The ARK continued its slow, counter-clockwise drift into the sunset. Whatever horrific tragedy had been averted by the sudden failure of the missiles to go off properly, it left almost no scars what-so-ever on the titanic space station's surface.

The same could not be said for the rest of the ships in orbit. Stretched in a gigantic crescent ring around the planet, a huge cloud of impact-riddled, burned-apart pieces of metal and warped ship hulls drifted around the planet at a few dozen times the speed of sound. Relative to each other, of course, they were very nearly stationary, except for the odd piece of metal that ripped through, even faster, and took a chunk out of something.

These pieces were, theoretically, chunks of space-ship, that had been thrown off into the distance by an explosion or and impact with another metal chunk, and had spiralled slowly down around the planet until they smacked into something coming the other way.

Some of the old ships that had been brought into orbit around the planet were truly gigantic, however, and — huddled low among smaller clouds of metal — remained relatively unscathed by the constant bombardment of space junk that plagued the graveyard. Providing the expeditionary group's shuttle stayed in the shadow of the large pieces of metal, and did not linger in the open spaces too long, it was almost completely safe.

As the shuttled gradually approached the denser, inner section of the graveyard, three of the biggest ships so far loomed in the distance. The least damaged, they also appeared to be the newest. They hung low over the earth's atmosphere, which had lit up a fiery orange as the shuttle approached twilight.

The UFS Carnelian was a huge, blocky structure — obviously used as an offensive weapon before it had vanished. It had disappeared a few years ago, while following a patrol program that was supposed to help intercept Dr. Eggman's more world-threatening activities. It was painted white and red, and was fronted with a gigantic, prickly sensor array — ostensibly to be directed planet-ward — that made it look sort of like a giant, intergalactic tooth-brush. Everyone assumed Eggman had destroyed it, and the attempt to watch Eggman from the sky was never repeated.

The UFS Palfinger was a small cruiser. It had disappeared while investigating the amount of space junk in higher orbits around earth. Its goal was to establish how necessary it would be to create a recycling plant at that layer, to begin scrubbing space junk out of the sky. The Palfinger's armour and shields had held up excellently through the first half of the mission, and then, in a burst of static, it had vanished out of the sky. It was assumed that a reactor failure had caused the transmission to fail, as well as the shields, and that the ship had been subsequently smashed to pieces by meteors.

The UFNC Marmaduke was… no-one really knew. It was an ugly, non-military freighter, and had absolutely no noteworthy news articles dedicated to its disappearance — none that anyone would likely remember, anyway.

Of the three of them, the one that warranted the most attention was the one that still had its lights on.

The UFS Carnelian gleamed in the sunset. The tiny runner lights dotted along its surface gave it the impression of being riddled with holes — but a closer inspection would reveal what appeared to be an almost fully functional ship, except for the minor and easily over-looked detail of a gigantic, charred hole being punched right through its engine-block, as if it had been taken out with an apple corer. Whatever the Carnelian's level of function, it was never going to move again.



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Coop had, at the last minute, offered to go on the ride. He did not seem happy to go, but he hadn't seemed happy about anything, recently.

Seated in the recesses of the cockpit, he eyeballed the ships balefully.

"Huh," he said, with considerable rancour, "nice."


He shook his head, after a few seconds, and rubbed his face.

"This… is…"

He looked back up at the floating hulls, in the distance.

"Anyone want to bet that these ships were all working when they got here?"

"Tch," Coop said, with a humourless snort, "I guess so, huh."

"I wonder if anyone's alive on that ship," he added, "didn't it disappear years ago?"

Coop made an uneasy rumbling noise at the back of his throat.

"Yeah," he said, eventually.

"Right," he added, to no-one in particular.

The radio crackled awkwardly.

"R--g--muffet, over. Federation, federation. United federation, over. Fe--"

A thick, fat-sounding pop of static interrupted the connection. The radio went dead as another wave of the mystical jamming signal engulfed the group's ship.

As the Carnelian loomed larger in the ship's viewport, it became increasingly obvious from the line of empty, exhaust-blackened launch tubes that lined the belly of the Carnelian that its escape pods had been ejected. Either everyone had left it behind, or someone had preemptively prevented an escape.

Coop's head jerked upright.

"That," he said, "on the radio! Did you hear that?"

A cavernous ribbed hollow in the ship's underbelly quickly became the most obvious place to land, and it was with very little trouble that the ships connected to each other.

Going through the airlock proved to be remarkably uneventful, so did traversing the first set of doors directly after the airlock, and so they entered the atrium of the ship.

It was small and high-ceilinged and black, but, as the group entered, there was a buzz, and the room lit up. Old lights flickered and buzzed gratingly as they responded to the presence of living creatures on the ship. The entire room flickered slightly, like a badly synced picture.

Two long, long hallways stretched out ahead of them, running the length of the ship up to, presumably, the bridge. More doors to their left and right lead to other parts of the shuttle, and a single elevator in the middle was flanked by ladders up and down.



As Coop tramped into the middle of the room, he slipped. His foot landed on something small and round, which slipped out from under him, and he fell heavily onto his back.

"Gaaaaagh," he spat in frustration, pressing himself up onto his elbows. He stood up.

He looked down.

Hollow brass tubes were scattered across the floor. Bullet casings. The bullet casings followed a trail through one of the doors to the left. He looked around. Paint had peeled and bubbled off the wall behind him, where the group had exited the airlock, and a huge stream of charred score marks followed the bullets, similarly disappearing chasing across the room to the doorway on the left. The doorway was almost completely black, and the metal in the middle was fused shut; bent out in stringy, lumpy chunks, like melted cheese. It had run together and cooled ages ago, and the door was now one piece of metal.

"Great," he said, and then, "so, what are we looking for — signs of life? Or are we just trying to figure out what happened to this place?"