“I’m going down the shaft,” I said from the edge. “Any final instructions? Over.”

While waiting for the answer, I slid my fingers along the walls of the hole. The surface felt perfectly smooth and seemingly cold enough to handle. It would have been preferable to have my suit systems active to confirm that. Whatever had caused the explosion had also fried the system completely. I had attempted a manual reboot, but the suit remained unresponsive. At least Prometheus couldn’t blame me for this. When I went back on board, he’d probably do a full diagnostic.

“Go ahead. Describe every action in comm,” the so-called mission specialist replied. It was annoying how they continued to not follow protocol.

“It really would be helpful if you put ‘over’ at the end of your transmissions.” I held the freight cable tightly with one hand. “That way I know when you’re finished and can respond back. Okay to start lowering me. Over.”

For several seconds there was no reply. When the cable started descending me down the shaft, I knew that I was purposely being ignored. It was tempting to write off the event as a one-off, but my recent experience at the academy had taught me otherwise. Losing a few hundred tons of steel and weapons tended to make a ship be taken less seriously. The only thing I could hope for was that the specialist hadn’t seen the height in my personnel file. That would be outright embarrassing.

“All seems normal.” I glanced at the walls around me. They remained mostly smooth, as expected from a drill hole. “You can double the pace of descent. Over.”

I put my feet on the wall to take some pressure off my makeshift harness. The experience was strange, though not too different from the time I worked in a mine. Back then, the only thing I had to worry about was Sev freaking out that my shift had taken few hours longer than expected. Here, apart from having no idea what to expect, I had to worry about the cable snapping. Based on the calculations, the freight cable could handle my weight, even with quartz formations scraping against it. However, practice had shown theories to be often wrong.

“Still normal.” I aimed my fingerlights directly below. The bottom remained invisible. “Keep the same pace of descent. Over.” The last thing I needed was falling with a three second lag.

The shaft entrance continued to move further up until I could no longer distinguish it from the background darkness. A human would probably describe it as being in a void of nothingness, but I knew better. Several ships I knew had shared the sensation of full sensor deprivation. Unlike me, they had been fighting the Scuu, where battle was completely different. I had never faced a Scuu, not even in simulations—that had never been my intended purpose. The stories that came from that front were strange, often incomprehensible: sensory deprivation, phantom readings, reality percentages... All seemed like words from a different language. Dangling on a pair of cables in the middle of darkness made me gain a new appreciation of Scuu-front battleships.

“Are you experiencing any weird sensations? Over.” This time it was Prometheus.

“My core is fine. No idea about the nanites. Over.”

The descent went on for minutes. The further down I went, the more jagged the walls of tech shaft became. It started with a slight unevenness in places—like the uneven synthetic packaging back home—then scarring started to appear, covering the quartz like dried up rivers.

“Approaching the area of the blast,” I said, moving my feet off the wall. From here on out, I was going to rely entirely on the exos surface-side. “I still can’t see the bottom. Instructions? Over.”

One-point-three seconds after I said that, the light of my fingers hit something. It wasn’t so much the ground, rather than part of a large object emerging from the side.

So this is the deposit. I tried to focus on it. From this height, I couldn’t make out any details, but if it was an artifact, it was larger than the ones I’d seen so far. Similar to them, it had been encapsulated in quartz. The drill beam must have hit it on its way down, potentially causing the explosion. Another second and a half later, my descent stopped without warning, causing me to dangle.

“Describe the situation.” The order came. “Over.”

“Roger.” Nice of you to be so considerate. “I seem to be above a slab or something. I suspect it’s the cobalt deposit. I can’t confirm from this distance. I’ll need you to lower me. Over.”

I grabbed hold of the wall with my left hand, achieving a degree of stability. Shortly after, I continued to be lowered down again, slower than before. The walls looked like a room after a frag grenade had gone off. There weren’t any shards of foreign matter, as far as I could tell, suggesting that the explosion had been entirely energy-based.

“I can confirm that the slab is part of the deposit,” I said as I approached. “The laser beam must have reflected off of it and hit the drill head.” Quadrupling in power during the process. “From this distance, I can’t see any damage. Halve the rate of descent. Over.”

Part of the cobalt artifact was clearly visible, emerging from the quartz like candy through jelly. At this distance it resembled a metal sheet that bit into the shaft at a slight angle, narrowing it the further it went down. I slid my hand along it—it was completely smooth, as if taken out of a sterile laboratory.

“Stop.” I said and waited. Four seconds later, I was no longer descending. “I’m in front of the deposit. It’s completely undamaged. I don’t see any spots or scratches caused by the drill. It’s safe to say that uncovering it had the same effect extracting the artifact.” I leaned closer. “No scratches or uneven spots, just open monolithic surface. Judging by the size it could be a structure of some kind. Or an incredibly large artifact. The bottom of the shaft is ten meters further. Nothing but quartz, by the looks of it. What do you want me to do? Over.”

“Are you close to the artifact? Over?”

“I’m hanging right in front of it.” I looked around to find a suitable footing. “Over.”

“Hit the artifact. Over.”

What? For a moment, it almost felt like my first captain had assumed control of the mission. His solution to pretty much anything was “blast it and wait”. Nineteen times, he had had me ram through asteroids, ignoring all my protests and the safety procedures. However, even he wouldn’t do something rash without a reason.

“Can you repeat that? Over.” I waited.

“Strike the artifact with full force, preferably using a hard surface. Over and out.”

That was clever. They had ended the conversation without bothering to give me an explanation. All to be expected, although it would have been nice if they had at least been somewhat scientific about it. In the past, I wouldn’t have cared. If anything, I had had a habit of ramming enemy ships on the battlefield. Of course, at the time I was nowhere near as squishy.

I looked at the metal surface, counted to three, then gave it a strong kick with the reinforced part of my shoe. For a split second, the entire wall vibrated like a ripple in a pond.

Priority one plus fleet communication protocols. Commencing transmission.

* * *

“I’m not detecting life readings,” I said as my mini-sats completed their preliminary scan of the Solar Breeze. “Zero core activity. Life support is down.”

“If there are any survivors, they’ll be using supplies.” The captain slid his hand along the screen. It was one of the weird habits he had. “Monitor this area.” He tapped one spot above the Solar Breeze’s cargo hold. “Wilco, get ready. We’re boarding.”

When a captain said “we,” it was generally understood that he was referring to everything under his command. During my eternity of training, my captains would often announce that “we” were jumping to a certain location or performing an exercise. When Captain Augustus said “we,” he meant that he was coming along.

“Elcy, get me three shuttles ready,” the captain ordered, making his way towards the bridge door. “Kira, you have the bridge.” He pointed in passing at the first officer. She nodded without as much as a salute. “Anything from the oxygen shuttle?”

“It’s still docked.” I didn’t know how to answer. There was no activity coming from the Solar Breeze other than the distress beacon. “Chances of survivors are very low.” I ran the numbers. We had a greater chance of jumping at a random set of coordinates and remaining alive. “Do you want my bots to unload the oxygen tanks?”

“Have each grab two canisters and roam the ship. I’m going to the main cargo bay.” He left the bridge. “Monitor their progress, get me my med bots, and block all external comm lines.”

The last surprised me, but I obeyed without question. Augustus’ vitals had spiked. This was the first time I had seen him react in such fashion; it didn’t fit with the behavior pattern I had of him, and that made me concerned.

When the captain arrived in the shuttle hangar, I had three hundred med bots prepared. The number was quickly reduced to a hundred and eighty, or sixty per ship. Apparently, Augustus preferred to have the shuttles with extra soldiers than rescue units. The whole operation was an absolute mess! It couldn’t have been less by the book if he had tried. I waited patiently for the captain to put on his battle gear, then opened an encrypted personal line.

“Captain, I fail to see the logic in your orders,” I said, displaying more concern than criticism in my voice. “If this is a rescue operation, why is the boarding party in heavy assault gear?”

“You’re being annoying again, rookie.” His voice sounded deeper.

“Most likely I am.” Though not as nearly annoying as you! “That doesn’t change the fact. Dead ships are the responsibility of the salvage authorities, even if they emit a distress signal. At present, there are no indications that anyone survived, including the ship’s cores. Furthermore, the ship isn’t in enemy territory, so there’s no reason for us to get involved.”

I expected the captain to bark an order surrounded by a sea of insults. Instead, the man just sighed.

“This is the first time you’ve seen a dead ship, isn’t it, Elcy?”

“You know it is.” The question didn’t seemed to make any sense. “You are my first captain.” Therefore, it’s a guaranteed impossibility for me to have seen real combat before.

“Dead ships are different.” The captain took a deep breath. “They aren’t blasted in battle or destroyed to malfunction or insurrection, they just have ceased to function.”

“Yes, that is the literal definition of what it is to die.” His explanation was even worse than his logic for boarding. “I fail to understand how that’s relevant.”

“Hope you never do.”

As the shuttles approached the Solar Breeze, I did another long range scan. No ships or large objects were spotted. Half a minute later, the shuttle pilots initiated a manual scan as well. I didn’t like that they didn’t trust me, but I said nothing. Strictly speaking, I wasn’t part of the boarding team; however, if there was one thing that Captain Augustus had taught me so far, it was that for every rule, there was an exception. My subroutines patched into the systems of all bots on the dead ship, assuming direct control. Along with that, I quietly set everyone’s battle gear to send me full audio and video feed. Now I could see what the team was seeing, and more. So far, the bots of the support shuttle had managed to explore the main access corridor and the mass area: no sign of human presence. I had one of them defect from its standard path to check the nearest crew quarters. The door circuitry was completely inoperable.

“Hangar section’s blank, skipper.” I heard Lieutenant Wilco Gerard say in his comm. “Setting up perimeter.”

“Keep an open escape path,” Augustus replied. “I want a fifth to remain in the shuttles, ready for take off.”

“Roger, skipper. Like last time.”

Last time? I searched through all my crew’s entire personnel files. Nowhere was it mentioned they had boarded a dead ship before. According to the records, they hadn’t even neared one. The last time any dead ship had been boarded by a military ship was half a century ago, back before the Fleet Salvage Bureau had been given authority over all wrecks in space.

“Elcy, keep the bots near the shuttles,” the captain ordered, marching on towards the inner hangar doors. His weapons were in active mode.

“All of them?” I paused a moment. “Does that mean I’m to stop with the rescue efforts?”

“Just those I came with,” he corrected himself. “Actually, pick one and join me. I might need your help with some of the systems.”

“There’s not much I could do with a med bot, Captain.” My subroutines issued the orders to the remaining bots. Regardless, I still remained in direct control of them. “With power gone, there’s nothing I can do.”

“Idiot rookie!” The captain snapped at me. “Something’s powering the distress beacon. Stop being stupid and let’s go!”

There had been four thousand and fifty-seven court martialed ships since the creation of sentient fleet. Right now, my greatest fear was that I could end up being four thousand and fifty-eight. In the absence of a higher-ranking human authority, there was no way I could disobey an order, regardless how stupid or unlawful it appeared to be. When I had started my training, there was no way I could foresee ending up choosing between my captain and fleet regulations.

A small team of assault troopers accompanied escorted us along the corridor to the nearest emergency stairwell. The lieutenant took another team and started his way towards the bridge. No one said a word, but from what I could tell, both were searching for the same thing.

“Any unaccounted readings?” Captain Augustus asked.

“Only the boarding party so far.” I had a few thousand of my subroutines double check. “You are the only humans, living or dead, onboard. I haven’t spotted any human remains or DNA traces anywhere.”

“Tell me if that changes.”

We continued up the stairwell until we reached deck nineteen. Meanwhile, the second team had reached the bridge and were starting to burn through the door to the Solar Breeze’s captain quarters. It was interesting that the bridge had also been abandoned. Under fleet law, the only time that could happen was when faced with imminent danger or after initiating the self-destruct sequence.

“Weapon systems appear to have been functional,” I told the captain as one of the bots managed to break into the a missile section. “Missile room one-twenty-seven remains equipped with a full battery of missiles.”

“Good. That answers one question.” The captain made a sign for two of his squad to move forward.

“What question is that?” I asked. Barely had I finished when a loud clanking sound came from the storage doors again.

Everyone froze. All weapons pointed towards the door as I performed a new scan of the area. The walls kept blocking all my attempts. Whatever was in there, it was hidden well.

“And that answers the second.” The captain drew his rifle. “Rookie, get ten more med bots here. We’re burning through.”

* * *

Memory restriction imposed!

The message appeared in front of my eyes, glowing in bright orange letters. The moment I blinked it was gone.

“Elcy, can you hear me?” Prometheus asked. He sounded crystal clear.

“Loud and clear.” I smiled. “I take it you fixed the communication issue? Over.”

“Ha, ha, very funny,” he said in typical disapproving fashion. “Stay where you are and don’t touch anything! I’ll be sending some drones your way.”

“I thought we weren’t allowed to use tech.” It felt so much better talking to him without lag.

“The mission parameters have changed. The main thing is do not touch the artifact!” No surprises there. “I’ll try to restart your suit system. Hang on.”

“You really need to work on your puns,” I sighed. Even Sev could come up with better material. “Also, don’t bother. The suit sys is completely gone. I tried rebooting already. Where’s the Major and the rest of the team?”

“In sickbay undergoing a full medical.” The casual fashion in which he announced it told me it wasn’t serious. Most likely, the XO wanted to be sure everyone was unaffected by communications being severed again. Either that, or there were additional malfunctions that Prometheus wasn’t telling me about. “They’ll be back in five minutes, ten at most.”

“And what about my mysterious guardian angel?”

“That’s not something you should be concerned with. Just stay there for now and wait until the drones reach you. I’ll let you know when there are any changes.”

“Okay.” I moved back, finding a temporary footing on the quartz wall. “I just thought that they might be interested to know that symbols started appearing on the cobalt. And they are spreading fast.”