"Hey guys," Keisha called out. "I think you need to see this. I found something." The other three walked over to her, Sturletto taking his sweet time. "The seats for Charlotte Rose and this Kline Tempus guy are empty. They must have gone somewhere to relay the message we heard. Mina guessed right."

Sturletto scowled at her, "This doesn't prove anything. She could be just as dead somewhere else on this ship. Hopefully, now that you see everyone on board is dead we can just blow the damn thing up and move on." He said as he crossed his arms. Everyone scattered slightly, finding open bottles and looking at the plush jumpsuits everyone had on. They were boxy jumpsuits that looked uncomfortable to wear.

"I don't think we're going to find out much from the observation deck, let's work our way down and check every level for them," Zayd started heading for the exit.

The floor directly below them was considerably smaller and only had windows facing Rigel. It was clearly the command deck and there were a few corpses at their posts similar to the viewing gallery. Zayd, Sturletto, and Mina started going through all the consoles to check the ship's functions and Keisha walked directly towards the windows and took a good look at what once was and what was returning to Rigel.

The star had gone supernova and subsequently produced a black hole. At the current time, the star was slowly forming back together and you could see the cracks in the helium core coming together. It was so bright it was hard to focus on for long, their windows must not have the same window treatments newer ships did. Rigel had been a blue supergiant and as Keisha watched it regather the core amidst the swath of hydrogen that had surrounded it. She knew it should be blue, but looking at it through the lens of the red time shield it was an astounding view of various purple flashing across the windows. Parts of it looked like lightning shooting back towards the star, other parts were as a faded cloud of a pastel purple. It was mesmerizing.

She was brought out of her reverie by Mina, "The ship looks stable, and the engine is regaining fuel, but our two witnesses don't appear to be here."

"I found their communique," Sturletto said. "They must have recorded it here and sent it out here before they left for...wherever it is they are."

"Good work. Those two need to be the priority. Or really, anyone else that may still be alive. We need a witness to tell us what happened." Zayd said. "Let's go."

On the next level was a long hallway with doors to what could only be their barracks. As they walked down the hallway they saw each door was monogrammed with their names again, in the same golden plate on the back of the observation chairs. As they walked down the hall Zayd opened each door and it would close automatically shortly after. Keisha was last in line and missed seeing the rooms as they would close before she got there. The ship had clearly been outfitted throughout with the same style of white on top and a red soft foam on the lower half. The only difference here was the doors were completely white and had their nameplates on the upper half of the door in the middle. As they walked Keisha noticed some names that didn't have chairs on the observation deck. I bet some weren't lucky enough to be up there when it happened.

They bunched up at the end of the hallway and saw Charlotte and Kline's rooms directly across from one another. Zayd opened Kline's first, Keisha saw it was a pretty standard barrack. There was a bed at the end and a table you could pull down and small storage space on the other wall. There are some designs you just can't improve on. They clearly had assumed everyone on the Icarus would want to be spending their time on the observation deck. They turned and Mina opened Charlotte's. Again their hopes fell as the room was empty.

"What if they're not even on this ship?" Sturletto asked. Everyone was stunned at him offering an actual question to their problem.

"I suppose they could have abandoned ship, but I didn't see anywhere an emergency pod could have launched from," Zayd said. "Let's keep moving. Either way, we need to search this place top to bottom before we do anything."

It was Keisha's turn to lead this time and they all followed her to the exit. There were only two more floors left. On the next level was engineering. The room was fairly small now and all the white and red was gone. This room had all the moving parts. It was old and everything was moving backward but the sounds were the same. Keisha couldn't smell anything with the orange jumpsuit on, but by the looks of it she would smell the same types of smells you would find in an abandoned shipyard. It was where they would take cadets when they were learning and even the idea of the smell brought Keisha back to those years. Working on ships was easy, working with people was the hard part of the job.

They were able to spread out a bit and as Keisha walked between some pipes she saw two people, apparently frozen in time but ever so slowly standing up from their previous position. "I think I found them!" Keisha called out. Not everyone could get a good look at them with all the pipes and mechanics in the way and Mina pushed her way forward and took out a scanner.

"They're alive and perfectly healthy." She called out. "I'm picking up elevated adrenaline and cortisol levels, but that's to be expected."

"Can we bring them to our time phase?" Zayd asked.

"I'm not sure. If we just put a suit on them it could kill them. If we just pick them up and bring them back in the Velos with us, that could be just as bad." She replied.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"Great, so now we've found your two, but we're nowhere closer to solving this problem than we were before." Sturletto threw up his hands and went back towards the exit.

Zayd put his hands on his hips and shook his head, "Listen, why don't you two stay here and brainstorm a bit, I'll take Sturletto to the last floor and see if we find any clues down there." They all nodded in agreement and he left for the stairwell.

When Mina and Keisha were left alone they sat down and just watched the couple. The woman was beautiful. She had dark brown hair and light olive skin. She was taller than Kline and had a thin frame. Keisha noted her clothing looked as though she came from big money. It was a fitted pantsuit similar to the ones she had seen on the skeletons, but Keisha knew hers had been tailored for her. The suit matched the nice interiors of the observation deck but inversed the white and red colors. The pants were white and the top was the same deep red, she had it tucked in earlier, but it must have partially come undone while they fled to this room.

The man was of average height with red hair that was going white. He looked scrawny, but also scrappy. The kind of guy you might mistake for being weak in a fight. He had something on his face Keisha had never seen before, thin plastic lenses in front of his eyes. Maybe some sort of heads-up display?

She reached out to touch them, "No don't!" Mina shouted at her.

"Sorry!" She threw her hands up.

"It's ok, we just don't know how that may affect him. This will all be very disorienting regardless, those things could be something very important to him." She tapped her foot and kept watching the two with Keisha. "What do you think they were doing down here?"

"I don't know," Keisha responded. "If they're moving backward, then it looks like they had been crouching and huddling here. Why though? Would we be able to get the suits on them even if we wanted to?"

"I suppose we could, it's just like playing with dolls when you were younger." Mina shrugged. "Big, dolls."

"I never played with dolls," Keisha said.

"What? What did you play with then?"

"Ships." The two shared a look and went silent then. "Let's go check on the guys, maybe we'll find inspiration for how to help these two."

They went to the stairs and started walking down to the last level. As they went lower they heard shouting and picked up the pace. The lower room was for storage and the two of them ran to the back of the room where Zayd and Sturletto were fighting. There was a huge crate open behind Zayd full of small canisters packed in a lot of foam. Keisha had never seen anything like it before, it had a dark swirling cloud that looked like a gas, but also hard like marble.

"Stand down Sturletto, I don't want to hurt you!" Zayd shouted. Keisha could see his hand bleeding and Sturletto's lip bleeding.

"What is going on down here?" Mina yelled.

Sturletto threw a medium-sized box at them that forced them both to jump out of the way. "You mind your own business!" He shouted, "I've had enough of all of you. Do you know what's in that canister over there?" He laughed, "They have dark matter! The stupid plebians on Earth brought a bunch of dark matter here. We can take it and blow this ship up and then sell it and never work again in our lives. Hell, we could buy our own ships as big as the Pytheas with the credits this would bring. But no. Captain here wants to save the ship and the people on it."

"I'm not letting you anywhere near that stuff. The earthlings may have made it for this ship, but they had no idea what it could do. The Confederation between our planets has banned it for a reason. It's probably what's responsible for this time phase crap. We don't understand it fully. I can't let you have it. Now stand down, that's an order." Zayd said. Sturletto slung another box at Zayd, who couldn't jump out of the way or it would hit the dangerous cargo behind him. He started bleeding on his forehead while the maniac laughed.

Suddenly the entire ship creaked and slanted towards the direction Rigel was. "What was that?" Keisha asked.

"I don't know, everything looked stable from the command deck. We should have a few more days before Rigel returns completely." Mina replied. The four of them stood there anxiously, Zayd and Sturletto still breathing heavily from the fight. Suddenly, a woman with long blonde hair in a Pytheas Commanding Officer uniform appeared.

"Captain?" Mina asked.

"Andromeda?" Keisha asked at the same time. She had never seen the girl wear a uniform before, she looked just like her mother. Mina looked over at her confused.

"I don't have time to explain now," the phantom responded. "Kill him and go to the command deck, there you will find a small canister inserted into the main engine drive, remove it. Bring back the Icarus and the dark matter. By taking the dark matter out of the engine the time phase should automatically revert back to normal."

"What about the survivors?" Keisha asked.

"If you want them to live, put a suit on them before you remove that dark matter. It's their only hope. Your time is shorter than you think. Sturletto can not be allowed to return alive." The phantom disappeared. Everything seemed to happen all at once. Sturletto dropped to his knees and put his hands up, as though he was as innocent as a dove. Mina drew a knife from her pocket and threw it straight into his chest. Zayd rushed to Keisha and threw her onto the ground covering her body with his own.

They slowly looked over at Sturletto and watched as he fell slowly to the ground. Mina's knife in his chest. Then looked over at Mina, her face hard and her eyes determined. Her hand was still outstretched from throwing the knife. Her small body was hard and still like a statue while she watched Sturletto die.

"Are you ok?" Zayd asked her while still on top of her. His blood dripped down onto her face.

"A little bruised but yeah, I'm ok." He slowly got off of her and helped pull her up. "Mina, what did you just do?"

"What I was ordered to." She stood up slowly and brushed her hands on her pants. "Shortly before we left the captain came to me and said there might be cause for violence and to be ready if there was. I was trained on Chronos with knives, some of the local fauna wasn't very friendly and you had to always be on guard. I did what I was ordered."

Zayd knelt by Sturletto and felt for a pulse. He shook his head and then closed his eyes.

Mina turned to them, "Let's get to work. Zayd, you and I are going to get those suits on Charlotte and Kline. Keisha, you go to the command deck and see if you can find out where the dark matter canister is." Keisha and Zayd turned to one another worry written all over their faces.

I guess Mina is in charge now.