Tales of the New Age: Come Home

Posted on Sun Aug 9th, 2026 @ 11:24am by Darth Serus
Edited on on Sun Aug 9th, 2026 @ 11:25am

12,575 words; about a 63 minute read

Chapter: Additional Stories
Timeline: 890 ABY

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This tale takes place in approximately 890 ABY, during the Second Bastion War between the Bastion Moff Empire and Manda'toma.

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The Unbroken had been missing for thirteen days when Raal Venn found her.

The Fel-class Star Destroyer hung above the uninhabited moon like some immense blade discarded across the stars. Her long, angular hull remained entirely unmarked, its pale armour broken only by the deep trenches, weapon emplacements, and darker geometry of the superstructure. Twin shield generators rose intact above the command tower, while the enormous engine housings at the stern retained the faint blue glow of maintained power. No debris surrounded her. There was no scoring from turbolaser fire, no rupture in the reactor housing, and no indication that Mandalorian boarding craft had ever touched the hull.

She showed no running lights and broadcast no transponder signal, yet she was not drifting. Minute corrections passed through the destroyer's thrusters as the salvage cutter approached, preserving her position above the moon with mechanical precision. Her artificial gravity remained active, as did her life support, internal power, and navigational systems. Even the immense reactor buried within the hull appeared to be operating at a disciplined standby rather than suffering any kind of failure.

Captain Raal Venn watched the warship through the forward window of the Vagrant, his antiox mask producing a soft mechanical rasp beneath the low murmur of the cutter's instruments. The reflected light of the sensor displays passed across his protective lenses, briefly concealing the dark eyes behind them.

"Tell me again," said Meyla Tann from the engineering station, "how many people are supposed to be aboard one of those?"

The Falleen had asked the question twice already. Her dark green skin had faded slightly since they first detected the destroyer, although Raal possessed enough discretion not to mention it. She sat rigidly before the engineering console, one hand resting beside the controls while the other tapped an irregular rhythm against her thigh.

"Approximately eleven thousand, excluding embarked troops," Raal answered. "The precise number depends upon the vessel's deployment."

"And how many can Sivv see?"

The Lannik pilot leaned across his display, long ears lowered as he searched the sensor returns again, as though several thousand life signs might emerge if he glared at them fiercely enough. Sivv had the compact, solid build common among his species, and his station had been altered with an elevated seat and shortened controls. His impatience usually expressed itself through constant movement, but he had become increasingly still as the Vagrant drew nearer to the destroyer.

"None," he said at last. "No organics. No active droids. Nothing large enough to be vermin. The scanner sees atmosphere, heat, gravity, and enough power to illuminate a city, but nothing alive inside any of it."

Braak shifted behind them. The broad-shouldered Houk filled much of the cutter's narrow central aisle, carrying a boarding carbine across his chest and enough cutting equipment to dismantle a blast door. His heavy features remained impassive as he examined the destroyer through the window.

"Perhaps Bastion took the crew off."

Raal shook his head. "They would have taken the ship."

He had served aboard two Fel-class destroyers during his years in the Bastion Navy. He knew the shape of their corridors, the rhythm of their engines, and the particular vibration their heavy turbolifts sent through the deck before the doors opened. Bastion had never forbidden Kel Dor from serving within its armed forces, and Raal had advanced further than most non-Humans, although the service had remembered what he was at every promotion board and formal dinner. His uniform had required alteration around the mask and protective lenses. Every wardroom portrait had made him conspicuous among rows of Human faces. He had spent eleven years proving that he belonged there and seven more pretending that leaving had cost him nothing.

The Unbroken had vanished while redeploying between two Bastion task forces on the frontier. Her last report had described all systems as operational and no enemy contact. She had failed to arrive at the designated rendezvous, ignored subsequent orders, and disappeared from the military network. Manda'toma had not claimed her destruction, which was unusual in itself. Both sides had searched for the vessel, although neither had thought to examine an insignificant moon well beyond the principal hyperspace routes.

The Vagrant had found her only because Sivv detected the destroyer's reactor while searching for an abandoned refinery which probably did not exist. Their charts identified the moon by a survey number rather than a name. It possessed no valuable minerals, no permanent settlements, and no strategic position worth defending. The Unbroken had no reason to be there, yet she occupied a stable orbit as though she had reached the end of a journey planned long before her disappearance.

There would be no lawful salvage claim. Bastion would regard the removal of anything from the Unbroken as piracy, while Manda'toma would either seize the warship or destroy it to prevent its recovery. If the Vagrant left immediately and sold the coordinates, the crew might earn enough to clear their debts and replace the cutter's deteriorating hyperdrive. It was the sensible course, and Raal knew that everyone aboard understood it.

If they boarded first, they could become wealthy.

Meyla turned from her console and studied him. "This feels like a trap."

"Bastion would not sacrifice a Fel-class Star Destroyer to capture four salvagers."

"That is not what I meant."

Raal returned his attention to the silent warship. He had seen vessels crippled by reactor failure and others gutted by Mandalorian boarding parties. They possessed a visible wrongness even at a distance. Hull sections sagged away from their frames, emergency lights blinked behind open hangars, and vapour bled from ruptured compartments before crystallising into glistening clouds around them. Wreckage testified to whatever violence had occurred, while the surviving machinery struggled noisily against its own approaching death.

Nothing bled from the Unbroken. Her hull remained sealed, her engines maintained their patient blue glow, and her weapons rested within their housings as though awaiting the beginning of another ordinary watch. She did not resemble a vessel whose crew had abandoned her. She resembled one whose crew might return at any moment.

"We dock, inspect the nearest hangar, and locate the command systems," Raal decided. "We remain together until we understand what happened. If we find evidence of contamination, hostile occupation, or deliberate sabotage... we return immediately."

Braak adjusted the sling of his carbine. "And if we find eleven thousand dead Imps?"

"Do not steal from them until I have finished with the command logs."

The Houk inclined his head with exaggerated solemnity. "You have my word."

Sivv transmitted a standard docking request towards the destroyer. They had expected the signal to disappear unanswered into the empty communications network, but the Unbroken accepted it immediately. No voice emerged from the speakers, and no flight controller requested their identity or purpose. A brief line of text appeared upon the navigation display, informing them that docking clearance had been granted and instructing them to hold their present vector.

That troubled Raal more than if the destroyer had ignored them.

A guidance beam reached out from the Fel-class vessel and took hold of the Vagrant, directing the cutter towards a secondary bay along the ventral hull. Raal ordered Sivv to interrupt the automatic procedure. The warship acknowledged the command, displayed a courteous confirmation upon their console, and continued drawing them in.

"It has control of our approach thrusters," Sivv said. His hands moved rapidly across the shortened controls as he attempted to restore manual authority. "I can shut down the engines entirely, but I cannot break the guidance lock without burning out half the board."

"Keep them ready," Raal told him. "If it alters course or takes us towards a military bay, cut everything."

They passed beneath the forward edge of the destroyer and entered its shadow. The Unbroken consumed the stars above them, her armour stretching in every direction like the underside of a metal continent. Rows of sealed apertures and recessed weapon batteries moved slowly across the window. No maintenance lights marked their route, no traffic beacons flashed across the hull, and no figures watched their approach from the observation galleries.

The hangar doors opened before them. Cold white light spilled through the widening gap and washed across the hull of the Vagrant, revealing the scratches, patched plates, and mismatched components accumulated across decades of repair.

Two full squadrons of TIE fighters stood within the bay, arranged neatly inside their launch cradles. Fuel couplings remained attached, service carts rested beneath the angular craft, and tools had been returned to their places upon the maintenance racks. Pilot helmets waited in orderly rows within an equipment alcove beside the deployment chamber. Farther back, a pair of troop transports occupied their assigned berths with their boarding ramps closed, while several utility vehicles stood inside marked floor spaces as though an inspection had recently taken place.

Nothing had been stripped, launched, or hurriedly abandoned. There were no dropped weapons, forgotten pressure suits, or overturned carts. The hangar appeared ready to receive its flight crews, but there was nobody there to give the order.

The guidance beam deposited the Vagrant upon an auxiliary landing platform. Magnetic clamps secured the cutter, and a boarding conduit extended from the wall with a heavy metallic impact which travelled through the deck beneath them. The destroyer transmitted atmospheric readings, gravitational conditions, and a formal notice welcoming authorised personnel aboard.

"No code challenge," Raal observed. "No demand for a rank cylinder or command authorisation. The ship has accepted us as though we were expected."

Meyla unfastened her restraints and rose from the engineering station. "Is that good?"

"No."

The boarding conduit connected with the Vagrant's outer hatch. Raal waited while Meyla checked the seal, although the display had already confirmed a stable atmosphere on the other side. Braak raised his carbine and inspected its charge. Sivv remained at the controls long enough to instruct the cutter to release its docking clamps if the crew did not return within two hours.

The Vagrant reported that its clamps were already released.

Sivv frowned and attempted the command again. "Our landing gear is free, but we are not moving. The magnetic hold must be coming from the destroyer's platform."

"We can cut through the couplings if we need to," Meyla said. She looked towards Braak's equipment, then at the thick hull surrounding the cutter. "It will take time."

"Let us hope we do not need to," Raal replied.

The outer hatch opened. Air moved through the conduit, dry and faintly antiseptic. The temperature beyond had been maintained precisely within Bastion naval regulations, and Raal's mask detected nothing harmful, although the Human-standard atmosphere would have been unbreathable to him without it. A subtle vibration passed through the conduit beneath his boots. The rhythm was familiar enough that, for a moment, he might have been returning from shore leave to a vessel filled with thousands of officers and ratings.

He entered first. The opposite hatch bore the crest of the Bastion Moff Empire above a narrow plaque identifying the auxiliary access point. Raal touched the control and expected a demand for identification. The armoured door opened immediately.

Lights awakened along the adjoining corridor, not all at once, but in successive sections. Each pool of clean white light appeared shortly before Raal reached it, drawing the salvagers deeper into the ship while the corridor behind them gradually darkened again. The metal floors bore no dust, blood, or marks from weapons fire. Doors remained closed, and directional displays continued to indicate engineering compartments, crew quarters, armouries, and flight-control stations as though the destroyer were proceeding through an ordinary watch.

The smell unsettled him most. Fel-class destroyers had possessed their own accumulated odour of machinery, cleaning compounds, recycled air, hot wiring, uniforms, and thousands of living bodies confined within a military hull. The Unbroken retained the antiseptic trace of maintenance chemicals and the warm metallic scent of an operational vessel, but everything contributed by her crew had faded. She smelled less like an abandoned ship than a newly constructed replica of one.

Braak stopped beside an open equipment recess and directed his lamp inside. "Blasters are still here."

Four Bastion naval carbines stood secured within the rack. Their charge indicators remained full, and each weapon bore the identification number of the crew member to whom it had been assigned. A sealed emergency locker beside them contained breathing apparatus, survival rations, medical supplies, and evacuation beacons. Nothing had been touched.

"Leave them," Raal said. "If someone comes looking for this ship, possession of naval weapons will be difficult to explain."

Braak reluctantly withdrew his hand from the nearest carbine. "They will find the rest of our visit equally difficult to explain."

The first duty station they entered overlooked the hangar. Three empty chairs faced a curved bank of operational consoles, while the broad window beyond offered an elevated view of the silent TIE squadrons. Flight schedules remained displayed across several screens. The Unbroken had been preparing a routine training deployment when its crew disappeared. Twelve fighters had been allocated to the exercise, their pilots named, their craft inspected, and their launch order approved.

None had left the hangar.

A ceramic cup stood beside the chief controller's station, a dark residue dried across its interior. Meyla lifted it and examined the ring left upon the console before carefully returning it to the same place.

"People were working here," she said. "Whatever happened, they did not prepare to leave."

"Thirteen days ago," Sivv replied. He looked around the room, his ears still lowered. "The ship has kept everything waiting for them."

A projector activated above the central console.

Blue light spread across the chamber, resolving into three translucent Bastion officers seated at the previously empty stations. Their uniforms identified them as flight-control personnel, and the details of their faces appeared with the faint grain of an ordinary operational recording. One dictated launch permissions while another complained about a faulty coupling aboard Fighter Six. The third raised the cup which now stood empty upon the console and drank from it.

The salvagers watched without speaking. The figures did not acknowledge them, and their conversation concerned nothing more ominous than maintenance delays, a late pilot, and whether the training exercise would finish before the evening meal. The familiar boredom of naval service made their presence more disturbing than any recorded alarm might have done.

After less than a minute, a warning sounded from somewhere beyond the holographic image. All three officers turned towards the hangar windows.

"What was that?" asked one of them.

The chief controller placed his cup upon the console. His expression changed as he stared through the glass, although the recording did not reveal what he had seen.

"I don't know."

The hologram ended, leaving the three chairs empty again.

Sivv raised his eyes towards the projector. "Did one of you activate that?"

Raal approached the console without answering and opened the recording information. The hologram belonged to the ship's automatic operational archive, captured thirteen days earlier and stored alongside thousands of routine watch records. There was no scheduled playback, no command registered from the station, and no explanation for why the projector had selected that particular minute.

He searched for the warning heard at the end. The archive registered no alarm at that time. According to the Unbroken's systems, the three officers had completed their watch normally and been relieved several hours later.

Meyla moved towards the hangar window. Below them, the TIE fighters remained motionless within their cradles, their black viewports reflecting the duty station's lights.

"Perhaps the crew evacuated afterwards," she suggested. "The recordings might be incomplete."

"The escape craft are still aboard," Raal told her. "So are the fighters, shuttles, and transports. The ship logged no evacuation drill and no emergency deployment."

"They might have used pressure suits."

"There would be no reason to abandon an operational destroyer for open space. Even if there had been one, we would have found bodies or suit beacons nearby."

Meyla continued looking through the window. "Then where are they?"

Raal turned to the central personnel system. His command was accepted without requesting his rank cylinder, identity, or security authorisation. Crew manifests opened across the console, followed by watch assignments, medical records, and internal location reports.

The Unbroken carried eleven thousand, four hundred and eighty-seven officers, ratings, pilots, troopers, and support personnel at the moment of her disappearance. No deaths had been recorded. No evacuation order had been issued. No escape pod had launched, no shuttle had departed, and no airlock had been opened without authorisation. Every member of the crew remained listed at an assigned station, compartment, or berth.

Raal selected the chief flight controller whose image they had just witnessed. They remained officially on duty inside the chamber. His location marker pulsed softly upon the console no more than two metres from where Raal stood.

There was nothing beside him but an empty chair and the ceramic cup.

He examined the remaining personnel records. Each contained the same quiet impossibility. Pilots remained assigned to fighters they had never launched. Engineers remained stationed beside machinery which continued operating without them. Troopers occupied barracks whose doors had not opened for thirteen days. Medical officers waited inside treatment rooms, and bridge personnel continued a watch which the ship's chronometers insisted had never ended.

According to the internal tracking system, the destroyer retained her full complement.

Raal looked through the hangar window at the empty flight deck. The Unbroken had recorded no attack, no death, and no departure. Her systems maintained the atmosphere, regulated the lights, prepared the fighters, and preserved the duty rotations of people who were no longer present.

According to the Unbroken, nobody had gone anywhere.

Raal closed the personnel records and instructed the console to display the most direct route to the bridge. A simplified plan of the Unbroken appeared across the screen, tracing a blue line from the hangar-control station through the central turbolift network and into the command tower. Several routes were marked unavailable because of scheduled maintenance, although the relevant compartments showed no loss of atmosphere, power, or structural integrity. The ship appeared to be directing him along a particular path rather than merely identifying the shortest one.

Meyla noticed the distinction. "We have seen enough. We should return to the Vagrant, cut ourselves free, and sell the coordinates before this ship decides it does not want to release us."

"We still do not know what happened," Raal replied. "The bridge records should contain the captain's log, navigational history, and final communications. Bastion will pay considerably more for the cause of the disappearance than for a location they might already rediscover without us."

"Bastion may also execute us for boarding one of its warships."

"Then we will sell the information to Manda'toma."

The suggestion had been intended as reassurance, although Meyla did not appear reassured. She looked towards the empty chairs and then at the pulsing location marker which continued to insist that the flight controller still stood among them. The Falleen's skin had faded further, losing much of its dark green richness beneath the cold illumination of the duty station.

Sivv moved away from the personnel console. "The ship took control of our approach, locked the cutter to its deck, and started showing us recordings which nobody requested. We came aboard for salvage, not an investigation."

"We came aboard because the vessel is valuable," Raal told him. "Its value depends upon discovering why eleven thousand people abandoned it."

"They did not abandon it," Sivv said. "That is the problem."

Braak had wandered towards the doorway while they spoke. The Houk stood with his carbine lowered, watching the illuminated corridor beyond. A figure passed through the distant intersection, visible only as a pale blue silhouette moving between one wall and the other.

He raised the weapon at once.

The others turned in time to see a second Bastion rating follow the first. Both wore engineering uniforms and carried tool cases between them. Their conversation reached the duty station as a faint, indistinct murmur, accompanied by the soft electrical distortion of holographic playback.

Raal stepped into the corridor. The two figures continued towards the next junction without acknowledging him, their bodies fragmenting briefly whenever they passed through the uneven light. One complained about an inspection report, while the other blamed an unnamed lieutenant for assigning them work which should have been completed during the previous watch. They sounded tired and irritable, possessed by the minor resentments of people who expected to repeat the same duties for years.

The taller engineer glanced behind him.

For an instant, his translucent eyes appeared to settle upon Raal. He touched his companion's arm and inclined his head towards the former officer as if drawing attention to someone following them. The second rating looked back as well.

Their conversation ceased.

Both holograms turned the corner.

Braak reached the junction first, but the adjoining passage was empty. No projector remained active, and the nearest archive terminal showed no recording in progress.

"They saw you," he said.

"They looked behind them," Raal replied. "Whatever caused the crew's disappearance may already have been occurring when the archive captured them."

"They looked at you."

Raal returned to the flight-control station long enough to download the deck plan and establish a shared communications channel between their personal transmitters. The Unbroken allowed him to access both systems without objection. When he attempted to include the Vagrant's communications array, however, the cutter did not respond. Meyla tried from a second console and received confirmation that the connection had been established, but nothing she transmitted reached the salvage vessel.

She examined the network status. "The ship is accepting our messages and reporting them as delivered. It is not actually passing them to the cutter."

"Can you bypass the internal network?"

"Not from here. There should be an auxiliary docking-control room one deck below us. Sivv and I can release the magnetic clamps directly and establish a separate signal link while you inspect the bridge."

Raal considered insisting that they remain together, although the first divisions of his plan had already begun to seem unavoidable. Reaching the bridge might take more than an hour if the turbolifts refused them, while returning to the hangar each time they required information from the Vagrant would achieve nothing. The route to the docking controls remained close to their present position, and Meyla possessed the engineering knowledge required to isolate the cutter from the destroyer's systems.

"Stay together," he told her. "Do not enter any compartment which cannot be opened manually, and do not follow the recordings. If you cannot release the Vagrant within twenty minutes, return here."

Meyla checked the charge of her blaster. "You are taking Braak?"

Raal looked towards the Houk, who had already resumed watching the corridor through which the engineers disappeared.

"If he can be persuaded to join us."

Braak turned his broad head towards them. "Someone should recover the contents of the armoury before Bastion arrives."

"Bridge first," Raal said. "You may become a pirate afterwards."

They left the duty station together and remained so until the first intersection. The deck indicators directed Meyla and Sivv towards a narrow service stairwell descending beside the turbolift shaft, while the illuminated route to the bridge continued forward. Raal watched the Falleen and Lannik disappear through the lower hatch. Their footsteps rang against the metal stairs for several seconds, followed by Sivv's voice over the communicator confirming that the docking-control deck remained pressurised and accessible.

The hatch closed between them. Raal continued with Braak towards the central turbolifts. The ship illuminated each section of their route before they reached it and allowed the previous lights to fade behind them again. They passed open offices, empty security posts, and recreation chambers whose gaming tables had been cleared between watches. Personal items remained wherever their owners had left them. A half-completed letter waited upon a communications terminal, addressed to a family on Bastion and ending in the middle of a sentence. Beside it lay a small model of an Imperial Star Destroyer of the Old Empire assembled from painted metal pieces. Someone had carefully repaired one broken engine with adhesive and left the model facing the doorway.

The first mess hall they encountered remained brightly illuminated. Hundreds of tables extended between food dispensers and serving stations, all of them clean except for one near the entrance. Four trays had been abandoned there, the remains of their meals dried into the divided compartments. A sabacc deck lay spread between them, preserving the state of a game which had never been completed.

Holographic personnel occupied several distant tables.

The images were less stable than those in the flight-control station. Ratings appeared and vanished as archive fragments began at different times, their translucent bodies overlapping one another whenever recordings from separate watches played simultaneously. Some ate hurriedly before returning to their stations. Others gathered in groups, laughing over conversations which the salvagers could not hear. A junior officer sat alone near the far wall, lifting an empty spoon repeatedly towards her mouth while the same five seconds of recording repeated.

Braak entered only far enough to inspect the nearest food dispenser. "Power is active."

The machine awakened as he approached and displayed the meal authorised for the current watch. Before he could select anything, the dispenser produced a tray of grey protein, boiled grain, and dark sauce. A cup followed, filling itself with water.

The Houk stared at it. "I did not order that."

"It may be following the duty schedule," Raal said.

The display changed. Instead of listing the meal allocation, it presented the name of an enlisted crewman, followed by his identification number and dietary requirements. Petty Officer Ulven Ress, a Human assigned to the forward reactor-control team. A holographic figure then approached from behind the Houk.

The image passed partly through Braak's shoulder before stopping beside the dispenser. Petty Officer Ress wore the same name upon his uniform. He looked down at the waiting tray, then towards the salvagers as though surprised to find them standing in his way.

"Excuse me," the recording said.

Braak stepped aside instinctively.

The hologram collected the tray. Its hands passed through the solid container without disturbing it, but the image behaved as though it had taken the meal and turned towards the occupied tables. After two steps, the sailor paused and looked back at Braak.

"You can have that one," he said. "I won't be needing it."

The recording vanished.

Braak remained beside the dispenser, his gaze fixed upon the untouched tray. Raal accessed the nearest terminal and searched the operational archive for Petty Officer Ress. The system identified several hundred recordings captured within the mess hall, but none included the words they had just heard. Ress had eaten there thirteen days earlier, during the final watch before the disappearance, yet the archived footage showed him collecting his meal without speaking to anyone.

"You heard it," Braak said.

Raal closed the search. "I heard something."

"It spoke to me."

"It may have spoken to someone outside the projector's field."

"It looked at me."

"The recording is damaged."

The explanation sounded inadequate even through the impersonal modulation of Raal's mask. He left the mess hall before Braak could require him to repeat it.

The turbolift arrived before they summoned it. Its doors opened upon an empty compartment, and the control panel already displayed the command-tower level as its selected destination. Raal entered cautiously. Braak remained outside long enough to inspect the corridor in both directions, then followed him inside with evident reluctance.

The doors closed and the turbolift began ascending. Raal felt the familiar vibration through his boots. The pitch of the mechanism, the slight lateral movement as the carriage entered the command tower, and the measured acceleration had remained unchanged from the destroyers upon which he served. He remembered standing inside compartments much like this one while wearing the grey uniform of a Bastion officer, studying reports before inspections or listening to Human colleagues discuss promotions for which he would never be considered. Service aboard those vessels had required him to demonstrate constant gratitude for opportunities which less capable officers received by birth, despite the repeated claims of the hierarchy.

Even so, there had been certainty in the Navy. Orders possessed a source, rank carried recognisable authority, and every individual knew where he belonged within the enormous machine. The Vagrant had never offered such certainty. Its crew followed Raal because he owned the cutter, negotiated their contracts, and understood enough naval procedure to keep them alive. They called him captain because a ship required one, not because any institution had judged him worthy of command.

The turbolift slowed unexpectedly. Its doors opened upon a command passage several decks below the bridge. A holographic Bastion captain stood beyond them, attended by two junior officers whose images trembled within the blue light. She was a tall Human woman in late middle age, with silver beginning to show at the sides of her dark hair and the rank plaque of a line captain upon her breast. Raal recognised her from the vessel registry as Captain Cordane Pell, commanding officer of the Unbroken.

The recording showed her addressing one of the junior officers. She listened to a report which Raal could not hear, asked a brief question concerning the navigational computer, and dismissed both members of her staff. They passed through the open turbolift and vanished inside its rear wall.

Captain Pell remained in the corridor and her eyes moved towards Raal. The doors began to close, but the captain raised one hand. The turbolift stopped as though obeying her gesture and opened again. She turned away from them, walked several paces along the passage, and looked back.

Raal left the compartment, but Braak caught his shoulder before he could proceed farther. "The bridge is above us."

"That passage may connect with the forward command stairwell."

"The lift was already taking us there."

At the end of the corridor, Captain Pell waited beneath an illuminated deck marker. Her posture had the composed impatience of a commanding officer who expected to be followed without requiring an explanation. When Raal did not move, she raised her hand again and drew two fingers towards herself.

The gesture was slight, almost dismissive.

Raal removed Braak's hand from his shoulder. "She may be showing us where the crew went."

"She is dead."

"We have found no bodies."

"We have found no living people either."

Captain Pell turned the corner and Raal followed.

Braak remained near the turbolift until its doors closed behind him. The Houk swore quietly and came after Raal, although he allowed the distance between them to grow as the corridor curved towards the forward command sections.

Meyla's voice emerged through their communicators. "We have reached docking control. The room is empty, but there are three technicians working at the consoles."

Raal touched the transmitter at his collar. "Recordings?"

"I assume so. They have not noticed us."

"They may."

There was a brief silence on the channel.

"What does that mean?" Meyla asked.

Raal watched Captain Pell pass through a sealed security door ahead of him. The solid barrier opened a moment later, revealing the empty passage beyond.

"Do not speak to them," he said. "Release the clamps and return to the rendezvous."

The captain's hologram had disappeared. Raal entered the next corridor and found three possible turns leading towards the command tower. No route remained highlighted upon the deck displays.

Braak arrived behind him. "Where did it go?"

Before Raal could answer, a wardroom door opened to their left. Captain Pell stood inside beside a long polished table. The holographic officers seated around it were discussing the redeployment order which had brought the Unbroken into the region. Their voices became clearer as Raal approached.

"The moon has no strategic importance," said one officer. "It is not charted as a refuelling point, communications post, or anchorage. There is nothing there."

Captain Pell stood at the head of the table, studying a projection of the uninhabited moon above the centre.

"Nevertheless," she replied, "we have been instructed to come home."

The officers looked towards her.

One of them smiled. "Home, Captain?"

Pell raised her eyes from the moon. Her gaze travelled past the seated officers and settled upon Raal in the doorway.

"Yes," she said. "We are expected."

The wardroom recording dissolved, leaving the chamber dark and empty. The holoprojector above the table showed no evidence that it had been active.

Braak backed away from the entrance. "We are going back."

Raal entered the room and examined the dead projector. "The ship's last navigational instruction may have originated here. If Pell altered course without notifying Bastion, the order should remain in the bridge records."

"It called this place home."

"It repeated a navigation command."

"It looked at you when it said it."

Raal moved around the table, following the route Captain Pell had taken before the image vanished. A second doorway waited behind her former position, opening into an officers' access corridor which ascended towards the bridge.

Braak did not follow. The Houk had turned towards an adjoining security station, where several holographic naval troopers were removing weapons from a storage cage. Their sergeant inspected each rifle before passing it across the counter. Unlike the other recordings, the scene produced no sound, but one of the troopers appeared to notice Braak watching and lifted a heavy repeating blaster from the rack - at least, the recorded visualisation of the weapon.

He held it out towards him and Braak took a step closer.

"Leave it," Raal said.

The Houk glanced towards him, then back at the weapon. "If the bridge systems turn hostile, my carbine will do nothing against the security doors."

"It is a recording. There will be no weapon there."

The holographic trooper moved towards another doorway at the rear of the station, still carrying the repeating blaster. He stopped at its threshold and waited for Braak.

"Five minutes," Braak said. "I will meet you at the bridge."

Raal might once have objected. The rules he established upon entering the Unbroken already seemed to belong to an earlier and less informed version of himself. Captain Pell had gone ahead, and each moment spent arguing with the Houk increased the possibility that he might lose her trail.

"Keep the channel open," he said.

He left Braak outside the security station and entered the ascending corridor alone.

The lights no longer waited for him. They were already burning throughout the passage, revealing a succession of doors reserved for senior officers, tactical-planning chambers, and the command communications team. The ship appeared brighter here than it had near the hangar, and the air carried the faint warmth of compartments designed for continuous occupation. Raal passed a reflective wall panel and glimpsed the pale outline of a Bastion uniform across his body.

He stopped. His reflection wore the dark clothing and equipment harness of a salvager. The image lasted only as long as it took him to turn his head, yet he had seen the high collar of a naval tunic beneath the straps, its insignia displaying the rank of commander.

Captain Pell appeared in the reflection behind him.

Raal turned, but the corridor was empty.

When he looked back at the polished panel, she remained there. Her holographic image stood several metres behind his reflection, one hand resting against the small of her back.

"You took your time, Commander," she said.

Raal stared at her through the dark lenses of his mask. "I am not one of your officers."

Pell's expression softened with something approaching recognition, and then the image moved out of the reflected corridor and vanished beyond the edge of the panel. A door farther ahead opened at the same moment.

Raal continued towards it.

Meyla's voice returned over the communicator, strained by interference. "Raal, the docking controls will not respond. They show the clamps as disengaged, but the field strength is increasing. Sivv has gone to the airlock access."

"Why?"

"He said he could see the Vagrant through one of the external galleries. I told him to wait, but he heard something over his communicator."

Raal entered the open chamber. It had once served as the captain's ready room. Captain Pell sat behind the desk, reading from a datapad while the moon turned slowly beyond the broad observation window. A second version of her stood beside the far wall, speaking to someone outside the projection field. Both recordings played simultaneously, their images passing through one another without acknowledgement.

"What did he hear?" Raal asked.

"I don't know. He said someone aboard the cutter was calling him."

"The Vagrant is empty."

"I know that."

The seated captain stopped reading and her head turned towards Raal. The other recording continued speaking beside the wall, but the figure behind the desk placed the datapad down and rose. She walked around the furniture, her translucent body passing through its solid edge, and approached until only the width of the desk separated them.

"Raal," Meyla said through the communicator. "Did you hear me?"

Captain Pell seemed to study his mask and protective lenses. Her features contained none of the alarm which had begun to dominate Meyla's voice. She appeared calm, composed, and entirely certain of his presence.

"Continue to the bridge," she said.

Raal's hand lowered from the communicator.

The hologram walked past him and through the open doorway. He followed without examining the recording controls.

Meyla's voice sharpened. "Raal, answer me! Sivv has opened the inner airlock door!"

Braak interrupted from elsewhere aboard the ship. "Meyla, get away from it. Do not go inside."

"Sivv!" she called, no longer speaking directly into the communicator. Her footsteps echoed over the channel as she ran. "Sivv, stop! There is nothing out there!"

A second voice reached them through her transmitter. Sivv sounded distant and strangely contented.

"They opened the hangar."

"The hangar is behind us. You are at an airlock!"

"I can see the ship."

"You are looking at its reflection! Come back to me!"

Raal reached another intersection. Captain Pell waited at the foot of a narrow stairway leading into the uppermost command levels. A procession of holographic officers passed around her, ascending in orderly pairs. Some carried reports, while others spoke quietly among themselves. Each turned towards Raal while moving past him. They did not stare with surprise or hostility. Their glances conveyed the polite recognition offered to a familiar superior encountered at the beginning of a watch.

Braak's voice sounded loudly over the shared channel. "Raal, order them back."

Raal watched the officers climb the stairs. "Meyla knows what to do," he answered aimlessly.

"She is following him into the airlock!"

Meyla's breathing had become rapid and uneven. A warning tone repeated somewhere near her communicator, announcing that an exterior pressure seal had been released.

"Sivv, look at me," she pleaded. "Not through the window. Look at me."

"They are all outside," said the Lannik. "I thought the ship was empty, but they are outside."

"No one is there!"

"They have been waiting."

A heavy door closed over the channel.

Meyla struck it almost immediately, the impact followed by the metallic scrape of her hands against the inner surface. "Open this door! Sivv, cancel the cycle!"

Raal stopped at the foot of the stairs. The captain's hologram had stopped as well, one step above him.

"Meyla?" he said, as if he had only now really become aware of whatever had been occurring over the communication system.

"The controls are locked! He has started the cycle, and the inner hatch closed behind us." Her composure collapsed entirely. She shouted Sivv's name, then addressed Raal again with audible panic. "Override it from the ship's network. Airlock Aurek-Seven, docking-control deck. Raal, open the inner door!"

Raal looked towards the nearest command terminal. Before he could approach it, Captain Pell extended her hand and the terminal darkened.

Braak swore over the communicator. "I am coming to you. Meyla, find the emergency stop."

"There is no stop. It has disappeared from the panel."

The pressure warning increased in speed.

Sivv began speaking to someone the others could not hear. His voice had adopted the respectful, almost childish tone of a person answering a beloved relative after a long separation.

"Yes," he said. "I know. I am coming."

Meyla seized him. The communicator transmitted the sound of their struggle, her boots sliding across the deck and Sivv crying out as she dragged him away from the exterior hatch. He was smaller than she was, but the Lannik resisted with a strength born from absolute conviction. A blaster struck the floor. Meyla grunted as one of his elbows caught her, then shouted for Braak and Raal again.

The exterior door began to open. Air screamed through the narrow breach. Meyla's next words were torn apart by the sudden roar, although Raal heard her call Sivv's name. There came a heavy impact as one of them struck the outer frame, followed by the sharp report of a cable or handhold breaking under their combined weight. The Lannik shouted something joyful into the escaping atmosphere.

Meyla screamed.

TBC

The sound ended before the airlock had finished emptying.

Static filled the channel. Beneath it, Raal could hear the airlock warning calmly reporting complete decompression. The exterior hatch remained open for several seconds before machinery drew it closed again and restored the seal. Neither Meyla nor Sivv spoke when the chamber began repressurising.

Braak's breathing became audible over the communicator. "Raal?"

Raal stood motionless beneath the command stairway. He understood that Meyla and Sivv were dead. He could picture their bodies turning above the moon, rapidly freezing as the Unbroken continued its minute orbital corrections beneath them. The knowledge should have broken through every other thought, compelling him to run back towards the docking deck or demand that Braak recover whatever remained of them.

Instead, he found himself troubled principally by the silence which followed. The two voices had become another absence aboard a ship already filled with them, absorbed so completely that their deaths seemed to have occurred thirteen days earlier alongside those of the crew.

Braak remained upon the channel, calling Raal's name. His voice sounded increasingly distant despite the communicator's clear signal.

Captain Pell lowered her hand, turned and ascended the stairs.

Raal followed her.

"Raal, where are you going?" Braak demanded. "I am near the forward armoury. Answer me!"

"The bridge," Raal replied.

"Meyla and Sivv are dead."

"I know."

"We have to return to the cutter."

"The bridge will tell us what happened."

There was a pause long enough for Braak to understand that no argument would reach him.

"This is what happened," the Houk said. "The ship is doing it again."

Raal deactivated his communicator.

The final security doors stood open at the top of the stairs. Beyond them, the bridge of the Unbroken extended through several descending command pits towards the triangular forward windows. Consoles remained active at every station, their displays filled with navigational calculations, weapons reports, engineering tolerances, and the routine information of a functioning warship. The uninhabited moon occupied much of the view, its colourless surface illuminated by the distant star.

Hundreds of holographic officers and ratings worked among the empty stations, but the bridge crew did not resemble a single coherent recording. Figures from different watches occupied the same chairs, passing through one another as they entered commands into consoles which had not been touched for thirteen days. Officers crossed the command walkway carrying reports. Communications personnel listened to silent headsets, navigators adjusted a course which the destroyer was not following, and weapons crews waited beside systems which remained inactive. The accumulated archive had filled every station with the people assigned to it, preserving countless fragments of their service and assembling them into the appearance of continued life.

As Raal entered, the conversations diminished. One after another, the holographic crew turned towards him.

Captain Pell walked along the central command platform. The other versions of her yielded as she passed, dissolving into bands of blue light until only one captain remained upon the bridge. She reached the forward windows, clasped her hands behind her back, and waited while Raal approached. Behind him, the security doors closed.

The crew returned to their stations. Fingers moved across untouched controls, orders passed between officers, and the immense destroyer seemed to gather itself around their activity. Somewhere deep within the hull, the engines changed pitch for the first time since the Vagrant discovered her.

The moon remained fixed beyond the forward windows, its barren surface filling half the bridge with colourless light. Captain Pell stood before it with her hands clasped behind her back, while the accumulated remnants of the Unbroken's crew continued their duties around her. Their voices blended into the disciplined murmur of a command watch, punctuated by acknowledgements, status reports, and the occasional electronic tone from consoles which responded to no visible touch.

"You are late, Commander," Pell said. "But you have come home."

Raal stopped at the edge of the command platform. The captain had not turned towards him. Her attention remained upon something beyond the forward windows, or perhaps upon an officer standing outside the field captured by the original projector. The executive officer might have entered from the starboard command pit moments before the archive began. There was nothing unusual in a captain addressing him without looking around.

Nothing except that the recording information identified the fragment as having been captured six days before the Unbroken received the order which brought her to the moon.

Raal opened the bridge archive. Thousands of records appeared across the nearest station. Routine tactical reports, personnel disputes, engineering inspections, and navigational updates remained intact, each dated and authenticated by the relevant officer. The last ordinary command watch had concluded thirteen days earlier. Its replacement had begun on schedule, yet no officer had relieved the previous watch and no change had been recorded in the bridge personnel.

The Unbroken had simply continued.

Raal searched for the navigational order which altered her course. The command had been accepted by Captain Pell and transmitted to engineering, but its point of origin had been left blank. There was no external communication attached to it, no encrypted instruction from Bastion, and no authorisation code belonging to any member of the crew.

The destination had been entered only as a set of coordinates.

Beneath them, in place of an operational designation, stood two words.

COME HOME

Raal enlarged the command history. "A damaged communications packet may have lost its header."

Captain Pell began walking towards the central command chair. She passed between holographic officers without acknowledging them, although several appeared to turn aside for her.

A navigator seated in the port command pit looked towards someone beyond the visible edge of his station.

"We have verified the coordinates twice, sir," he said. "There is nothing there."

Another voice answered from outside the projector's field.

"Then why were we called?"

The navigator returned his attention to the moon displayed upon his console. "Perhaps they knew we were lost."

The recording broke apart.

Raal searched the archive for the exchange. Neither sentence appeared in the navigational transcript. He adjusted the parameters, accounting for damaged audio and possible errors in transcription, but the system returned nothing.

A projector could preserve images after losing their metadata. Audio might have been separated from one recording and imposed upon another. Eleven thousand crew members had produced millions of hours of conversation aboard the destroyer. Given enough fragmented material, the archive could assemble statements which seemed meaningful only because he was searching for meaning within them.

The explanation was sufficient.

He proceeded to the captain's station.

The command chair stood empty despite the several recordings of Pell moving around it. A ceramic data stylus rested in a groove beside the controls. Its polished surface bore the shallow scratches of long use, while the arm of the chair had been worn smooth beneath the captain's right hand. Raal found these small signs of occupation more difficult to dismiss than the holograms. Recordings required only energy and storage. The marks had been created gradually by a living woman who had expected to return to the same seat for years.

Captain Pell then appeared beside him.

She was addressing a bridge officer who no longer occupied the space between them. Raal could see only part of the man's shoulder whenever the image distorted.

"You have performed your duty," Pell said. "There is no dishonour in standing down."

The unseen officer replied too quietly for the recording to preserve his words.

"No," Pell continued. "You have nothing left to prove. Join the others and find peace."

She placed one hand upon his indistinct shoulder.

To Raal, it appeared to rest upon the empty command chair.

The recording faded.

Braak's voice returned over the communicator. "Raal, answer me."

Raal hesitated before activating the channel. "I am on the bridge."

"I know where you are. The ship is displaying your location on every terminal I pass."

"It has tracked all of us since we boarded."

"Meyla and Sivv are still on it."

Raal looked towards the personnel display. Two additional markers had appeared upon the docking-control deck. Sivv was listed inside Airlock Aurek-Seven. Meyla occupied the adjoining external gallery.

Both markers reported them as present and on duty.

"The system has not updated their status," Raal said.

"They are dead."

"I am aware of that."

Braak's breathing remained audible for several seconds. "Then sound like it!"

Raal closed the personnel display. "Come to the bridge. The ship's final records are here."

"I am trying. The lifts keep bringing me back to the forward armoury."

"Use the officers' stairwell."

"I did. It took me to crew berths three decks below where I started."

Raal examined the internal plan. Braak's signal appeared near the forward security station, less than two hundred metres from the bridge. A route illuminated across the display, directing him through two command passages and the final stairway.

"I have transmitted a route."

"You transmitted one ten minutes ago."

"This one is direct."

"They are all direct until I follow them!"

The channel filled briefly with static. Beneath it, Raal heard a second voice. A Bastion trooper appeared to be speaking somewhere near Braak, reciting instructions in the level tone of a security briefing.

"...report to your assigned station. Do not remain in the passage. Your section is waiting."

Braak's transmission sharpened. "Can you hear that?"

"A security recording."

"It begins whenever I stop moving."

"The internal system may be replaying evacuation instructions."

"There was no evacuation."

"There should have been."

The trooper's voice continued behind him.

"Proceed without delay. You will be received when you arrive."

Braak fired his carbine. The report cracked across the channel, followed by the hiss of scorched metal.

Silence returned.

"It was looking at me," Braak said.

"A projector cannot look at you."

The connection ended.

Raal remained beside the captain's chair. He attempted to reopen the communication channel, but Braak's transmitter no longer answered. The internal tracker continued to place him beside the security station. According to the ship, he had not moved.

Captain Pell crossed the bridge again. This recording showed her during an earlier watch. The insignia upon her uniform was different, and her hair contained less silver. She listened while an older officer delivered what appeared to be a private report near the navigation stations.

"You have served long enough," Pell told him. "Nobody will think less of you for wanting to go home."

The officer spoke beyond the range of the recording.

"Of course there is a place for you," she replied.

Raal turned towards the captain. Her eyes appeared to pass over him, but she was looking at the unseen officer. When the man moved, her gaze followed a point immediately beside Raal's shoulder.

"Come with me," she said.

Pell extended one hand, but the image ended before the officer accepted it.

Raal inspected the projector information. The fragment had been drawn from an officers' retirement ceremony conducted four years earlier. The archive described Pell presenting a service commendation to a retiring navigator. Nothing in the record concerned the moon, the disappearance, or Raal.

Its selection was peculiar, but not inexplicable. His searches had included the captain, the navigational staff, and the phrase come home. The bridge system was returning records related to those terms. A poorly indexed military archive might interpret a request broadly enough to produce almost anything.

Raal entered a more restrictive search and another projector activated near the tactical pit.

Captain Pell stood there wearing the uniform from her final watch. Several officers surrounded her, though their bodies appeared only intermittently as the recording lost and recovered portions of the scene.

"How many?" someone asked.

"All of them," another voice replied.

"And the ship?"

"Waiting."

Pell looked towards the forward windows.

"Then we should not keep them any longer."

The warning sounded.

Raal recognised it from the flight-control station: two descending tones, followed by a brief pause and a third note pitched slightly higher. The archive had contained no record of such an alarm, yet every holographic figure upon the bridge reacted to it.

Conversations stopped.

One after another, the officers and ratings turned towards the windows.

Raal followed their gaze. The moon remained unchanged. Its cratered plains passed slowly beneath the destroyer, crossed by shadows cast from ridges and ancient impacts. Stars burned beyond its horizon. Nothing approached the ship, and no unidentified object appeared upon the tactical displays.

Captain Pell moved closer to the transparisteel.

"What is that?" asked someone in the port command pit.

A communications officer rose from her station. "There is no signal, Captain."

"Then how do you know they are there?"

The officer did not answer.

The bridge recording fragmented. Figures disappeared from some stations and emerged at others, their movements repeating in brief and disconnected sequences. A lieutenant walked three paces towards the windows, vanished, and began the same journey again. One of the navigators raised his hand towards something outside. Several others smiled.

Captain Pell remained stable.

"They have been waiting for us," she said.

The holographic crew began leaving their stations.

They did not run. There was no panic, argument, or attempt to restore order. Officers completed entries upon their consoles before joining the ratings moving towards the bridge exits. Some collected personal effects. Others offered a hand to the person beside them. The procession possessed the quiet solemnity of a watch being dismissed after a long and difficult duty.

A young communications rating stopped near the command platform. She looked back towards someone outside the field of view.

"Are you coming?"

Whatever answer she received appeared to reassure her.

"There is room," she said. "There is room for everyone."

She followed the others.

Raal watched the bridge empty until only Captain Pell remained. She stood before the windows, her reflection faintly visible within the transparisteel.

The recording ended.

The bridge was immediately repopulated by the ordinary archive fragments which had preceded it. Ratings resumed reports made years apart. Navigators entered courses the Unbroken had long since completed. Several versions of Captain Pell crossed the command platform without seeing one another.

Raal attempted to retrieve the final-watch recording, but the system denied that it existed. He searched by time, location, personnel, and the phrases he had heard. The archive returned the retirement ceremony, a junior officer's disciplinary hearing, and a speech Captain Pell had delivered after another recent conflict. None included the crew abandoning their stations.

Perhaps he had watched several fragments playing simultaneously. The bridge archive was damaged, and his concentration had deteriorated since boarding. He had been breathing air filtered through the same antiox reserve for longer than recommended, while the repeated changes in temperature and the stress of Meyla and Sivv's deaths might have impaired his judgement without producing an obvious physical warning.

He checked the mask's diagnostic display. Every reading remained within tolerance.

A heavy impact then struck the security doors behind him.

Braak's carbine fired twice. Red light flashed through the narrow gap between the doors, followed by the sound of the Houk throwing his weight against them.

"Raal!"

The doors opened and Braak entered with his weapon raised. One sleeve had been torn away below the shoulder, and several shallow burns marked the side of his neck. His remaining cutting equipment had gone, although a Bastion repeating blaster now hung across his back.

He stopped when he saw the occupied bridge.

Raal looked around. "Recordings."

"I know what they are."

Braak moved between the holographic personnel, forcing himself not to step around them even when their bodies crossed his path. One officer passed directly through his chest. The Houk flinched and continued.

"We are leaving."

"The cutter remains held by the docking field."

"I found the manual release."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because you were not aboard it."

Raal returned his attention to the navigational archive. "The last order did not originate from Bastion."

"I do not care."

"It may not have originated anywhere. There is no transmission, no sender, and no authorisation."

Braak reached the command platform and pulled Raal away from the console.

"Meyla followed Sivv into an airlock because he heard someone calling from an empty cutter. They are dead. Every corridor between here and the hangar is full of people who are not there, telling me to join them. That is the last record you need."

Raal freed his arm. "The Vagrant cannot outrun this destroyer if its systems become hostile."

"They have been hostile since they took control of our approach."

"The weapons remain inactive."

"The ship does not need weapons."

Braak gestured towards the holographic crew. Several appeared to be watching them, though each gaze could be traced towards another figure within its respective recording.

"It brought us aboard," he continued. "It separated us. It killed two of us. Now it is keeping you here while it shows you dead officers welcoming people home."

"They are operational archives selected in response to our searches."

"I did not search for anything."

"You moved through compartments associated with those records. The projectors may be linked to location or personnel tracking."

Braak stared at him. "Do you believe that?"

Raal looked towards Captain Pell. She stood beside an engineering officer near the starboard pit, speaking too softly to be heard.

"It remains the most rational explanation."

"It is the explanation you are using because the other one would require you to leave."

The statement irritated Raal because he could not dismiss it.

Braak removed the repeating blaster from his shoulder and placed it upon the command console.

"This was waiting for me in the armoury," he said. "The trooper recording kept walking towards the same rack. Every time I ignored him, the doors brought me back. I took it, and the route to the bridge opened."

"The armoury inventory probably detected that the weapon had been removed."

"The recording led me to it."

"You followed a recorded soldier into an armoury. Finding a weapon there is not extraordinary."

"The ship rewarded me for doing what it wanted."

"It provided you with a functioning weapon and allowed you to reach me. That does not support the conclusion that it wants us dead."

Braak leaned closer. "It wants us to go outside."

The bridge lights dimmed and both salvagers turned towards the windows. The moonlit surface beyond them had become partially obscured. At first, Raal mistook the interruption for a fault within the transparisteel, a pattern of dark specks spreading across the outer layer.

Then, one of the specks moved. A Human figure passed across the moon. Thousands followed after. They hung in the space beyond the command tower, arranged in ranks which extended above and below the limits of the forward windows. Officers, ratings, pilots, troopers, engineers, and medical personnel stood without pressure suits or helmets, their uniforms untouched by the vacuum. Some retained datapads, tools, weapons, and cups. A technician carried a sealed equipment case between both hands. A mess attendant still held a cloth folded across one arm.

None drifted. They stood upon the emptiness as though assembled upon an invisible parade ground.

Raal moved towards the windows.

Braak remained behind him. "What do you see?"

"The crew."

The nearest ranks belonged to the bridge personnel. Commander Vey, the executive officer from the records, stood directly beyond the command tower with his hands clasped behind his back. The navigators and tactical staff waited around him. Thousands more extended towards the moon, diminishing into ordered points until Raal could no longer distinguish individual faces.

Their eyes were directed towards the bridge.

Captain Pell appeared between Raal and the window. The hologram did not occupy the space outside. It belonged to another bridge recording, projected within the command platform several metres from the transparisteel. She stood before an assembled group which the limits of the image did not preserve. A faint ceremonial banner crossed the bulkhead behind her, proving that the scene had occurred somewhere else and at another time.

"We gather at the end of a long service," she said.

Raal heard Braak approach behind him.

"There is nobody there."

Raal did not look away. "Eleven thousand people."

"There are stars and the moon. Meyla's body struck the hull below the command tower. That is all."

Captain Pell continued her speech.

"Each of you has given more than duty required. You have endured separation, hardship, and years which cannot be returned to you." The recording briefly distorted. A different bulkhead appeared behind her, then vanished beneath the ceremonial banner. "The Bastion Moff Empire does not forget those who serve it."

Several officers outside the window turned their heads towards Pell. The movement travelled through the ranks until thousands appeared to be listening.

Raal placed one hand against the transparisteel.

Braak seized his wrist. "They are not there."

"They are arranged by section."

"You are looking at nothing."

"Commander Vey is at the front. Pell's bridge staff are behind him. The flight crews are assembled to port."

"You know their names because you have been reading the manifest!"

Raal tried to pull free. Braak tightened his grip.

Captain Pell's speech continued behind them.

"For some, the conclusion of service is difficult. Duty has given order to their lives. They fear that peace will resemble emptiness."

Raal looked through the captain's translucent image towards the waiting personnel beyond the glass.

"But no one leaves alone," she said. "Those who went before are waiting to receive you."

The bridge's external-maintenance airlock opened. Neither hologram nor gesture appeared to activate it. A door near the rear of the command platform simply withdrew into the bulkhead, revealing the narrow, brightly illuminated compartment beyond. Its display reported that the outer hatch remained sealed and that a standard atmosphere had been maintained inside.

Braak released Raal and raised his carbine towards the opening.

"No."

"It may have opened because the hull sensors detected a maintenance requirement."

"There is no maintenance team!"

Raal examined the nearest engineering display. A pressure irregularity had been registered outside the command tower, followed by an automatic request for inspection. The fault coincided precisely with the opening of the airlock.

He showed the record to Braak.

The Houk glanced at it. "The ship wrote that."

"It is a systems report."

"Written by the ship."

"The outer hull may have been damaged when you fired upon the security station."

"I was fourteen decks below us."

"Damage can propagate through connected systems."

Braak stared at him with open disbelief.

Beyond the window, Commander Vey raised one hand.

He did not beckon. His palm turned upwards and remained there, the formal gesture of an officer presenting the assembled crew for inspection. It only resembled an invitation because Raal stood opposite him.

Captain Pell reached the end of her recorded address.

"You have done your duty," she said. "You may stand down now."

The people outside began to turn away. They did so by section, each rank facing towards the moon. Commander Vey remained in place, his open hand still extended towards the bridge.

Raal moved towards the airlock.

Braak stepped into his path. "The Vagrant is free. We can leave now."

"The crew went outside."

"They disappeared. You do not know where they went."

"I can see them."

"You can see what killed them."

Raal stopped before him. Through the bridge windows, the assembled thousands waited beneath the moonlight with their backs turned. Their arrangement left one open space at the front, beside Commander Vey.

"Why did it bring the Unbroken here?" he asked.

"I do not know."

"Why preserve the ship? Why maintain their duty assignments and replay their records?"

"I do not know."

"They did not abandon their posts."

"No."

"They completed them."

Braak shook his head. "Meyla did not complete anything. She was terrified. I heard her die!"

Raal remembered her final scream. For a moment, it returned with painful clarity, stripped of the calm which the ship imposed upon every absence. He saw her running after Sivv because Raal had sent them to docking control. He had divided the crew, ignored her warnings, and continued towards the bridge while she pleaded with him to open the airlock.

The recollection should have drawn him away from the illuminated compartment.

Instead, it left him tired.

Captain Pell began the same recording again.

"We gather at the end of a long service..."

The speech possessed no knowledge of him. It had been delivered years earlier to people who had grown old in uniform and earned an honourable retirement. The archive had selected it because Raal searched for the captain's final actions and the crew's disappearance. The open airlock had responded to a recorded maintenance fault. The figures beyond the windows might be a visual artefact generated by thousands of overlapping personnel files, imposed upon the external view after the bridge archive failed.

There were explanations for each separate event.

Their accumulation did not make them false.

Raal removed his salvaging harness.

Braak watched him place it beside the command console. "What are you doing?"

"Inspecting the hull."

"You do not have a pressure suit."

"The airlock will not complete its cycle without one."

"Then why remove your equipment?"

"It may interfere with the suit seals."

No pressure suit waited within the compartment. Raal entered regardless.

The inner display identified the airlock as operational and repeated the request for an exterior inspection. A row of emergency suits should have occupied the recessed rack beside him, but its doors opened upon an empty space.

Braak remained beyond the threshold. "Come out."

Raal examined the suit inventory. The ship insisted that six remained available. Their identification numbers appeared upon the display, each assigned to a member of the command maintenance team.

"The inventory is incorrect," Raal said.

"Yes."

"The suits may have been removed by the crew."

"Yes."

"That would explain how they left the ship."

"No, it would not."

The people outside wore uniforms. Raal knew that. The conclusion persisted without consequence. If the archive had imposed their images upon the windows, their clothing proved nothing. If they were really there, pressure suits had not mattered to them.

The inner hatch began closing, and Braak caught its edge before it sealed. Motors strained against the obstruction, then withdrew the door a few centimetres in accordance with safety protocol.

"Get out," he said firmly.

Raal looked past him towards the forward windows. From inside the airlock, he could see only a narrow portion of the assembly. Commander Vey remained nearest. Captain Pell's recording stood between him and the stars, addressing retirees who had occupied another room many years before.

"No one leaves alone," she said.

Braak pushed against the hatch. "That was not said to you."

"I know."

"Then stop answering it!"

Raal met his eyes through the dark lenses of the antiox mask.

"You called me captain because the Vagrant required one."

Braak's grip shifted against the door. "You are its captain."

"We bought a cutter and took whatever work kept it fuelled. Meyla repaired it because nobody else would employ her. Sivv stayed because he owed money on three systems. You followed me because I negotiated the contracts."

"I followed you because you knew what you were doing."

"Bastion did not agree."

"Bastion is not here."

Raal looked towards the bridge. The uniforms passing through its stations belonged to the only institution which had ever offered him an ordered place within something larger than himself. It had denied him promotion, reduced his service to a useful display of tolerance, and allowed lesser officers to inherit the authority he had earned. He had left it in anger and spent years insisting that freedom compensated for the absence of purpose.

The Unbroken did not promise to correct that injustice. It offered only an empty place beside the officer who had received what Raal had not.

He placed one hand against the hatch. "Return to the cutter."

"Not without you."

"That is an order."

Braak's expression tightened. "You do not have that rank."

"No."

Raal forced the door against the Houk's grip. The motors re-engaged. Braak resisted until the narrowing space threatened to crush his fingers, then withdrew them, and the hatch sealed.

Braak struck the small observation panel with the heel of his hand. His voice reached Raal through the intercom.

"Raal, listen to me! Meyla heard someone aboard the Vagrant. Sivv saw people outside. The ship shows each of us whatever will make us open the door."

Raal turned towards the exterior hatch. Its display requested confirmation of the maintenance cycle. The control did not activate by itself. No holographic officer entered the airlock, and no voice addressed him by name.

Beyond the narrow window, Captain Pell continued speaking to someone else.

"You have carried the burden long enough."

Raal raised his hand towards the control.

Braak struck the glass again. "If you press that, you will die."

"That remains unproven."

"You are not wearing a pressure suit!"

"The first moments of vacuum exposure are survivable."

"Not long enough to reach anything."

Commander Vey stood several metres beyond the outer hull. His face appeared calm beneath the moonlight. One open place remained beside him.

Raal entered the command. The airlock asked for pressure-suit confirmation. The Kel Dor selected confirmed.

A warning appeared, reporting that the suit assigned to Commander Vey could not establish a telemetry connection. The name remained on the display for several seconds before the system offered a manual override.

Raal hesitated.

Commander Vey had been the executive officer of the Unbroken. The empty place outside therefore belonged to no one except the absent commander himself. The arrangement had not been prepared for Raal. The gesture was not an invitation. The ship had merely assembled its personnel according to rank, leaving a gap where its records incorrectly insisted Vey remained aboard.

The explanation was almost reassuring.

Raal accepted the override.

Braak's voice sharpened. "Do not do this."

Captain Pell extended her hand towards someone outside the ceremonial recording.

"Come forward, Commander."

The exterior hatch unlocked.

Braak shouted through the intercom, but his words were lost beneath the decompression warning. Air vents opened around Raal, drawing the atmosphere away in a controlled evacuation before the outer door could move. His mask detected the falling pressure and attempted to compensate. The antiox system forced gas into his lungs, designed for an unbreathable atmosphere rather than the absence of one.

He gripped the rail beside the hatch.

The last of the air vanished.

Silence enclosed him.

The exterior door withdrew.

The moon spread across the opening, followed by the stars and the assembled ranks of the Unbroken's crew. Without the forward transparisteel between them, their forms appeared less substantial. Moonlight shone through some bodies, while others remained perfectly solid. Raal could not determine whether he was looking at people, holograms projected beyond the hull, or the first failures of a brain deprived of oxygen.

Commander Vey lowered his hand.

The open place waited.

Raal released the rail and pushed himself through the hatch.

For several seconds, he retained enough awareness to recognise the physical reality of what happened. His boots left the deck. His body turned slowly in the vacuum, carrying him away from the command tower. Pain spread through his chest and behind his eyes. Warning symbols filled the damaged lenses of his mask.

The crew remained motionless around him.

He passed through the nearest rank.

There was no impact. A lieutenant's translucent body broke into bands of blue light across his sleeve, revealing the stars beyond. The next officer did not flicker at all. Raal could see the texture of his uniform, the moisture within his eyes, and a shallow scar beneath his jaw.

Whether they were present no longer seemed important.

Raal turned towards the Star Destroyer.

Through the forward windows of the Unbroken, the bridge appeared fully occupied. Officers and ratings worked at every station, their movements no longer confused by overlapping recordings. Captain Pell stood before the command chair. The ordered murmur of their reports could not cross the vacuum, yet Raal felt that he remembered its rhythm.

Pell turned towards an officer entering from outside his field of view.

She raised one hand.

"Come home," her recording said inside his failing mask.

 

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