The ship of the unknown design was turned to the specialists from Neptune. Humans and a few AI were working on the remains.

But nothing special was inside.

And what was mysterious no crew was found.

Admiral and King have left the party to check firsthand what they deal with. They were standing inside a powered-down ship. Its hyperdrive was unfortunately busted beyond any inspection- about 30% of the ship was vaporized and the jumpdrive must have been there. Admiral hold some part in his hand and was watching around.

"What do you think Admiral? I'm not the battleship specialist but this ship shouldn't be able to be this stealthy." Asked uncertain King Konrad.

"I don't know... Maybe they are using some unknown type of emulation system we vaporized with engines..." The Admiral dropped a bizarre fragment of perhaps a door. "What do you think about its crew?"

"Ship this size would be comparable to our small frigate. That means about 100 to 200 sailors and 50 marines. However, judging by all the data we were given there are very little and few traces of its crew at all." said Konrad after a while. But something was very off in this ship. They couldn't find any evacuation pod or even their launch bays.

"They were destroyed by saturated area fire. Admiral Parker wisely choose the standard pattern "Fuck you whatever it is in this general direction" and got a few solid hits. Their stealth technology is not as efficient as ours but for sure is good since we can't detect them."

Admiral had a strange feeling. Freya and Ra'volta materialized before them. They took command over these two dreadnoughts as they were closest. There was still a party on Dauntless so it wouldn't be a good idea to drag all these people here. Admiral was looking above him as seven Valliant class dreadnoughts were taking positions around them. Three planetoids are keeping watch just in case.

Knowledge is power so protect it well. Ra'volta was running some tests.

"My King and Lord Admiral I might know the reason why this ship is so mysterious." they both looked at him with full focus.

"Go on."

"I believe I detected the server room of this ship. It's almost 30% mass of the entire wreck which is at least odd. While its components and technology are much more inferior than the Commonwealth it's still too big for housing AI of this ship. The viable explanation would be the fact of their AI being less sophisticated than we are but still, an AI would compress and optimize its data to more manageable sizes. A better explanation is a theory that this ship was housing more than one AI. It could mean this ship has less than a skeletal organic crew of which traces we have found."

That made sense. Freya informed about her finding: "In intact part of the ship we found remnants of unknown installation. Its components were melted and charred most probably by some emergency procedure. Some organic matter traces were found in meltdown remnants but it can't be determined if it belonged to the crew or other organic matter normally present in ships like food or pieces of furniture. We are attempting to break into the ship core and remnants of the servers. We will try to recover all the data but if we find anything translation might take a while. But not much usable data left."

"Thank you both. I think we will return now to Dauntless... What it is?!" Admiral pointed his finger toward the approaching ship.

"Ummm Raven Rock? Guardian what are you doing here?" asked surprised Konrad.

"Sir! Queen ordered me to bring here Lady Khrisa. She will try to detect if any traces of mana could be found. Her dropship is underway. We came in Raven Rock because we weren't sure if Lady Khrisa would need her lab or not." They both looked at each other and shrugged. It will not hurt to try for sure. They should think of that themselves but taking a friendly mage on an investigation is not the first thing that came to your mind while inspecting wrecks. When Khrisa landed with her husband and a team of five other marines she immediately came closer to them.

Raphael quickly joined the Captain of the Admirals security team and they linked tactical data.

"Right here I don't sense any trace of the mana. Thats good. And no- it can't be removed or masked as far as we know. I have an entire wing of scientists who try to do this for the last nine years."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"That's good. Fighting hostile xeno mages is not exactly my definition of good fun." Responded Admiral and King smiled since he couldn't agree more.

Recently Fa'enni themselves started more and more aggressive tests with the usage of their mana. At first we Humans were joking about casting a fireball but Fa'enni are dead serious about weaponizing magic. They reasoning that's their natural weapon and should be used for the protection of the entire Commonwealth in the same manner as the Commonwealth once saved them.

Khrisa was checking some data and tilted her armored head. "Let's go to this destroyed section. I want to try something."

"Sure. But don't touch anything without an AI allowance! We don't know what parts of the ship still can be powered and what will happen." She waved her hand in agreement. Admiral, King, Khrisa, and 4 of the Marines left for a room found by Freya.

The AI avatars vanished but they always monitor their Crews. After passing through a few straight corridors and a few turns they entered spacy but entirely burned-down room.

She looked around and set up sensor arrays equipped with 3d optical sensors at few points in the room. "Give me 5 minutes in silence. And whatever happen don't interrupt me. I'll be trying this for the first time outside the lab."

They all just nodded. She never asked them to do anything stupid or pointless so waiting here 5 more minutes won't hurt even if she fail at whatever she was trying. She kneeled and sat on her legs in the middle of the room. After a brief moment, she touched melted remnants of anything that was placed in the middle. All humans were standing in silence mindlessly watching the melted equipment of this room which solidified in fantastic shapes after the room was exposed to the coldness of space vacuum.

After four minutes twelve orbs of purple light formed a circle above Khrisa's head and started spinning extending their radius faster and faster until touched the walls. A sudden flash of light blinded them briefly and they saw a different sight.

They were standing in the same room but it was in its peak condition. Near Admiral was standing hideous alien and was using some kind of console. He was short for Human and Fa'enni standards and was about 140cm tall. But it was ugly like the sin itself. Potato-shaped covered with black-brown fur torso and four tentacle-like appendages where you expect to see arms and twelve more where legs should be. No head could be seen growing from its torso.

Humans knew they are seeing the famous Fa'enni "Vision" and "felt" what and when they are looking at. They observed a creature trying to figure out where it could have a face but it wasn't easy. Suddenly the room in vision start shaking. That must be an effect of a direct hit from one of the Commonwealth battleships. Alien visibly panicked and started pressing some buttons. Doors to the room opened and twelve other creatures gathered in the middle of it and suddenly vanished.

The Admiral looked straight into the King's eyes for one second to ensure he think the same. With a short nod, Konrad confirmed and watched what will happen next.

The next shake and they saw the alien tripping on his twelve legs signaled another hit. At the same time, four other aliens entered the room carrying large heavy looking boxes. Each box had wheels mounted probably for help in transport. The alien controlling this system quickly pressed the button and his friends disappeared as well. They saw fifty more creatures entering the room in a span of few minutes in groups. The operator waited a few more seconds and pressed a few more buttons and rushed toward the middle of the room and disappeared as well.

After one more minute doors to the room opened once more and seven wounded creatures entered. One of them came to the console while the rest of them were waiting in the middle of the room. Alien near the console was hitting buttons with panic and started screaming something but no sound could be heard.

So their faces were as hideous as the rest of them. Clearly carnivorous circular cavity full of rows of triangle teeth. Its eyes must be somewhere near. Maybe that three lighter spots.

All seven were now screaming but to no avail. After a brief moment, a ball of plasma appeared in the middle of the room instantly killing all aliens gathered there and beginning to melt the entire room. The last alien started burning and hitted the console with its side while being sucked inside the plasma ball. A few seconds later console melted and they saw the room they were standing in.

Khrisa was heavily breathing and was about to faint. Raphael helped her and took her in his arms. One of the Marines from her guard team carefully collected sensors and packed them into a reinforced small crate.

"Lady Khrisa I'm absolutely impressed. We will leave the ship now since we really have something now. Much more than I expected." Admiral was smiling. So you bastards think you can mess with anyone. We know now enough and now with Fa'enni's help we will find you. "Take her to safety and let her rest. After she gets better I will have some questions but that can wait."

All of them left the melted room. King asked Admiral on private frequency. "Teleportation?"

"It looks like. But it seems it is quite limited. If they could just teleport away they didn't have to gather in this room. Hmmm... We stopped the research a long time ago. Maybe it's time to dust off some projects?"

Konrad looked at the data. It really was a closed case for the few last centuries now. But with this... "We need a way to understand this system. They didn't teleport any warhead on board of our ships but we can't be sure what they can do and what not."

"That is for sure. Merlin and his team will be here in a few hours. It was a bit of a hassle to gather them so quickly but Merlin managed to organize them on Makeana."

"When Khrisa wakes up I'll make her gather a team to help you here but I'm afraid she can't stay Admiral. I want to return to the Alinti system asap just in case. I know Robert probably doesn't need me there but I feel responsible for the Fa'enni."

"Understood King General."

Denis Makosso really understood his duty and burden.