A note in the ship’s log: just outside the city of En'Dohthmir, Earth 427.

We landed the Sanguine Sojourner on the nearby sandstone outcropping and took the float car into the burnt out husk of a town. The otherwise barren valley had almost overgrown the place with dry vines and weather-bludgeoned trees. Clouds streamed across the cold-blue sky in a dull parade. I’d been here back in ‘94 during the Great Scourge, so I knew the way better than Ava or Kal. We drove the float car through the winding operatic thoroughfare. All was deserted—a stark contrast to the death and clamorous distress of the forrays I had experienced on these very streets. But that was thirty years ago. I was a military man then and the Scourge was still afoot. We fought the Scarship raiders tooth and nail in those days, only for them to burn it all as they retreated to the Shattered Suns.

But I at least knew the streets now, as a dreamer returning to his nightmare. The Scarships were gone but the scars remained—the smell of ash and death. We had won in the end, but we had won only the echo of what we’d fought so long and hard for. Now the beautiful museums and the Grand Library of Adnaxela lay in charred ruins, their shelves and displays crushed and empty.

If the library was an egg, it had been spilt over cold rocks, and now only the shell remained. When I vocalized this thought, Kal scoffed at the analogy, but I ignored him. Kal did not care for poetry anyway, therefore his judgements on the methods were predictable to say the least. It was a good thing too that Kal was not our chronicler—our ship’s log would be a dreadful bore, all numbers, guns, and game theory.

We parked the float car at the library’s entrance and made our way through the ruins on foot. It had once been a beautiful literary museum, bursting with rich narratives and scholarship. Now, half caved-in, ceiling blown away by Scarship blast rays, the old library barely echoed its past grandeur. I shuddered, remembering the Heartless pouring out of their scarships in droves, faces hidden behind their silver visors. I saw them in my mind’s eye, their armored mech suits, rampaging through the library, shredding priceless manuscripts like children stomping sandcastles. We had fought hard that day, but there was only so much we could do.

I led the way through the maze of tall, barren shelves, in search of what could very well be the last artifact on Earth 427. Since the Scourge, this place had been stripped of any surviving artistic works—all artifacts were carted back to the Innerlands for safekeeping. Since then, the artships had considered this place empty. We only came to this system following the call of the Art Detector.

It was a small risk. Earth 427 is mostly deserted, reclaimed by the Artship Military Directive. The blue and green planet lay well within Artship territory. We did not anticipate a Scarship encounter. That meant our greatest risk was the artifact itself—was it a longform narrative? A collection of poems perhaps? Hopefully the former, because our narrative propulsion systems were running on fumes at this point, but we would take whatever inspiration we could get our hands on.

The real risk was this: we had no idea what language the artifact was written in, only that it was an original manuscript and therefore would produce higher efficiency inspiration. We had a whole drawer full of untranslatable manuscripts. Sure, some of them we could run through the automatic translator, but the results rarely retained the inspirational potency of handcrafted translations. In other words, computer-translated poetry had the inspirational power of a lone packing peanut. Not quite nothing, but definitely not much of anything either.

The ping on the Art Detector holotable did not give us much besides location and quality of artifact, which often resulted in long hunts for artifacts that turned out to be duds. But we couldn’t complain too much—the machine was our brilliant Captain Ava’s own invention, the great secret that distinguished the Sanguine Sojourner from the other Artship scavenger crews.

I paused my revere to examine a dusty, half-crushed bookshelf. Goodness this place was desolate. We passed the blown-out hull of a small artship, half-buried in its own crater. Ava paused, staring at the artship’s rear-shield, a curious expression on her face.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I don’t know...” Ava said slowly. She narrowed her eyes, and held her breath as she always did when she was trying to remember something. The edges of her eyes wrinkled slightly.

Kal glanced around, uneasy. “This place gives me the creeps,” he said, shifting the launcher rifle in his arms. “Can we hurry up, locate the artifact, and show ourselves out?”

Ava shook herself loose, nodding in agreement with the burly gunner. I raised an eyebrow. Kal and Ava rarely agreed on anything, especially in the field. We trod onward, scouring the shelves as we went. It would have been faster with all of us searching, but our two other crewmates had stayed behind to watch the Sanguine Sojourner. You could never be too careful.

It took us an hour to scout the first floor, but we found ourselves standing around the crashed ship once more. If this artifact was here, it was either on the roof’s remnants or under the floorboards. I wondered if the crashed ship had concealed or buried the manuscript under the rubble. Ava’s eyes narrowed at the burnt-out artship. I did not understand her continued interest. The ship was standard military issue back in ‘94.

“This ship is not from ‘94,” Ava said, as if reading my mind and finding the thoughts insufficient. “That’s what bothered me this whole time. Couldn’t quite put a finger on it.”

“Looks standard military issue to me,” I said. A blue kite insignia stuck out from under the buried part of the ship. “I thought clean-up crews hauled this kind of stuff out back in ‘98. Perhaps they missed this one.”

“No. Look at the rear shield. The ship is an old model, but that rear shield is a new techlon model from last year. Besides, the ship barely has any dust on it. It looks like it crashed here last week.”

She had a good point. I opened my mouth to concede but something clattered behind us. We spun on our heels, drawing our weapons. I held a simple launcher tight against my shoulder.

A woman peeked around a scorched pillar, wide-eyed and jumpy. She had frizzy brown hair, shoulder length, just curly enough to be fluffy, but not curly enough to form locks. Her mud splattered jacket bore the blue kite insignia from the wrecked artship behind us. Ava holstered her weapon. Kal and I lowered ours but kept them handy.

Ava asked the woman for her name.

“Mary Westley,” she said.

“Is that your ship behind us?”

“Yes.”

“Are there any other survivors?”

“No,” Mary said. “I only came with the Onboard 4Z. But obviously the processing unit didn’t make it.” Her voice was thin but unwavering.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Mary,” Ava said and strode forward. The old library floorboards creaked under her plasteel-shod boots. Mary instinctively jumped out of the way of the Captain, who knelt and began prying up the floor board which Mary had stood on a second earlier. A moment later she stood, holding up a thin leather notebook, a triumphant look in her eyes.

“Bingo,” she said.

Mary’s face drained of color and her hand flicked to her belt. In a blur of movement, we all raised our weapons, aimed at Mary who had pulled out a sleek, gray rotgun. She looked truly terrified of us.

“How did you know that was there?” she blurted.

Ava sighed. “I didn’t. I had an instinct and I always trust my instincts.”

“How do I know you aren’t scarship operatives? I hear they can smell an artifact from a mile away.”

By the sound of her voice, Mary was young, fresh out of the University. She had a smooth accent, polished and well educated. What was she doing way out on Earth 427? Probably the same thing we were: scavenging.

I said nothing. Ava typically handled situations like this with more grace than a grumpy old geezer like me could even comprehend.

“I recognize the model of your ship,” Ava said. “Standard military issue from the early 90’s, with a few modifications, but it’s your ship, isn’t it?”

Mary nodded.

“Do you want a ride out of Earth 427?” Ava asked. “Your ship doesn’t look like it works anymore.”

“How do I know I can trust you?” Again, Mary’s voice was thin but steady.

“We can drop you off at the Zopa Station. We’re going that way.”

“How do I know you aren’t Scarship Operatives?”

Ava sighed. This woman truly was green to the game.

“Do we look like scarship operatives?” Kal grumbled. Ava stiffened at Kal’s intrusion.

“I don’t know,” Mary said. “Nobody knows what they look like under their visors.”

“Look,” Ava said, taking control of the conversation. She had a talent for wielding the great magnet of her personality like a great ballad wields its narrative. “My name is Ava Islestorm. I’m the captain of the artship Sanguine Sojourner. We came here to see if any artifacts survived the Great Scourge in ‘94.” She motioned to me with a wave of her hand. “This here is Silas Gont. He’s our chronicler. He has his master’s in Narrative Propulsion Physics.” She grinned mischievously, and I stiffened. “He secretly writes poetry.”

“Oh come on!” I blurted. “Are we telling secrets now?”

“It’s hardly a secret, Silas,” Kal said with a chuckle.

I felt myself shrivel up inside, just a little.

Mary spoke again, her voice relieved of some of its tension. “You’d take me to the Zopa Station?”

Ava shrugged. “We have an extra bunk.”

Kal and I both recoiled. An extra bunk? I could see Kal’s face darken, his eyebrows knitting. But now was not the time, not with this stranger listening.

An hour later we stood aboard the Sanguine Sojourner making preparations to take-off. I found Ava at the helm,

“Could you look over the artifact?” she asked me without looking up from flight controls. “I want to make some adjustments to the Art Detector. I feel like it should be possible to obtain more detailed signals.” I saw her eye glance at the large drawer labelled “UNTRANSLATABLES” in red marker. We all referred to it as the “Dud Drawer.” It was a swiftly growing category. Many wasted efforts, fruitless risks. All because of the limitations of Ava’s marvelous invention, the Art Detector.

“I’ll input the log,” I said. “No problem.” It was an honor really to work anywhere within the vicinity of the device—a true, one-of-a-kind prototype, which identified and located sources of inspiration (fuel for the artships) with such tenacity and accuracy that in the hands of the enemy, it would quickly lead to the destruction of all art. And so we kept the secret from everyone, even the Guild of Artships knew nothing. Not yet at least. The secret of the Detector’s ingenious design lay only within Ava’s mind and within the device itself. But I’m waxing poetic, I know.

“Thanks,” she said. I could tell her mind was already occupied with the preflight checklist.

I’d almost completed the inputs, basic information about the artifact—that it was a short story, multiple segments, science-fiction, written by a young man named Arthur Glass, etc.—when I realized someone was watching me. I stood suddenly, turning and powering down the holotable.

Mary stood in the door, jaw dropped as if she had just walked in on a time traveler with a unicorn.

“What’s up, Mary,” I said in my best efforts at nonchalance, approaching the door to block her way into the Bridge. “How can I help you?”

She ignored me, slipping past me and running up to the machine with a giddy, trancelike enthusiasm.

“Is. That. A. Transdimensional-aesthetical-expressiv- field...detector?!” her voice wavered with intensity. “Please tell me my eyes do not deceive me. I’ve longed for this moment my whole—”

I cleared my throat loudly. “What? I don’t know what you are talking…about.” But I could see Ava sitting up straighter in her chair. Mary had learned our secret. There was no going back, only forward. I gave Kal a sharp look as he stumbled through the doorway, clearly panicked at having lost track of Mary.

Kal, you had one job, I thought.

Ava cleared her throat and raised an eyebrow at me. I shrugged casually, a juxtaposition to the panic in my every muscle. Ava stood and motioned me towards her chair. “Item 9, work down from there,” Ava said. “I’ll take care of Mary.”

I grabbed the pre-flight checklist like it was my lifeline and began vigorously working my way down the list from Item 9. I expected that Ava would take Mary to a back room, explain to her, as Ava had explained to me all those years ago, the gravity of our situation. If anyone else knew of this machine’s existence, then the entire fate of humanity faced peril like nothing before. I expected Ava to drill it into Mary’s head. Show her the tapes of Scarships blasting paths through the Old Worlds, devouring all that was beautiful.

Tell no one. Leave this ship knowing the fate of the world rests on your shoulder. Surely that’s what Ava meant when she said “I’ll take care of Mary.”

Later, when I walked down into the Archive Processing Center (my lone shelter from the rest of the crew, where I did my sorting of Artifacts in peace) I found that Ava had given Mary an indefinite internship—under my department. My soul dropped into my stomach like an untranslatable journal drops into the Dud Drawer.