Eli drifted among the rocks, occasionally colliding with one softly. The dark expanse of the field left the stars of the galaxy twinkling as asteroids briefly blocked their light. The ambient light unable to give anything but the faintest silhouettes of nearby pieces. It would have been beautiful and surreal, had he not been stranded there half dead by some stalker that sounded like a televangelist preacher!
Spewing curses to himself, he scanned all the rocks he could looking for any minerals he could use to repair himself. When one came close he'd snag it with his remaining arm and bring it close to his refinery in the bay. He could only do this sparingly however, running on battery power with little to no light, there was no way to recharge. A choice needed to be made, either try to make a M:E from ruined parts of his own body and what little material drifted close to him or he could fabricate a miniature messenger capsule with a ALC drive, and use a large chunk of his power to send a distress call to back to Sol.
"It would be simpler to make a small probe to send back on battery power than to make a M:E from scratch. But if that thing felt like it had time to leave and come back here, it probably has something set up to keep me here. Which probably means it'll negate any alcubierre effect from forming." He mused, running simulations on his arrival to the area.
"It'll have to be the MTE, I hope whoever the Jewelled ones are, that they can handle themselves."
With that decision made he expanded his sensor fields, looking for high concentrations of metals. Right away several blips showed in his local area. Using what little fuel remained, he pushed himself towards the nearest one. After about thirty minutes of slowly drifting towards the metal deposit, he was close enough to see its silhouette against the twinkling stars. Activating his floodlights to find a spot to grasp it, he gasped in shock.
Pinned to an asteroid by a rod of some kind was a ship, designed like nothing he'd ever seen before. Shaped as if two cylinders had been connected by sphere, from either side of the cylinders swept sleek, wide winglets. The hull was translucent green with veins of crimson red tracing a network across the entire ship. The sphere had no viewports or obvious sensors apart from one forward facing jewel, faceted many times like that of an insect. If this first ping of metal had been a ruined ship, what did that mean for the others? His mind reeled at the thought that what had stranded him here, had plenty of practice doing so before he came around.
The rod pinning it to the asteroid was gold, but if gold had been smeared with oil and grease, with patterns that seemed to squirm and twist when in view. Dust and small rocks clung to it as if it had its own gravity. Circuitry could be faintly seen below the sheen of the surface. Eli's sensors couldn't identify what it was made out of, the closest he could imagine was if someone took a meter wide column of tungsten, then compressed it to the diameter of a soda can.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Tentatively, Eli began to dismember the alien ship piece by piece. Everytime he removed a panel, or section he'd take a recording in case anything would eventually prove useful. The winglets held some sort of energy caster, with the large cylinders appearing to be engines. He had yet to find any recognizable FTL or M:E parts, but he hadn't yet worked up the courage to start peeling away the central orb pierced by the rod. After a period of psyching himself up, he tore the first piece off, what he assumed was the crew compartment and expecting corpses.
No atmosphere leaked out or wires sparked, but surrounded by a mess of wires and tubes he could see a small silver orb with a single small blue light dimly shining. Delicately he pulled it out, no hardwired access port or input could be seen as he examined it. Removing it from the ship hadn't made the light fade out either. Deciding not to destroy something that still had power after God knows how long, he stored it away. It could be some form of black box after all. Eventually, after stripping the entire ship apart from what surrounded the strange spear, Eli was left with a good portion of reclaimed material but lacked the rare elements he needed for a M:E generator.
Eli moved on towards the next closest source of metal, leaving the disturbing golden spear alone. His power reserves were doing well at eighty percent, but the act of recycling nearly an entire ship had left him dangerously hot, especially if he needed to do so again. Thankfully the next deposit was a nickel laden asteroid, not a decrepit starship of unknowable origin.
-Meanwhile-
A dark mass of a ship stalked across the stars, it's passage seeming to leave a black scar behind. The ship vaguely resembled some great beast, but if it had partially decayed, then been dipped in onyx ink. It's surface brokered no reflection or gleam of light. Its path extended from where Eli had been ambushed, and it's travel, if some cosmic straight edge could be aligned with it, lead straight to Torc, and the Glint. A board this horror of a vessel, a creature crooned in a voice like a heavy rock thudding into dirt as it spoke into a terminal.
"We have taken the location of the Jewelled ones from the White Messenger. Our presence there should provoke a response from the Jewellers, after we have dealt with them, we can give the Messenger and it's race their reward for the information."
The creature finished its ominous message completed, purple energy cracked across the exterior of the horrible ship as a void in space appeared momentarily. A single black drop from the amorphous ship seperated and disappeared into the void, shortly vanishing with a glint of light.