BH-3406

> *“A wife’s death creates a widower. A husband’s death, a widow. A child without parents is an orphan. But a parent losing a child It’s a pain without words.” Boren Neuge - Broken Stars and other poems - 223, 4th Era.*
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The Kain family was respected and known in most parts of Amora before the Drop. Beside their status and their riches, ingenuity was the family’s main heirloom. Bri was no exception. At the age of 9, she was already a gifted engineer, assembling robots by herself. Her biggest pride was a racing drone. It could fly so fast above the dunes that it raised clouds of sand. She called it the Storm Feather.

Passion was the only match for her talent. Her progression through the Academy was punctuated by quarrels with the teachers, but also perfect grades. The Board of Directors noticed her and offered her a professorship at the age of 23. Some speculate that it was only to buy peace with the genius. Nonetheless, Bri took the job and directed cutting edge research on hyperspace travel. She was on the verge of a working prototype when the Drop happened.

Suddenly, everyone had access to hyperspace engines. No one understood it, but they didn’t need to. Soon, Brie’s research became irrelevant. The Board defunded her life’s work, making the Kain name fall into disgrace. Records are blurry about the few succeeding years. When the Hyperspace crisis started, and Amora was bombed repeatedly, she had basically vanished, like the rest of the Kain family. But unlike them, no grave was registered to her name.

It’s only 20 years later that she resurfaced. Photos matching her face scan showed up in the Belt Colonies registration, under the name “Fallah Kando”. A young man named Zim Kando, accompanying her, showed high phenotypic resemblance, suggesting a son or a genetic clone. They lived amongst other workers, in the industrial district of JagaTech. At this time, the company was heavily funded by the Amoran Federation, who wanted to fight back their recent invaders. Bri Kain kept a low profile and did what she did best. Only she traded small robots for exo-armors and drones for spaceships. Her expertise made her valuable to JagaTech, so when the conscription came, she wasn’t sent to the frontline. Her son wasn’t so lucky.

Zim was one of the many soldiers gutted during the failed assault on the Kataran Station. Amoran reports say that the tragedy was attributed to an ambush by the enemy. But blackboxes retrieved from the battle zone showed no sign of a surprise attack, and instead a series of confused orders from the higher ranks. Moreover, data of the commanding ships launching early hyperspace jumps to flee suggest an inexperienced commanding force. Indeed, most officers were linked to prosperous families that made their fortune with the Amoran Glass trading. A safe job to bring honour to their name.

Somehow, Bri knew this. When a soldier knocked on her door to bring her the rehearsed news of her son’s death, she didn’t flinch. The following weeks, she carried working at the JagaTech Factory, harder than ever. Archives from the security cameras show her assembling an engine. The technology isn’t from the Drop. It’s her invention. One day, she hooked it on a ship and put on an exo-armor. Before she climbed aboard, she painted off the ship’s serial number and replaced it with a new name.

The Sand Feather took off faster than any spaceship known. After that, the commanding officers who led the Kataran assault started disappearing, one by one. Some were found only years later, dismembered. No body found showed signs of a swift death. An audio file was left on the last officer: “There is no end to revenge. I have remembered your face to track you down. But I got lost in my hunt, I forgot my son’s face. There is nothing left, only grief. I am sorry Zim.”