After surveying the habitable planet as best we could, we finished up investigating the rest of the system before moving on. The next system was small, with only two gas giants and their moons, so it didn’t take as long to survey. From there, we continued on, following the route the lost ship had taken.

  We arrived in the new system and began scanning until we were astonished to discover another possibly-habitable planet. It was during my shift that we arrived and began a more thorough scan. As the data came in, I turned to my supervisor.

  “Ma’am, these readings are… strange.”

  She typed a few things and stared at her screen. “What in the void is that?” she mumbled before turning back to me and speaking in a clearer voice. “Run the advanced scan on those regions.”

  “Aye, ma’am.”

  I did as she said, using the higher-powered scan that took too much power to run for the entire planet. The results were astonishing.

  “Ma’am, am I interpreting this correctly?”

  She read over the results, her eyes widening as she continued on.

  “XO, you need to see this,” she called out.

  The XO got up and stepped over to us, having been working on something else and likely not paying much attention to what we were doing.

  “Please, ma’am, tell me what this looks like to you?”

  She scanned over the data, her brow furrowing in an oddly opposite movement to the lieutenant’s.

  “The captain needs to see this,” she said before waking her up.

  A few minutes later, the captain entered, looking as put-together as ever.

  “What is it, Estradari?”

  “We need you to take a look at these readings.”

  She stepped over and read through the data.

  “By the black, that’s unbelievable.”

  The lieutenant and I nodded, and I noticed Specialist Anabadas giving us curious glances from the pilot seat.

  The XO said, “It’s not possible… right?”

  “The data is right there, though maybe there was a mistake. When the crystals recharge, we’ll run another scan. For now, keep this information hidden.”

  “Aye, ma’am.”

  The captain left the bridge, and the XO returned to her seat. “Lieutenant, Ensign—you heard the captain. This is to be kept secret for now. Re-run the scan when the crystals are recharged.”

  ““Aye, ma’am.””

  “And specialist? You heard nothing, understand?”

  “Aye, ma’am,” Anabadas replied.

  An hour later, I re-ran the scan and got the same results.

  “Ma’am, the results are the same.”

  The XO nodded, probably expecting that. “This will be huge. Continue keeping it a secret until we hear from central command what they want us to do.”

  “Aye, ma’am.”

  I continued running the normal scans, though nothing else extraordinary turned up, and eventually, my shift ended. I headed to my room to sketch alone for around an hour, trying to process what we had discovered.

  Once I was in a calmer headspace, I went to the mess hall for some dinner. There, I found Isa and Jara just finishing up their meal. Isa waved me over, so I grabbed my food and joined her.

  “How was your shift?”

  I shrugged, keeping a mask on my emotions. “Running scans, mostly. Pretty standard. You?”

  She started rambling about her studies and the work she was doing. I ate my food while nodding along, glad that she hadn’t pushed for more information about my day. As much as I was eager to share what we found, I knew I couldn’t.

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  As I ate, the other two chatted, having finished their food. After that, they convinced me to play cards, and I was able to push what had happened to the side for a while.

  Shortly before my next shift, the captain called the XO, Lieutenant Rokloth, and me into the ready room for a meeting.

  “So far, only the four of us know about this. I had the others do other duties that would avoid them finding out. Since then, I’ve heard back from central command, and they are understandably very interested in what you’ve discovered. This could change a lot. They don’t want this leaking until they’ve determined more about it. It’s one thing to find remnants of an extinct species that had started colonization, but this is very different. Keep it secret. We’ll be moving on to survey the rest of the system now, so be ready.”

  At that point, she dismissed us, and we headed onto the bridge to take over our shift.

  There were no more major surprises in the system, thankfully, and a few days later, we moved on, continuing to follow our known route.

  Sometime during that period, rumors started to fly about that we had discovered something important, though no one could agree on what it was. A few people tried pressuring me to spill since I was associated with the rumors, but I insisted there was nothing to say. Fortunately, they stopped pretty quickly, probably correctly assuming that I wasn’t allowed to talk about it. From what I could tell, the fact that we stopped scanning the planet after my shift then the captain pulled us officers into a meeting fueled these rumors.

  The guesses got to be pretty wild. Some had a hint of truth, though, which was interesting. The rumors ranged from a living civilization of elvenoids to various types of advanced technology to sapient flesh-eating plants. One person even suggested we had found a working teleportation gate, something that was long established to be impossible.

  Space could get pretty boring at times, so I wasn’t surprised that people came up with outlandish ideas as a form of entertainment.

  The next couple systems had nothing special, which was a relief at that point. I didn’t think I could handle another major surprise. After that, though, we found something else interesting, though not nearly as earth-shattering as the other discoveries.

  There was a moon orbiting one of the gas giants with an abundance of rare metals that would make it a prime candidate for mining. Nothing major, just a nice find.

  Another few weeks and two systems and we found ourselves back in known space. From there, we traveled back to Leval, arriving back where we left after more than five months away.

  Everyone was excited for the extended shore leave we were granted, including me. After such a long and stressful trip, it was good to have a full week away from the ship, though I had conflicting emotions about being under the wide-open sky. On the one hand, it was literally a breath of fresh air, but it also made me miss the void.

  I spent most of my break with the same group as before. We went dancing, visited restaurants and parks, went to a play, and generally had a good time.

  The play was particularly interesting. It told an ancient Levalian legend about a warrior whose village was being tormented by a particularly vicious predator. The animal had supposedly reached Tier 4, higher than anyone in the village, and would come once a moon to pick off one of the felids there, almost like a tribute. The story followed the heroine as she trained with the spear, learning to fight in the wilds before setting a trap for the beast. She lay in wait for days, until the creature twice her height approached.

  The trap went off, and the creature was tangled in a net. It roared, slashing at the ropes restricting its motion. A glorious battle ensued, the Tier 1 warrior fighting for her life against a monster that could kill her in a single blow.

  Eventually, she stabbed the beast through the eye, piercing its brain and killing it, but she would not come out unscathed. Her enemy tore off her arm, and back in those days, they lacked the ability to regrow a limb. She was forever crippled, but she refused to let that stop her. She would go on to become a famous warrior queen, ruling over a large nation that would survive until it united with others in the Levalian Confederacy, the ruling government of Leval before they joined our empire.

  “So, how’d you all like the play?” Jara asked as we left the theater.

  “She was all, swoosh slash hie-yah and the beast fell,” Ani exclaimed.

  “I liked the effects and costumes, they were really well done,” Isa said.

  “Yeah, it was great,” I agreed.

  We chatted more about what we had just experienced as we walked back to the hotel.

  Once our leave period ended, we returned to the ship. As it was departing, I realized that it was my birthday—my real one, not the fake one for Dax. I spent some time thinking about everything that had happened over the previous year, from graduating and becoming an officer to meeting new friends and discovering new planets.

  I thought about how things would change when our discovery was revealed, the layers to what we had found. Sure, the technology itself was important, and I was sure that Isa would latch onto that part. Large-scale terraforming was theoretically possible, but it was a long ways off from becoming reality—or it had been, until we made our discovery. Now we could study the network of devices that had transformed the planet from a toxic mess into a garden world and maybe unlock some of the knowledge for ourselves.

  But the discovery went beyond that, because who built it? Was there an incredibly-advanced civilization out there, waiting to find us, or had they died out somehow?

  If they still existed, how would they react to us? Would they be friendly? Patronizing? Warmongering? It could be one of the greatest discoveries in history, or one of the worst, and it was impossible to know.

  Or maybe they had died out. If that was the case… how? How could a society with such advanced technology die out? Was it some sort of super-plague? Civil war? Or, worse, was there an even more advanced society that had killed them off or enslaved them?

  The possibilities swirled around my mind, just as they had been doing since I first discovered the terraforming network on that planet. The worst part, though, was not having anyone to discuss it with.

  Eventually, I shook off the intrusive thoughts, as I always did, and focused my mind on our next mission.