"You're sure these are the correct coordinates?" I asked Micheal and Benjamin for the seventh time since we'd exited our jump.

"Completely," Micheal answered. "According to your Cyber and mine, this is the area of space that the fleets they sent to the Milky Way came from. Just can't figure out why they sent them to the Milky Way only."

"We'll worry about that later," I said, waving his concerns aside. "For now, let's start with a full sensor sweep. If they're using certain types of thrusters or drives, the fuel-burn will leave a noticable trail. Benjamin, inform the other Galaxy-Jumpers that I want them to begin sweeps of their own, have them move in a clockwise orbit around us and send one up and one down. Let's hope we shake something loose."

While Micheal and Benjamin began to send out my orders, Carrie walked up to me and handed me a drink.

"Think we'll actually find anything?" she asked.

"Honestly? I don't," I answered. "It's been three years since they attacked us, and even in space, that's enough time for a trail based on burnt fuel to fade into the background and be lost. I just don't want to say we gave up at the first hurdle."

"I'll hope that you're wrong for once," she said. "I want to find these people too. The Scourge is a problem for the entire universe and they're crazy enough to worship them and the guy who made them. I want to knock some sense into them especially if that means taking a few of their teeth out to do it."

"I'll record that moment so you can live it forever," I promised. "Your own home-movie that makes the tooth fairy giddy."

"Thanks," she smiled.

"Sir," Micheal called my attention toward him. "The Laughing Leprechaun reports that they've found something. They think it might be worth a closer look."

"Send them and one other to check it out if it's physical," I said. "If it's something on sensors, have them pinpoint the spectrum and area and we'll all look at it."

"Yes, sir," he answered before turning back to his console and sending my orders out.

"Think this might be them?" Carrie asked.

"There's always a chance," I told her. "If we dismissed everything just because it wasn't perfect or something, then we'd be stuck on Rallypoint or back in the feudal ages."

"So, we're going to be checking out everything that moves," she said.

"Like a jock at a cheerleading conference," I confirmed.

"Sir," Benjamin said, "I've got something on the deep space sensors. Appears to match the signature we have for the Children of Hynbel. Orders?"

"Send word to all Jumpers," I said. "We're going to hop beside whatever's there and we're going to surround it. If it can shoot back at us, I want it hammered into the ground. If it can't we're preparing boarding parties."

"Will we be one of those parties?" Carrie asked.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"I certainly will be," I told her. "I'll take Sarah and Benjamin. They'll watch my back while you stay here."

"Last time we split up, you lost a leg," she said. "The first time we split up, you lost an arm. Everytime we split up, you lose a limb. Try not to continue that trend."

"I'll do my best," I promised. "Let's go boys. Answers await."

As Micheal and Benjamin began to start the process that would send the fleet to the detected location, I sent word to Sarah to start picking out teams that would be joining us when we shuttled over to whatever we found. Assuming we didn't have to destroy it.

"Object coming into orbit of the ship," Micheal said as we approached the area. "Matches with our signatures of the CoH. Shall I send a shuttle to retrieve the object? It appears no larger than ten feet by three feet by two feet."

"Sounds like a coffin," I muttered to myself before raising my voice. "Send a shuttle to retrieve it. Send word that I want an armed force there to help us receive it when it enters the hangar. I also want a group of medical personnel there as well."

"Yes sir," Micheal said before turning back to his console and sending orders to the shuttle crews while Benjamin began to coordinate the security force that would be waiting in the hangar bay.

"I'm joining that security force," Carrie told me. "You stay here and wait for me to tell you what's been found."

"I know better than to argue now," I said. "Just be careful. I'd hate to say goodbye now."

"Aw, you're still so sweet," she smiled at me before leaving the bridge to change into her armor.

"Sir?" Micheal spoke up. "Can I get you to give Ben lessons in how to talk to women? He's a terrible wingman."

While Benjamin tried to defend himself and Micheal teased him further, I chuckled and felt some of the tension that had been mounting since the attack fade away. Perhaps things would work out for us all.

"Okay, Carrie. I want an open line between us while you do this," I told her as she approached the hangar with the security team following close behind her. "If there's something alive in there, I want to be able to hear it and record it. If it's dead or empty, I want to know right away. Get me?"

"I've got it, Rickshaw," she assured me. "This isn't the first time we've encountered something that we have to be careful with. The obelisk comes to mind."

"The obelisk was left by sane people that knew they weren't going to live long enough to stop a disaster," I said. "This was left by insane people that worship that disaster and want to help it along. It's like those crazy people that thought the world was going to end and so they kept trying to steal nukes and set them off to jumpstart the process and get it over with."

"There were people like that?" she asked.

"I'm sure there were," I said. "They just ended up on lists and were watched by the government."

"Sounds nuts," she said. "Living like that and thinking that way."

"No more crazy to me than the people that thought they could work their way out of poverty with a minimum wage job and no useful skills," I said.

"I see the shuttle," she said. "Let me set up my people."

"Go ahead," I told her. "I can wait until we determine what's inside the magic box."

While Carrie directed the security team into position and placed the medical personnel in the correct spots, I studied the viewscreen that was showing me the hangar that she was in and the object that the shuttle had secured to itself with magnetic forces. Carrie was setting her people into position to form a cross-fire from all sides and she had several of them moving crates and machines into position for them to use as cover if whatever was in the object was alive and hostile.

The object in question was just as scans had determined. Ten feet long from head to foot, with enough width and height to hold a single body. Whatever this was, it reminded me of the AEP that I'd woken up in so long ago. There was enough room for me and my supplies but anything else would have been cramped and crushed. A coffin waiting to be buried and forgotten.

Finally, Carrie sent word to the shuttle's pilots that they were ready for them to enter the hangar. Slowly and gently, the shuttle made it's way inside the hangar and to the middle of the formation that Carrie had set her people into. With care and ease, the pilot set down and began to disengage the object from the magnetic locks on the bottom of the shuttle. Once it had completed that, the shuttle lifted off again and moved to a different part of the hangar before landing and the pilots quickly left the hangar. As the doors hissed closed, a small team approached the object and began to study it for a latch mechanism or other markers that would open it.