"All right, Lieutenant, we'll message when we need you to unlock a gate. Maintain radio silence otherwise. Should be back in about 48 hours."

"Roger that, sir. Good hunting," Pirra replied.

Didn't want to go blasting signals into a place as messed up as Terris, she knew. As much as she hated being left behind, she also felt dread at the very thought of heading in.

The line went dead, and she let out a deep breath.

"Beginning diagnostics on the maintenance systems," Tred said. "Expected time; five hours."

Pirra glanced to him. "We're supposed to be checking the fusion generator, right? Not the maintenance systems. Those were checked only . . ." she brought up the logs. "Two months ago."

"It's procedure, ma'am. Sir. I mean, if you want to order me to go against procedure, I can, but-"

"No, no," she sighed. "Sky forbid we violate procedure."

A scandalized look went across Tred's face, but he said nothing.

Pirra checked the readouts from each of the dashgates still operating within the system. They were kept locked down at all times, to prevent people from entering, and only a signal from this station could turn them back on.

If she was with the team, she'd be sleeping in her seat, taking food pills, relying on a suit for everything and barely able to move. Heading into the heart of the most corrupt place known to the Sapient Union.

She should feel lucky.

Tred was tapping on a key nervously; the sound was just in a range to be annoying to her, but just as she opened her mouth to speak, Tred said something.

"Do you ever think about all that ordinance that went astray at big battles in space?" he asked.

She was thrown for a loop by the topic change. "What?"

"You know, like at the Battle of Terris. How many millions of rounds must have been fired? And some went astray. They're just going to keep flying for . . . well, forever."

He frowned. "Until they hit something."

"Yes, I know how space works," she replied dryly. "Keep your focus on your work."

"It's all going - I got the system enough resources to run two scans at once, should cut our total work time in half!"

That did sound impressive, but it raised a more important question in her mind. "Were you unsure if we could get the work done in less than forty-eight hours?"

"Well, no," he admitted, looking surprised.

"Is there any advantage to it?"

"We'll be done faster in case the Lt. Commander decides to leave early?" Tred replied. It sounded like a question.

"Are you asking me that?" Pirra said.

"No, no! I'm just stating it."

She lapsed into silence and decided to look into sleeping arrangements. Part of her was tempted to assign him a bunk as far as possible from hers.

"There could be a shell heading at us right now," Tred suddenly said. "We'd never even see it coming, not at that speed."

"Tred!" she snapped.

He jumped in his seat. "Yeah? I mean, yes ma'am?"

"Let's . . . there's a lot of other things we should be thinking about rather than stray ordinance, all right? Is there anything else you could be doing now to prepare for when your current tests are done?"

"I . . . suppose. But like you said, we've got forty-eight hours. I was going to kind of pace myself . . ." he replied, nervously.

She was pushing him out of what little remained of his comfort zone. The man loved planning his schedules and then keeping them, she had learned that very quickly about him . . .

"All right, keep to your schedule, then. But why not go take a look at the reactor? Just do a . . . spot check. Make sure there are no obvious major visual problems."

"Visual problems? Like cracked screens or peeling paint?" he looked very troubled at the prospect.

"Anything," she suggested.

"All right . . ." the man muttered, standing and walking off the bridge.

*******

Pirra sipped her drink and ordered the drone launches from the station.

Wonderful, job done. They'd been here . . .

She looked at her timer. Fifteen minutes.

And she was pretty much done with her work.

Leaning back in her seat, she stared at the ceiling. She wasn't going to be annoyed, she wasn't going to be annoyed . . .

A voice came over her comm. "Lieutenant Pirra, I have a question . . ."

She held her breath a long moment. Too much air always made her get more aggressive.

"Yes, Tred?"

"In looking over the fusion reactor and the history of its maitenance, I saw a discrepancy. No team has apparently stayed here longer than 24 hours," he said.

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

"Okay," she replied, unsure what she was supposed to make of this.

"That means they can't have run a full Level 12 diagnostic on the system - those take at least 30 hours!"

"Okay," she continued. "Does that need to be done?"

"It's not usually listed to be done for at least two more years, but in my experience such a test is important for finding early issues and preventing them from-"

"Will this throw off your main schedule or interfere with my duties?"

"No, ma'am, this will only be using the engine core's AI. I'll be down here all day working on it while my other tests run in the main system." He sounded so gleeful.

And she liked the sound of that, too. He'd be happy in his environment, and she could . . . well, she didn't come out ahead except she didn't have to deal with him when he was nervous.

"That sounds like a good plan," she said. "Execute it."

"Yes, ma'am!"

Pirra had almost touched the button to disconnect when Tred spoke again.

"There's just one other thing, ma'am."

"Yes?"

"Well, I found something else when I was looking through these maintenance logs."

She waited for the man to continue, but realized after a moment that he was waiting for her.

"Go ahead, Tred. Just tell me the whole thing."

"Okay, ma'am. So, in these logs the techs, well - they wrote that everything started out fine, but then . . ." he trailed off, and she was about to prompt him on again when he finally spoke.

"They get a bit weird. These guys say they were seeing ghosts."

Pirra couldn't think of anything to reply to that. The concept of ghosts were a very . . . sticky one among her kind, though she'd never even believed in them. Still, part of her wondered if the man was poking fun at her.

"It's just really kinda spooky is all," he said, his voice going a bit quieter.

No, she realized. He was just being nervous.

"There's no such thing as ghosts, Tred," she told him evenly.

He was quiet for a long moment.

"Yes, ma'am," he replied.

*******

She must have fallen asleep.

Pirra sat up in the command chair, blinking and looking about blearily.

The room was dark. Wait, what room was this?

It was the bridge of the Monitor Station, she realized. Right, she was stationed here for a few days while Iago took the rest of the team . . .

She remembered the whole thing, rubbing her forehead. They were in the outer reaches of the Terris system.

It was so dark. Why were the lights off?

"Computer, lights," she ordered.

They increased - but just slightly.

"Computer, why are the lights dim?"

"Operating on emergency power, due to primary reactor being offline."

Offline? "Why is the primary reactor off?"

"The Primary Reactor has been taken offline for a Level 12 diagnostic."

Damn it! She hadn't realized that that's what Tred's diagnostic entailed.

Looking at the time, her system helpfully informed her that she'd been asleep for nearly an hour. "Where is Tred?" she asked.

"Engineer Tred is in the engine room. His condition is normal."

She almost forced a laugh. The system had read her so well that it knew she was concerned. Damn her if the AIs were almost too smart.

"All right," she said, realizing that there wasn't a deep problem here. As long as the reactor would come back on in time for Iago's return all would be well.

Unless something went wrong . . .

"Computer, do we have external communications?"

"We can receive messages but we cannot send messages," the AI told her.

That would be okay . . . If they got a message from Iago then they could interrupt the scan and be ready to help them.

That settled that. The system would have awoken her if there was a message - and she double-checked to be safe - so there was no issue with having fallen asleep. She hadn't even felt tired before.

It felt so claustrophobic on the bridge. She reached for her drink, fumbling as it wasn't where she thought she'd left it. Finding it, she took a sip-

And spat out the nasty stuff in there.

"What the hell?!" she asked. This wasn't her drink! She'd been drinking salt water, but this was . . .

She looked down into the cup. It was coffee in there. She never drank coffee.

It wasn't her cup, either. Putting it back, she looked around for her own.

But she couldn't find it. This wasn't right.

"Computer, has Engineer Tred left the fusion reactor area?"

"He has not," the computer replied.

". . . Has he been asleep?"

"Yes. Engineer Tred's sleep coincided with your own."

Something was wrong here. "Computer, why did-"

A blood-curdling scream came over the comm.

Pirra lept to her feet, hand going to the spot her sidearm should have been. But those hadn't been issued for this mission, she realized.

"Tred! Tred, come in!"

"Lieutenant! Are you all right?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she replied. "Was that you?" It hadn't sounded like Tred, but she couldn't be sure.

"No! I thought it was you, but it sounded human . . ."

It certainly hadn't sounded like a Dessei. "Scan the station. Confirm we're alone-"

The door to the bridge opened, and a man she had never met before stepped on.

She stared at him, and he stared back, shock making them both pause.

"Who are you?" she demanded, snapping back to reality.

The man said nothing, taking a hesitant step back. His uniform was SU, but her system provided no information on him.

"Identify yourself," she said, taking a step towards him.

The man panicked and ran.

"Stop!" she ordered, chasing after him.

She thought she could catch him, but as she followed him down the curving tunnel everything distorted.

It felt like the air was knocked out of her. She staggered - but the other man kept going, opening a hatch and jumping through.

Trying to get back into stride, she stumbled to the last point she'd seen him. He'd gone deeper into the station, where the gravity was lower.

The room was almost empty, with just a glass meeting table in the center. There was nowhere to hide.

She queried the system to give her data on the opening and closing of doors to hopefully track the man.

"The door across the room has not been opened for six years," the system informed her.

But the man had come in here, and there was no other way out. Yet he was not here.

"Locate all individuals on the station," she ordered.

A list came up. It was just her and Tred.