I heard a chime and checked the holoterminal—a green, vaguely star-shaped ping on the Art Detector. Green meant it was a primary source—an original artifact. The ambiguous star shape meant the creation was either a short story or collection of strange poetry. It’d taken countless hours to fine-tune the transdimensional readings and even longer to incorporate the correlations into the Detector’s code. I called out the starsystem to Ava.

“Good work, Silas,” she said. I felt a faint warmth of pride in my heart at the words. I was not only secretly a sucker for compliments—especially from the Captain—but also I had not been confident in my calculations.

“That’s technically Scarship territory, Captain. Do we risk it?” I eyed the fuel gauge. Even with last month’s artifact from Earth 427, the Narrative Propulsion Systems could still seriously use a boost. Ava looked up from the extractor helmet that she’d been repairing.

“All the more reason,” she said. Her voice was calm and grim. She was always grim with me. It was almost like she knew how scared I was of being laughed off, and she somewhat overcompensated.

“I thought you’d say so,” I said and nodded.

“But you raise a fair point,” Ava said. “Bring everyone to the mess hall. We’ll discuss the risks as a crew—over potato soup.”

“Yes, Captain.” I turned to go.

“Oh. Silas? One more thing.”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Make sure your assistant is there.”

I stared blankly, feigning ignorance.

“You know, the intern. Mary Eastley.”

“Westly. Mary Westley, Captain.” I sighed inwardly, dreading all interaction with Mary. “I’ll make sure she attends the meeting.”

“Good. I haven’t seen her around in a bit. Have you been keeping her busy or something?”

I bit my lip. “No, Captain. Erm. She seemed really interested in the Vivaltan restoration project.”

I cursed under my breath. Would I not get a moment’s rest from Mary the Chatterbox Westley? Or would I die from an overdose of enthusiasm?

Ava looked me in the face, and I fought the urge to squirm.

“I suggest you stop hiding Mary away, Silas.”

I gulped. “Yes, Captain.”

“She’s part of the team now. And for good reason.”

I nodded and turned to go. For a good reason? Ha! Mary was only here for one reason. She’d stumbled upon our greatest treasure and keeping her on board was the only way to ensure the chatterbox kept that secret. We had the greatest weapon against the sinister Scarships—devourers of art, destroyers of beauty, heartless of soul. The Art Detector, first and only of its kind.

A quarter hour later we all stood around the circular mess-hall table, waiting before steaming bowls of potato soup, Vedod’s special hot-n-spicy recipe.: Everyone who knew of the Creativity Detector’s existence: me, Mary, Vedod, Sage, and Kal. It was not our custom to begin eating until Captain Ava arrived. I looked over at Mary who kept leaning over the soup and smelling it. I rolled my eyes and looked away from the six crew members around the table, waiting for Ava. Seven among us. Just like old times. But no, I forced my mind away from the subject. It would not serve well to become teary over potato soup, especially not with this outsider, Mary, watching.

“My friends,” Ava said as she approached the round table. “Sit, please.”

We sat—a mild cacophony of leather and plastic, grunts, and shuffling of steel-mounted chairs. Vedod busied himself dishing out the soup into bowls which he set out on the lazy susan. His long, dark braid swerved behind him, like a shadow and his bare, dark-skinned arms shifted with muscle as he leaned over the table. He offered the last bowl to the Captain, as our tradition dictated. Ava looked up, gave a weak smile, but did not touch the bowl. I pursed my lips—it concerned me to see the captain turn down her favorite of Vedod’s plethora of potato recipes.

“Don’t mean to pry, Captain,” I heard Sage mutter. Ava leaned towards the one-armed botanist and the rest of what Sage said was too quiet to make out. Something about “nerves” and “postponing”.

To my right, Mary tested her first spoonful of the soup. I smiled inwardly, expecting her to cough at the absurd levels of jaremin spice. Her face reddened—I held my breath—Mary looked up, and seeing everyone watching, she promptly swallowed and took up another spoonful of bravery.

Vedod and Kal let burst a round of applause and laughter. Ava smiled, clapping ceremoniously. Sage’s face remained motionless, yet she somehow communicated respect with a slight tip of the head. I scowled inwardly. I’d seen tougher men than I fold under the heat of Vedod’s infamous potato soup. Whatever. At least she wasn’t wandering the ship unattended.

“You didn’t use enough gunpowder, Vedod!” Kal exclaimed.

“I must’ve accidentally used chilli-jeramin powder, what I fool I am.”

Sage watched silent and mysterious across the table, and beside me, Mary ate, strangely silent. Not that there was any room to speak amidst the clamorous bantering between Vedod and Kal—but still, I savored the otherwise quiet room.

“Friends,” Ava said. The bantering faltered and went out. “The Art Detector picked up a strong signal coming from an Andromedic world.”

“That’s great, Cap!” Kal said. “What are we waiting for?”

“Waiting for you to shut up,” Vedod muttered, just loud enough for everyone to hear. Kal kicked him under the table.

“It’s not an outer reach world,” Ava continued, ignoring them both. “It’s technically in Scarship territory.”

The room fell silent. Only Mary fidgeted in her seat—clearly the spice had gotten to her a little after all. I stifled a satisfied grin.

Ava continued, speaking from a deep breath. “We won’t move forward without unanimous decision.”

Sage leaned forward first, her mech arm clunking on the table. “I am in. An artifact is an artifact,” she said. The gesture spoke louder than her voice, as usual.

Vedod nodded, setting down his wooden spoon in agreement.

A flicker of something, anger or confusion, crossed Kal’s face but he said nothing, his arms crossed sullenly. I could empathise with him. This situation could not help but bring up old memories—a time much like this one, all those months ago. Were we really doing this again?

I set down my bowl. “I’m in.” Although I would go forward, I still had reservations.

Mary followed eagerly, imitating the symbolic gesture. “I’m also in!” She set her bowl next to mine.

I couldn't help but cringe at the excitement in her voice. Was all gravity and reverence lost on her? I glanced at Ava but the Captain seemed somehow less tense, set at ease by the levity in Mary’s voice. I stifled another scowl—Kal’s sizzling eye rested on me now, bitterness plastered across his face. I gave him a slight shrug, a grimace of the body. His expression softened. I could practically hear his brain reciting his old mantras—calming the storm of grief and anger which we knew raged beneath his chest. Eventually resignation clouded his eyes.

“I’m in, too,” he said at last, setting his spoon in his half-empty bowl. He very clearly kept his hands and arms from touching any part of the table or bowl. Disdain.

The next two weeks passed peaceably if not amicably. We kept to our quarters and posts—interacting enough to maintain the communal integrity of the ship, but not so much as to grate each other’s nerves. At Zopa Station, the Artship Caravan Registrar (or ACR for short) connected us to a motley amalgamation bound for Earth 19. We welcomed the company, safety in numbers, but held the other crews at courteous arm’s length. What conversation did occur was between Ava and the other captains. There was safety in secrecy. In all, seven artships set out together from the bustling Zopa Station the next day.

We resumed our social equilibrium, falling into our old patterns and solitudes. Planetfall changed that. For one, the landing maneuvers required us to work in closer coordination, and for another, the stress and anticipation heightened the tension—excitement, yes, but also irritability. The whole process, from dropping out of warp space to landing on the planet’s surface, only took a couple hours, but it sometimes felt like all the weeks leading up to it had crammed into a single afternoon.

Ava, Kal, and Vedod suited up against the brackish Earth 19 atmosphere. I gave the all-clear, shifting the engine into its whirring cool down mode, watching through the grey-slated viewing shield as they trudged out the door into the dense jungle. I kept my attention out the long window as the canyons, sprawled out before us, whistled and sang in the autumn wind. Forest veiled almost every rocky knoll, giving the song a thick and textured voice. Earth 19. My heart sank as I scanned the forest and saw the structure poking out of the foliage—the familiar swirl-pentagon rock carvings of the Ascentan Templars. I prayed that the artifact would be written in any other language than the dense, complex script of the Ascentia.

My mind turned to the Dud Drawer, which was crammed fuller than a dishwasher. I wondered whether there even was space for a new untranslatable.

“Mary, do me a favor and check to see that there’s room in the Dud Drawer,” I said.

“The what?” She looked up from her wrist-pad which she’d been typing into with frightening intensity.

Sage cleared her throat. “I’ll show her.” Her voice spoke from the shadows, somehow, despite the lack of shadows in the well-lit ship’s helm.

“Thanks, Sarge,” I said. We called her “Sarge,” not because it was fitting, but because any nickname will do when it comes to an enigma like her. She once told me she’d lost her arm cutting her way out of a Behemkrash on Lusis IV—not so subtly implying that the pirates had fed her to one of the scaly sharklike squid-beasts.

I pressed the comlink into my ear, testing with the familiar script. “Com one, check. ‘Journer to ground, check.”

“Ground receiving Sojourner loud and clear, check. Ground to Sojourner, check.”

“Loud and clear,” I said.

Ava’s voice crackled back, static riddled but otherwise intelligible. “Entering the temple structure now. No recent signs of Scarship activity. But they’ve been here for sure.”

“Copy that,” I said.

“It’s a pretty classic Ascentan Temple, teardrop sanctuary,” Ava said. “I’ll check the record’s alcove for scrolls.”

Kal’s voice chirped back through the radios. “The scarships probably already picked it bone-clean,” he grumbled.

I snorted. Kal was probably right.

“I need to check anyways—they could have missed something,” Ava said. I admired her tenacity if not her optimism.

“Stay safe out there, Cap,” I said. “Ascentan’s not in our wheelhouse. It’s not worth sticking out your neck for dud stuff we can’t even read.”

“Just because we can’t read it,” Ava said. “Doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable.”

I winced. “Sorry, Cap.”

“Not everything is about us, Silas.”

I cursed myself silently, waiting a moment before speaking into the mic. “Copy that.” I waited, a sugary churning in my stomach, my eyes fixed upon the forest. The crew scoured the temple for what felt like an hour.

“Nothing on the first sweep,” Ava said.

“Did you check the floorboards?” I asked, grinning. The radio was silent for a moment.

“Very funny,” the Captain said. “Check the detector, maybe it has a better reading now.”

I swivelled to the holo table, summoning the terrain reader. Three pin-points—Ava, Kal, and Vedod—glowed within the wireframe temple structure. A green star blinked to life on the display. My heart jolted at the sight.

“Um, Captain,” I said,. “It’s moving. The artifact, it’s moving toward you!”

The green star crept along the static holo terrain, approaching the far side of the miniature temple. “South side! Approaching the outer wall now,” I said, my voice shaking. I tried to bring the helmet video feed onto the display, but the cameras frizzed out, a cascade of overlapping screen captures clawing the pixels to garbled mayhem.

No response came over the radio.

“I repeat, Sojourner to ground. Do you copy?”

A muffled static coughed momentarily to life. Silence. My heart thumped and my mind raced over the memory of the stumbling static. What had I heard? More garbled interference? Screaming? I flipped an alarm switch. Claxons blared through the ship, summoning Sarge and Mary to the bridge. They looked startled but ready for anything—as long as the “anything” meant a who-can-look-more-frazzled contest (which Mary would have won) along with a wild-west-style shoot out (which Sarge would have aced, her hand already on her holstered launcher). Instead of either of those things happening, the radio sputtered to life.

“Ground to Sojourner,” Ava’s voice said, calm and confident. Relief poured through me. “Copy that, speaking with the priest now.”

A shaky video feed showed a decrepit old man. A half-thousand generations on Earth 19’s forest-ridden continents had given the man dark green, bark-like skin, long arms, and a spindly tail—but despite my biological urge to see him as “other”, he was unmistakably human. An Ascentan priest, or maybe a monk—it was hard to differentiate sects when you don’t speak the language.

It was a shame really. Inspiration at our fingertips, yet inaccessible. Sage and Mary came closer, watching the shaky video feed of the low, slow grumbling old man. He gestured, dignified yet animated. It took me several moments to realize that the ancient man was telling a story of some kind, pointing to his hand, his heart, the sky—his voice shifted pitches for various speakers. It took me a longer moment still to realize that behind me, Mary stood writing the story down.

At first I thought she was writing down a phonetic record—I almost told her not to bother—the feed was recording just fine, no need to strain yourself. But then I saw the familiar complex script, a cascade of overlapping marks and curves like woodgrains in a particularly gnarled tree—telling the story of the winters and seasons of growth and drought and harvest.

“You can..translate Ascentan?” I asked under my breath.

Sage shot me a withering glare, pressing her finger to her lips. Shut up, it said.

I sat still, mesmerized by the intern’s swiftly moving pen, half sketching, half cursive. Perhaps I had underestimated the new kid. Not only could she stomach Vedod’s spicy potato soup, but she’d studied Ascentan. Perhaps she did belong on this team.