Ghost Signal from Tau Ceti

My name’s Jace, and I fly junk rigs for a living. Tau Ceti’s outer rim was my latest gig: scout a mined-out rock called Korrath for salvage. The job was routine until my nav pinged a signal. Not static, not a beacon, but a voice. My voice. Screaming “abort” from a ship ID matching mine, timestamped tomorrow. I throttled down, heart slamming. Korrath’s blue wasteland stretched below, its shattered cliffs glinting under a sick green sky. I was alone. No way that signal was real.

I ran diagnostics. My rig, the Skarn, checked clean. The signal looped, clear as grief: “Jace, abort. It’s breaking.” I traced it to a canyon 10 clicks north. Stupid or not, I banked toward it. The Skarn’s hull rattled as wind hit, flecked with glowing ash. I’d seen ghost signals before. Old relays, pirate traps. But this felt personal, like the universe was whispering my name.

The canyon opened into a basin, and there it was: a twisted antenna, half-buried, sparking blue. Not human tech. Its base pulsed, syncing with my signal. I suited up, grabbed a pulse rifle, and dropped to the surface. The ground crunched, brittle as bone. My helmet’s HUD flickered, showing static waves that matched the voice. Every step closer, the scream got louder. “Jace, abort.” I wanted to run, but my boots kept moving.

At the antenna, I found a panel. Alien glyphs glowed, shifting like liquid. I’m no scientist, just a guy who patches hulls, but I knew this wasn’t scrap. My gloved hand brushed it, and the world split. Pain seared my skull. I saw the Skarn crashing, flames licking its frame, me inside, clawing at controls. Not a memory, a warning. The signal wasn’t tomorrow’s. It was mine, trapped in a loop, bleeding through time.

I staggered back. My HUD blinked: oxygen at 40 percent. The Skarn sat 200 meters off, but the canyon walls shimmered, bending. I ran, ash choking my vents. The signal screamed now, not words, just anguish. I tripped, saw my own face in the dust, eyes blank. Not possible. I hauled myself up, lungs burning, and reached the hatch. Inside, I slammed the console, killed the receiver. Silence hit like a fist.

But the ship hummed wrong. Lights pulsed in rhythm with the antenna outside. I checked the logs. They showed me landing twice, hours apart, same coords. My gut said run, but Korrath’s storms would shred takeoff. I patched into the antenna’s frequency, hoping to shut it down. Instead, it fed me data: a fracture, a tear where time folded. The Skarn was caught, reliving its crash unless I broke the cycle.

I had one play. The rifle’s core could overload, fry the antenna, maybe seal the fracture. Downside: it’d torch my power, strand me. I pictured home, my sister’s bar on Ceti’s hub, her laugh. Then I saw the crash again, my hands failing. No choice. I dragged the rifle back, set the core to blow. The glyphs flared, almost pleading. I didn’t care. I fired.

The blast ripped the basin apart. My suit’s alarms wailed, visors cracked. I crawled to the Skarn, felt time snap straight. The signal died. Logs reset: one landing, mine. Power was shot, but the storms eased. I had enough juice to limp to orbit, ping a salvage crew. Maybe they’d find me. Maybe not.

As I launched, Korrath’s sky cleared, stars cutting through. I wondered if the antenna was a trap or a mirror, showing what I’d lose to keep going. Pilots don’t get answers. We fly, we break, we choose. I chose to burn that signal out. If it calls again, I won’t listen. Some ghosts you leave behind.