Seven trees he gave the sky.
Eight was waiting, cold n’ blind,
When old Capt Eamon died.
Verse 2
He named her Beith where the first light shone.
Luis for the love he’d always known.
Fearn Sail Nion n’ Dair followed true,
The eighth one, Tinne, he never knew.
Chorus
Seven lines, boys, seven lines,
Seven trees he gave the sky.
Eight was waiting, cold n’ blind,
When old Capt Eamon died.
Verse 3
Free hauler crews still sing Eamon’s name,
When the jumps feel old and always the same.
Out on the rim where the edge beacons glow,
You can hear him still whisper… one more to go.
Chorus
Seven lines, boys, seven lines,
Seven trees he gave the sky.
Eight was waiting, cold n’ blind,
When old Capt Eamon died.
NHist 002
The First Last Harbor: A History of Luis Octant
The recycled air on the Thorned Verge tasted of stale coffee and wet metal. Lena Voss stood barefoot in the galley, staring at the flickering status display. They were three days out from Haven with a full load of grain and frozen meat bound for the orbital stations above MarLu Sept. The run had been smooth until twenty minutes ago, when one of the cryo-pods started bleeding temperature.
“Echo,” Lena called, voice tight, “tell me we’re not about to lose half the shipment.”
The KIND glided in from the storage bay, fingers already dancing across the console. “Pod seventeen is failing. If we reroute auxiliary power, we can save it… but it will cut life support to the cabins section for fourteen hours.”
Marcus Keller’s voice rumbled from the doorway, arms crossed. “Fourteen hours without heat and cycled air or we lose the food. Pick one.”
Dr. Crowe leaned against the bulkhead, calm as ever. “Or we could just accept that sometimes the Black takes its cut.”
Lena’s scarred hand curled into a fist. “Not today it doesn’t.” She turned to Echo. “Do it. Reroute the power. We’ll bundle up.”
Fourteen hours later, the crew was cold, exhausted, and sore, but not a single pound of food had been lost. As the Thorned Verge slowly docked with Forgepoint Station, the massive orbital platform above MarLu Sept, the station crew was waiting at the airlock.
The dock chief actually had tears in his eyes when he saw the manifest. “You beautiful bastards… we were down to four days of protein. You just bought us another month.”
Lena gave a tired smile as she watched the first pallets roll off the ship. In the Black, sometimes hope came measured in kilograms.
The First Cut – 2300 thru 2350
The first colony ships arrived in 2308. They made planetfall on what would become Dire — TerraLu Prime — A cold, harsh planet of vast grasslands and ancient conifer forests, Dire bred hard people and bigger animals. Livestock brought from Sol grew massive within a generation. The settlers grew with them. By the 2330s, Dire’s ranching clans were legendary — men and women who rode megafauna the size of old Earth elephants and laughed at the cold.
By 2325 the second habitable world, Haven — TerraLu Deux — was opened. A gentle world of rolling hills and wide rivers. Terraforming had been almost effortless here. Within thirty years, Haven was shipping grain and livestock back through the Golden Egg jumps. Families arrived in waves, entire bloodlines staking claims on land that actually felt like Earth. For the first time since leaving Sol, people spoke of “home” without irony.
The third habitable world came much, much slower. Tempest — originally called MarLu Prime — earned its nickname honestly. Savage winds, near-constant tornadoes, and brutal hurricanes made every landing a gamble. But the soil was rich and the gravity familiar. The first permanent settlements were built low and reinforced like bunkers. The people who stayed became some of the toughest in the Octant. They measured a person’s worth by how long they could stand upright in sixty-kilometer-an-hour gale.
While the three Earth-style worlds flourished, the corporation began the long, brutal work of terraforming the Mars-style planets. MarLu Deux had been burning for forty-seven years by the time the Thorned Verge crew was born — a scorching desert world where corrosive sandstorms ate through hull plating in minutes. MarLu Quint was an ice ball being slowly thawed, its polar caps melting under orbital mirrors while lethal radiation spikes still killed workers who stayed on the surface too long. MarLu Sept was a toxic swamp slowly being coaxed toward breathable air.
Two worlds were already lost. MarLu Trix had become a planetary tomb — a failed terraforming experiment that left a corrosive toxin so vicious it dissolved suits and structures within hours. No one has set foot there in over a century. MarLu Sext was worse. The attempt to increase planetary mass by dropping asteroids had cracked the crust open. Now the planet constantly vomits magma and seismic fury. Both worlds stand as silent warnings that even “safe” sectors eat their own.
The Venus-style resource worlds fed the machine. Massive gas giant VenLu Prime supplied hydrogen, VenLu Deux yielded iridium and platinum from its ever-shifting crust, VenLu Trex burned with geothermal crystals, and frozen VenLu Quad provided methane and noble gases. Together they kept the Luis economy running even as the Black pressed closer.
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The Pressure Begins – 2360s
The Free Belt Alliance revolt of 2362 barely touched Luis directly in open fighting, but its influence ran deep. Although the sector was more self-sufficient than most, many families quietly sympathized with the rebels. Luis became a refuge — a place where Free Belt fighters could disappear for a few months, where sympathetic Aftermath crews would “lose” supply crates filled with food and medicine, and where wounded rebels could heal without FourthTM patrols asking too many questions.
When the revolt was finally crushed, the CC-10’s response was cold and pragmatic. Luis wasn’t violently punished. It was simply… quietly neglected. Supply shipments slowed. Terraforming support was delayed. Critical licenses were left unrenewed for months. The message was clear without a single shot being fired: sympathy had a cost.
That quiet neglect became permanent when the central AI hub was destroyed and every automated shipyard died with it. Luis suddenly understood that the fleet they depended on was finite. Every lost Nemesis-class ship was irreplaceable. For the first time, even the most content families began to feel truly vulnerable.
Families who had lived on Haven and Dire for three generations began to understand something their grandparents never had: we cannot guarantee help is coming and this might not last.
That realization did two things to people. Some grew harder. The ranching clans on Dire started training their children younger, teaching them to shoot before they could read. The wind-hardened families of Tempest built deeper shelters and stronger walls. They became the backbone that kept Luis functioning.
Others broke quietly.
Whole families simply stopped having children. Divorce rates climbed. Suicide rates climbed faster. The CC10 responded with the usual corporate benevolence — more benefits, more necessities versus luxuries — but the cracks were already showing.
And then the monsters arrived.
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The Long Siege – 2380 to 2440
The first confirmed Xenonid sighting in Luis came in 2381 — a supply shuttle from the neighboring Sail Octant that docked at Haven with three crew members already changing. N.A.C.S.S. burned the ship in orbit rather than risk landing.
In 2429 a single infected shuttle slipped through quarantine and reached the capital of Windspire. Within forty-eight hours the city of two hundred thousand was crawling with Xenonids. Local politicians, still clinging to pre-infestation laws, demanded a voice in the response. They wanted committees, hearings, and a 48-hour delay so “civilian leadership could be consulted.”
N.A.C.S.S. answered with a single orbital strike. The entire capital was glassed from orbit in six minutes. No warning. No negotiation.
That single act became the moment “Twice is enough” stopped being a slogan and became law. The message was carved into the soul of every world in Luis Octant: when the monsters come, there will be no debate. There will only be fire.
Primebloods followed soon after. The slithering creatures first appeared on MarLu Sept, the toxic swamp world still undergoing terraforming. They didn’t just survive the poisonous atmosphere — they thrived in it. Within months entire sections of the ongoing bacterial seeding operations were lost. N.A.C.S.S. fire-teams were forced to rotate out every six weeks because even sealed suits couldn’t protect them from the nightmare swamp. Unlike the Primebloods who would just molt a new skin.
Nightstalkers proved even worse. They began slipping through from the Nion Octant, using the black between stars like a highway. They hit Dire hard. The megafauna herds that had grown massive over generations became the perfect breeding ground — the Nightstalkers didn’t just hunt them, they used the giant carcasses as nurseries, laying eggs in the cooling bodies of thousand-pound prey. Entire ranches were wiped out in single nights. For nearly four years the ranching clans of Dire fought a grinding war against an enemy that could see in total darkness and move like smoke. Entire bloodlines were lost before the N.A.C.S.S. finally helped burn the last known nests out of the deep forests in 2397. Even today, some of the oldest ranching families still refuse to go out after sunset.
Luis never suffered a full planetary outbreak like Beith did. That was the point. It became the last safe harbor precisely because the sector learned to amputate the infected parts without hesitation. Entire orbital stations were vented. Colonies that showed confirmed infection were glassed from orbit. The people of Luis did it to themselves, because the alternative was losing everything.
On Haven, parents taught their children blood scans before bedtime stories. On Dire, teenagers competed to see who could hold their breath longest during hull breach drills. On Tempest, the wind itself became part of the defense — few creatures could fly or crawl effectively in sustained hurricane forced winds.
Captain Driscoll’s rowan tree comment became a dark little in-joke. When they vent an infected station or watch another orbital strike burn across the sky, someone always mutters, “Rowan’s keeping the devil away real well today,” half-bitter, half-hopeful.
The same families that grew stronger also grew colder. Trust eroded. Every new face on a station was scanned three times. Every Aftermath shuttle that docked was met by armed N.A.C.S.S. troopers and a KIND running full bio-spectral analysis.
SUBs became both vital and suspect. Their smugglers kept critical supplies moving when official channels failed, but everyone knew some of those ships carried more than just spare parts. The gray market became the only place certain luxuries could be found… and the only place certain horrors could slip through.
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The Present — What Remains
Today, Luis Octant is still standing. Barely.
Haven remains the breadbasket, though its population growth has flatlined. Dire’s megafauna ranchers have become the sector’s unofficial defense force — their long-range hunting skills translate disturbingly well to hunting things that used to be human. Tempest, after nearly two centuries of brutal winds and harder people, formally applied for IPA independence three months ago. The first successful IPA world in Luis. The CC10 approved the application in record time. Some say it was a reward. Others say the CC10 was simply tired of pretending they could control a planet where the wind itself fights for the locals.
The failed worlds still circle like scars. MarLu Trix and MarLu Sext stand as monuments to hubris, yet even they are not empty. Every planet in the sector, habitable or not, hosts sprawling orbital stations and workforce habitats. The four Venus-style worlds teem with refineries and mining platforms. The ongoing terraforming projects on MarLu Deux, Quint, and Sept — despite their pain and setbacks — still demand thousands of workers across generations. There is always another shift to pull, another system to repair, another load of ore to process.
And that may be Luis Octant’s quiet miracle: while entire sectors starve in the Black, Luis still puts full bellies on the table. Two fertile worlds keep the food flowing, and as long as the stomachs are full and the stations need hands, people still have purpose. In a galaxy being devoured, that small mercy is the last thread of hope most crews dare to hold onto.
Life in Luis still carries a strange, stubborn optimism. Children on Haven grow up learning both how to drive a combine and how to run a spore scanner. On Dire, teenagers race megafauna across the grasslands by day and drill evacuation procedures by night. Even the orbital workers above the failed worlds and toxic swamps treat their dangerous shifts with a kind of grim pride — every repaired panel, every processed ton of ore feels like another day stolen back from the Black.
As long as the fields on Haven and Dire keep producing and the stations keep needing hands, Luis refuses to admit it’s dying. It may be the last harbor, but for now… it’s still a harbor.
Through it all, the Thorned Verge and dozens of other Aftermath crews keep flying. They service the remaining Nemesis-class ships, run emergency resupply to isolated stations, and bring back anyone still breathing.
NHist 002
Luis Octant (2)
Economic Symbols:
- Red Bullet: Military (1)
- Yellow Wrench: Industry (1)
- Green Plus: Research (1)
- Blue Starburst: Service (1)
Faction Influence
- CC10 : Dominant
- NACSS: Strong
- IPA: Present
- SUBs: Occasional
Neighbors Octant – Luis, Sail, Nion
Planetary Masses
- (Earth style) TerraLu Prime – Nickname: Dire. A cold, rugged world of vast grasslands and dense conifer forests. Like Earth’s Ice Age, it supports massive megafauna. Livestock brought here grew unexpectedly large, and so did the settlers.
- (Earth style) TerraLu Deux - Nickname: Haven. Formerly Marlu Quad. A peaceful world of rolling hills and wide rivers. Originally too hot due to excess CO₂, it was the easiest to terraform and the first one completed, despite its remote backwater location in the sector.
- (Earth style) TerraLu Trex – Nickname: Tempest. Formerly Marlu Prime. Fully habitable Tara Lu planet known for extremely high wind speeds, frequent tornadoes, and powerful hurricanes. It has just recently applied to become an IPA member world.
- (Mars style) MarLu Deux - Status: Ongoing Terraforming for 47 years. Scorching desert world with corrosive sandstorms. Adding moisture to stabilize the atmosphere.
- (Mars style) MarLu Trix - Status: Failed. The terraforming disaster released a corrosive toxin that destroys suits and structures within hours. No boots on the ground possible.
- (Mars style) MarLu Quint - Ongoing Terraforming for 29 years. Frozen ice ball with lethal radiation spikes. Melting polar caps to create oceans.
- (Mars style) MarLu Sext - Status: Failed. An attempt to increase planetary mass through orbital asteroid bombardment cracked the crust, causing constant seismic instability and massive surface eruptions. No safe landing possible.
- (Mars style) MarLu Sept - Status: Ongoing Terraforming for 12 years. Toxic swamp world. Burning off methane and introducing oxygen-producing bacteria.
- (Venus Style) VenLu Prime - Massive gas giant. Harvests hydrogen for fuel refinement.
- (Venus Style) VenLu Deux - Cracked planet. Surface constantly shifts with massive fissures. Mines of iridium and platinum.
- (Venus Style) VenLu Trex - Lava-covered inferno. Mines rare geothermal crystals
- (Venus Style) VenLu Quad - Frozen comet-like world. Extracts liquid methane and noble gases.