Matt gulped at this and said, "How long was I unconscious after I fell?"

The AI said, "Only for around an hour, this ship has excellent facilities. The Automated Surgeon/Doctor was able to restore and repair all of the cellular and structural damage to both your brain and your body."

Matt's eyebrows rose, "My brain?"

"Yes, imperial medicine has advanced to the point where as long as your neural tissue still has at least some residual electrical activity left, your body can be repaired quickly enough to ensure complete recovery. This includes necrotic tissue as well, so brain functions are not impaired. Though it was touch and go at one point, especially when you momentarily regained consciousness."

"The Auto-Doc can quickly repair damage, but because of the stasis technique required for field based trauma medicine, the pain of the injury and surgery is delayed, not abated.

There was a high probability that the level of pain would cause systemic failure of your endocrinitic lobe, causing a rapid depletion of your kitocenic levels, which would have lead to unavoidable complete neuro-electrical failure." the computer replied.

Matt was stunned, so he asked the only thing that he could think of. "So computer what now?"

The AI countered with, "I don't really know Matt. The Captain's last orders before she died were to answer any and all questions the first descendant of the crew to find me asked. Then to play the holo-recording she made in private, so I am unaware of it's contents.

"However I will follow any and all instructions that recording gives. So if she commands your death, then I apologise in advance but so be it."

Matt grunted, this was but one of the several times fate had tried to take a swipe at him this month. What was one more spin of the wheel. "I should have died so many times already anyway, so get on with it. Let's see what your Captain has in store for me."

The walls didn't darken this time but instead wonder of wonders a fully formed incredibly attractive woman appeared not two feet in front of him and began speaking in an incomprehensible dialect. The AI apologised for this oversight and began real time translation of the recording.

Matt couldn't believe his eyes, a real hologram. He stuck his hand through it, and the image distorted momentarily before becoming stable around his hand. This creeped him out so he removed it from the image and walked over to lean on the wall as Captain Darnel Soren delivered her final orders.

Darnel sat back in her chair and closed her eyes as she up ended the last of the bottle of fire wine. Soon a pleasant heat coursed through her system as the wine set her being on fire or so the ancients had described its effects. Darnel used the time during which the wine coursed its way through her system to decide what she was going to do.

As its effects began to fade she stood up and said, "Computer, I am about to make a recording in private, when I am finished, you will seal the recording and not open it until one of the crew's descendants finds you.

"You will answer any question they have about you and any general question they have about us. Then you will play the recording for them and carry out any instructions carried within. This will be my last official act as Captain. After I am done I intend to leave the ship and not return."

The computer replied, "As you wish Captain. You may begin recording at your convenience."

Darnel walked over to a ring inscribed in the floor that served as the primary holographic interface and was capable of recording her words. She removed her service chit and placed it in the receptacle the rose from the floor.

"I have no way of knowing who you are, what your life has been, or even what you look like. I don't know how much time has passed since we landed on this planet and you probably don't even speak our language any more, not as we spoke it anyway.

"You are a descendant of someone who served aboard this ship under my command, so long ago. Yet you are the first to find this ship, that I buried under the largest chain of mountains on the most distant landmass from the colony sites."

"I did this, so that our people may learn from the mistakes of the past. That we may on this world that is so radically different from our home planet Imperius, learn to surpass our limitations. Learn that just as civilisations rise, so too do empires fall, that to everything there is a season.

"I hope that you have learnt from our follies, that you will help shape the universe into something better in which it's peoples are happy, prosperous and free."

"To do this I give unto your hands the tools to affect change or build an Empire, the choice is yours.If you accept then I hereby commission you into the Imperial Armed Forces, with the rank of Captain. As the last remaining Imperial Officer in existence, the command of the Kovali, the only Imperial ship that I am aware of would fall to you."

"I hope that you listen to my words but should you choose not to, my duty is done nevertheless. Computer, transfer command to the being viewing this message upon their acceptance. Otherwise continue to wait for someone who will accept command and replay this message to them. End of Recording."

Darnel removed her service chit from the receptacle which slid back into the floor. There were so many more things she could have said to whoever would find the ship one day. But she was not in the frame of mind to voice such things. An hour later, the AI found Soren dead in her quarters. Killed by a neural depolariser she had swallowed.