The fruit wasn’t recognisable. There were no obvious apples or oranges, but they were clearly fruits. Some peach-looking things had a more greenish hue and something that was similar to the kiwifruit. She was in no rush to try any of it. She kept moving down the row of stalls, nodding politely, trying to blend in with the crowd.

There had been no habitable planets in the system, so the pod couldn’t have simply landed somewhere, and if it had, she should be able to see it. It wouldn’t have just melted. None of this made sense. If she had her slate, she would at least be able to determine how long she had been unconscious.

“Not exactly,” said a voice. She turned around; the closest shopkeeper looked at her, startled. “Keep calm,” the disembodied voice said. “No one else can hear me,” he said.

Grateful, Grace asked, “So now I’m hearing voices?”

“And don’t worry about that,” he said. “What you need to appreciate is this was a long time ago,”

“So not now?” she asked, subvocalizing so as not to draw attention.

“This was before man,” answered the voice, “and before humans, before the Earth itself.” Grace, tried to do the maths in her head. “I needed you to see this,” he said.

“A market? We have those,” she said.

“This,” he said, as the sky grew dark. Grace turned and lifted a hand to cover her eyes from the bright sun.

A dozen ships had hit the atmosphere and flew low overhead; shock waves sent produce falling from the market stalls and the traders hurried to clean up the mess, only for another wave to follow, setting off the whole chain again. Grace felt a primal terror in the pit of her stomach. There was something about these ships that terrified her. That was ridiculous. She wasn’t one for superstition. But she couldn’t shake it.

As the ships were getting closer, they powered up their compressed energy weapons and started targeting the town. Massive explosions rang out; smoke filled the sky. They were firing indiscriminately everywhere, including the market.

People were running in every direction. The first storekeeper Grace passed was incinerated instantly. One narrowly avoided being completely vaporised but lost a leg in the process, falling to the sand and dragging himself forward, surviving another few seconds before the next ship closed in.

Grace joined the fleeing masses, running as quickly as her legs would carry.

“Who are they?” she asked, but the voice did not reply. She decided it was enough to go on. The people were fleeing in every direction. The ships still attacking, and then the ships spread out and divided.

The desert faded to white around her, and suddenly she was no longer running with the crowd from the market but amid a running street battle in a burnt-out street, still on the desert world, but with trouble now all around her.

The sky was now clear of fighters. Instead, there were soldiers on the street. Looking down. Grace realised she was holding a large plasma rifle. Lifting it, she pulled the trigger, and one of the masked soldiers fell to their knees as the red beam impacted his chest.

But then she recognised that the sense of adrenaline was gone, and she was simply going through the motions. Were these someone else’s memories or simply an illusion, she could not say.

She stopped and closed her eyes. “This is a dream,” she said, trying to force herself to wake up, but to no avail. Looking over her right shoulder, she saw that there were five other partisans in her team, all carrying similar rifles. Their red eyes peered out over with fabric obscuring lower part of their faces.

The enemy were bipedal, over two meters tall, carrying weapons of their own, covered from head to toe in black body armour, including full face helmets.

Grace took another shot, and a second soldier was taken out. She dived down behind the remains of a brick wall, and one of her compatriots joined her.

“Got them on the run,” he said. “There are rumours of a withdrawal from Palogem City.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Grace heard herself say. She didn’t know where they came from; her words spoken like she was a passenger in someone else’s body.

The man jumped to his feet and was aiming his rifle when he was blown to ashes. What was left of his burning body hit the ground as it vaporised, scorching where it fell.

Grace shuddered. The soldiers were now shooting. More of her fellow partisans were vaporised. She knew she couldn’t remain much longer. She tried again to wake up.

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“Not long now,” said the voice in her mind.

Not long to what? Till she died? Till she was sent back? What did it mean? “These people didn’t know it, but the soldiers can be defeated,” the voice told her.

“How?” Grace asked. More plasma fire rained down over the ruined streets. She stood and ran, withdrawing back the way they had.

“Keep throwing down suppression fire as much as you can. We can’t let them get past us,” the other partisan was yelling. “We have to make a last stand here.”

They found a burnt-out vehicle. It was similar in design to the hovercraft Grace was familiar with, but all the branding was off. They both stood up one last time and gave it their all, discharging their weapons at the advancing troops. Three of the soldiers were hit; two went down. The others continued at them. The other partisan that remained stood and screamed as his body was vaporised, a guttural cry that was burned into Grace’s soul.

She climbed onto the roof of the vehicle and fired every way she could. She had assumed a certain amount of comfort from this being a dream, a simulation, but when she was hit, the pain was more than she could bear.

Grace had expected, like the others, to die in an instant, but she fell to the street below; the agony was all over. One soldier advanced over her; unable to move, she just looked up at it as it raised its weapon. There was a bright red flash, and then darkness. That was it. Had she died?

“Remember this place, Grace Dakota,” the voice in her head said. The pain sloughed away; all that she was left with was darkness. She could hear something that had vanished for some time; it was her own breathing. The lights came back on, and she was in the escape pod.

Grace wanted to scan the system and confirm where she was first. She looked at her hands; they were normal, how they had been before. She went to pull up a comms link and checked her reflection on the screen; she was herself once more.

She slid the touchscreen away from her, closing the comm window and bringing up the sensor readout. The location was still as it had been, and there was only one ship in range: the Trafalgar. The pod was on a course to dock with it. Grace felt a sense of great elation wash over her; this was actually working. The other ship was nowhere to be seen; there were no obvious engine trails or signs of it having left the system.

She would have to look into this later; it made no obvious sense. Checking on the pod’s navigation readouts; she was due to dock within the hour. She would have to find the engine room; if it was going to be anywhere, it would be in the engine room, of course. She had no real idea how she would sell it; there was no obvious providence. She would have to admit the location; then people would at least believe the ship was real. But there’s no way the authorities would let her take anything off the ship once they knew about it.

So, her only choice was to grab the engine part now even if she wouldn’t be able to prove that it came from the Trafalgar. But it was the best option; it would still pay her more than working her day job for the next twenty years, and that was enough.

There had been a similar find about ten years ago, and even without a chain, the artefact has sold in the five figures.

Grace also had the problem of how she would get back to the cluser. Either she put out a signal and hoped someone would pick up, or she would need to find a ship on the Trafalgar that still worked. She’d need to make contact with the onboard systems.

This thing had been out here for the best part of three centuries; to expect computer systems still to be working was not exactly reasonable. The pod’s computer had not been able to make contact.

But she had done some archaeological engineering courses and was pretty sure she could fire it up if it was in working order. Of course, it might just be a dead ship. That was not something she had considered. If she’d flown out here for nothing and found there was no way back and nothing to salvage; that would be really disappointing. But the pod was docking, so the condition of the Trafalgar had met its predetermined requisite for surviving, which meant there should be air on board, hopefully heat as well.

“It’s the small things a girl likes,” she said aloud.

Sitting back in her seat and watched through the small viewport as the ship came into view. It started to fill the entire window until she could make out the exact docking port; they were closing in and the pods docking clamps clanked down loudly as they made contact.