It took over two hours of preparation. The civilian mine had to be atomically printed since they had none onboard, while Milly also fitted it to a rudimentary delivery system along with power, and a deflector system so it would last long enough inside the middle layer to detonate. It also had a remote control and detonation timer installed should it be needed. As far as civilian grade super weapons were concerned Milly was quite proud of herself. Should a rebel faction ever appear within the Corporate Nation, she’d be the best demo expert out there. All it would take for her to make a simple item or low-grade explosive into a military grade weapon of mass destruction was some simple cleaning products, a flashlight, duct tape and some carefully selected dirt. She was trained technically, and could do some basic maintenance and repair, but it was explosives that she excelled at.

Once she’d finished dollying the device to the airlock, it was time to deploy.

“Ok so, let’s go over the plan some more but in detail, ok? You listening Ventra?” With her hands on her hips Milly waited for a reply but none came. “Could you please stop sulking and just listen! So…. The plan is this. We deploy the explosive just above the top layer of the grinder to make sure nothing happens to it. Then we plot a course to just above the object, while navigating through the top layer. Once we reach within tether distance, we mirror its orbital trajectory. Once we get into proximity, I’ll trigger the device to remotely dive into the middle layer and detonate. Then, while we endure the blast radius, we snag the object, pull up and bash to an FTL flash point for five thousand kilometres above the ring. If all goes well, we can then try to stabilize our orbit from there.”

“Hold it! Hold it! What did you just say?! Firstly, navigating the top layer is suicide! Dodging rocks left and right, and at the same speed that object is flying is just adds to how questionable your mind is. Then! You want to take off the safety system to the extremely sensitive FTL drive so that you can use it to pull on an object seven times our size while entering the event horizon of a twenty-megaton blast radius? This is foolishness!”

“No, it’s not... Oh and by the way, I’m going to be piloting the ship. I want to do most of this manually, with the exception of getting the timing for the device deployment and destination. I’m leaving that to you. It’s not as if we will be hitting the explosive area directly, there needs to be a small enough delay to allow the tether to hook on without the explosives tearing it apart or making us miss, while at the same time early enough so that the object does not get engulfed in dust again. It’s all about the timing. The explosives only job is to wash away the dust long enough for us to catch this thing.”

“I can’t convince you not to do this can I?”

“Nopsy nope!” Milly curled the corner of her mouth in a toothy grin.

“You’re going to get us killed, you know that right?”

“You’re not alive to begin with, so why should you care?”

“The company… it cares.”

“... Well whatever. This is going to happen, and we will live! If we don't, oh well, at least I tried!”

Milly sat on the captain’s seat, with the navigation joystick in hand, and a VR headset on her head that was linked the four degrees of freedom external hull camera on the ship. This would let her see everything she needed while trying what the Ventra insisted was impossible.

Maybe it was, Milly thought, but she couldn’t shake off this lust for the unknown. The months of boredom and loneliness turning the object into an escape - Her very own Moby Dick. A white whale sent to her lap waiting to be fished out, literally and figuratively.

“Ok, the device is set, we just have to fly into position and hope for the best!” Flicking a switch on the side of the stick, the ship's thrusters sparked, and then ignited. Control bursts went off all over the ship’s hull to motion it into position, as Milly tilted the joystick. To conserve power, most of the ships systems, other than internal atmosphere, sensors and navigation were turned off, leaving enough power for defence, and when the time was right, the FTL drive.

The ship appearance consisting of five rectangular boxes - One large one in the centre, two smaller ones in front either side of the larger one, set slightly lower. And then at the beach again smaller than the largest one and contained the main sub-light propulsion of the ship. All the edges of the ship were chamfered, and the plates that made the hull were crystalline in texture, giving the ships a grey galvanised steel look. The last detail of the ship; A dome in the centre of the largest mid-section where the command deck is located. As ships go, it was small, no more than the size of a football field and a fifth the height, but it was large enough for a crew of ten and had enough equipment on it for its job, which was astrological surveys.

With this in mind; it goes without saying that if you asked the ship designers whether or not it was in their design spec for this ship to be able to toe an object with its FTL drive. That the object to be toed was seven times its size, that it had to do it at speed, while dodging stray asteroids, and then tell them that it had to do so while butting headfirst into an atomic explosion. It would only be natural that they would then proceed to beat you senseless with their wrenches and kick you out of their office.

Naturally Milly had considered this only to then through the idea out the window. Why bother worrying, when she felt there was a high chance that she could overcome it?

“Milly. We are in position. Waiting on the object to reach predicted coordinates. Particulate deflection is at maximum, we can't last too long out here. Even if we are in the top layer, the hull is getting harshly sanded! I predict full hull penetration in less than ten minutes! We have only one shot at this!”

Daring not to answer Milly filled with concentration, weaved the ship under a passing hunk of rock, nine times the size of the ship, dropping dangerously close to the middle layer.

“We have intersection in T minus thirty seconds. -” Rising up again at speed, Milly applied more power to the forward thrust, while zagging past smaller rocky objects. “-twenty Seconds. -”

“Activate the device!” Milly hollered. Manoeuvring the ship into a barrel roll for max avoidance to a larger cluster of rocks, the sweat on Milly’s face started to drip.

“Device active, intersection fifteen seco-” A large bang echoed through the hole ship. “Heavy impact on secondary deck, suggest abort! Suggest ABORT!”

“NO WAY IN HELL!” Milly screamed putting all her might into holding on to the joystick as the ship shook hard from the impact. The ship continued to roll at full speed, its right lower-side trailing a plume of smoke from the impact, a small hole penetrating through.

“Intersection in five… four…. Device detonated! Brace for impact… two… ONE!” In the distance, the light of a thousand suns irradiated the belt, shining foggy god rays, marred by brown dust all around in front of the ship. A sun like ball swiftly expanding in the distance, its size getting bigger and bigger. Rocks and dust vaporising on contact of its horizon, while others pushed aside like the red sea. The energy released was far greater than Milly had expected. The reaction far beyond the twenty megatons she had specified. “We won’t make it! Abort or we’re dead!”

“...” Milly remained silent, bracing herself, knowing full well that even if she did, it was already too late. Her gamble didn’t pay off, or rather, she made a mistake. However, right then she remembered! Waking herself from the dazzling light of the explosion, how could she forget what this was all for. Below the ship, despite the chaos of the surroundings was a distinct nothing. A nothing that parted the clouds like a blimp through fog, revealing literally nothing behind it.

Without a moment's hesitation, Milly pointed the tethering cannon into the middle of this blank nothingness and fired against all warnings as the ship was being torn apart. Sweating and shaking, Milly held her breath as the time seemed to slow down to nothingness. All chaos had seemed to stop, and as if through this there was a moment of stillness, where only her and the object were left alone in the universe. ‘Please latch! Please Latch’ These words circulating her mind, begging for vindication as if by the act of latching onto something, was indeed something and not just a strange nothing. That all this would have meaning, that instead of having no meaning, that the actions she performed, meant something!

Milliseconds passed, barely a second that felt like an eternity. Fires would burst from the ships corridors, and systems would flash before shutting down. Despite this the ship stayed in one piece as the rumbling vibration of the explosion continued. Time moved as the tethering hook flew against the current of the explosion, towards the mass of nothing.

“If we don’t leave in two seconds there will be nothing lef--!”

Ventra was about to complain when suddenly the tethering light flicked from yellow to green, meaning a positive lock onto… well... Whatever it was.

Her heart skipping a beat, Milly, with a tiny delay in her reaction, as if she at first didn't believe it, sprang into action and pulled the ship UP. No mind, nor care to the destination, just UP. Up as far as possible to get away from the explosion as fast as possible with her prize close behind her.

“Activate the Graviton Field Safety Override, fire up the FTL and get us out of here! Envelope the object in our gravitation bubble!” At that moment while the ship pulled up, the front small rectangles opened up long ways to reveal large spinning coils of metal within, that fired a strange beam that distorted space around it. As the beams reached a point in front of the ship, is split open like an umbrella, and started to envelop the ship. Normally this would surround the ship in a bubble separating it from space allowing it to travel faster than light without distorting time. However, the bubble started to expand along the tether, like a thin umbilical cord, towards the tethered object until finally both the ship and it were inside an FTL field.

If the ship was being pushed to its limits before, it was now facing twice that. The main reactor on the middle main deck glowed brighter than the sparkling eyes of a thousand virgins, causing it to hum and vibrate even more than before, all the while still bracing through the nuclear storm outside.

The hum turned to a whine as Milly pushed the ship forward in its new upward orientation, but no movement could be had. “I told you! This isn't going to work! We’re being pulled apart, and there isn't enough power to maintain the integrity of the FTL Field! WE NEED TO ABORT!”

A bar showing field integrity of the bubble was shown on the side of Milly’s vision. The amount the reactor was pumping out while maintaining the ships defences high enough to keep the ship in one piece while pulling this object was not enough. Milly’s choices were as follows - Either risk getting smashed for the split second needed to divert energy from defence to the FTL, over straining the FTL on the slim near impossible chance of success, or abort with a high chance of self-destruction anyway. The way she felt about it, she couldn’t see herself getting out of this alive.

However, like everything that has happened today, another unexpected event occurred.

Quickly a console started to buzz on and off in warning of an anomaly. The console controlled the FTL drive and it showed the integrity of the field was increasing. What's more the strain on the reactor was lessening. Quickly the bar on the side of her view filled up and in a second before she could work out why, the FTL kicked in, and in a flash, all that presented Milly’s field of view was a vast expanse of stars. Looking behind her, she could still make out the scene of the explosion, but it was at a distance where it looked no bigger than a yoga ball two or three meters away. Slowly, the explosion started to fade away. In its place, a massive hole in the ring. This didn't last long however as dust and rock started to refill the gap.

Shaking, Milly lifted the VR headset off her head, and then let it slip off her lap. Her expression vacant, emotionally exhausted and confused. One thing after another dazed her mind. Thinking back, she may have bitten off more than she could chew, leaving her with a similar being to a rabbit in the headlights.

“We… We won… but… how?” Making it as if the entire thing was a competition against her fate, she looked at the screens around the room, as if trying to find an answer but still too exhausted to get off her chair and really find out.

“I’m not sure, but… Something…. Something reinforced the FTL field just enough for it to trigger. The amount of energy needed is far more than this ship can create on its own.”

At that moment, a chill went up Milly’s spine. She had already guessed that far, but didn’t voice it out, deliberately as if her silence denied the possibility from becoming reality. “The object… helped us?”

“A… likely explanation.”

“F..-f.fu…. I was only joking when I said first contact! I take back! I take it back!” Holding her head with her hands almost crouching in her seat, a wave of fear struck her.

“A little late now considering what you’ve done to the ship! Just look at this!” A 2D hologram report of the state of the ship was itemised in front of her. It listed quite a number of damages, some considerable. The most notable were firstly, the FTL Drive, which was now completely totalled (meaning she wasn't going to be leaving this place any time soon) and secondly the reactor. Although it still worked, it was haemorrhaging fuel, and if it wasn’t patched up within the next week, it would run out within that time, making the ship literally dead in the water.

Milly didn't mind so much the last one, since she could fix it, but looking at the FTL Drive on the list, she couldn't help but wince in despair.

There were some other not so minor items on the list, but nothing that couldn't be sorted over time. Reality was cruel, but somehow had left her with some time before it would become desperate.

Taking a deep breath, she got up from the chair and walked towards the large view screen in front of her. “S..so… what about the object?” The moment she said that the screen changed to the onboard tether canon camera. The tether wire strung tort into the distance.

“It appears the tether is still latched onto something... However, sensors can't detect anything. There is nothing visually detectable either on any EM spectrum. There is a slight deviation on the gravimetric sensors saying there may be some mass there leaving an impression, but it's so small that it’s enough to be considered within margin of error. For all I can tell you, we are grappled onto the void of space itself.”

“I… I’m no expert on military technology, but isn’t a stealth system like this impossible? Everything leaves a trace, every system has at least one weak point. What sort of technology was needed to create this?!”

“This is on the assumption that we are dealing with is a stealth system of some kind. However even if that is so, it did have a weak point, and that was the dust… no matter how perfect a stealth system is, unless you phase through space and time, you can’t pass through solid matter. Still, in the void of space the only reason we found it was because of the dust storms in the Grinder. If it was out in the open, no one would be able to find it.”

It felt strange to see the wire tort, floating in the middle of nowhere as the only indication that something was actually there. Something that had also generated a ridiculous amount of energy, and got them out of the sticky situation they had been in.

Milly looked down at her shaking hand. This fear wasn’t overwhelming her but exciting her. Part of her wanted to fly off and hide into the nearest corner, while on the other hand she felt a deep-rooted need to jump in head first and quash this feeling. Her curiosity at this point also flared, adding to her shakes.

“S-so what do we do now?” Like a girl at her first time fishing, unable to think of what to do with her catch, as she gingerly held onto the rod.

“Nothing we can do, except wait, I suppose. The ship needs some repairs before we can do anything else. So, it would be for the best to focus on that.”

But...

Before Milly could get up and walk off to do exactly that, a change occurred on the view screen in front of her. Starting from what seemed to be the centre, suddenly, a form of something faded into existence. It started with a single hexagon, the surface of which looked as if there was nothing there, lifting away like some sort of transparent object created from energy before it faded away no longer existing. Like a ripple in a pond, hexagon panel after hexagon panel, the hole this created spread until eventually the entire object underneath became revealed.

Milly stood there frozen in place, her breath quickened, eyes wide unable to tear away or even blink. It was huge. She knew it was at least seven times the size of her ship but seeing it on screen and the impact it created was far greater than the holographic model created from the predicted dimensions ran by the simulation.

“M-Milly… This… This is, as far as I’m aware, not something humanity can build…” Milly knew this, she felt it from the beginning, but again did not voice it. The weight of this information was too heavy on her tongue. However, the reality was inescapable, like looking at an obnoxious neon billboard in full Technicolor advertising the latest clown car without a care about how anyone felt.

Even an idiot without scanning it could see this was the case, so Milly could do nothing but have to agree. It was like nothing she had ever seen before.

The object for the most part was intact, but there were signs of scorching a what seems to be most of its ‘left side’ missing. The simulation predicted its shape to be like a claw, but with what remained of its ‘left side’ suggested some symmetry to its ‘right side’. This not only meant that two fifths of the object were missing, but also that it was more a ‘bow shape’ than a claw. The reason why it could be considered the left and right sides, rather than top or bottom, was because the sensors seemed to pick up the decking structure of its insides which indicated that the ship was very horizontally wide rather than vertically tall.

The architecture also seemed unusual. Most company ships were very geometric. This was to save on costs and was the most efficient. Other human nations, such as the religious state of the Human Imperious Referendum, although tend to be gaudy and bombastic in design, also didn't stray too far from the metallic efficiency the company employed.

In contrast, this object, or after a few scans confirming it, this ship had an architecture that seemed entirely organic in approach. What's more, it wasn't made from metal parts. There were no hull plates stitched together or even printed. No struts or rigid frame. It had a hull, but one that seemed to be grown from itself. It wasn't that it wasn't made out of metal, but rather that the metal wasn't formed through an industrial process like Milly’s ship, the Ventra was.

“I-it’s beautiful. It’s like I’m looking at something that's alive.” And she wasn’t far wrong for thinking it. The leading edge or horizontal prow of the bow shaped ship’s arms were like the central stem on a leaf, with vein like branches splitting off in symmetry or each other. The hull itself a sweeping curve like the front of a wing. It’s colour and shape reminiscent of a dark green beetle shell, with a rainbow-like reflectance.

Where the middle of this ship should have been when it was still whole, lay back from the leading edge of its arm, that would give the ship a similar profile to a rather thick composite bow.

The vertical height of the ship was about four or more times that of the Ventra, while its width close to ten to fifteen times. This was mostly speculation since it was impossible to really know given the condition the ship was in.

The back of the ship’s bow arms seemed to be where the main sublight propulsion was housed. It too was somewhat strange. Although the sensors picked up some familiar systems, indicated it used the same Helium Ion based technology, but it was so advanced that it was hard to predict how much thrust it could throw out at any given time. The shaping was also strange, flowing all along its width as two sandwiched layers, with a long separator of nearly transparent insect wing like material, that was also separated width ways by spines, giving it a fish fin like appearance. Overall, there were ten, slit like propulsion units per layer, each separated the same way as each layer.

The amount of detail and effort that went into making a ship like this seemed beyond what Milly could understand. It was elegant, organic, but held a symmetry and uniformity that suggested a high level of intelligence to its design.

These facts by themselves also added slightly to her fear. If what she guessed was correct, then they were dealing with something far more advanced than what humans had so far.

By the time all the results from the scans came in, Milly had been fixed to her seat, transfixed to the view screen for about an hour, unable to look away.

“It’s… waiting for us isn't it?”

“Now how on earth did you come to that conclusion? The reactor needs attention, so before you start jumping to strange conclusions, can you please put your attention towards that first.”

“Can’t you just shut down the reactor, isolate the leak, and leave us running on batteries for a while? I-i want to check out the inside of that thing. I can fix the leak when I get back.” Agitation appeared for the first time on Milly’s face like she was being harrowed by something inside her.

“Milly, what is wrong with you? You were shaking in your little booties a moment ago, but now you want to jump head first into it without thinking again!”

“It’s… it’s precisely because of that. I’m scared ok, really scared, but unless I find out what it is and stop this feeling. Unless I go forward and crush my uneasy, nothing is going to get done!” Her mood turned to conviction with every word, reinforcing the feelings deep inside her. There was still a slight shaking, but nothing that tightening her hand into a fist didn’t solve.

“That's a rather strange mentality. In fact, everything you have done so far is out of company spec.”

“Well… Let’s leave it at that, ok? I’m sure everyone has their own past and things. Life is just like that.”

“But you didn’t… There is nothing on record - no wait… you were involved in a shuttle explosion at age six. However, that shouldn’t explain your current behaviour.”

“And that's why computers will never replace human beings when dealing with disasters… I was the only one that jumped, so i was one of the only ones that lived. End of story!”

“This was not on your psych evaluation either.”

“Why bother mentioning something that's not important? Look... Enough of this, can we switch to batteries and run cold for a while? I’m going out to have a look.”