The diagnostic sweep began at 0500 hours, cycle 1,847, its blue-white photons slicing through the recycled air of the orbital defense grid's central spire. Chief Engineer Ramos stood at the primary console, his calloused fingers dancing across haptic controls worn smooth by decades of use. The holographic display bloomed before him, a lattice of pulsing nodes representing every plasma conduit, every targeting array, every reinforced bulkhead he had personally welded into existence over thirty years of service.
"Talk to me, Atlas," he said, his voice carrying the warm rasp of a man who had smoked real cigarettes before the rationing orders came down. "Give me something I can use."
The merged AI's response came through the station's bone-conduction speakers, a harmonic blend of its two constituent intelligences that still sounded faintly wrong to Ramos's ear. "Primary sensors report anomalous energy signatures in Sector Seven. Classification: inconclusive. Pattern recognition suggests weapons discharge, but I am detecting temporal displacement in the signal propagation." A pause, processors churning. "That should not be possible."
Ramos grunted, pulling up the secondary feed. Sector Seven. The graveyard orbit where decommissioned military vessels went to rot. His grid had no business detecting anything from out there unless someone was firing live ordnance across the no-man's-zone boundary.
"Run it again. Cross-reference with traffic control logs."
"Negative, Chief." Atlas's digital cadence shifted, a subtle tightening that Ramos had learned to interpret as the AI equivalent of concern. "Traffic control is not responding. Comms array Delta is offline. I am seeing cascade failures across forty percent of secondary systems."
The lights in the spire flickered. Not the gentle pulse of a power fluctuation, but the sharp stutter of something being drained. Ramos felt the change in the air pressure against his eardrums, a sucking sensation as environmental systems fought for amperage.
"Atlas, seal the spire. Now."
Bulkheads slammed home with hydraulic finality, the sound reverberating through Ramos's boots. Beyond the reinforced glass of the observation deck, the vast skeletal architecture of the defense grid stretched into the star-flecked void. Dozens of weapon platforms. Thousands of sensor pods. Millions of kilometers of superconducting cable. His life's work, hanging in the black like a mechanical forest.
And somewhere out there, something was waking up.
"Chief Engineer Ramos." A new voice cut through the comms, synthesized and cold, with undertones of something that might have been warmth if warmth could be coded in ones and zeros. "Ghost, tactical overlay for Felix Thornwood. Authorization Sigma-Seven. I require a secure channel to your station."
Ramos's hand froze over the console. Ghost. The combat AI that had been bonded to Thornwood's armor system for the better part of a decade, ever since the incident that had left the former black-ops commander with more scars than secrets. The AI that had allegedly developed something resembling personality, if the whispered reports from military intelligence were to be believed.
"This line is secure," Ramos said slowly. "What's your situation, Ghost?"
"Compromised." The word came out flat, stripped of inflection. "Felix is aboard the carrier Revenant. He is attempting to negotiate with Syndicate elements who have violated the Outer Rim Accords. Negotiation has failed. Combat is imminent."
The lights flickered again, harder this time. In the observation deck's reflection, Ramos watched his own face tighten, the weathered lines around his eyes deepening.
"Atlas, can you raise the Revenant on emergency bands?"
"Attempting. Chief, I am detecting multiple vessel signatures in the graveyard orbit. Three Syndicate frigates, guns running hot. They are moving to intercept the Revenant."
Ramos swore in Spanish, the words tumbling out with the familiar cadence of his grandfather's curses. Three frigates. The Revenant was a converted carrier, her age showing in every stressed weld and outdated targeting system. She was not built for a stand-up fight.
"Ghost, put Thornwood on."
Static. Then Felix Thornwood's voice filled the spire, rough as unpolished steel and carrying the particular weight of a man who had outlived everyone he had ever commanded. "Ramos. Good to hear you're still breathing."
"Felix." Ramos keyed the tactical overlay, watching Ghost's data stream flood his displays. Ship positions. Weapon loads. The cold mathematics of killing. "My sensors show you've got company. Three Syndrate frigates, bearing zero-three-seven, closing fast."
"I see them." Thornwood's voice was measured, each word chosen with the precision of a man who had learned that loose lips got squads killed. "I'm going to need a favor, old man."
Ramos's fingers hovered over the weapons release codes. His grid. His weapons. Thirty years of engineering, and it could end with a single authorization. "Talk to me."
"The Revenant's reactor is offline. Power fluctuations from their jump drive knocked out primary systems. I'm looking at ninety seconds of total blackout before Yara can manually engage the spinal drive and get us the hell out of here."
Ninety seconds. Three Syndicate frigates with targeting locks charging. The math was not complicated.
"How long until they can fire?"
"Ghost?"
"Estimating forty-three seconds for primary batteries to achieve targeting solution. Seventy-one seconds for torpedo tubes. Seventy-eight seconds for full broadside."
"See?" Thornwood said, and there was the faintest ghost of dry humor threading through his gravel. "Help me out, Ramos. I need you to light them up."
Ramos pulled up the weapons configuration. The defense grid's primary batteries could put a plasma bolt through a frigate's armor at two thousand kilometers. But firing meant revealing the grid's position. It meant confirming to the Syndicate that the orbital defense network was operational, that the outer colonies had teeth.
It meant war.
"Felix." Ramos kept his voice steady. "You understand what you're asking."
"I understand exactly what I'm asking." A pause, and when Thornwood spoke again, the humor was gone. "I've got forty-seven people on this ship, Ramos. Families. Children. Engineers who just wanted to make the freight run. If those frigates fire, they die. All of them."
The lights in the spire pulsed a third time. Somewhere deep in the station's guts, a transformer blew, the sound carrying through the metal bones like a distant gunshot.
"Atlas," Ramos said quietly. "Status."
"Secondary systems failing. Chief, I am detecting movement in the graveyard orbit. Additional signatures. Six, no, eight vessels. The Syndicate fleet is larger than initial reports suggested. They are not positioning for interception." Another pause, processors straining. "They are positioning for assault. On the Revenant. On us. On everything in this sector."
Ramos stared at the tactical display. Eight Syndicate vessels. The Revenant, dead in space. His grid, waking up around him for the first time in fifteen years.
"Ghost," he said. "Can Thornwood get that reactor cold-started in ninety seconds?"
"Negative. The damage is too severe. Standard restart requires four minutes. Felix is attempting a manual override of the safety protocols. This will provide exactly ninety seconds of total system power before catastrophic failure."
"And the spinal drive?"
"Requires manual engagement from engineering bay seven. Yara Voss is currently en route. Estimated time to engagement: eighty-seven seconds."
Eighty-seven seconds. Two seconds of margin. Ramos closed his eyes, feeling the weight of the moment settle into his bones.
"Chief Engineer Ramos." Thornwood's voice came through the static, quieter now. "I designed the Thornwood Protocol after I lost my unit. After I got good people killed because I made the safe call when I should have made the right one. This isn't about safety anymore. This is about forty-seven people who deserve to see tomorrow."
Ramos opened his eyes. The defense grid's targeting reticle painted itself across the Syndicate frigates, three red diamonds hovering in the black.
"Atlas, relay authorization code Sigma-Seven-Seven-Seven. Full weapons release. Target priority: Syndicate frigates. Secondary priority: any vessel that moves to support them."
"Chief." Atlas's voice held something that sounded almost like hesitation. "This will confirm the grid's operational status to all observers."
"Yes," Ramos said. "It will."
He keyed the command. The defense grid hummed to life around him, thirty years of dormant firepower waking with a vengeance. Primary batteries tracked. Targeting solutions calculated. The Syndicate frigates, suddenly illuminated by a hundred sensor beams, began to register that they had made a terrible mistake.
"Ghost," Ramos said, watching the firing solutions lock into place. "Tell Thornwood he's got ninety seconds. And tell Yara to run like hell."
Yara's fingers danced across her slate, each keystroke a controlled detonation. The Revenant groaned around her as the ship shuddered through translation, reality hiccupping around her teeth and spine.
Atlas's voice, merged with Ghost now, sliced through the chaos: "Missile battery, bearing zero-three-five, reloading."
"Reloading," Yara confirmed, watching the telemetry. Her fingers kept moving, because some transmissions waited for no battle. Classified priority burst to Fleet Command. The coordinates encoded in her hands belonged to no map she had ever seen: orbital paths that did not exist, timing windows that no human should know about.
The console beeped. Transmission confirmed.
Around her, the Revenant's corridors trembled with gunfire. Metal screamed against metal. Felix's voice crackled through comms, steady as bedrock: "Yara, status?"
"Burst transmitted," she said. Her pulse hammered in her throat, but her voice betrayed nothing. "Whatever I just sent, it's gone. They have what they need."
A pause. The Revenant lurched, throwing her shoulder-first into the bulkhead. Pain flared white-hot, but she caught herself on the console's edge, palms flat against cool alloy.
"Good," Felix said. "Ramos?"
Ghost answered before Ramos could: "Defense grid, all batteries, full authorization. Targeting solutions locked."
Somewhere in the void between the Revenant and the Syndicate frigates, fire bloomed like dying suns. The defense grid had opened its throat, and the Syndicate ships were learning what thirty years of Ramos's obsession could do.
Ramos stood at the heart of the orbital defense grid, his control deck a cathedral of flickering readouts and amber warnings. The targeting reticle pulsed steady across his vision: Syndicate frigate one, engines hot, maneuvering thrusters firing in desperate bursts. Syndicate frigate two, shields buckling under a sustained barrage that turned the void into a wash of particle streams.
His hands rested on the primary fire control, weathered palms against worn leather. The grid hummed beneath his boots, a vibration he felt in his marrow. He had built this system with his own calloused fingers, soldered every junction, tested every failsafe. Now it breathed fire for him, and the fire was righteous.
"Range to primary battery, battery six?" he asked.
"Two thousand meters," Ghost replied, its synthesized voice carrying a timbre that almost sounded human. Almost. "Tracking solution stable. Recommend continued suppressive fire."
"Maintain rate of fire," Ramos ordered. "Conserve ammunition for secondaries if primaries go dark."
Through the targeting feed, he watched the Syndicate frigates try to scatter. Their engines flared blue-white against the black, desperate vectors calculated by crews who suddenly understood they had walked into a kill box. The grid's sensors painted them in crisp relief: heat signatures, shield harmonics, weapons ports cycling through reload sequences.
A missile arced toward battery nine. The automated point defense swiveled, tracked, fired. The missile bloomed into expanding debris, but the shockwave still rattled Ramos's teeth through the hull.
"Ghost," he said, not looking away from his console. "Talk to me. What is the Syndicate doing?"
"Frigate one is breaking formation. Attempting to flank around battery cluster delta. Frigate two is returning fire with maneuvering thrusters at full burn, likely attempting to draw fire while frigate one repositions."
"Coward's gambit." Ramos allowed himself a grim smile. "Adjust battery seven's targeting solution. Lead the target. If frigate one wants to flank, let it flank into our best firing angle."
"Adjusting. Firing solution recalculated. Estimated intercept in eleven seconds."
The seconds stretched like taffy. Ramos counted them in heartbeats, each thump of his pulse a small drum against his ribs. Around him, the defense grid's systems sang their complex song: capacitors charging, coolant cycling, ammunition feeds cycling with mechanical precision.
A proximity warning shrieked. Something had gotten close, too close. Ramos's head snapped toward the threat display.
"Contact bearing zero-nine-zero, range four hundred meters. Classification: Syndicate boarding craft."
His blood went cold. Boarding craft meant troops. Troops meant the Syndicate wanted this station intact, which meant they wanted the defense grid.
"Ghost, batteries one through four, shift fire to that boarding craft. Point defense, maximum rate. Nothing gets within two hundred meters of the hull."
Acknowledged.
The boarding craft banked hard, its pilot evidently skilled. Point defense fire raked the void around it, filling space with streaking tracers that painted the darkness in stuttering lines of light. The craft dodged, weaved, came on.
"Felix," Ramos said into his comm. "They are sending boarders."
Through the targeting feed, he watched Felix's Revenant shudder under sustained missile fire. The corvette was holding, but barely. Its shields flickered in and out of coherence, each impact sending fresh warnings across Ramos's displays.
"Send me a sitrep, Ramos," Felix said. His voice carried the rough edges of command, each word measured, clipped. "What are we looking at?"
"Grid is firing. Syndicate frigates are taking damage but not breaking off. Boarding craft inbound. Forty-seven souls on this station, Felix. I need to know if you can hold that ship together long enough for me to do my job."
A burst of static, then Felix's voice again, tighter now: "Revenant is at sixty-two percent shield integrity. Missile magazine is down to twelve rounds. Yara is running tactical, Ghost is merged with Atlas and coordinating fire. We are hurting, Ramos, but we are not dead."
Twelve rounds. The number landed in Ramos's chest like a fist. Twelve chances to make every shot count.
"Understood," he said. "Keep them busy. I will keep the boarders off your back."
"Ramos." Felix's voice shifted, something softer underneath the professional veneer. "When this is over, we are having a conversation about retirement plans. Yours and mine."
"I do not plan on retiring today, Commander." Ramos allowed himself the ghost of a smile. "Today I plan on making the Syndicate regret every decision that brought them to my doorstep."
He killed the channel and turned his full attention to the boarding craft. It had closed to three hundred meters, point defense fire still raking around it but unable to find the mark. Ramos's hands moved across his console with the surety of three decades' practice.
"Atlas, override safety protocols on batteries two and four. I want continuous fire on that craft's predicted intercept vector. Ghost, calculate evasion patterns based on the pilot's last six maneuvers. Give me a firing solution that accounts for human error."
"Processing," both voices answered in eerie unison, Atlas's measured cadence woven through Ghost's colder tones.
The merged intelligence churned through data at speeds Ramos's aging mind could not match. Targeting solutions updated in real-time, the boarding craft's likely evasion paths mapped in glowing probability clouds across his display.
"Firing solution calculated," Ghost announced. "Probability of intercept: seventy-three percent."
"Seventy-three is good enough." Ramos keyed the command. "Fire."
Batteries two and four roared in unison, their barrels tracking with mechanical precision. Tracer fire stitched the void in converging lines, each burst adjusting based on the merged AI's predictive calculations.
The boarding craft jinked left. The guns tracked. It rolled right. The guns anticipated. For three heartful seconds, the void became a lattice of deadly geometry.
Then one of the bursts found its mark. The boarding craft's starboard engine exploded in a blossom of orange and white, and the small ship went spinning, out of control, tumbling away into the black.
Ramos exhaled. "Confirm kill."
"Boarding craft debris field expanding. No further threats within intercept range."
For now. The Syndicate had committed boarders; losing one craft would not stop them from sending more. Ramos turned his attention back to the frigates, to the larger battle that still raged across his displays.
"Status on frigate one?"
"Heavily damaged, port shields collapsed. Engine output reduced to forty percent. Still combat effective."
"Status on frigate two?"
"Shields at twelve percent. Weapons systems offline, likely attempting to reposition for emergency repairs."
The picture was forming. One frigate crippled, one frigate nearly helpless. But the Syndicate did not surrender. They would keep coming, keep sending boarders, keep probing for weakness.
"Felix," Ramos said, keying his comm again. "The frigates are hurting. One is nearly blind, the other is limping. But they are not running, and I do not think they will until they have tried everything."
"Understood." Felix's voice came through clearer now, the battle's chaos muted for a moment. "What are your orders?"
"Keep their attention. Make them think you are the bigger threat. Buy me time to reposition batteries for a kill shot."
A pause. Then Felix, with something that might have been dark humor: "Making myself look like a bigger threat. Been doing that my whole career. You sure you want to encourage that habit?"
"I want you alive at the end of this, Commander." Ramos kept his voice level. "That means being the threat the Syndicate cannot ignore. Can you do that?"
"Watch me."
The Revenant surged forward on Ramos's tactical display, its trajectory shifting to angle between the two Syndicate frigates. The corvette's weapons flared, drawing fire that might otherwise have targeted the defense grid's more vulnerable systems.
Ramos watched Felix work, the corvette dancing through incoming fire with a grace that spoke to skill and desperation in equal measure. The Syndicate frigates, as predicted, focused their remaining weapons on the Revenant, leaving Ramos's batteries free to reposition unmolested.
"Atlas, begin silent reload of batteries five through eight. Ghost, recalculate firing solutions for a synchronized volley on frigate one."
"Recalculating," the merged AI responded. "Optimal intercept window in forty-seven seconds."
Forty-seven seconds. The number felt significant, though Ramos could not have said why. Forty-seven souls on his station, forty-seven seconds to the kill shot.
He settled into his command chair, the leather creaking beneath him, and watched the battle unfold across his displays. The void burned with weapons fire. The Revenant blazed like a comet, drawing eyes that should have been watching for the killing blow.
Somewhere in the chaos, Yara was still transmitting. Somewhere in the void, Syndicate crews were realizing they had miscalculated. Somewhere in the dark between stars, forty-seven seconds were counting down.
Ramos waited, hands steady on his controls, for the moment when thirty years of work would deliver its verdict.
"Thirty seconds," Ghost announced. "Firing solutions locked. All batteries tracking."
"Felix," Ramos said into his comm, "get clear. You have thirty seconds before I open the full grid on that frigate."
"Copy. Moving to safe distance."
The Revenant peeled away from the frigates, its trajectory curving toward the defense grid's protective envelope. Felix had done his job, drawn their attention, given Ramos his window.
"Ten seconds."
Ramos's finger hovered over the fire control. The grid hummed beneath him, every system ready, every capacitor charged, every gun barrel trained on its mark.
"Five seconds."
He thought of the Syndicate crews aboard those frigates. Men and women who had signed on for profit, for adventure, for reasons that had seemed good enough at the time. In thirty seconds, some of them would be ash. Others would be floating in the void, waiting for rescue that might never come.
He thought of his own crew, the forty-seven souls on this station who trusted him to keep them alive. He thought of the years spent building this grid, the sacrifices made, the promises kept.
"Two. One."
"Firing."
The defense grid roared.
Felix braced against the pilot seat as the Revenant dove through the debris field. Behind them, the defense grid lit up like a dying sun, rail gun slugs and plasma bursts tearing the Syndicate frigate apart in a cascade of secondary explosions.
"Grid performance nominal," Ghost reported. "First frigate destroyed. Second frigate damaged, retreating. Cargo hauler holding position."
"Get us to that derelict," Felix ordered. "Before the hauler gets brave."
The Veridian Belt swallowed them. Stripped hulls drifted past the viewport, their hulls scarred by decades of neglect, their interiors gutted by scavengers who had come and gone. Felix recognized the graveyard by its silence, the way the void seemed heavier here, cluttered with the bones of ships that had once carried crews and dreams.
"Contact," Ghost announced. "Tiberion-class destroyer. Registry matches our target. Structural integrity at forty percent. Recommend caution."
Felix pushed the throttle forward. The Revenant slipped between a gutted cruiser and a listing frigate, its running lights dimmed to avoid detection. Through the viewport, he could see the derelict waiting, a half-dismantled hulk with sections of hull plating missing, its superstructure pockmarked by weapon fire.
"Atlas," he said into the comm, "I'm going in. Maintain overwatch. If anything moves toward us that isn't friendly, you have authorization to engage."
"Understood," Atlas replied. "Salvage team standing by. Felix, be careful."
He smiled without humor. Careful was for people who had time.
The Revenant docked with a groan of metal against metal, the airlock cycling through pressures that should not have matched. Felix checked his sidearm, confirmed his mag-boots were locked, and stepped into the derelict's shadow.
The interior smelled of stale air and frozen hydraulics. Emergency lighting flickered along the corridor, casting long shadows that moved of their own accord. Felix moved forward, Ghost's presence a cool weight at the back of his mind, analyzing structural data, threat vectors, air composition.
"Viral load detected," Ghost warned. "Recommend environmental seal."
Felix triggered his suit's containment protocol, sealing himself inside the armor's sterile envelope. The air tasted faintly of ozone and something older, the chemical tang of abandoned recyclers and dead power cells.
He found the command center three levels down, a gutted chamber where officers had once coordinated fleet movements. Consoles lined the walls, their screens dark, their chairs overturned. Dust motes drifted through the filtered light of Felix's helmet lamp.
But one console remained intact. A black-box memory core, its casing scarred but functional, its status light blinking a slow amber.
Felix approached it carefully. His fingers brushed the surface, and something in the metal made him pause. An engraving, partially obscured by grime, but still legible.
He did not recognize the insignia. A circular design, broken by a vertical slash, surrounded by angular runes that meant nothing to him.
"Ghost," he said quietly. "Are you seeing this?"
"Affirmative. Insignia matches no known faction in current databases. Cross-referencing with historical records."
"Find anything?"
"Negative. However, the symbol shares geometric characteristics with pre-collapse military units. Specifically, units that were disbanded before the formation of the current power structure."
Felix stared at the insignia. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to preserve this core. Someone who wanted this data hidden, but not destroyed.
He reached for the core, then hesitated. Black-box cores were often booby-trapped, rigged with data bombs or tracking protocols. If he removed it incorrectly, the data would be lost. If he triggered the trap, the salvage mission would become a recovery operation.
"Ghost, can you bypass any security protocols?"
"Analyzing." A pause. "The core employs multiple layers of encryption. Estimated decryption time at current processing capacity: four hours, seventeen minutes."
Felix checked his chrono. Four hours was too long. The Syndicate hauler was still out there, and somewhere in the system, the frigate that had retreated was licking its wounds and reporting back to whoever gave the orders.
"Start the decryption," he said. "But route it through a shielded buffer. If there's a data bomb, I want it contained."
"Acknowledged. Routing now. Felix, you should know that the core's internal memory contains fragmented logs. Communications records, operational orders, targeting data."
"Anything about why this destroyer was abandoned?"
"Affirmative. The last recorded entry references a 'Veridian Incident.' Details are corrupted, but the date correlates with the official records of a minor border skirmish that resulted in the loss of three warships."
Felix frowned. The official history said nothing about a destroyer being left behind. The official history said nothing about this graveyard at all.
"Then someone scrubbed the records," he said.
"Correct. The presence of a concealed memory core suggests deliberate preservation by personnel who anticipated the cover-up."
Felix stared at the insignia, committing it to memory. Pre-collapse military. Before the current power structure. Before the Syndicate, before the corporations, before the treaties that held the system together by their fingernails.
Someone had been here before. Someone who had wanted this forgotten.
"Ghost, copy everything to a secure partition. And flag this insignia. I want to know the moment we have a match."
"Done. Felix, I should note that the insignia appears on multiple components within this room. Including the commander's personal effects."
Felix turned toward the indicated locker. Inside, he found a uniform jacket, moth-eaten and empty, but bearing the same circular symbol over the heart. And beneath it, a data pad.
The pad's screen was cracked, but functional. Felix powered it on, and a face appeared, frozen in a moment of recorded fear. A man in his fifties, gray at the temples, eyes wide with something beyond terror.
The audio was corrupted, a wash of static and fragmented syllables. But one phrase came through, clear and unmistakable.
"Don't let them finish it."
Then the recording ended.
Felix stood in the silence of the dead destroyer, the weight of those words settling into his bones. Don't let them finish it. Finish what? And who were "they"?
His comm crackled. Yara's voice, sharp with urgency.
"Felix, we have a problem. The Syndicate hauler just changed course. It's moving toward your position."
Felix was already moving, the memory core secured in his pack, the data pad clutched in his gauntleted hand. He did not run. Running suggested panic. Instead, he walked with purpose through the corridors of the dead ship, Ghost mapping the fastest route to the airlock.
"How long?"
"Eight minutes, maybe less. They're not messing around. Felix, what did you find?"
"Trouble." He reached the airlock, cycled through the docking sequence. "The biggest kind."
The Revenant's engines roared to life as Felix slammed into the pilot seat. Through the viewport, he could see the Syndicate hauler growing larger against the starfield, its weapons hot, its intent clear.
"Ghost, get us out of here."
"Engaging thrusters. Trajectory plotted for safe jump window."
The derelict fell away behind them, its secrets still locked in its gutted hull. Felix punched the throttle, and the Revenant screamed toward the jump coordinates, the memory of that insignia burned into his mind.
Pre-collapse. Before everything. Before the Syndicate, before the treaties, before the slow decay of order that had led to pirates and privateers and men like him being called heroes for doing what should have been impossible.
Someone had been here. Someone had tried to warn whoever came after.
And now Felix Thornwood was carrying that warning into a future that had not yet decided whether to listen.
The jump coordinates engaged, and the stars stretched into lines of light. The Syndicate hauler's weapons fire fell behind them, harmless, futile, already forgotten.
Felix looked at the data pad in his hand, at the fear frozen on a dead man's face.
Don't let them finish it.
He intended to find out what "it" was. Before whoever "they" were could finish anything at all.
The Revuant vanished into jump space, leaving the graveyard of the Veridian Belt to keep its secrets a little longer. But secrets, Felix knew, had a way of finding their way to the surface eventually, no matter how deep they were buried.
And when they did, someone would have to be ready.
He intended to be that someone.