Chapter 1: THE DYING MAN'S CARGO
Blood filled my mouth.
Not the slow copper trickle of a split lip. This was drowning. My lungs seized, coughing up wet chunks that splattered across hands I didn't recognize.
Wrong hands.
Too thin. Scarred differently. The calluses were in the wrong places.
A klaxon screamed somewhere above me. Red emergency lights strobed through smoke and floating debris. My back pressed against cold metal, pinned under something heavy—cargo crates, I realized, as my eyes adjusted. A freighter's hold. The whole structure groaned and shuddered around me.
"WARNING: HULL BREACH IMMINENT. ESTIMATED TIME TO FAILURE: THREE MINUTES."
The voice was mechanical, feminine, utterly calm about announcing my death.
My death. Again.
The memory hit like a sledgehammer. The VA hospital in Bethesda. The clot they found too late. My son's face through the ICU glass, his hand pressed flat against it while the monitors flatlined—
No. I shoved it down. That was before. That was Earth.
This wasn't Earth.
The control panels flickering overhead weren't any technology I recognized. The cargo straps were some kind of energy webbing, not canvas. The air tasted like recycled atmosphere and burning circuitry. And outside the viewport—
Stars. Not the stars I knew. Wrong constellations. Wrong everything.
"TWO MINUTES FORTY-FIVE SECONDS."
The crate across my chest shifted. I grabbed the edge and pushed, leveraging my body weight sideways. Something in my ribs screamed protest—cracked, maybe broken—but the crate moved. Inch by inch. My arms trembled with effort that shouldn't have been this hard.
This body was weaker than mine. Malnourished. The muscles felt like wet rope.
I rolled free and hit the deck plating. Stars burst behind my eyes. When the spinning stopped, I pushed myself up on hands and knees, breathing through the nausea.
Memories that weren't mine surfaced in fragments.
Ven Calder. The name came with a face I'd never seen in a mirror—angular features, hollow cheeks, a scar through one eyebrow. A smuggler. Small-time. Running from someone. The details blurred like trying to read underwater, but the fear was crystal clear.
Ven Calder had been terrified of something. Someone.
And now I was wearing his body like a stolen coat.
"TWO MINUTES."
I forced myself to stand. The hold was a disaster—crates scattered everywhere, sparks showering from a ruptured conduit, a crack in the hull plating that whistled with escaping atmosphere. Through the doorway ahead, I could see the corridor to the cockpit.
Move, Morgan. Assess later. Survive now.
Three tours in Afghanistan had burned one lesson deep into my bones: you can't solve problems if you're dead.
I stumbled forward, using the walls for support. The ship lurched violently, and I slammed shoulder-first into a bulkhead. Pain flared down my arm. I kept moving.
The cockpit was small—two seats, a console covered in lights and alien script, a viewport filled with something that stopped my heart.
A planet. Rust-red and volcanic, filling half the sky. We were falling toward it.
No, not falling. The ship was trying to land, but the controls were sparking and half the console was dark. The AI was attempting something automated, but half the systems weren't responding.
"WARNING: ATMOSPHERIC ENTRY IMMINENT. BRACE FOR—"
The ship hit atmosphere like a truck hitting a wall.
I flew forward, caught myself on the pilot's chair, and threw myself into the seat. My fingers found straps—some kind of harness—and I pulled them across my chest just as the viewport turned orange with friction fire.
The controls were meaningless. I didn't know how to fly this thing, couldn't read the symbols, couldn't even guess which button did what. But I could see the ground rushing up through gaps in the flames. Volcanic rock. Some kind of settlement in the distance.
Star Wars.
The thought crystallized with horrible clarity. The ship design. The technology. That planet—I'd seen it before. In screenshots. In episode summaries. In the endless wiki binges during my recovery.
Nevarro.
I was falling toward a planet from a fictional universe, wearing a dead man's body, and I was about to crash.
The noise became everything. Metal screaming. Wind howling through the hull breach. The AI's calm countdown lost in the chaos. I gripped the armrests hard enough to feel the bones in my fingers flex.
This is how I die twice.
The ground filled the viewport.
Impact.
Darkness. Then light, stabbing through my eyelids.
I tasted blood again. Fresh. My lip was split, pressed against something hard. My ears rang so loud I couldn't hear my own breathing.
You're alive. Somehow. Figure out why later.
I opened my eyes.
Sunlight streamed through cracked transparisteel—the viewport, I realized, now a spiderweb of fractures. The cockpit was tilted at a sharp angle, half-buried in volcanic rock. Smoke curled from a dozen small fires.
My whole body hurt. Cataloging: ribs definitely cracked now, maybe three. Split lip. Possible concussion—the headache pulsing behind my eyes suggested yes. Everything else felt bruised but functional.
I'd survived.
And so had this strange new reality I'd woken up in.
The host's memories surfaced again, clearer now. Ven Calder. Thirty years old, give or take. Smuggled cargo between systems. Owed money to someone named Vesh—no, Rendo Vesh. A lot of money. He'd been running when the ship failed.
Now I was the one being hunted. Wearing a dead man's debts.
Movement outside caught my attention.
Through the cracked viewport, shadows crossed the rocky ground. Human-shaped, but I couldn't make out details through the damaged glass. Three of them, approaching the wreck.
My military training kicked in. Unknown contacts. No weapons. Injured. No backup.
Escape routes. The emergency hatch behind the cockpit—I'd seen it during my stumble forward. If I could reach it before they reached me—
One shadow stopped. Gestured to the others.
They'd found the hull breach.
I unstrapped myself as quietly as possible, biting down on a groan when my ribs shifted. Every second counted. I needed to move.
My hand brushed a cargo strap on the floor, and something strange happened.
A jolt ran up my arm. Not pain—something else. Like static electricity, but deeper. And then my hand was holding something that hadn't been there before.
A credit chip. Small, unmarked, warm like it had been in someone's pocket.
I stared at it.
What the hell?
Voices outside. Alien language I didn't recognize. They were getting closer.
Questions later. I pocketed the credit chip and moved toward the hatch, ignoring the fire in my ribs.
The hatch groaned when I hit the emergency release. Too loud. The voices outside stopped.
I pushed through into harsh sunlight.
The wasteland stretched in every direction—volcanic rock, sulfur vents steaming in the distance, a rust-colored sky with twin suns burning overhead.
Twin suns.
Earth had one.
Behind me, the scavengers started cutting through the hull.
I picked a direction—away from them, toward the distant smoke that might be a settlement—and ran.
Author's Note / Support the Story
Your Reviews and Power Stones help the story grow! They are the best way to support the series and help new readers find us.
Want to read ahead? Get instant access to more chapters by supporting me on Patreon. Choose your tier to skip the wait:
⚔️ Noble ($7): Read 10 chapters ahead of the public.
👑 Royal ($11): Read 17 chapters ahead of the public.
🏛️ Emperor ($17): Read 24 chapters ahead of the public.
Weekly Updates: New chapters are added every week. See the pinned "Schedule" post on Patreon for the full update calendar.
👉 Join here: patreon.com/Kingdom1Building