Chapter II

The first thing Creta realized as she re-materialized, was the oppressive darkness. Beyond the thin panes of the windows, there was nothing. No stars were visible, only the unending, impenetrable darkness. A long way off, she thought she saw a single point of light, a blur, perhaps the shape of a distant star cluster.

She found herself feeling depressed by this... She knew that Ir Miilas was now far out on the rim, or farther... Beyond the edge of the galaxy. There was nothing out here, maybe not even dust. She gulped.

The crew stood, uncoiled, and stretched, feeling uneasy from the phantom gravitational forces of hyperspace. They stumbled to the far viewport, where the view could be appreciated. Ziir appeared truly captivated by what he saw... The spiraling arms of his Galaxy stretched out before him. He could see everything. It was like all the flat screen images he had seen for so many years, but it was real, it was alive. In his eyes, the stars were like a trillion tiny pearls laid out on a black blanket, radiating all the light in the universe. At the center of it all, the core was there as always... The great bulge of matter at the center of the swirl. The inner rim, the cradle of a thousand worlds.

But to Creta, the sight was still dull. She'd never lived a moment out of the core she was looking down at... Now she only felt like an ant being held a mile above the hill. Almost nauseated, she stepped down from the window.

"We are in position... Confirmed alignment. Link established... The other two ships are reporting successful alignment."

"Nabaal, activate sensors on my mark. Mark!" The commander gave a few orders from his chair. It seemed strange, but Creta noticed that he seemed happier. He was practically glowing, somehow delighted by the sheer desolation he saw around him. He stood and turned to face his crew. "Telemetry is coming in. Mapping is in progress."

A silent cheer went up from the small crew. They stood at the window for a moment longer before scattering to miscellaneous diagnostic tasks throughout the ship. When the crowd was gone, a few remained: A'Kuul was perched at his own console, returning to work on the endless spatial calculations. Ziir was standing over the sensors readouts, where the galaxy was presented as a hologram. Waves of light swept over it, depositing more stars with each pass. Creta decided to go look at it, in hope that the radiance of the image would help her relax.

"Are you feeling sick?" Ziir asked, noting how pale she had become.

"N-No." she said, automatically.

The Commander approached the console. He seemed to be avoiding the Taiidan with his eyes, but was notably more relaxed nonetheless. "Nabaal. How long do you think the mapping will take to complete?"

"Maybe two hours. We won't have to move to the next set of coordinates for another five, though."

Ordin looked longingly into the void, wishing he could stay longer. "Good." He left, disappearing behind another door.

Creta watched him go. She turned to Ziir, and asked, "Is there something wrong with him?"

"Why do you ask?"

She hesitated. "He really seems to like it out here. It's unhealthy, if you ask me."

Ziir was slow to respond. He sighed, looked down at his galaxy several times before answering. "It is said, his Kiith was once one of many thousands of people. His family was great, rich, on Kharak. But... in the burning..." he stopped for a moment. "He is the only one left. His story is not unique, but Ordin was hit very hard by it. It is said that he tried to take his own life... That is all I know."

Creta glanced back at the door, still darkly curious about the Commander. After a while, she returned to her console, where a number of lights were flashing.

 

* * *

Ordin sat, in his small, empty room, facing the window looking into the void. His legs lay folded, a gray mat lay below him. At his fingers, there was a small control pad, and a holographic display linked into the sensor cluster on the hull of the ship. Before him, a dim image of the galaxy swirled slowly, silently in its unending revolutions. After a while, he spoke to it.

"Quadrant four, sector seventeen... zoom. Zoom..." The stars slowly bled away, leaving smaller clusters that expanded to fill the room. He looked for a moment, into the darker, more desolate regions of the display. He picked out a single star among the hundreds, and looked down on it. He sighed, and spoke again. "Enhance thirteen by twenty six."

The holographic stars vanished. One bright point grew larger until the star was a marble hovering in the center of the room. Just barely visible, Ordin saw a few smaller bits of white, representing planets and moons. Each one was encased in a weak shroud of dust and small asteroid fragments... Amidst all the excess material, his eyes picked out a small bulge of gray circling around the parent star. He stared inward at it for a long time, never taking his eyes off of it. He absorbed the image, not feeling the tears dripping from his face, or the pain in his chest, or the quickening of his heartbeat. He stared, and felt part of him cry out to move closer, to expand that ball of gray into a visible planetary mass.

But he held himself back from it... for he knew that if he did so, he would see the truth. No, things were perfect from here... Here, where the planet was still just a ball of light. Just a perfect sphere, not revealing anything. Perfect, as it had been, Before...

Ordin sank into himself, closed his eyes and made his mind quiet against the storm.

The door behind him jolted open, shattering him. The stars vanished. He remained still, motionless, dead.

"Commander...?" A familiar voice said, "We require your guidance." The voice was quiet, but Ordin recognized it.

"What is it, Taiidan?" he shouted, the rage suddenly welling up in him.

Creta stood unmoving in the doorway.

Ordin slowly recovered himself. He wiped the moisture from his face. "I... I'm sorry. I'll be there in a moment."

A few seconds of silence, and then the sound of the hatch whirring shut.

 

* * *

Reluctantly, he took his seat and focused himself. "What is it? What's happening?"

Ziir answered. "Our sensors have found something nearby us... Something very large. A ship, almost mothership class."

Everyone had frozen in place. Disturbed, Ordin stood up. "Out here?"

"It's just a faint echo... The ship, if it's here, must be within six thousand kilometers of us. I'm not reading any power signatures... It took our advanced sensors just to know it's here. It could be a derelict..."

"We should approach with caution." A'Kuul spoke up. "I have read of derelict ships... One such vessel was found during the original homeworld war. It was quite dangerous to nearby spacecraft. However, even if it is dangerous, the vessel should be investigated... It might provide an invaluable technological insight."

Ordin nodded. "Can we learn more about it from here?"

Ziir scanned a few controls. "Yes. I'm pointing two scopes at it... There's no haze, so we should be able to get a good view. Hold on..." He typed commands into a number of pads. Finally, a huge screen in the center of the room activated, and displayed the readings.

The derelict ship was dark, almost as dark as the black of space behind it. As the scopes brought in more data, the structure became more apparent. It was rectangular, long, gray, crudely assembled, with a huge engine module. It was indeed old, judging by the corrosion, but it was intact besides that. Only the rim of its hull was really visible, faintly illuminated from beneath by the distant stars of the nebula. It looked just like more junk, but there was something about the shape... something familiar.

Niilan stared, in awe, at the dark object. "Do you recognize it?" he asked, dazed.

"Yes..." Ordin said, the words dripping from his mouth. "It's the Khar-Toba."

 

* * *

"The ancient Hiigarans were exiled from the homeworld, three thousand years ago. They traveled over thirty thousand light years in ships like those, generational vessels. After perhaps a century of travel, they landed on Kharak. But this one... This ship did not land on Kharak. The technology was unreliable... perhaps, this ship failed in its orbital maneuvers and just skipped out of the atmosphere, with inoperable drives, unable to regain control. Over three millennia, it drifted farther and farther, and ended up out here."

Ziir stumbled around the cabin, trying to rationalize the situation.

A'Kuul looked up, his eyebrows moving for the first time in the whole flight. "My calculations indicate that it would take a Khar-Toba class vessel at least ten thousand years to reach this distance, at the maximum possible velocity gained from a failed entry."

Even now, Ordin was stunned by the man's computational ability. "I suppose you have a good explanation for this?"

"I do not... But the fact that I have no explanation should not cause us to jump to explanations which are mathematically improbable." A'Kuul did more mental calculations. "More likely, this ship is not a Khar-Toba class, but rather another derelict merely resembling the Khar-Toba."

Everyone seemed disgruntled by this. Creta talked for the first time. "If it is a Khar-Toba class, it has a great deal of importance... It could be the greatest archaeological find of the century, for your people and mine. Surely we cannot abandon it..."

Ziir spoke up, worried. "Unfortunately, we will have to abandon it, if we don't think of something. In four hours thirty two minutes, we must hyperspace to the next set of coordinates. Otherwise, the mapping project is lost, and we'll have to start over months from now. It will cost a great deal of time and funds..."

Ordin was disturbed by this. "Can't we just call a salvage team?"

"Unfortunately, no. They'll never find it again... We're so far out from the galaxy now, navigation would be impossible. I doubt if even a ship with our sensors could find the way back to this exact spot."

A'Kuul looked upset by this, for he now realized how very improbable their encounter with it was.

"Can we call another ship to come here and secure it before we move on?"

"Doubtful. No one would make it this far out without a drive at least as advanced as ours... And I doubt we can contact the Bentusi in time."

"Can we make it easier to find? By Sajuuk, isn't there anything we can do?"

Ziir was intrigued. "Yes, maybe. It might be possible to plant a beacon of some sort on the derelict... I could build such a beacon from the backup parts we're carrying for the transmitter systems. It might work!"

Ordin smiled. "Get started on it. I want it done by the time the mapping here is complete... We'll only have three hours to set it up."

The crew was left, for than time, to further speculate, propose theories, and stare in awe at the thing on the screens.