The moment I heard the klaxons wail, I tensed up, but within a few seconds, I snapped into action. Taking a deep breath and relaxing my muscles, I stood up and hurried out of the lounge along with the others present. I hoped this was a drill, but something told me it wasn’t.

  I jogged through the halls to the bridge, my designated location during general quarters. Since I was the most junior bridge officer and off-duty, I wouldn’t actually be doing anything during the event, but I was to be there in case something was needed.

  By the time I reached the bridge, the klaxons had shut off, though the warning lights were still glowing, giving everything a slight tint. As I arrived, the captain began speaking over the shipwide intercom.

  “Attention, everyone. We have detected an unidentified vessel approaching our position from an unmapped aether current. Be prepared.”

  I kept my breathing slow. Occasionally, we heard of pirates having discovered unmapped systems and using them to hide and attack. It was rare, but it happened. Whether that was what was happening here or not remained to be seen.

  “Navigation, map us a path out of here if we need to flee quickly. Comms, have they responded to our hails?”

  “No, ma’am,” replied Lieutenant Domini, the third-shift junior bridge officer. “No response.”

  “Send another request. Sensors, do we have any more details on that ship?”

  “It appears to be a larger vessel, though it’s too far out to determine more than that.”

  “Be ready, everyone.”

  The next few minutes were a tense period of waiting until the ship neared enough for more accurate detection.

  “Captain,” Lieutenant Droth, the current sensors officer, said. “They are approaching the mouth of the current. Once they cross, we’ll have more information.”

  Like the mouths of some rivers, the place where major aether currents transitioned into the minor currents within a system was often turbulent, requiring more active piloting than traveling the body of the current. This turbulence could also interfere with certain sensors, limiting the details that could be obtained past it.

  “Uh, ma’am, something seems to be wrong,” Lieutenant Droth said a few minutes later.

  “Yes, lieutenant?”

  “The ship is moving erratically, as if their pilot doesn’t know what they are doing.”

  A dark look briefly passed over the captain’s face before disappearing into her normal stoic visage. “Keep an eye on things. Comms, they still haven’t responded?”

  “Correct, captain. No response to our hails.”

  The tension continued as Lieutenant Droth continued to keep us updated. Twenty minutes later, she informed us that the ship was entering a calmer region.

  “Captain, life detection sensors are reading no life signs.”

  She nodded as if she already expected that, then spoke into the intercom. “Crew, it appears we’ve located a derelict vessel. Marines, prepare to board. Everyone else, remain at general quarters.”

  A few seconds later, a woman’s voice came from a speaker near the captain’s chair. “Aye, captain. We’ll be ready soon.”

  “Navigation, plot an intercept course. Pilot, prepare to intercept.”

  ““Aye, captain.””

  The tension relaxed a little now that we suspected it was a derelict, but it didn’t go away. Over the next half hour, we navigated through the aether to intercept the other ship. Eventually, we pulled up beside the ship that looked perfectly normal from the outside. Once the docking tunnel was attached, the captain sent the marines to the other ship.

  “Captain, the ship obeyed our docking request, as per protocol,” the comms officer stated.

  “Good,” she replied. “Marines, proceed when ready.”

  “Aye, captain. Entering the ship now.” A few seconds passed. “Captain, no contact on the other side. Continuing through the ship.”

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  The marine lieutenant kept us informed as her squad navigated the ship.

  “The cargo bay looks full—I believe this to be a merchant vessel.”

  “Aye, lieutenant, that tracks.”

  “Still no contact. Proceeding into the crew areas. Alert! Dead body up ahead, looks to be a sidhe. No signs of wounds—cause of death unclear without a medical examination. I’m no expert, but the body doesn’t seem to be more than a week or two dead.”

  “Be careful, lieutenant, and make sure your protective gear is working.”

  “Aye, ma’am.”

  Over the next ten minutes, the marines reported more and more dead bodies, most in their beds or lying in groups in a shared space.

  “Captain, it appears as though everyone died from an unknown cause. There doesn’t seem to be any threat, at least while using environment protection.”

  “All right, marine. Go ahead and return. We’ll send Lieutenant Missiker with you next to analyze the body for a cause of death.”

  At that point, the captain ended general quarters. I was tired, but I wanted to know what would happen. Lieutenant Rokloth must have seen my indecision because she walked over and spoke to me. “Get some sleep, ensign. Odds are, this will still be ongoing come our shift. Come on, I’ll walk with you.”

  I nodded, agreeing to her suggestion. It was a bit harder to fall asleep than usual, but I got enough sleep to wake up, grab a quick workout and breakfast, then head to the bridge.

  “Lieutenant, ensign, good,” the XO said when we were both there. “Lieutenant, I’m going to need you to take command of the bridge while the ensign and I head over to the other ship to get the logs and such. We have some idea what happened thanks to our good medical officer, but hopefully the logs will explain more.

  “Ma’am,” I asked. “What did happen?”

  “We suspect that their water reclamation system failed, causing them all to die of dehydration when their engineers couldn’t fix it. Why they were in an unmapped system, however, remains a mystery. I’ll be sending Specialist Dalgado with you as well—her job is to investigate the water reclamation system and determine what went wrong.”

  I nodded then followed the XO as she led me to the docking bay. Before we reached it, we stopped in a storeroom.

  “The environment seems to be fine over there, but we’ll follow protocol and avoid taking unnecessary risks. I assume you know how to use this device?”

  She handed me a life support harness. It was a manatech device that strapped across your chest and could maintain a layer of breathable air around your body, as well as an aether shield. We wouldn’t need the aether shield, but having it just in case would be useful.

  I strapped on the harness and gave her a nod when I was ready. She led me out and to the docking bay where we met up with Jara and Isa. I gave each of them a nod in greeting and turned back to the XO.

  “Okay, we only have one marine with us right now, but each of us is armed. The situation should be safe, though we will remain as a group. We’ll head to engineering first to ascertain the status of the water reclamation system. Understood?”

  ““Aye, ma’am.””

  “Good. Marine, lead the way.”

  Jara led us through the docking ports into the other ship. From there, she kept her head on a swivel as she guided us to engineering. I appreciated her vigilance, even if we were all pretty sure there would be no surprises.

  I learned that day that Isa mumbles to herself when she works. It took fifteen minutes of that before she pulled away from the machine with a frown.

  “Ma’am, I believe I know what happened with the machine.”

  “Yes, specialist?”

  “They neglected to perform routine maintenance over a long period of time and some of the mana channels degraded to the point of failure. Repairing it would not be difficult, but it would require facilities this ship lacks.”

  “Thank you, specialist. If you wouldn’t mind accompanying us to the bridge, we’ll proceed to our next task.”

  “Aye, ma’am.”

  “Private, please guide us to the bridge.”

  Jara nodded and proceeded to the bridge with us in tow. After checking the room, she let us in.

  “Ensign, I’m going to have you download the ship’s logs for review. This is a Counterpoint Enterprises ship, so its systems adhere to the standards. Any questions?”

  “No, ma’am.” I pulled out my tablet and hooked it up to the captain’s system. Using override codes unique to the navy, I unlocked and downloaded the ship’s logs into an isolated partition in case of sabotage. This only took a few minutes, then I disconnected and relayed the information to the XO.

  “Good work, ensign. Now, let’s return to the ship and analyze the data.”

  We did as she said, and soon I was back on the bridge of the Bluejay.

  After I ran an automated scan over the logs, I transferred them to the ship and the three of us divided them up for review. It was tedious work, skimming the captain’s reports for information, but eventually Lieutenant Rokloth found something.

  “Ah, here we go. They seemed to have taken a wrong current a couple months back on the route between Leval and Coral. They didn’t notice until they ended up in an uncharted system, then from there, proceeded to fly around blindly hoping for a route to known space. Looks like they would have found one had their water reclamation not failed almost a month ago. They had just enough time to enter the current we found them leaving before they died.”

  I didn’t know how to react to that. It was terrible. Two mistakes and the entire crew died. Had they not taken a wrong turn, they would have been within range of a station when their water reclamation system failed, and had they maintained it properly, they would have ended up back in charted space within a week or two. They were so close—of course, had they not been, they would have just been another lost ship never seen again. Really, the strange thing was that we found them at all.

  “Excellent work, lieutenant. I’ll prepare a report to send to central command—they’ll want to know about the potential new systems to chart. Feel free to speak with the crew about this later—we don’t need to keep it secret.”

  Once I got off duty, I ended up explaining what happened multiple times. It didn’t get any easier to talk about as I explained it, though. Everyone’s mood seemed subdued after learning the details. I knew I was thinking about how dangerous our jobs were—it wasn’t just pirates or the Kaksholi that we had to worry about, but getting lost or having our tech fail. There were so many ways to die in the void. Nevertheless, I reminded myself that this was worth it, at least for me.