“Get someone to wake Captain Carter. Koffi, I need to know why we’re the ones being contacted. Get on it. And someone bring me the Mayday message.” Juno sternly commanded.

“Ma’am,” Koffi acknowledged, before barking orders at the crew. A comms officer left his station and met with Juno.

“Message ma’am,” he addressed Juno, holding out his tablet with the transcript on it, “Mayday. Terro Six, flight path sixteen double O, thirteen hundred. Derelict. No response. In planetary drift around Cautlus.” The flight path was an arbitrary number assigned to ships to help identify them, or help a search if the ship ever disappeared. It worked… as long as the ship told someone where they were going.

“Ma’am. The Mayboy says we are the only ship responding, ma’am. We are the second ship closest to the target area. The nearest is ignoring any requests for assistance.”

“Any word on a rescue response time?”

“No one is willing to inform us about it, ma’am.” Time could be of the essence, or it could not be. If the ship had been drifting for years then it wouldn’t matter if they responded or not. Maybe somebody knows something we don’t…

Rescue teams would surely arrive at some point to recover the ships and the bodies in the worst case scenario. If that wasn’t the case though a couple hours may be the difference between life and death…

However, it was Captain Carter’s choice. As if reading her mind, her Glass chirped. Cpt. Carter. Transmission.

“Accept.”

“What is it, Juno?”

“Mayboy flyby informed us of a distress signal coming from Cautlus, sir. We are the closest ship responding.”

“What’s the urgency level of this operation?”

“Unknown Captain. The Mayboy didn’t have many answers.” Carter took his time responding.

“... Take care of it, Juno. You’re in command.”

“Yes, sir.” The Glass disconnected. Thanks for nothing. This is probably another test.

A Mayboy has already contacted a response team, surely, and seeing as they aren’t a rescue ship, their help would be limited. Not to mention, an alien species was aboard that vessel. The Voyager wasn’t capable or trained to deal with that yet. Going to help might end up causing more trouble.

However, say the crew was trapped and time was slowly running out. Every second would count. Between Carter’s orders and their wait limit for the station, the Voyager was just sitting there.

“Alright. Captain Carter is remaining off duty, flight deck. I’m still the acting commander.” The word commander gave her chills, “We are responding to that distress signal. Accept whatever coordinates are sent and take us there.”

Cautlus was an icy dwarf planet two and half billion miles away from its star, Cerina. No life existed anywhere on it, nor any intentions of colonization, industry, or even research established. It was a completely dead and isolated world.

The Voyager exited its grav jump on the side Cautlus facing Cerina. Juno watched the main screens, terminals in the center of the flight deck wall, as the frozen planet jumped into view. This was a much clearer picture of the little dwarf planet.

Little was relative. It was massive. The entire image took all eight displays to showcase and only half of the planet was showing. Mostly off white, like a slightly yellowed egg, Cautlus’ defining feature was large patches of rusty red ice painting its southern pole.

Juno basked in the fear and wonder of the alien world, her first visit to a non-human planet. Its vibrant reds and whites mixed in sharp contrast. The bulbous splotches strained her eyes. How alien is a world if no one’s laid claim to it?

They flew closer until the planet seemed to stop growing, altogether. If Juno didn’t know any better she would’ve thought they had stopped moving.

Slowly, an object formed somewhere in the mess of red and white. It was tiny, a speck, but over time, as they approached, its shape actualized. A small box-like ship sat suspended before the unfathomable size of Cautlus.

It always made Juno uneasy the way things in space, like the ship seemed to just float unnaturally. Ship grav drives made things even stranger since they could totally discounting zero G inside the ship. The crew walking freely aboard the ship while outside things hovered and floated like ghosts in a featureless void… It felt like a dream.

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The ship looked more like a mini station rather than something that could fly on its own. It was a series of boxes, one long one on its side in the middle and two others hanging like wings behind it, with a small room at the front, a cockpit probably. A long hallway, tubular in design, stretched away from the cockpit, down the middle of the ship. This was where the boarding dock was. At the tail end of the “wings” were two dual engines, fat and simple. The overall shape looked like a rudimentary drawing of a house, except with a long tube down the middle of it.

The ship was clearly not military, or even exploratory. It didn’t look like a private vehicle either. Whatever it was, Juno hadn’t ever seen one before.

“What kind of ship is that?”

“No clue ma’am,” Pressly, the Lead Pilot, answered.

Its actual size was surprising. Up close it was much bigger than it looked. Juno’d mistaken its size for a car or bus, but up close it looked more like a proper ship.

“Still no reply ma’am,” Koffi informed her.

“Nothing on board seems to be moving,” Pressly answered.

“Can we get a name on this ship?” Juno asked.

“Mayboy is non responsive. Unnamed, ma’am.” Unnamed was a bad thing. It meant someone was concealing or refusing to give the name to the Mayboy. It could be that the species of the system didn’t recognize who was asking. Or, it meant the ship was never registered. However, it did have a flight path.

“No life signs, no identification. And no response. What’s the procedure ma’am?” Koffi asked. The ship looks inactive. Chances are everyone on board was dead, or even abandoned ship already. They should wait for rescue teams. But…

“How did the Mayboy come up on this vessel?”

“It was a repeating distress signal. It’s been on loop for… twelve days ma’am.” Nearly two weeks? Everyone was dead. They had to be. Space was large, too large. Even with a distress signal, it could take days, months, years to be found if you were lost. The only reason the derelict ship had been found now was because of all the new traffic.

“The ship AI onboard activated the signal itself, ma’am.” Twelve days was too long. There was no reason to board.

“Can you contact the AI?”

“No response, ma’am. Just the signal.”

“It’s derelict. If anything’s alive we aren’t equipped to do anything about it. Keep comms up and continue trying to raise the AI. We’re here if something changes. In the meantime we’ll wait for a rescue team.” It would take hours, but they had nothing else going on. What did it matter? With absent eyes, Juno watched the screens, inspecting both the ship, and the planet behind. They’d just arrived and things had already gotten complicated.

Time drip fed away.

This close to the planet, the orbit of the ships seemed to have stopped. The surface of Cautlus barely moved. Everything seemed to have frozen in place.

Juno’s mind wandered uncontrollably, drifting through the imaginary ship in her mind, or down over the barren wastes Cautlus. She hated this feeling. Her focus was broken by two of her comms officers' conversation. They seemed to be having a heated debate.

Koffi rejoined Juno’s side.

“No word on the rescue team. No word on anything ma’am. Juno checked the time. Nearly an hour had passed.

“The Mayboy has sent word. It’s what they’re designed to do.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Juno noted a hint of something in the Second Officer’s voice.

“You disagree?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Speak candidly. You’re the second officer. I need you to advise me, not kiss my ass.” Juno was surprised by her own aggression.

“Alright, then. I think we would have gotten word from someone by now. Anything. A message. An alert. But, it’s dead silent.”

“We’re an exploration vessel. No one has any reason to communicate with us.”

“Yes, ma’am. You’re right.”

“The truth is, this ship is most likely empty. Twelve days is a long time to be in distress. And that’s if the AI sent out the message after the emergency, which in most cases it probably didn’t. Let’s face it, Koffi. There’s no one on board that ship still alive.”

“Of course, ma’am. Good point.” Koffi didn’t necessarily believe that, but Juno in contrast had convinced herself fully. Juno, however, did hope the rescue team would arrive sometime soon. It was less than a couple hours from the main station with their grav drive. Rescue teams should have faster ones. Their absence at this stage was worrisome.

The two comm techs were still arguing over something, quietly at their stations. Juno tried to ignore them. One was visibly distressed, though, and raised her voice.

“You have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.” That was Juno’s cue. She approached the two.

“What is it?”

“O–oh, nothing ma’am. A disturbance on a comms channel,” a squirrelly man said.

“It’s movement ma’am,” the comms tech argued. It was the same woman Juno had chewed out earlier.

“It’s a blip. It’s nothing,” the first said, more to the other woman than Juno.

“It’s not nothing ma’am. It’s a disturbance in the comms relay. Something is sending a signal to us. It’s repeating every five seconds.” Juno paid attention.

“It’s true ma’am, but it could be any number of interferences.”

“It’s coming from the ship?” Juno asked.

“Yes, ma’am. It could be someone inside using something to transmit a sound, something small, like an SOS, ma’am.”

“It’s more likely it’s interference from the ship itself. Or something could be bouncing off the planet and then off the ship. There’s no way to tell.” Juno had already made up her mind.

“But, it could be a crewmember alive on that ship?”

“Yes, ma’am. A slight chance, but yes.” Juno didn’t bother hearing more.

“Koffi, get a boarding crew ready. Flight deck prep for boarding. Then, take us in.”