The first thing I blurted out was, “You were the pink-haired nurse.” Besides the white sci-fi-esque undersuit accentuating their hourglass figure, I could remember that hair colour anywhere.

“ Coral. And no, I don’t recall meeting you before this,” they pouted, flipping their cyber-punk hairdo. They smirked playfully. Their hair was an inverted bob with a front sweeping side-profile.

True Elfin ears peeked from beneath hair screaming fey more than alien. They had an oval shaped face and a button nose that accentuated the size of their unturned eyes. Heart shaped lips grinned wider, a stark pink against a tanned olive brown complexion.

“ You like it?” they said, leaning across the console. The disconnect from the earlier conversation gave me whiplash. Their white undersuit skirted the line between racy and decent, though that was mainly because they’d been generously endowed. I had never found myself averting my face before now, but I could feel my cheeks growing hot.

“ Elevated levels of adrenaline and vasodilation of your facial capillaries suggest you approve―”

“ Hey, that should be illegal!” I blustered. I choked back surprise when I whirled around only to realise they’d been in my face. There was a palpable warmth radiating off their construct, like putting the back of your hand against a laptop fan. I hadn’t even seen them move.

Their skin was so surreal it might as well have been made of ceramic. I noticed for the first time that their irises were composed of minute circuit traces that twinkled like firing neurons. Rather than being embarrassed that they could read my vitals, I was more appalled at their lack of personal space.

“ You can touch my skin if you’d like,” they cooed, and batted their eyes suggestively. “I managed to modulate the gravity field to account for ambient temperature without losing cohesion,” The uncanny thing is that the sound did not come directly from them. There was no air movement, but rather their voice seemed to still come from everywhere and nowhere. A trick of acoustics, I surmised.

I managed to reign in my runaway fantasies by closing my eyes and taking measured breaths. I never knew I could get so flustered by being teased like this. Maybe the hologram had a screw loose or something, because they were too human. Or perhaps, they’d picked up too much of the fey’s mischievous ways.

“ You have managed to deflect so many times I’ve lost count,” I rubbed my face. “ I think I’ll go turn in, “ It was four in the morning; the EVA had assured me that the chronometer was calibrated to Central European Standard Time. As if to emphasise that, a jaw splitting yawn tore itself out of my mouth.

“ Oh my, let me show you to your quarters,” Irina giggled.

“ Don’t pretend I’ll forget about the test,” I said, sobering up from encroaching lethargy. I got up from the pilot's seat and headed to the back of the bridge.

“ Fine fine―” they muttered, giving a wobbly wave as they floated backwards . The hatch dilated to let us pass into the maglift. Barely five minutes later, Irina showed me to my quarters. I paused before the hatch, thinking that I’d forgotten something, before I shook my head and went in. Then I remembered as I found crates from Bubble-E inside the living quarters. I queried Irina, with one arched brow look.

“ I took the liberty of appropriating your personal effects,” they said, smilingly as the hatch contracted shut.

“ Have a good night Master Ryan,” their voice echoed as I slumped onto the floating bed. The lights dimmed automatically after that, as I sank into a blissful sleep. My first encounter with an alien hologram in the likeness of a pink haired space elf was too much excitement for one day.

I would have been lying if I didn't say I was looking forward to what the rest of the day would bring; as long as I built up tolerance for Irina’s antics, that is. They were going to be a handful for sure.

In the future, some things remained the same—like induction plates; life in space did not need the hazard of open flames. Things were easily replicated using a matter synthesiser that could build proteins and carbs from their building blocks, but those were more like field rations. Like the freeze dried stuff astronauts would hydrate for consumption. Unfortunately, I wasn’t just going to be saying latte, macchiato hot and just have a cup at hand anytime soon.

It was a pity that the kitchen didn’t have outlets for appliances. However, the run of the mill doodads were well represented, like a dry ice refrigerator. Just because water would be synthesised from aether did not mean the ship had to lack efficiency.

There was nothing in the fridge save for the stuff the EVA had taken from my place. In place of an Insinkerator, they had a matter recycler. Yep, it did what it said on the tin. It broke junk into its constituent components and got it back into the usage cycle.

That saved the matter synthesiser from having to conjure new material out of aether every time. In a way, it was a sophisticated 3D printer, and while the one in the kitchen could print organics and composites, a heavier duty one could print light metal.

“Aether might have been a renewable resource, yes, but unlike you Arcanotech cannot readily gattheir it―at least that which I know of,” Irina shrugged. I was having breakfast in the commons with the ungovernable AI hologram for company.

I was reading up on all I needed to know about aether before I started training. I thought it prudent to catch up on the basics while I ate to economise my time. Suddenly, I had a million things to do on my plate, one of which was to prevent humanity from making an irreparable mistake.

I’d lost count of how many cups of coffee I’d gone through as Irina gave me a breakdown of things. The timeline started from the first time they landed on the planet until several months ago, punctuated with all but the most important events. The ship had to be 150,000 years old and yet it still worked. All thanks to its AI and EVA bots and, of course, a hardy outer hull.

Still, the Velastra’s hydrogen fuel cells and helium-3 reactor were in dire need of refuelling. Hydrogen was only an ocean away, but for the latter, much else would have to be done.

“So the long short of it is, you crash landed in the north pole 150,000 something years ago,” detached the primary from the secondary hull to scout around then went into hibernation to conserve power?”

“ Yes, “ Irina said. “ The primary hull runs on an auxiliary core, meant for redundancy. The main core is with the rest of the ship. The primary and secondary hulls are capable of interplanetary transit. The last section of the ship― “ they put across. A hologram of the Velastra winked into existence between us. “ Is the trans-spatial manifold,”

I could not help but be awed by the Thulian Class Corvette. The primary hull, the one we are on right now, was 60 metres across in diameter and had 8 metres of height, making it twice the length of a vanilla 737 as well as its fuselage height.

The secondary hull was shaped like a javelin head and was widest halfway where the primary would integrate. It seamlessly integrated to form a stealthy looking craft, like a spacefaring version of an SR-75.

Where the neck narrowed, there were two gimballed navigation thrusters sitting on struts away from the body and, following that, the larger main thrusters. The last section presumed parked somewhere in a Langrange point between Mars and Jupiter was a giant ring with two extensions to either side. These formed emplacements for the main thrusters when the trans-spatial manifold and the main hulls were married for intergalactic transit.

It looked eerily similar to an Alcubierre warp drive. Irina was kind of dodgy in the last module, but the revelation thus far had enough weight of urgency to give me pause. The secondary hull housed the main reactor core and enough weaponry to take out an air carrier . That same hull had been spotted via satellites over the Arctic ice shelf. The how was not so important as what the team sent to look at it would find once they arrived.

I was not too late, as Arctic expeditions would not leave for another month. While a recon team would set out from Norway via flight, the excavation equipment would take some time to arrive by icebreakers and expedition vessels.

With the Second Cold War in effect, I could expect altercations to ensue as every country tried to get a piece of hittheirto undocumented metal. While the information was in the public domain, the presumption was that an irregularly shaped asteroid was buried deep beneath the ice sheet.

Knowing that tensions were already high with the second Cold War, I understood why Irina wanted to have me combat ready by the end of the month. However, their urgency was still over the top. I knew there was something they were not telling me about the occupants of the ship, but I didn't push them. Maybe it was a bit of a sore spot; they didn't want to talk about it. I wasn't fooled, but I trusted that their providing the information on a need to know basis was deliberate.

Nonetheless, it was a rescue operation, and already an elaborate plan was forming. And that was putting it lightly; I barely had three weeks!