Interview statement: Milly Sayer, anno 2763 -

“Sometimes there are things best forgotten. That's what they say. Sometimes it's to protect, other times it’s to forgive, but there are times, times when we ‘lose’, it becomes the most ‘convenient’ to forget. ‘To make the point all about you’, as if what happened never happened. To make a ‘convenient’ truth. They also say that starting a story is the hardest part, but how could I ever forget how it all started?! How my life got turned upside down, inside out and changed forever. It was the best thing to happen to me, but to then ‘lose’ it all right after, all because you bastards ‘lost’ and got us to ‘forget’! I will tell you now! My stories just started and I will make it so you will never forget ever again!”

Chapter 1: Assignment.

There are many suspicious jobs out there in the universe. Even if the line of work is relatively legitimate, there are times when requests come in that get you asking, “Why the hell do I need to do this?”. Those were Milly’s first words upon reading the assignment brief from her superior.

It had not been long since her graduation from her prenatally-assigned technical training, the one given her since birth by the corporation. After just six months of orientation, her first assignment came up which instructed her to go and search Minos Minor, a rocky Earth like planet with a set of massive rings. These rings, known by traffickers jokingly as “Vikhar’s grindstone”, caused everything entering it to be ground to dust. This was largely because of the strange gravitational anomalies created by Minos Minor, while the rest was due to the rings themselves, creating massive charged dust storms in a perpetual cycle of clumping together and smashing apart.

Ok, so knowing this everything seemed above board, but looking deeper questions surfaced in Milly’s mind.

Firstly, the location of the Vikhar solar system to which Minos Minor is the fifth planet, is a part of the Siduri Star Cluster, just barely on the edge of an area of space classed by the Corporation as a “forbidden zone”. As to why it was forbidden, no one knew, or would refuse to answer. All Milly understood, was that any ships approaching it would be shot down without question by the border patrol. Thankfully she was still within the border, and the assignment gave her e-papers to give any patrol just in case.

Secondly as the assignment itself. She was given three years to find, report and document any disturbance she discovered either in the belt rings known as Vikhar’s Grinder, or on Minos Minor itself. Ok sounds fair enough! That is until she read that, although she was given an H-A Class ten-man science corvette as her ship, that she would be sent off on that ship alone throughout the entire three years. She would be there with no backup, or support, and worse still, under no circumstances is she allowed to contact anyone except the nearest patrol, should she discover something, via an encrypted line.

This was already reaching pretty sketchy territory as far as Milly was concerned, but the icing on the cake was that, taking this assignment was mandatory and she wasn't allowed to talk about it to anyone before departure. Failure to comply will result in a massive fine on top of the request to return all her tuition fees, as well as the loss of her citizenship. To her that meant only one thing; to be shipped off to a comet mining facility and manually mine Helium 3. In other words, it was her death sentence.

Oh, and worst of all the pay was complete trash.

It took about nine months of consent FTL jumps to reach Minos Minor, and after that, two months of rigorous scanning passed by. Milly sat in the darkly lit command deck, her head tilted back in her reclined captains’ seat lazily, half asleep. She’d set the room to night mode, where the only lights, dim and blue, coming from the different screens around the room.

The ship had a central intelligence, which Milly opted to keep on silent as much as possible. Not that it was normally jarring to listen to the constant nagging, and verbose logs, but on top of this ridiculous assignment, listening to the computer would just make her fly into a rage. This would be bad since she would end up breaking something, which in turn would end up cutting her salary since the ship was company property.

“Yawn… Why here alone for three years when my classmates are off together doing fancy jobs for the company?” A tinge of sadness ran across her otherwise bored face. Her hands wiped down her cheeks before they flopped back to the chair’s armrests. So far this was her fortieth complaint since coming here, and it didn't take long after arriving for the loneliness to set in.

Milly could be said to be a bubbly social person with a slight sarcastic streak, who in the end couldn’t handle her own company for too long. Coupled with her inquisitive nature, the combined tedium and loneliness was like being placed into the world of two hells. But for the sake of her life, she could do nothing about it until it was over.

As for her appearance. Although she stood at nearly one hundred and eighty centimetres, she gave off the impression of a “small animal”, being a little timid at times, that is until she opened her mouth. Her skin, as pale and white as fax paper, and equally without a single smudge, complimented with her slender athletic build, it wrapped around her body like soft elastic spandex without an iota of fat. Not that you could see much of it over her rented grey overalls. As for her head, her hair a dark yet natural mahogany coffee colour, straight that cascaded to the length of just below her shoulder line. Her dark blue eyes, piercing yet innocent, framed by her well chiselled nose and dainty eyebrows. Her cheekbones, high and well formed, if still holding on to some adolescents. All this wasn’t all that surprising considering her young age being no more than nineteen.

It had been an hour since she had decided to mindlessly sit in the main seat. It was part of the job, even if she didn’t have to do anything, her hours were clocked by the computer and she HAD to be on time for work.

*POM-Beep-ep-ep… ep… ep*

An echoed pulse followed by a reflected beep that bounced until it vanished heralded Milly to lazily look towards a console on the far-right wall. Normally the noise would mean the AI was going to blurb about some bullshit she herself had no time for, but she knew she’d turned that off, so was a little confused towards this sound.

Slowly in an almost robotic manner with a look of concern, she rose from her seat “Ventra, what was that for?”

In response to her voice, the computer projected a series of blue 2D holographic images, detailing the latest results of an area scan around what Milly designated the twenty sixth quadrant of Vikhar’s Grinder.

What made the Grinder, a grinder, was that the ring of duct and rock was actually three, layered so closely on top of each other that at first you wouldn't notice. What makes them different, however, is the “current” the two top and bottom layers follow. The top ring, on the side of the northern hemisphere rotated around the planet counter clockwise, with the bottom most went clockwise. The middle layer didn't rotate as much as roll in on itself, with massive eddies and dust storms. This made it that anything larger than a pebble entering the middle layer would soon get broken down, not just by the larger rocks on the top and bottom layers, but also but the crushing gravitational and electromagnetic forces within the ring.

Little is known as to why Vikhar’s Grinder became like this, some speculated in the files Milly read, that at one point two moods got captured by Minos Minor’s gravity, but in alternate directions before being pulverised together, and instead of simply smashing into a simple ring, the strange gravity from the planet's equator caused the debris to vertically stratify, while orbiting in opposite directions.

None of this mattered to Milly, with the exception that all this made her job that much harder. The eddies of charged dust within the middle layer made scanning very difficult, increasing the time it took for things to get done.

That is… until now.

She stared at the projected images with wide eyes. She’d learned enough to know what the waveform charts and histograms showed, and it didn’t take long to imagine what it was she was seeing.

“A… Pocket?... an… an empty… pocket?!”

As simple as it sounds, it was a big deal. Somewhere within the twenty sixth quadrant of the middle layer was a seemingly impossible empty pocket of space with literally nothing in it. What's more, is that particles of dust were observed entering the pocket at speed, only to leave the other side at exactly the same speed and trajectory. It’s like the dust ceased to exist for one moment only to exist again.

“How is this possible? What is going on?” Quickly she started typing on the command console, looking back at older scans of that area. It then became apparent that not all dust returned.

“Wait? No, what? Something is blocking the dust in certain areas… Ventra, use the information gathered so far to create an image of the object that might be blocking the dust in place. Include any rebounds you might find. It might help us get an accurate scale on this thing. Even though the dust vanishes before it, it seems there is something there inside this dead zone.”

“That will take some time, as matter around the area need further observation to create an accurate image. In the meantime, it is suggested you make a report.” The moment Ventra, the female sounding AI suggested this; Milly winced. Although it could mean her time here would be over shorter than she had anticipated, writing a report to the authorities always felt like she was confessing her wrongs to the class supervisor.

It took a total of three hours for the ship to finish monitoring how the dust in the surrounding area acted with the empty pocket. In that time, Milly wrote a very basic initial report, which she knew she wouldn't get a reply to for at least a day. After that she fed herself and got ready for the results. For her this was it, her chance out of this hell!

Or so she thought.

“What the hell is that?!” before, when looking at the data, her eyes were wide, this time Milly found herself gawking. What she thought would be some form of unusual naturally formed anomaly or maybe a weird rock, but it turned out to be something… else…

Projected in full 3D, a blue hologram of the supposed object rotated in place. What the AI had managed to calculate, was not only the objects size and shape, but also its movement within the third layer. What Milly could see, was a very unnatural looking object, almost claw like in shape, and symmetric.

“I… don’t know. According to the observational data, all around the object seems to emit some sort of dampening field, making it impossible for any of my scans to penetrate past it, hence the empty pocket. What I have managed to speculate from the trajectory data, is a rough shape and size of the… object within.” Ventra, a rare show of fare and emotion appeared in Ventra’s voice. A not too uncommon feature of modern AI’s, but right this moment, not something Milly needed, as being alone in the middle of nowhere, a voice of reassurance would have been preferred.

“Why...Why hasn’t this been discovered before? Surely something like this would just pop up right? It’s not like we’ve done anything special…”

“According to record, a science attachment was sent over seventy years ago, but the mission was halted before it even arrived. Not to mention that this pocket would be undetectable to military grade scanners, it is simply too subtle to notice. Only ones at the grades similar to this ship would have a hint at discovering this.”

“Even military capital ships? That's hard to believe…”

“Why would they send them this far out? It is uneconomical for the corporation to do such a thing and would spur on suspicion from the neighbouring Holy Doctorum.”

“But then why stop the original science mission, why wait and send me now... Alone…?”

“It is best you don't ask such questions. I do not know the reason, but this is your mission, and that is all you need to know.”

She had heard this before, so didn’t take the scolding to heart. Instead she gazed again at the holograph. Her initial shock began to vanish, lighting in its place another more powerful feeling within her. She felt drawn to it somehow, a feeling of curiosity stronger than what she had felt before. It was naturally in her nature, but she didn’t know if this sort of feeling would be her downfall one day.

Ventra continued “So far, the object is in a stable orbing around the planet within the inner ring and is itself rotating in a stable slow trajectory against the dust currents, that seems to defy logic.”

These words caused the blaze of curiosity within Milly to burn brighter. It was too late for her to change her course now, there was only one path left to her.

“Sooo… how do we get it out?~” Standing upright with her arms behind her back, body fidgeting a little, with an innocent look on her face, Milly pronounced her ridiculous notion lightly as if it was as easy as persuading someone with puppy dog eyes to go down the shops and buy ice cream.

“Excuse me?!”

“We’re getting it out of there right?” She persisted.

“The object is nearly seven times the size of this ship and is in the middle of the most treacherous part of the Grinder, how do you even suggest we do such a thing?!”

“Oh, I don't know? Pull it out maybe?” She looked coyly at the object and tilted her head. Despite her seemingly naive suggestion, she was actually being serious. The ship, as it happens was fitted with a large tether system used for both collecting samples off of asteroids and was also more than capable of latching onto an object and pulling it.

As if brushing off the girl’s attitude and humouring her a little, the AI asked in an audibly detectable monotone “And how do you suggest we do that? Using the tether inside that mess of dust will seriously damage the equipment and render you liable for the costs.”

Pausing for a moment, contemplation on her face, but after a moment Milly beamed with a massive smile on her face.

“Ha! This is part of the mission, right? How can I “document” anything if there is nothing but an “absence of everything” on the scanners to document? My liability is covered if it’s part of the job! As for getting it out… what if... What if the dust was no longer a problem? I might have a way. Besides, we’re not going anywhere for long awhile and digging this thing up sound fun.”

“What do you mean no longer a problem?”

“Well it's simple… if this thing is unaffected by the dust of the middle layer and will continue along its orbit unperturbed, then what if we blast the dust away ahead of it long enough before it passes through an area, and then attempt to snag it when it enters the gap?”

“Before I ask, ‘how’ you plan on doing that, but you said yourself how it is unperturbed by that dust storm, what makes you think a tiny tether is going to make a difference?”

“He he! Four words; ‘Graviton Field Safety Override’. Just unlock the safeties on the FTL, expand the bubble, and then get it running with a minute amount of power. Oh, and as for the dust cloud, just fabricate one V class Civilian mining explosive, lace it with beryllium-tetrafluoride and some Naktazine and watch the world go up in a massive twenty megaton ball dust vaporising fun!” Her answer came along with a matter of fact innocence, like being asked by a teacher in class. Truth be told, she was just playing at it, knowing full well that no matter the protests or repercussions, this was the plan she was going to proceed with no matter what.

“... I can’t believe you! That’s insane! If you so much as… No really this is going on your record!”

“Ventra?!” Milly shook her head with a disapproving look on her face, while grinning inside herself. “Whether you like it or not this is the only way, and I’m not sitting around doing nothing while something so amazing is right in front of my eyes! So what if it ends up on my record, when face to face with possible signs of alien civilisation, who in this universe can stop me!? This is first contact, Ventra! First contact! We thought the Great Filter had wiped out all life in the galaxy bar ourselves, and yet here we are now! I’m not going to miss my chance even if it means I get myself killed!”