The Earth Colony (October 2022)

Top of the class at the NASA (North Atlantic Space Agency) Academy and veteran of multiple tours throughout the galaxy, he had been selected and trained for a special military operation on a recently-settled Earth colony 100 light-years away. During the course of his highly-classified covert actions to sabotage enemy life support systems, he was injured by laser fire and was deemed no longer viable to complete his mission. Because NASA now regularly used hyperdrive technology, he arrived back on Earth only 200 years later (Earth time) ... but in the wrong place.

He was parachuted from the returning spacecraft on account of the secrecy of his mission but owing to human error was dropped in the middle of a tropical rainforest in an unexplored archipelago somewhere between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. On landing in the high canopy, he was rescued by a hitherto undiscovered indigenous jungle tribe. The most likely explanation for the community's isolation was that it was believed that there were no resources of value, e.g., energy and minerals, but then copper, nickel, platinum and gold deposits were discovered on the nearby seafloor. Since deepwater mining had become profitable due to the increasing scarcity of strategic metals and recent innovations in ocean mining technology, the area's profile had been raised. Countries and companies were again sending out teams to scour the oceans and seas across the planet.

The astronaut—still recovering from severe burns to his arms and hands—suffered two broken legs, a dislocated shoulder, and contusions on the face and head from his crash landing. Upon being brought down safely from the treetops, he was taken in and cared for by the reluctant shaman on the orders of the chief elder. The shaman was a cautious and wise man—and, actually, the oldest person in the village—but the chief elder's daughter intervened on the helpless astronaut's behalf, and so the astronaut was treated with the utmost respect and concern during his lengthy recovery.

Over the course of the months spent living among his island hosts, the astronaut discovered that the highly-regarded skull in the shaman's possession was most likely that of the Chilean geologist whose shabby, weathered leather-bound journal had also been retained as a sacred artifact—sacred because it symbolized an evil force that had been defeated by the tribal gods. Discreetly—though not from regard to form or privacy—he read snatches of the journal when the shaman was thought to be away performing one of his frequent rites and ceremonies.

He had to read by candle light, because there was no electricity. And there was no running water. In fact, there was little to nothing to suggest that life on this planet had advanced technologically to the point that it maintained distant colonies light-years away in other galaxies.

He was careful not to disturb the order of anything he touched, and when he once spilt candle wax on the bed cover, he meticulously scraped away the wax residue. It was in the journal that he learned who had hired the geologist and what the geologist's investigations had turned up. That provided the impetus he needed to plan his next move. The shaman, meanwhile, must have known that the journal had been discovered, for it had the white man's smell.

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The astronaut never returned to NASA, though the agency spent millions combing the waters and land over a period of several months. He was, after all, counted as one of NASA's most valuable assets and very expensive to replace. No traces of a NASA landing anywhere within a thousand-mile radius of the last beacon report were to be found. Nor was there any evidence of indigenous human life in this remote archipelago. Such had also been the results of the Australian mining company's investigation of its Chilean geologist's disappearance four years earlier, though that recovery mission was on a much smaller scale.

However, for those who were keeping track, two-and-a-half years after the NASA spacecraft was monitored re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, an Australian-Chinese mining company established a mobile base in the island chain. The remains of the Chilean geologist were respectfully but quietly returned to the nearest Chilean consulate, but no records of his expedition were ever officially retrieved. And no first contact with the indigenous people has ever been made public.

The astronaut became the de facto governor of the archipelago—a sinecure really—nominally under the territorial government but answerable to Shanghai-Sydney for the profitability of the deep sea mining operations, which were now unofficially defended by a contingent from the Australian-Chinese Navy's Indo-Pacific battle fleet.