The rest of the crew stared at their captain in disbelief. “It can’t be Tyr,” Slavko protested. “Tyr disappeared over a hundred years ago!”

Mairead stepped forward, eyeing the image with a practiced eye. “It’s definitely not Freya. I can tell you that much. This ship doesn’t have any of the repairs we did after the Aggaaddub attack.”

“And it can’t be Thor,” Xuilan chimed in, naming the third Terran battleship, “that was confirmed destroyed not long after the Yīqún ravaged Earth.”

“All those sightings over the years… they were real?” Isi said in wonder. “I always thought they were just space stories.”

“We all did,” Remi agreed, still staring at the monitor. “Which begs the question… what is it doing here?”

They all turned to stare at the alien, who up till now had been carefully saying absolutely nothing. “I believe you owe us an explanation, doctor,” the captain growled as he approached the scientist.

“I cannot explain this,” Axchxairx demurred. “I do not know why a Terran ship has appeared in this region of space.”

“Then what were all those experiments for?” Remi demanded. “It’s been obvious to us for some time you’ve been looking for something, something on the other side.” He stepped in close, his hand on his weapon. “So tell me, doctor… what are you searching for?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” the scientist said disdainfully. “I explained to you from the start that I was attempting to create a weapon to use against the Yīqún. That has not changed.”

“That’s the story you’re going with?” the captain replied, as he withdrew the weapon and placed it against the alien’s head. “Are you sure you don’t want to revise that statement?”

“Cap’n, I just realized something,” Xuilan interjected, interrupting him. “Tyr’s last confirmed position before she vanished was somewhere near the Crab Nebula, not Orion. That’s over five thousand light-years away.” The confusion on her face was palpable. “How the hell did it get from there to here?”

Remi raised an eyebrow. “That’s an excellent question,” he said coolly, returning his attention to the Eleexx scientist. “How does a derelict ship travel five thousand light-years, doctor?” He pressed the barrel of his weapon against his skull for emphasis.

“Are we sure it’s derelict?” Slavko said nervously. “I mean, you hear stories...”

“I am not entertaining notions of it being a ghost ship,” Remi snapped. “We’re adults, not children. Let’s try acting like it.” He turned his attention back to Axchxairx. “I believe I asked you a question.”

“How should I know?” the alien snapped, exasperated. “This is new science we are exploring. There could be many reasons!”

The pirate glared at the alien scientist before turning to his crew. “Mairead, Xuilan, prep Gyrfalcon for flight, and repair what you can. Slavko, Isi… secure the prisoner.” The two men moved up, and each grabbed an arm. “I want him bound and gagged and locked into a cabin. Not the one he’s been living out of, one of the empties,” he amended. “Terra only knows what sort of surprises he’s got hidden.”

“Now see here…” Axchxairx sputtered, only to yelp in protest as the two men dragged him off.

“Assuming Gyr passes pre-flight,” Mairead posed, “just where do you plan on taking her?”

Remi looked back at the ancient ship on the display.

“Guess.”

It was almost four hours before Mairead pronounced the ship ready to fly. The experiment that resurrected Tyr did a number on the old girl, and the Tinker refused to bring the power plant online until it was safe. It left Remi champing at the bit, but with repairs, he deferred to his engineer, except under the direst of circumstances. The last time he’d overridden her, they’d ended up with a Tu’udh’hizh’ak corvette stalking them on their way to Earth.

That still left the retracting roof. He’d worried the experiment’s aftereffects had trapped them inside the Troika base, but Mairead assured him there was a separate dedicated generator just for that contingency. At first, Axchxairx refused to transmit the code to open the doors, but after some persuasion, he quickly saw the value of cooperation. It hadn’t even required Remi to break anything.

The Bridge was strangely subdued as they approached Tyr. She was a legend, a tale shared by drunken Corsairs and told to frighten small children but staring at her now brought those thoughts unbidden to them all, leaving the crew nervous and on edge. The same familiar lines as Freya, yet there was something dark and ominous about her. She hung there in space, surrounded by the swirling tendrils of the nebula… waiting.

Remi leaned forward in his chair. “Anything on sensors?”

Xuilan checked her scope and shook her head. “Nothing, Cap’n. No signs of life, and her power plant’s cold.”

“No obvious signs of damage,” Mairead observed, scanning the old ship. “Not seeing any blowouts or indications of weapons’ fire.”

Slavko glanced back at him. “What are your orders, Cap’n?”

He steepled his fingers, considering that. “Anywhere we can safely dock?”

“Sure… same place we docked on Freya,” the Tinker informed him. “If the plant’s in hibernation mode, or offline completely, we’ll have to do a manual override to gain access, but it should be safe enough.”

“All right, make it happen,” he nodded. “But at the first sign of trouble, we abort. I’m not risking this crew on a fairy tale.”

“Aye aye, Cap’n,” Xuilan confirmed, altering course as she moved to dock the ship.

Mooring Gyrfalcon to Tyr was tricky without approach radar or traffic control guiding them in, but Xuilan’s deft touch navigated them to safety without incident. As she shut down thrusters, Remi and the others rose to their feet. “Xui, I want you to remain on board in case we need a fast getaway,” he ordered. “Secure the Bridge behind us and monitor our guest. We’ll keep a comm link open while we reconnoiter the ship.”

“Understood, Cap’n,” she agreed.

“The rest of you, suits and weapons, just like before,” he continued. “We don’t know what we’re going to find, and I don’t intend to get caught with our pants down.”

“Sounds good to me, boss,” Slavko agreed, as they headed for the suit locker.

They took their time to prepare, double-checking the seals on their suits and performing function checks on their weapons. Mairead returned from engineering with a stripped-down version of her toolkit, in case they ran into any surprises or difficulties. As they stepped into the airlock and sealed the hatch, she got to work, cracking open a maintenance panel on the ancient battleship and running a power tap into the hatch’s inner workings. Once she got a green light, she depressed the switch, the hatch groaning in protest as it slowly ground its way open.

Helmet lights came on as they inspected the corridor behind. Hoar frost coated the exposed surfaces, giving them a ghostly sheen. “Where to, boss?” Isi asked nervously.

Remi flipped a coin in his head. “Engineering,” he decided.

“Copy that,” the purser agreed, making his way aft, his plasma thrower at the ready, cautiously sweeping the corridor as they moved deeper inside the ship.

A comm signal pinged in his ear. “Cap’n, this is Xuilan. How’s it look over there?” she inquired.

“Not much to report so far,” he answered. “Keep this channel open, though, in case of an emergency.”

“Copy that, Cap’n. Gyrfalcon, standing by,” she responded, as the crew resumed their search. Ice crystals crunched beneath their feet as they explored the derelict craft, as Remi ran his hand across a bulkhead. The rime ice crumbled beneath his touch, exposing the surface beneath.

“What caused this?” he wondered out loud.

“Atmospheric condensation when they lost power,” Mairead explained. “There’s still air here, even though it’s cold as hell.”

“97.4⁰ below zero,” Slavko confirmed.

“There’s no way anyone attacked this ship,” Isi reflected. “If they’d been holed, the oxygen would have long since dissipated.”

“Then what did this?” Remi demanded.

“No idea, but maybe engineering will tell us something,” Mairead suggested.

The captain grunted at that as they rounded a corner, only to come to a halt as Isi held up his fist. “Cap’n… got a body,” he said quietly.

Remi moved past him, his beam pistol at the ready, as he spotted the corpse for himself. It lay on its side, curled into the fetal position, covered with a thick layer of frost. Approaching the body, he took a knee at its side, brushing away the ice from its tunic. “It’s frozen solid,” he murmured, as something caught his eye.

A black shoulder patch, bearing the stylized image of a pale woman with white hair, surrounded by the inscription TERSPACE - Task Group 101.2 - Verðandi. “Terran Navy insignia,” he said reverently.

“Makes sense,” Slavko nodded. “Tyr disappeared prior to the Clan Wars.”

He scrutinized the body, searching for clues. “No obvious signs of trauma,” he informed them, “and since there’s still air, it wasn’t asphyxiation.”

“Poison, maybe? Or radiation?” Isi suggested.

Mairead shuddered. “This ship gives me the creeps. It’s a fucking cursed tomb.”

Remi stood back up, brushing the ice from his gloved hands. “Keep moving,” he ordered. “I want to see what engineering looks like.”

“Roger,” Isi nodded, taking point once more.

It took them the better part of an hour as they made their way through the frozen, silent battleship. They soon discovered other bodies, all unmarked like the first, leaving them with nothing but questions and no answers. Arriving at Main Engineering at last, Mairead engaged the manual override and muscled the hatch open, revealing the engines that had once powered this mighty craft. They were as dark and silent as everything else. Sweeping her light across the machinery, she started her inspection, moving clockwise around the central structure.

“I’m not seeing any damage,” she explained, “though it could be something in the software. Maybe a cascade failure,” she suggested.

An idea coalesced within their captain’s mind. “Mairead,” Remi said carefully, “could you get this ship up and running again?”

She stared at him like he’d just gone mad. “You’re kidding, right?” she said in disbelief.

“Assume for a moment I’m not,” he fired back, a hint of steel in his words. “Can you?” he repeated.

“Hell, Cap’n, I’ve got no idea!” she exclaimed. “Gotta figure out what shut it down.”

“And if you can, and it’s something you can fix?” he prodded her.

“Terra, I don’t know,” she said dubiously. “Ask Maggie how big her maintenance staff on Freya is. They’ve got damn near a hundred Tinkers keeping that ship space worthy.”

“I don’t care how many Tinkers Maggie has,” he snapped. “Can. You. Do. It?”

Mairead sighed, looking at the power plant. “Maybe,” she hedged. “I can’t tell you any more until I get a better look at the problem.”

“Fine,” he said tersely. “Until then, can you at least access the log?”

“I’ll try,” she promised, moving to a nearby console and plugging in her portable APU, performing some arcane ritual as she attempted coaxing it back to life. The minutes slowly ticked by as she worked her magic until finally, she was rewarded with a cascade of lights as the computer started boot-up procedures. A small screen mounted over the console flickered to life, showing a string of start-up commands, until UTS Tyr: Engineering & Maintenance Database - Enter Query appeared on the display.

“UTS?” Isi asked.

“United Terran Ship,” Remi explained. “Bring up the last recorded log,” he ordered. “Let’s find out what happened here.”

The Tinker began punching in request, working her way through the archaic software before frowning as a file appeared. “According to this, they were in a routine maintenance cycle when the log abruptly cuts off. One minute, everything’s fine. The next? Nothing.” She looked back at her captain. “I can’t explain it. There should be something.”

Remi considered that for a moment. “Is there anything about how it shut down?” he asked.

“Umm… yeah, here it is,” she answered, inspecting the command-line interface. “According to the log, after twenty-four hours without manual input, the system automatically went into hibernation mode,” she informed him. “Three days later, the computer ordered a complete shutdown of all systems.”

“And no signs of damage?” he asked.

“Not so far,” Mairead responded. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t any, especially after more than a century, but if the computer shut itself down, assuming it didn’t run into something later, then there’s a possibility all we’d need to do is reboot the system.”

“Cap’n, you’re not seriously thinking about reactivating this ship, are you?” Slavko said dubiously. “I mean, there’s no way the five of us could sail her.”

“One step at a time,” Remi cautioned. “Before we tear into this, I want to see the Bridge. Maybe there’s some record there of what happened.”

“It’s worth a look,” Isi shrugged.

“I can start a diagnostic at least,” Mairead shrugged, typing in a command. “Should tell us if she’s salvageable or not.”

“Good thinking,” Remi said in approval. “Isi… take us to the Bridge.”

Returning the way they’d come, the crew started pushing forward, headed for the ship’s command center. They found more bodies along the way, like the others, until finally, Remi came to a realization.

“These people just dropped dead in the middle of their daily routine,” he said in sudden recognition. “Just look at them. Carrying out their assigned duties one second, then stone-dead the next. What the hell could cause that?” he wondered aloud.

“Shipwide?” Slavko shook his head. “Nothing I can think of.”

“Me either,” Remi agreed, “and that bothers the hell out of me.”

The others nodded in skittish agreement as they continued forward, the rest of their trek made in silence until their arrival at the ship’s bridge. Bodies sat strapped into the chairs, hanging frozen in their harnesses. “Must have been maneuvering,” the captain mused, as he stood before Tyr’s captain. “What were you thinking, those last moments?” he asked the corpse.

“Got a connection,” Mairead announced. “Should be able to pull up the ship’s log. Just give me a few.”

“Whenever you’re ready,” Remi told her, still staring at the frozen captain.

A few minutes ticked by before the Tinker could retrieve the ship’s journal. “... nothing,” she groaned. “Just some notations about their course and itinerary. Nothing that would explain what the hell happened here.”

“Check the sensor logs,” Remi ordered. “See if they had exterior cameras running when the end finally came.”

“Good idea,” Mairead nodded, pulling up the files. “Got something,” she announced.

“Can you throw it up on the main viewer?” he asked.

“Think so,” Mairead agreed, typing something into the console, as the main viewscreen powered up. “Playing the file now.”

They stared at the monitor, holding their breath. At first there was nothing to see, just a continuous shot of empty space, but then suddenly something erupted in front of them, some kind of strange phenomena that somehow looked eerily familiar. Space rolled and boiled as Tyr raced to meet it, unable to prevent a collision.

And then there was nothing.

“... I believe I have some questions for the good doctor,” Remi said coldly, as the image faded from view.