Initializing Mission Logs...

Mission Log 2: XVLQ57814

XVL sits in an engineering deck, bouncing her leg up and down. They’ve been full steam ahead for over a month and the ship is in frustratingly good shapes. Instead of fixing anything, performing checkups, or doing anything she’s supposedly been hired to do, she spends her time bouncing from deck to bay to server room. The ship is maddening to navigate. The engineers who’d designed and built the Cocyetos prioritized the database holding the uploaded citizens first. Next, energy efficiency. Then the procreation bay. At the very end, they’d filled the remaining pockets of space with living quarters for the crew. These quarters had been lowest priority and it showed.

So XVL’s mostly been filling her time finding shortcuts to avoid the winding corridors and halls and endless grav tubes. She’s got the time for it. Of course, she knows that a bored engineer is the sign of a healthy ship, but this doesn’t make her feel much better.

Her wristcom beeps.

"XVL!" Xia's voice snaps XVL to attention, even though the captain isn’t present.

"Captain! Technical issue? My panel isn't showing anythi-"

"No tech problem, but your absence has been noted by the crew. You’ve barely put a foot in the living quarters this past month. I’ve had some complaints that you’re acting aloof and I won’t have it on this ship.” Her voice is half-serious but XVL knows it’s not really a joke.

"I… I’m not being aloof. I'm just not used to working with other people"

“That is exactly the problem,” Xia says. “I’m relieving you of your maintenance duty for now. Your new directive is to socialize with the damn crew. Captain out.”

There’s an unspoken ‘little one’ in her voice that makes XVL feel very small and a little stupid for sitting around for hours, pining away for a day where she could while away her time uploaded and alone. But an order is an order. XVL crawls to her feet to find the recreation room.

The rec room is a thirty-minute walk away and XVL isn’t in a hurry. She doesn’t bother with any short cuts. She even puts the grav tube on the lowest speed as she’s slowly pulled up thirty-nine flights to the rec room.

The space is sparsely furnished. There’s a chunky, tablecloth covered table, occupied by the CADIs, who are staring intently at a game of four-dimensional hyperchess. A couple framed paintings hang around the room, all post prior modernist extremist style. In a corner, two squishy, fuzzy seats sit near a shelf loaded with chips to activate a ton of games. There are also a weird amount of physical books and decorated boxes. The boxes are so clunky and archaic that XVL can’t help but examine them. One says Chess on it, but it’s all bright red and black and inside is a small wooden square with some crudely carved pieces. It looks nothing like chess.

She jumps as a hand touches her shoulder lightly. She turns to see Tetra, a smile on their thin face, holding a small bag of candy.

“Topple pop?” they offer, holding out the bag. XVL shakes her head and Tetra’s eyes drift over the box. “Virtual games take energy to play. Not a lot, but there may come a day when even that’s too much. I’m sure you can imagine.”

Tetra’s light voice, just a tad more synthetic than the others’, doesn’t squash the ominous feeling rattling in XVL’s head. The games, the books, they aren’t relics. They’ve been designed to provide crew members with entertainment as the ship begins requiring power cuts. She’s struck by how many of them are two-player only.

Tetra laughs at XVL’s wrinkled nose. “Not your kind of games, huh? I’m surprised you’re even here. I bet Niner that it’d take another two weeks before you tried your hand at socializing. Haven’t you been bored?”

"Uh…” XVL fidgets. “Kinda? Most of the things I used to do for fun… aren't… you know, functioning?"

The friendlier half of Tetra’s face allows for a wide grin. “Oh, so you tried your hand at that first, huh? Strange though. Niner and I requested those same parts to be activated and we were both approved.”

XVL’s face glows a deep crimson. “I meant,” she says, “that-” she coughs, clearing a nonexistent blockage from her synthetic throat, “I usually spent all my time in sims. Game sims.”

Tetra starts guiding the very flustered XVL over to the game table. “Hmm, yes, and we don’t exactly have the power to boot up a full VR version of Turbo Galaxy Princess Jaima III.”

“I mean, two was better than three but-” XVL can’t stop the sentence fast enough as Tetra starts laughing and Niner presses their face into their hands. Tetra had been joking and XVL wants to die.

“Whichever Princess Jaima was better, we don’t have the power for any such sophistication,” Tetra says, generously guiding the conversation away from the stupid game. “Hence the boring, slow, even analog, games.”

“Do you think it’ll get that bad?” XVL asks.

“You know more about power consumption than I. But no, I don’t think it’ll get that bad. Not anymore.” They pop a yellow candy into the air, which floats for a moment before clamping down on it. The movement is so natural that XVL forgets that it’s actually their mask’s opening, not actually their mouth, retrieving the snack.

Niner looks up. “Tet…” Their voice holds a cautious ring but they don’t say anymore.

XVL straightens up to her full height of exactly 1.5 meters. “Are we keeping secrets?” She crosses her arms.

Niner smiles for the first time since XVL met them and XVL is more unsettled than comforted. “No. Something has caused us to divert our course. That’s all.”

“The captain will fill us in at briefing,” Tetra assures XVL. “It is more prudent to discuss manners with all crew members present. Right now only the pilot, captain, and psion know.”

XVL’s eyes narrow, doubting that the navigator is really in the dark. She doubts that there’s anything unshared between the couple. But their explanation satisfies her for now and Niner seems rather absorbed in the game.

DH chess isn’t exactly XVL’s idea of a good time. If she wanted to play a multiday MP game, she’d play metatag. Which actually, now that she thinks about it, might not be a bad idea. She’s not exactly keen on maintaining her unspoken status as the baby of the team and she knows that suggesting metatag isn’t going to help. But it’s the only social game she likes. And she is supposed to be getting to know the team. Captain’s order.

“So you’re the kind of players who stretch your games out?” she asks.

Niner holds up fingers even longer than Tetra’s and one of their asymmetrical brows plunges in irritation.

Tetra entertains the question. “They need the distraction. Piloting gets dull-

“-I like flying, Tet-”

“Piloting behemoths like this gets dull. They need something mull over in those long cockpit hours,” Tetra empties the rest of their candies in the air. “Especially when I’m not there.”

Watching Tetra chase after the topple pops with their tongue, XVL makes a mental note not to enter the cockpit without knocking.

“So you like metagames?” she asks, plowing on. “Have you ever played-”

“Hello hello!” Tali’s voice is an abrupt intrusion into the energy of the room and Niner flinches. “Xia said I might find you here. Actually, she specifically told me to find the other team members. Apparently, Cradle was complaining I wouldn’t cop off. He kept threatening to upload me back to the borg. Classic psions. At least someone is proving the stereotypes right, which is more than can be said for the rest of you.”

He watches, grinning as a candy floats out of Tetra’s reach. Swearing under their breath, they flip off their grav controls and push off the ground.

“Are there stereotypes?” XVL asks, watching Tetra bonk into the ceiling, candy in mouth.

“We had ‘em, back at the academy. Pilots are crazy, navigators boring, and engineers humorless. Everything’s offset by one here. Way to shake it up, guys, proud of you.”

XVL laughs for about a second before doing the math in her head. “Hey, I’m not bor-”

Niner stands up sharply. “I think I will retire to the cockpit and consider my next move.”

“Oh come on.” Tetra comes in for a landing in front of their peeved partner. “They’ll leave soon. None of these games are their speed.”

“Is dead a speed?” Tali asks. He looks from the board to Niner. “You’re the pilot, you’d know. What’s the speed of something that isn’t moving.”

XVL interrupts before the bickering gets worse. “I was going to suggest metatag.”

A quiet fills the room for a moment before Tali and Tetra laugh. Tali’s guffaw couldn’t be more different than Tetra’s slithery giggle but the intent is the same.

“The schoolyard game or the drinking game?” Tetra asks.

“Booze isn’t allowed on official expeditions,” Tali said. “I tried. God I tried.”

XVL ignores this. “We’re gonna spend a lot of time together. There’s a lot of stuff on this ship you could tag. And we’re an even number.”

“You think Cradle will play?” Niner’s question holds unbridled skepticism, but XVL is emboldened by the way the stoic pilot stops in their tracks.

“I bet I can get him to.” XVL keeps her voice even.

Niner shakes their head. “You won’t get the buy-in.” They continue walking away.

“You’re wrong,” XVL says.

This time when Niner stops, their whole body is even more rigid than usual and XVL can feel the tension radiating off Tetra and Tali.

“I think I will,” XVL continues. “I’ll get them all. Even the captain. If I tell her the rest of the crew is on board, I can pitch it as a team-building exercise.”

When Niner turns, their face is annoyed, each half showing it a bit differently. Still, XVL can see the challenge in both eyes.

“What do you say?” XVL asks. “If you’re right, Cradle doesn’t join, no game. If I’m right, Cradle joins, game on.”

Niner pauses for a long while, considering this. One side of their face chews on their lip while the other side’s lip grows taught.

XVL’s just starting to wonder how their pilot can have such a slow processing speed when they speak up. “Done. If you get Cradle’s buy-in, I will join.”

===

Convincing Cradle, turns out, is way easier than XVL expected. She arrives at the bridge to find the psion leaning back in a chair, eyes glazed over with a grey film. The room’s pretty small and it isn’t hard to justify sitting next to him. XVL plops down and starts noisily tapping at her wristcom.

“Eurgh, briefing’s not for another fifteen, isn’t it?” He glowered at her interrupting his reading.

“Didn’t realize I was being loud, sorry. Just trying to figure out how to tag some things.”

“Someone stealing stuff? Bet it’s the damned sec ops. Go tell Xia, she’ll put a stop to it.”

“No no, not like that.” XVL’s never considered herself to be a great liar but it’s easier in a fully synthetic body. “It’s for some old game Tali wants to play, metatag-”

“Oh man…” Cradle leans back, a lost look on his face. “We used to play that way back. I forgot kids these days put ID tags on them. Back on Earth, real Cradle Earth, we had to use discs to mark our items. Actual physical discs. It’s a whole different game now. But I can read you all like books anyway.” He leans back again. “I’d have the game won in a year.”

The old man never struck XVL as particularly fussed with his ego, but she knows she completely fits his impression of her as a little kid… “Think you could help me? I’m bad at reading people.”

“That would be cheating.”

She swallows hard. “Ok, maybe be on my team?”

“Shit kid, you’re asking me to go way back.” He rubbed the back of his neck, shaking his head. “You know, it was a drinking game at one point.”

“Really?”

“Mhm.”

“Too bad we’re not allowed to.”

He laughs, a rusty saw noise. “Too bad you say. When we get this boat to a real planet, you try the game how it’s supposed to be played.” For another few seconds, his eyes grow distant, almost how they’d been when he was reading. Then he sighs. “Alright, I’ll join your team, give you some pointers. It’ll be miserable on this thing, watching you all fail to pick up each others’ signals. We gonna have uneven teams?”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“You’ll play?” XVL needs total confirmation.

“Yeah, I said I was in. What are the teams?”

“Not sure yet. I bet Niner that I could convince you to play. They were pretty sure I wouldn’t and said they’d play if I got you too.” XVL can’t help a huge grin on her face. It’s embarrassing how pleased she.

Cradle grits his teeth, giving a low grunt under breath. “Bratty little-”

They’re interrupted by a hard metal clank as the doors into the room snap open. Xia gives them a cordial nod as she enters. “Just you two?”

XVL nods, still smiling. “Briefing isn’t for another three minutes, is it?”

Xia’s lips pinch. “Early is on time.”

Then the doors open again and Niner walks in. They bow sharply to Xia before saluting. XVL hadn’t noticed the salute in detail before but it’s one she doesn’t really recognize. The side of their thumb lines up with their ear and the whole hand goes out, to the side, instead of up. If XVL was more comfortable with the frosty pilot, she’d ask its origin.

“Tetra and Tali will be up in two minutes.” Niner finds a seat opposite XVL.

“You ran into them on your way up?” Xia asks.

“No,” Niner says plainly. “I just know Tetra.”

With sixty seconds on the dot to spare, the doors open and the last two party members enter. Niner smiles, maybe even smugly, as Tetra joins them.

“Alright alright,” Xia says, eying the screen. “Cradle, why don’t you show the team what you picked up.”

Cradle sits up straighter. “Now, none of you are going to be able to pick this up,” said Cradle. “Kinda why I’m on this boat to start But we,” he pauses for dramatic effect, “are not alone in space.”

His eyes glaze over but this time the film is blue. The blue is fuzzy, like static from an ancient monitor unit. Then it flashes and a projection appears over the table.

The projection is a ship, a massive blue sphere with three tall, dark purple panes forming a triangle around it. The panes are connected by metal arms but don’t visually attach to the sphere. XVL knows that they use psychomagnetic forces to stay together. She also knows that the massive halo around the sphere should be rotating. She knows that the panes should be all lit up with veins of red and silver electricity and a trillion dazzling white lights. She knows because it’s the same design on the Cocyetos. Which means she knows that there’s something wrong with this ship.

XLV darts a quick eye at the others, to see who’s reacting. The CADIs are both cool and calm. As XVL expected, Tetra’s been in on this.

Tali is, as usual, the first to talk. “We got neighbors?”

“They’ve got technical difficulties,” XVL jumps in. “They’ve broken down.”

“Could be that they are approaching their destination,” Niner says, voice slow but eyes sharp. “You cut power when you’re close.”

XVL shakes her head. “The procreation bay would be active. That whole massive sphere? It’d be lit up.”

Niner presses their point. “They may not have the power to start procreation until they arrive.”

“Could be an ambush.” Tali’s normally cheerful demeanor has changed. “We all left Last Light friends but if they’ve been drifting a few millennia and found nothing… space and desperation can change you. They could be hoping we try to help and then launch an attack, take our energy, leave us dead in the water. Or just dead.”

“Speaking of dead,” Xia’s face is also stern, “it could be a ghost ship.”

“Right,” Cradle says. “And then we would want to stop by and take anything we can.”

Xia nods. “Pilot, take us closer. Psion, I need a full, constant scan on that ship. If you hear a peep, let me know. I’m moving to coms. Navigator, ETA?”

“Twelve days and seventeen hours,” Tetra reports.

Xia nods. “Engineer, down to the boarding craft. We’ve got plenty of time but we want to be prepared.”

===

XVL’s mind wanders as she tinkers with the omnitool in the ship’s first engineering bay. There are a hundred or more like it on the ship, in various engine rooms, by the life ships, escape pods, there’s even one in the galley. If a thing can break, get loose, get stuck, or blow up, there’s an omnitool nearby.

So it’s a safe place to put her first tag. The first engineering bay was the first place she used an omnitool while on the H.S.S Cocyetos, also coincidentally on her first day on the ship. It’s a fitting place to put her tag, symbolizing the first tool she ever learned to use. Admittedly, the omnitools back then were far less sophisticated than what she’s using now, but metatag isn’t about finding the precise replicas of the subjects of the story. It’s about swapping tales and creating a scavenger hunt around important key items.

And, yes, it can be about getting drunk, but XVL rarely played it that way because she wasn’t exactly a big partier back at home.

No, not home. The base wasn’t home anymore. She shakes her head, clearing it of memories and finishing implementing the tag.

“XVL to the bridge.” She’s been expecting the call all morning but it doesn’t make her tense up less. Carefully, she replaces the omnitool on its base and dips behind a grate, sliding down a chute, which saves her a good ten minutes of running.

“Captain.” She enters the bridge, fingers up in her childish salute. The room has seen a bit of use since they started. There are used plates, licked clean of anything edible on them, courtesy of Tetra. Tali’s pink coffee cup is in a new location every time XVL enters, which isn’t a huge problem until it ends up inexplicably in the cockpit. Then there’s hell to pay.

Right now it’s sitting on the ground, inches from Xia’s feet, as she stares out the large screens, emulating windows.

Xia nods at XVL’s reflection. “As you were. We’re a day out. Status report on the boarding craft?”

XVL swallows. “No luck on coms?”

“Even if we do successfully contact them…” she tips her head, “even if there’s anyone to contact, we still need our ships ready to board.”

“Yes ma’am. All boarding ships are have passed preliminary scans. Ships gamma and lambda both have minor technical jamming and ship rho has some rust. I can fix these-”

Xia waves a hand. “I think eighteen should suffice for now. Only Tali and Cradle will be crossing over at first, to assess the situation. This has been an expensive detour, so hopefully, it’s worth it.”

XVL nods, mind already racing to think of the best-case scenario: this ship is so close to a destination they’ve powered down and are preparing for orbit. This had been Niner’s suggestion, which is an oddly optimistic hope from the dour pilot. Especially considering they’d been at full flight for less than six months. Most likely scenario, they’re about to take on a whole lot of passengers.

“Anything else?” XVL asks.

Xia shakes her head and turns to sit at the table. They’re supposed to keep the place clean, but even Xia’s left a notebook out, which she now picks up and begins scribbling in. “You’re dismissed if you care to be.”

XVL nods and turns to leave when Xia speaks up again.

“Your hair is out again. It’s going to catch on fire one of these days if you aren’t careful.”

XVL flushes and gropes around her head before finding the lock of crimson hair poking out from the fireproof wrap that almost always shrouds her scalp. “It’s one of the only vanity things I asked for,” she said, securing it. “I always wanted red hair. It didn’t run in the family but I knew someone who had it and always thought she looked amazing.”

Xia continues looking at her notebook, but a sharp eyebrow raises on her mask. “Did you tag your hair, XVL?”

XVL vehemently shakes her head, wishing she could find a way to shut off her mask’s ability to blush. “That’d be silly.”

“It would be,” Xia agrees, but she’s smiling now. “But so is metatag. I’ve already got four of my six items tagged. Have you finished?”

“No ma’am.”

Xia closes her notebook with a crisp click. “I suggest getting on it. Make them good; we don’t want to lose you to the enemy team too quickly.”

It isn’t like XVL would really mind joining ranks with the CADIs and Tali. Specifically, Tali, who always makes her laugh. Maybe there are crewmembers on the derelict ship. A grin spreads across her face.

“Are you already planning to betray us?” XVL can hear the note in Xia’s voice that hints at the captain humoring her a bit.

“No ma’am. Just thinking about the prospect of helping that ship, maybe rescue some crew.”

Xia’s pleasant demeanor vanishes and in an instant, she’s got her frosty captain eyes. “Temper your expectations, engineer. Go finish those boarding craft. Dismissed!”

===

Tali lets out a low whistle, examining the sleek, silver boarding craft. The crew has gathered, ready to send of Tali and Cradle to the derelict ship. “Girl knows her craft,” he says. “These things didn’t look half as shiny in the sims.”

“Well, we didn’t have XVL in the sims.” Tetra’s voice is casual but XVL has to contain herself from squeaking in excitement. She’s proud of her well kept little fleet. She’d been able to internalize a lot of the wiring and sensors, making for safer, faster, and cooler looking craft.

Tali and Cradle are both suited up for exploration. Cradle is on discovery and Tali defense. Depending on what they find, they’ll either bail, fight, or send for XVL to bring people over or scavenge for parts.

“Remember,” Xia says, more for show than as an actual reminder, “analyze, assess. Then bail, fight, or proceed.”

“Or die,” Tali says, climbing into the shuttle. “Though I suppose that’s not really as much of a directive as a potential outcome. Still, always best to be as ready to die as possible. As first to be clicked off when shit hits the hay, it’s something I’m prepped for. Got a last meal and everything planned.” He grins, holding pulling a protein bar out of a satchel, the kind you couldn’t pay XVL to eat. “Security means every day could be the last so I gotta keep it on me.”

“We could only hope,” Cradle says, before nodding at Xia. “Right. Die, proceed, fight, bail, in that order.”

Tali gets a big grin on his face but plays along. “Wait a minute now, isn’t that the opposi-”

The slamming door cuts off his voice. The shuttle descends into the airlock. Niner’s fingers dance across the console that controls their trajectory. Next to them, Tetra is holding a holosphere, tapping around it to enlarge certain areas. Tetra is firing off coordinates to Niner so fast that XVL can’t even try to follow the numbers. She’s not even sure now Niner can even process them but as soon as the shuttle reports that it’s ready to go, Niner punches the large red button.

The shuttle blasts off, so fast and silent that XVL almost misses it. She cranes her neck to look out the airlock, trying for a glimpse of it.

“Here, engineer. Don’t want to miss your handiwork in action.” Xia waves her hands over the console of the large status screen and it blinks before dividing into four different views. One is a large image front the front of the ship, watching the shuttle get further and further away.

“That dot,” Tetra points at a spot on the screen, “is the ship.”

The next two screens are different cameras on the shuttle. The final is the most interesting, a magnified view of the shuttle. XVL watches the different engines, each propelling it just right to send it on intercept with the downed vessel. She smiles, knowing that the tiny little corrections, the smooth exterior, the airtight doors are all really only something she can appreciate. Everyone else just counts on them to work and XVL makes that happen.

===

The boarding craft takes six hours and thirty-two minutes to reach its destination. When Cradle radios in, his voice has just a hint of madness.

“Alright kids,” he says, “we made it, not a shred of worry on the way in.” XVL hears Tali laughing in the background. “We’re boarding now. No responses to any of our attempts to hail her.”

XVL bobs on her feet. It’s not sounding good but she still holds out hope.

The moments tick by and XVL feels like she’s the only one who cares about what’s going on. Xia is scratching in her journal. Niner has pulled out the four-dimensional hyperchess board and is staring intently at it. Tetra is chewing on something, eyes tapped out. Maybe this is how they express their nerves? Or maybe they genuinely were entirely ambivalent.

“Engineer,” Xia says. “May I take your ear for a moment.”

XVL hops to her feet and hurries off to the side. Xia keeps ushering XVL further through the bay until they’re sufficiently far from the CADIs

“There’s no enemy to be found. I’m sending you over. You’ll be in the craft alone but you’ll return with Tali, since you take prio. Find anything we can use and bring it back.”

XVL drums her fingers on the wall, waiting for more. After a moment she sighs, impatient. “Did he say-”

“They’re still investigating XVL. You’re showing your youth. A little patience will take you a long way.” Xia cranes her neck down the aisle, before dropping her voice. “On the way back, try to get Tali talking.”

“Ma’am, I’m under the impression that won’t be hard.”

She laughs. “About that protein bar. He keeps it on him all the time. Cradle may have spotted it but we need,” she drops her voice to nearly a whisper, “the story.”

Ohhh. Xia thinks the protein bar might have a tag on it. Guessing the item is 75% of the battle but you have to know the story to unlock the tag. XVL nods sharply, saluting the captain.

===

XVL’s craft drifts through the air. It’s funny how it feels so fast, moving from ship to ship, when in reality she's' going thousands of times slower than on the Cocyetos. Perspective is a hell of a drug and the six hours pass quickly. As she approaches the ship, she can tell at a glance, it’s been down for a while. The enormous panes, each megaframes that contain billions of uploaded lives, aren’t even emitting the electrostatic she’s used to always feeling back on the Cocyetos. She can’t really see past them to the massive procreation bay, but she knows the lack of the rotating halo means its gravity would never be able to start up. If they used that bay to raise the next generation, they’d have to do it in 0g.

The boarding craft detects the strips around a loading door and drifts towards it. Each strip on the boarding craft aligns with one on the ship, like magnets, and her vessel hisses as it connects. The process takes time and XVL is all but bouncing off the walls ready to go.

“Holy shit,” she whispers as the door to the downed ship opens. Xia has a strick no swearing rule on board, which has always been hard for XVL. Truth be told, until now, she didn’t expect to step off Xia’s ship for some years. She walks through the halls of the ship, aware of how much darker it is than the Cocyetos. Their masks provide a good deal of light, so any degree of darkness is still manageable, but it’s not until now that she realizes how much atmospheric like there was on the Cocyetos.

“Cradle and Tali’s coordinates have been uploaded directly.” Xia’s voice pipes directly into her ears. “You have nothing to worry about.”

XVL hoists her toolchest and scurries down the hallways. Having coordinates is not the same as having directions. Maybe in an open field they’re the same but throw in a few corridors and they’re nothing alike. XVL spends probably a good hour pinging down different halls and dead-end rooms, chasing after some real-life version of a virtual game quest marker.

Occasionally she calls Tali and Cradle, explaining where she is and asking for directions. They try, they really do, but it’s rough going and XVL wonders how they even planned on getting back. Maybe they found someone and know they don’t have to. A smile hops on her face as she’s reminded of her goal and she speeds on.

She finally finds them in the main engineering bay.

“I thought maybe you’d be at the pod comp,” she says, her footsteps echoing across the massive bay. It’s different from hers and she notes some changes that she could probably implement back on the Cocyetos. “Or did you already wake the crew?”

The minute she sees Tali’s and Cradle’s faces, she feels every bit the dumb child again. Both men wear the expression commonly found on parents telling their children that teeth fairies aren’t real.

XVL swallows hard and suddenly the death surrounding her feels very heavy. No one had ever expected to find anyone. This is a ghost ship and they all knew from the start. “So you want me to just grave rob the place?” her words are embarrassingly choked.

Tali bounces up and down, tiptoes to heel. “Well, yes. That is why we came here.”

“Dolt,” mutters Cradle. “Look, kid, you’re gonna see some death around these places. It was a stab in the dark, one we knew we were making. You did the right thing, pushing for us to come, but there’s nothing left. There’s still some energy. A computer glitch fried the database and the ship didn’t have the energy to initiate countermeasures. Anyone still uploaded is dead.”

“We located the pod comp,” Tali says. “If you want, you might be able to scavenge something useful from the crew.”

“Alright then,” Cradle snaps. “We’re not gonna grave rob that hard. We can find abundant parts here and hopefully it’ll be worth coming out of our way.”

XVL already knows there isn’t. Not to justify how far they’d come. If the ship had been just drifting to save energy then it would have been alright. But this place is just a graveyard.

“Right.” She sets down her toolchest and pulls out a few cards, which she starts to insert into the slots on the consoles. “How many people were on this ship?” It’s a morbid question that she regrets asking immediately.

“It’s the H.S.S. Acheron,” Cradle says. “I remember its trace in my head. Holds 3.18 quad.” His voice quiets. “Held. I remember when they left. It was centuries before we did.” Then he takes a deep breath. “Good sign that we’re passing it early on. We’re exploring new territory.”

XVL’s not exactly sure that she’s in the mood for bright sides. She pulls out the chips and inserts them into different slots. After tapping a few keys, she lets them load and pulls out her omnitool. The tool feels stupid in her hands. Here she is, holding some toy from a game, in the tomb of tens of hundreds of trillions. She remembers Xia’s secondary mission, to talk to Tali. Xia had known what XVL would find. Xia had just been humoring her. Again.

Or, she thinks, Xia had given XVL that mission to keep her spirits up and eyes forward.

It doesn’t entirely erase the dwarfed feeling settling in her gut over the next few hours as she removes a few key parts from the ship, handing them off to Tali and Cradle to store in the boarding craft. But it does give her just the slightest bit of peace. If Xia has hope, there may very well be a happy ending to this journey yet.