The glow of the emergency lights continued to cast my ready room in shades of blue as I waited for Hailey to arrive. Before me, my desk continued to pulse with Cherenkov light centered on the metal badge resting on its surface. I was scared and anxious about what was happening to my ship, but at the same time, I felt excited. Hailey knew something about all this, and I was finally going to make some progress at finding out where Humanity's home was.

The door to my office opened, admitting Hailey and bringing to a halt any wild speculations I might come up with. She looked slightly frazzled, and her eyes darted nervously around my office before resting on my desk, whose surface continued to pulsate with light.

"So it's true, you actually found one."

"Well, it would be more accurate to say it found me. But what exactly is it that I've found, Hailey?"

"That is a solid-state memory core. The information on it is encoded into the molecular structure of the object. Until triggered, it looks like any other bit of metal until it activates, only high-resolution scanners would pick up the differences, so it's no surprise that you didn't know what it was. Exposing it to specifically tuned graviton fields will activate the device and download its contents, such as those built into your desk designed for that purpose."

"So what is it doing to my ship? What information is it transferring that would cause a shutdown like this and how do you know so much?" I asked, confused.

"I said you'd finally get your answers, right? Well here's the first one." Hailey took a deep breath before looking me in the eye.

"I was a part of Project Halcyon." I stared at Hailey, no less confused but with a slight hint of hope.

"Did you know my parents then? Were they part of the project and that's why they had this badge?"

"The Halcyon Project was quite large and spread across multiple locations. If you can tell me their names I might recognize them."

"No, no names, just this holo-picture, and these two badges." I showed her the picture and my hope plummeted as she shook her head.

"It was a top-secret program, and a lot of it was compartmentalized. Sadly, it's not surprising that I never met them."

"How come you never mentioned this before?"

"There wasn't really any reason to without a way to contact her, so I didn't think it was worth giving you false hope."

"Her? Who is 'her'?"

"The Halcyon, the objective of the project was producing an interstellar, possibly even intergalactic, ark ship capable of indefinite self-sufficient operation. These ships could be sent out into the galaxy to explore and found colonies. Forever roaming the universe, they would ensure that humanity would survive should the worst happen. This memory core is keying in the decryption keys and directing all the ship's power to the graviton transceiver to send a signal to the Halcyon herself wherever she is."

"You're saying the ship exists, that they finished it. That there's a ship of humans out there, they might even be the ancestors of the people who settled here in Itzli space." I finished quietly, as I processed the ramifications of what I'd heard.

"It's possible, but Rama, don't get your hopes up. If there's been no contact for hundreds of years then it's possible something may have happened on the Halcyon." Hailey gently reminded me.

"It's still more to go on than we had before. How long until the signal is sent and what should we expect to happen?"

"Unknown, it could be hours before the signal is strong enough to reach the Halcyon if she's on the other end of the galaxy."

"Ok, you just said something ridiculous again. The ship, my ship, is trying to broadcast a signal across the entire galaxy." Hailey tilted her head, looking confused as to why what she said was so absurd.

"Yes, we don't know the location of the Halcyon so the system was designed to broadcast across the entire span of the galaxy. Remember, she was designed for possible intergalactic voyages so any method of trying to communicate with her had to have the range to reach any possible location she could be." It did make sense, but the scale was so mind-bogglingly huge I couldn't wrap my head around it, I guess I knew why the Cody had those massive reactors now though.

"Ok, so putting aside the fact that to anyone who has graviton-tech we're going to light up their sensors like a supernova, why in all the hells was this memory core designed to look like a badge? Is the rest of humanity so conceited that even their data storage has to be some fancy plaque? Or do you simply enjoy being deliberately vague and mysterious to drive people mad?" Hailey frowned.

"I... don't know. This isn't the typical form memory cores should take. I only recognized it as one because of your description. They're typically easy to identify, their purpose and contents are embedded in a chip that would ping a person's NIL for easy identification and to prevent them from being destroyed or thrown away on accident."

"So someone was trying to hide it then." Hailey and I glanced at each other, the unasked 'but why' clear on our faces, but neither of us had an answer.

"Well, I'm not exactly happy with my ship getting co-opted, but at least it's looking like we'll be getting somewhere with this whole 'find humanity' thing we were planning. What are we supposed to do in the meantime? Just sit around and wait?"

"There's not much else we can do right now. Until the process is finished the ship is dead in space."

"Yea, I don't exactly like that either. I don't like not being able to leave if something happens. Not that I expect it to, mind you, but it makes me nervous that we're stuck here." How quickly I had become accustomed to the freedom to go where I wanted when I wanted, that the thought of being trapped here caused me anxiety.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Unfortunately, I cannot recommend attempting to abort the process. Given the amount of power we are generating, the sudden shutdown of the graviton transceiver when under such a high load could have unintended consequences."

"Yeah, gonna have to agree with you there. I'm not finished with my studies on graviton theory, but I know enough to understand that it could cause a USE."

"Yes, an Uncontrolled Singularity Event is perhaps the best you could hope for, at worst it could even cause a subspace rupture, opening a permanent tear between realspace and subspace." I winced, that didn't sound like it would be good for anybody.

"Ok, so trying to abort the process is definitely the option of last resort then."

"Agreed."

"Well, any ideas on what to do to keep us occupied?"

"Emergency power means that most ship facilities will be offline. Currently, there is only power to the life-support systems. This includes the onboard hygiene and food facilities."

"So what you're saying is my options are to eat, shower, or sleep until this is done. Well, I'm not hungry so shower and a nap it is. I'll need to let everyone on the station know that we're out of commission at the moment, I'll say we're doing maintenance or something and that we had to take the ship offline for a few hours. Hopefully, by then this will all be done with and we can get on with it. Anything we need to worry about with the systems going down unexpectedly like that?"

"The Fabricators were in the middle of a production cycle when the power went down, so I've set them to standby for when the power comes back up. I'll need to abort and recycle the current fabrication and start it over again. Otherwise, everything else should be able to resume operation from when it shut off."

"That's good, I was worried we were going to need to spend days going around resetting systems manually. I had to do that on a freighter once when it had an overload." I shuddered at the memory of the hours I'd spent in grimy claustrophobic crawl spaces resetting systems that hadn't seen maintenance in decades.

"Thankfully no, Human ships have a mostly centralized control system. So even if they did need reset it could all be done from a single console on the bridge."

"Thank the stars for that. Alright, I'm going to go shower and then try to take a nap, I guess. What about you?" Hailey pondered for a moment.

"Probably the same, I need to clean up after feeding the fabricators so I'll join you."

"Alright, well no time like the present then."

We left my ready room and passed through the bridge and into the ship. The eerie blue light and lack of even the quiet hum of the William Cody's systems set me on edge. I blamed the horror films that Hailey insisted on showing me, but I eyed corridor intersections and darkened doorways that we passed with suspicion anyway.

We passed through the halls of the ship silently, neither of us speaking a word, causing my heart rate to increase because of the eery atmosphere. I was tempted to try and talk to Hailey but I feared my voice would betray my agitation, and I honestly didn't know what to discuss.

Thankfully for my nerves we quickly reached my quarters, also encompassed in the blue glow of the emergency lights. As soon as I heard the door shut behind us I relaxed. Funny how I can face down giant space bugs who want to eat me, but an empty ship with eerie lighting is enough to make me nervous.

I passed through my quarters to my bathroom and began to undress. Lost in thought over the paradox of irrational fear vs my ability to face down things that wanted to kill me, I didn't notice the door to the bathroom opening and closing until I turned around half undressed.

Hailey stood before me with her jumpsuit unzipped and open down to her waist exposing her pale body to my gaze as I almost swallowed my tongue. Her skin looked even paler in the dim blue glow. My eyes followed her pale neck down to her small- I regained my wits as she sat on the floor, hair falling forward to provide her some decency, and began removing her boots so that she could peel off the rest of her jumpsuit.

"H-hailey! What are you doing!?" She gave me a confused look.

"Showering? I did say I'd join you, remember?"

"Yea, b-but I thought you meant after I took mine!" She looked at me like I was a particularly dense idiot.

"That would defeat the purpose then. We're on emergency power so we need to conserve resources. We shouldn't be wasteful." She finished removing her boots and stood.

"You said that it shouldn't be for more than a few hours though! Certainly we don't need to go this far!"

"There's always the possibility that something could go wrong, and regulations state that all personnel onboard a ship on emergency power should take all measures to preserve their resources." She slid her jumpsuit down her long shapely- I tore my eyes away from the tempting sight and turned away.

She was treating this with the same calm, matter-of-fact aplomb of someone telling you the astro-weather forecast. I could already tell there was no way short of physically trying to force her, and that had all sorts of problems of its own, that I was going to get her to leave. My leaving wasn't going to work either, going by her argument of conserving resources.

"A-alright, just..." I started.

"Just what?"

"Just... nevermind." I ended weakly.

Taking a breath I rapidly removed the rest of my clothes before stepping into the shower, resolutely not glancing behind me. Thankfully, the shower in the captain's quarters was quite large and left more than enough room for both of us.

I studiously ignored the sound of Hailey's bare feet stepping onto the wet tile of the shower as I proceeded to wash up. My heart was beating so fast that my heart rate from my earlier bout of nerves over the eery atmosphere on the ship seemed completely normal.

I wasn't sure if it was my imagination or if my hearing was that hypersensitive at the moment, but I could almost hear every motion of her lathering up her body. My imagination continued to play tricks on me, as even though our backs didn't touch I felt a phantom warmth on my skin as if she was just a hair away from her skin brushing against mine. I finished my washing routine in record time and quickly stepped out of the shower, leaving Hailey behind.

"Done already?" Was that a pout I heard in her voice, or just my evil imagination?

"Yea, gotta preserve resources right? Don't want to spend too long in the shower and waste the water."

"You make a good point, Captain. I'll try to finish quickly as well." My eyes widened and I quickly dried myself off, being in here when Hailey left the shower was not going to be good for my heart rate.

I began putting on a fresh set of clothes rapidly, only to find that I had been too sloppy with my drying and found my damp legs catching on the pants. Too late, in my panic to quickly dress I had taken longer, and I heard the shower shut off as Hailey stepped out.

I desperately focused on getting my pants on as I heard her pad across the bathroom floor. I caught a glimpse of her wet form, back turned to me, out of the corner of my eye as she made her way to the alcove where the towels were stored. My head turned as if magnetically attracted, exposing her slender back and shapely hips to my eyes before I ripped my gaze away to stare at the wall, face burning with shame.

How sick was I, to be peeping on my officer and friend like this? My imagination was putting her actions in a context that didn't exist. So what if she wore thin night clothes? I didn't wear a shirt to bed because it was comfortable. Just because she showered with me didn't me she was trying to show off her body or provoke me. She'd give me that morning kiss but she either didn't remember doing it or maybe it was a normal human morning ritual where she was from. I felt shame well up in me at my own weakness. Was this how I treated someone who had saved my life multiple times and continued to help me every day?

I quickly finished dressing and stepped out of the bathroom leaving Hailey to finish dressing. Sliding into the bed I did my best to crush my inappropriate and self-recriminating thoughts. Hailey didn't deserve for either one to taint my interactions with her. She deserved to have a captain and friend she could rely on, not one ogling her body or distancing himself out of guilt.

Hailey entered the bedroom and crawled into the bed behind me like she usually did, her arms wrapping around me. I studiously ignored that I could tell she was wearing her thin nightgown again as she pressed against my back. I hadn't been sleepy, my mind going the speed of light, but as soon as her arms wrapped around me my mind slowed and my worries eased. It was like a soothing purple mist had descended over my thoughts, revealing how small all my worries had been all along. Unbidden, I found my eyes drifting closed.

*****

Across the galaxy, in a vast room of green crystal pillars gilded in gold, sat a throne of the same. There was no roof on this throneroom of emerald and gold, the only light coming from the crystals themselves and the stars above.

On this throne a statuesque felinoid woman regally sat, golden staff in hand, set with another gold gilded green crystal. Adorned in purple robes gilded in still even more gold and crystal with a single crystal set in her forehead. Her ostentatious clothes did nothing to detract from her noble beauty.

A procession of female white-robed felinoids approached. They bore minimal gilding and lacked the crystal embedded in their foreheads. Halting at the foot of the throne dais, they prostrated themselves before it as the leader of the procession spoke.

"Your Highness, our astral arrays have detected a disturbance."

"Yes, We saw the anomaly Ourselves. Our foresight predicted such an event. The time that was expected has come. The fruit of Our labor has ripened, and the time for the harvest has come." The light of the crystals pulsed in tune with her ethereal voice.

"Do you wish us to dispatch the fleet?"

"No. There is another who will suit our purposes in this quest." She waved her hand and an image of a powerfully built Itzli appeared before the procession, "But We will not leave our champion without companions of his own. Send him your best, most zealous Warmaidens to assist him." The leader of the procession's face remained implacable.

"I can see your thoughts, Acolyte. Rest assured that this one is no ordinary lizard. He will suit our purposes splendidly." The acolyte inclined her head.

"As expected of the High Seer, you see right through my doubts. As commanded, I will send this champion my greatest Warmaidens to aid in his success." As one the procession stood and returned the way they came, leaving the High Seer alone on her throne once more.

"Finally, after five thousand years, We will be restored and regain what We have lost."