The next two warp jumps proceed without incident. On the third, the warp currents drag us towards an angry, churning star, a system with a blue sun and a single planet.

We wait a week at the mandeville point, letting the light of the system wash over the ship for the long range auspex to absorb and process, giving a much higher resolution than if we’d waited five minutes before firing up the engines.

Quaani joins me on the bridge. We stand by a holotable and examine the scan data it displays in 3D. His new height means I only come up to his chest, though he is gangly.

The map is covered with millions of tiny dots. All of them are labelled as obsidian, a black and shiny volcanic rock. An impossibility in space. The planet itself doesn’t show up properly, unknown interference preventing us from getting a full image.

Quaani plays a sequence of pics over his data slate, his eyes growing wider as he flicks through them. He hands the data slate over. “That’s a lot of sculptures.”

I nod, “It is. There are palaces and temples too, at least, that’s what I think they are. Definitely xeno, so who knows?”

“Is it safe?”

I scoff, “There’s an abandoned destroyer, cobra class, in orbit around the planet. The whole system is filled with xeno wrecks as well as strange structures. Solar flares have stripped the planet of its atmosphere. Another thousand years and all of this will be wiped out in a supernova.”

“I don’t think the xenos were native to the system,” Quaani zooms in on the holotable, focusing on the star, “the sun is too unstable and harsh. Why did they come here and build stuff?”

“No idea,” I shrug. “More importantly, is their reason important to us?”

Quaani frowns. He looks at the marks on the holotable then stares at the wall and back at the holotable several times. “At least one structure is hidden from the warp.” He manipulates the holotable, focusing on a single dot, a large, slowly spinning obelisk.

I bring up the scan data for the object in my head, “It still has power. Four percent of the structures do.” I highlight them on the holotable. “Are all of these hidden too?”

“I’ll look. This will take a while.” Quaani retreats to a chair and closes his eyes. An hour later he comes too. “I checked thirty of them from the four percent list. They were all hidden.”

“This is a remarkable discovery, possibly a vital one for mankind’s survival,” tap my finger against the holotable and grimace.

Quaani nods and grins, “Yes! We will be so rich when we get back.”

I slowly shake my head, “We’re not going to touch them.”

“What?”

“Quaani, what do you think the people on that cobra class destroyer thought? There’s no way they didn’t notice the same thing. That means they investigated and now they're dead. Or worse. Right now, we need scrap, not xeno artefacts. We’re going to tow their ship out of here and move on. We’ll collate all the data we get while we’re here and record the location and route on one of your special navigator maps, then send it to the inquisition.”

“We’re just gonna give this all up?”

“Yes. Can’t spend it if we’re dead, Quaani.”

“Dammit!” He paces around the holotable. “I want to be an imperial hero, to have my gilded cage actually mean something, and now you're telling me I can’t have that?”

A sad smile mars my face, “Sorry, Quaani.”

Quaani throws his hands into the air and roars, “OK, fine. I get it. I even agree. I know if we weren’t so desperate for resources we wouldn’t even go further into the system. It’s the smart play to let others take the risk at this time, etcetera etcetera. It’s still annoying as fuck.”

I hold out my fist and Quaani stomps over then punches mine hard. I blow on my knuckles, unclench my fist, and shake my hand rapidly.

“Good punch.”

“Stop exaggerating,” a small smile flickers across Quaani’s face, then he returns to scowling. “Damn the Omnissiah for my curiosity. We’ve had an adventure presented before us and we’re not pursuing it. I’m going to have to go my whole life not knowing what happened here!”

“I’ll get us underway,” I walk towards the command throne, chuckling.

“Aruna!” says Quaani.

Behind me, my servo harness cameras show Aruna appearing on the holotable and batting the planet with its paw.

“Yes, navigator?”

Quaani jumps slightly and looks up from his dataslate where Aruna normally appears. I review the data feed on the holotable. Aruna is using the holotable to project himself, rather than impress himself on my implants like he usually does.

Looking over at me, Quaani says, “Is this how you usually see it?”

Rather than shout, I project my voice from Quaani’s data slate, “It is.”

“I wish I could do that.”

“Apologies, Quaani. I can’t replicate my archeotech.”

“Yeah, I know,” Quaani’s bony shoulders slump a little, “Right, Aruna. My question. Do you know what system this is? Does it have a name or can we give it one?”

“This is the Melbethe system, it places us near the Rifts of Hecaton, like before, but farther coreward. Melbethe was discovered by the Disciples of Thule, followers of Arch-Magos Paracelsus Thule, who believe that the eternal Quest for Knowledge is best pursued in the field. I have no data on others who have visited Melbethe.”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“Oh, so they’re an explorator faction, like us?”

“Calling two people a faction is bold, navigator.”

“It’s fun though!”

Aruna turns around, his tail high in the air, then saunters off the holotable and disappears.

“Ergh, which fool forged a machine spirit with such perfect mimicry. I swear I saw a black hole beneath its tail.”

“The ship’s cat,” I say, “Has played an important role since the age of sail over forty millennia ago. They keep the ship free of vermin and assist the crew with their mental health. While Aruna is infinitely more intelligent and capable than the creature it is based off, the need for such a role has not changed. It does not surprise me whoever designed Aruna’s hologram put a lot of effort into it.”

I sit on the throne and connect to the ship. My senses and processing capability expand massively, especially with the custom mods I added. I feel the void on my skin and the harsh swell of radiation laps against my eyes. Thousands of servitors scurry through my body and power rumbles through my bones.

“Really?”

A thought stream focuses on Quaani, “Absolutely.”

“How do you know that?”

“Period dramas and a lot of documentaries. Goes well with burgers and beer. Want to watch one while we wait?”

“If you’re making burgers, sure.”

“What’s wrong with the ones out of the nutritious ooze module I assembled?”

Quaani grimaces, “It’s just not the same. Food made by machines lacks... warmth, I guess. Like it’s stale or something, no matter what the auspex says.”

“Not sure if I should be flattered or insulted. I put a lot of work into that machine and a hydroponics system and I think it’s awesome, but you also like my cooking.”

“Insulted,” Quaani smirks, “I never said I liked your cooking.”

“Then you can make your own, or make do with the machine.”

“No! Spare me!”

I disconnect from the command throne, “Alright, that’s enough nonsense. I’ll fix us some grub and we’ll eat in the strike craft pilots’ ready room. They have a good pict-caster there.”

“Send me the list, I’ll pick!”

E-SIM forwards the list to Quaani and I skim it. There are a lot I haven’t seen. It’s not like they stopped making similar stuff for hundreds of years after I kicked the bucket.

Quaani and I spend six hours watching TV, or pict-caster as they call them in these future times. Watching Hornblower puts a smile on my face and I feel less adrift in time and space. The 2203 remake of Pirates of the Caribbean was decent, Quaani liked the cautionary tale of why you shouldn’t touch ‘chaos artefacts’ as he interpreted it.

There was also a good documentary from 2382 about the Mary Rose, a sailing ship that sank in the Solent, the strait north of the Isle of Wight and south of England.

The documentary was filled with data tags my implants could interact with; I access them and dredge extra information from the footage, acquiring more detail than the narration provides. The feature is fantastic, but it also makes me wonder if something happened to the internet at that point in history as broadcasting extra data when you could run a search for it instead, or just provide links, seemed strange to me. No company would pay for data if it didn’t have to.

Four days later, we rendezvous with the cobra, Erudition’s Howl, in orbit over Melbethe. Although we still can’t get scans of the planet, we are able to look at it from the observation dome.

The planet is artificial; more than half vacuum by volume with branching, winding coils of dark stone. The planet looks more like a tangled thicket: an abyssal maze of boggling proportions. One section is damaged where someone has shot a lance into the planet and the hole is surrounded by imperial structures transmitting garbled data that I order Aruna to discard, rather than record.

We expose some film and are able to take physical pictures and make some sketches of the planet, but when we look at the data we discover the pict-recorder we used was bricked after a single photo.

We reaffirm our commitment to non-interference with all xenos structures and focus our efforts on Erudition’s Howl.

Detailed scans of the exterior hover above the holotable. The vessel is one point five kilometres long and zero point three abeam at the cross-shaped, stern fins, though much of the ship is half as wide.

It has four torpedo launchers recessed in an armoured prow that takes up a fifth of the ship. A prominent superstructure juts from the centre spine, like a shark’s dorsal fin and a gothic cathedral structure looms over the vessel’s stern.

“It’s in good condition,” says Quaani. “Is scrapping it really the best plan? By volume, we’ll need -” Quaani fiddles with his data slate. “Oh wow, I did not expect that. We’ll need at least fifty three of them for the mobile shipyard, compared to eight for a new lathe class. The extra width of the origami class compared to more traditional cruisers makes a bigger difference than I thought it would.”

I point a camera at his dataslate with a mechadendrite, “That’s correct. It gets worse for even a small battleship.” The mechadendrite snakes over and taps at Quaani’s dataslate and enters the numbers.

“Six hundred and forty four!” says Quaani.

“At least. That’s for a eight kilometre by three point two kilometre battleship. Some are as big as twelve kilometres. The Gloriana super battleships, dreadnaughts, or however you label them, are even more ridiculous. Point is, I agree. I hadn’t thought about quite how much scrap I need. I only compared it to the raw ore on Mote. Turns out both numbers were ridiculous. Maybe next time we’ll find a couple of scrapped luna-class cruisers. Searching for over fifty destroyers isn’t practical.”

“We need escorts anyway.”

“True. We’d best get to it. I will assign you and Aruna as supervisors.” I tap my head, “With ten of me controlling the process, I make crises rather than avoid them!”

Quaani quirks and eyebrow at me then shakes his head. “I’m glad you gave me a mind impulse unit now. Being able to drop into the noosphere and join your simulations is really useful, even if I can’t think at your ridiculous speed.”

I eye the holotable as D-POTs appear near the edge rush towards the hulk, “Me too. I wouldn’t want to do this without practice either.”

“Don’t you need to plant your ass back on that chair?”

“No,” I turn around and head back to the command throne, “But I really should for when this all goes horribly wrong. I don’t want to though. Living in my power armour is useful but living on a throne makes me want to explore things I should not, like those obsidian temples.”

“Heavy is the arse that wears the throne.”

“Don’t let the sisters of battle hear you say that.”

Quaani makes the sign of the aquila, crossing his arms, with his palms flat against his chest and his thumbs interlocked, then bows his head to the imperial aquila hanging behind the command throne. He rubs the side of his head and gives a sheepish smile.

“The Imperium hasn’t outlawed humour yet, Quaani, but getting sanctioned for it would really suck.”

“I hear you, Aldrich. I’m sorry.”

“We all say dumb shit from time to time. Only the most rampant fanatic has the energy to chase every perceived insult, but when you’re a public figure like a captain or a navigator, you have to be extra careful.”

Quaani snorts, “Navigators aren’t public figures.”

“To a normal citizen? No, they are not. Among merchants and nobility, however, they are social butterflies. I can only hope we make it back to hold a few soirées of our own.”

“That would be awesome! You’re cool and all, Aldrich, but I’d really like some friends.”

I clasp Quaani’s shoulder, “Me too, Quaani.”