There was nothing she could do. All the doctors had told her as much. They said she should get some rest. Sleep, maybe. Or do something to keep herself busy while she waited, to keep her mind off what she could not control.

Val sighed as she paced back and forth on the bridge of her ship.

“You’ll dig a hole in the floor,” said Nim.

“What am I supposed to do?” she asked, ignoring the jibe. “I can’t wait here forever.”

“Do we have someplace else we need to be?”

She frowned. “Well, ‘need’ might not be the right word, but we’ll have to get back to work eventually.”

Nim remained quiet as she continued her pacing.

“Why did he have to play hero like that?” She threw her arms in the air. “Just like him. What a fool! I can’t believe he—” She paused as her gaze fell on the screen. “What is that?”

It showed the image of a planet with red shapes in an ocean of blue.

“I don’t know,” said Nim after a few seconds of silence.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I didn’t put it there.”

“You didn’t? Then who—”

She bit down on her lip as she remembered the dormant AI. Hadn’t Kaine suggested it might not be dormant at all? It couldn’t be if it had opened that space rift.

“Val? What’s wrong?”

“Please check all of your systems,” she said. “Make sure everything is in order. Let me know if you find anything that isn't.”

“Of course, Val.”

But if it had been the AI’s doing, why would it have wanted her to go through that rift? To find out about the Qevahri attacking the Imperial fleet? She would have found out eventually, along with everyone else in the Imperium. Her stay on Rimzana had otherwise been short and unremarkable...

That was not exactly true, though, was it? She had met Kaine.

She frowned. Shook her head. No, that couldn’t be it. Why would a stupid AI want her to meet a guy like that? Plus, meeting that man had been such a random thing, there was just no way it could be the reason for all of this.

“I have found nothing, Val,” came the familiar and soothing voice. “Besides that box in the hold, everything is under control.”

“Thank you.” She paused. “Could you pull up for me all the information you have on this planet?”

“Of course.”

As the data scrolled on her screen, she tried to remember everything that had happened on Rimzana. It wasn’t like there had been anything special. If it hadn’t been for the rift, her ship wouldn’t have been damaged and she wouldn’t have needed to find a fixer...

Except, she never got to the fixer, did she?

She blinked, then squinted at her wristpad.

“Nim...”

“Yes, Val?”

“Is there something wrong with my wristpad?”

“What do you mean?”

“Back when we were on Rimzana, something happened. I found a list of fixers that I transferred to my wristpad. And then... it glitched. What with everything that’s happened since, I’d forgotten about it—until now. Could you look into it?”

“If you place its screen against the dashboard’s sensor, I can connect to it and check it out.”

She did as instructed and read the display while she waited.

The world was called Calista. It was one among thousands that lay within the rim of the Imperium. It had been first settled some three hundred years prior and had quickly grown. Despite its location at the edge of the rim, it had drawn the attention of conglomerates and scientists because of the rich and unique minerals that could be found there. The interest waned after a century—in part for political reasons, but also because better and more accessible resources had been found.

“It seems to be working perfectly well, Val.”

“Alright, thank you.”

She glanced at her wristpad as she pulled it away from the dashboard and looked back to the screen. Her eyes widened as she read the next paragraph.

The planet had disappeared. It was not immediately noticed, as Calista was no longer closely monitored, but when it was, it raised many eyebrows and the news spread like wildfire. This happened nearly a century ago and had now become more of a myth, with many not even believing the world had ever existed.

Val frowned as she went back through the file and read older entries. There were too many records of the settling, of trade agreements, company foundings... How could people think it was a myth? That world was real. There was evidence of it right there, plain as day.

“Damn it,” she muttered. “People can be so infuriating!”

“What is it, Val?”

She pointed at the screen. “A mystery bites them in the ass. They investigate. They can’t find an answer, so what do they do? They sweep it under the rug, of course. Never happened. Much easier this way.”

“I don’t know what to say, Val. I’m only an AI. I don’t know humans as well as you do.”

She gritted her teeth but said nothing.

After a while of staring at the screen, she jumped into her seat and tapped at the controls.

“The hell with it,” she grunted. “I’ll go crazy if I stay here waiting one more minute. Let’s go look at this mystery planet.”

“What about Ondine?”

The girl had stayed at the hospital, refusing to leave her rescuer’s side.

“She’s better off where she is. She’ll be safer down there, where she can watch over Kaine. Besides, this shouldn’t take long—we’ll just take a quick look.”

“Alright. But there won’t be anything to see if that planet is gone, Val.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see about that.”

Her mind kept going back to the dormant AI.

First a space rift, now this...

What game was it playing?