The Queen Hesperia under construction above the Moon

The Queen’s Saboteur

The Queen’s Saboteur is a browser-playable science fiction interactive fiction and classic text adventure in development for Unseen Lands. It is a direct prequel to The Star Astraea, set years earlier during the construction of the first Hesperia-class colony liner, The Queen Hesperia.

Above the Moon, the biggest ships in human history are built in zero gravity where whole futures are assembled out of scaffolds, transit tunnels, pressure doors, service decks, and quiet procedural work. To most people, the Queen Hesperia is proof that colonization has already won.

To the Custodians, it is proof that protest failed. You play Miranda Quinn, a systems integration technician working under cover inside a four-person infiltration team. Your mission is not to blow the ship apart. It is to seed it with the kind of hidden faults that survive launch, stay buried in the record, and wake up later when nobody can turn back.

In Development direct prequel to The Star Astraea

Orbital construction bay aboard the Queen Hesperia build works

What it feels like

A covert mission inside a living construction project where the danger is not open combat, but access, timing, records, inspections, misplaced tools, restricted corridors, and the constant pressure of doing suspicious work without ever looking suspicious. The ship is unfinished, crowded, and procedural. That helps you. It also means mistakes stand out.

You are not here to save the ship. > look Construction bay. Open framework, tether points, suspended work platforms, cabling runs, tagged panels, and a hundred places for a careful hand to leave trouble behind. > check panel Fresh install. Passed this morning. It will pass again if you leave it alone. > open housing You crack the access panel just far enough to work without advertising that it was touched. > plant fault Not a dramatic failure. That would be amateur work. What you leave behind is smaller than that. Cleaner. The kind of problem people blame on distance, wear, or luck. > listen Tools clatter. Air handlers hum. Someone laughs over comms. Nobody sounds worried. That is the whole point.

About the story

The Queen’s Saboteur follows Miranda “Mira” Quinn and a four-person Custodian infiltration team embedded in the build crew of the Queen Hesperia. Mira handles systems-side work and diagnostics. Around her, the rest of the team moves through inspection, logistics, and construction access, each of them carrying a different piece of the mission.

The story begins on the Moon, moves quickly to the ship, and returns to the Moon at the end. The Queen Hesperia is still in buildout, not voyage, which changes everything. This is a ship full of open work zones, contractor traffic, incomplete sections, and procedures that are still being tested into place. That gives the team room to operate, but it also means every planted weakness has to survive later inspection, commissioning, and launch preparation.

This is where the long sabotage begins. The failures that later haunt The Star Astraea do not come from nowhere. They begin here, with hidden choices, buried access, and a team trying to scar a future starship badly enough that the damage will still matter years later.

Control room overlooking Queen Hesperia construction operations

Quick facts

For readers, streamers, and anyone following the Astraea setting.

genre: interactive fiction / text adventure / parser game / science fiction / sabotage thriller status: coming soon setting: orbital construction space above the Moon role: Miranda Quinn, systems integration technician and covert infiltrator structure: Moon to ship to Moon connection: direct prequel to The Star Astraea focus: infiltration, hidden sabotage, access control, procedure, evidence, and long-term consequences platform: web browser (no install) saving: automatic progress when released

If you liked tracing the consequences aboard The Star Astraea, this story moves backward to the moment those consequences were first put in motion.