Dunn’s flashlight lit the ice coated metal, light scattering in rays across the entirety of the hall. Floating motes of matter drifted by, lit by the mounted light on his rifle. He clunked further and further down, the clang of his mag-boots echoing out across the thin atmosphere. Behind him the rest of the squad moved in zero-g, pushing off and maneuvering across the halls with ease. None of them had lights attached to their weapons, their armor actually having optics.


    “Dunn, I think I can get the power online. This shit’s so old there’s no grav generator. I think the shuttle can power this whole place, but there’s a couple fuse boxes down here. I’ll see what works and try to get something going towards the bridge,” Mallory’s voice echoed in his ear. The gearhead was the best investment he’d ever made, her natural instincts for tech keeping the Alliance floating.


    “Copy, we’re pushing towards the bridge now.” Dunn changed radio frequencies with a thought, his neural implants working in tandem with the psionic tech in the helmet.


    “No lifeforms detected, but that’s no excuse for being sloppy. Everyone, blades and runes ready. The hull is thin, so be careful. Nobody likes explosive decompressions, yeah?”


    The rest of the team gave a series of affirmative hums or grunts. He grunted back at them and turned his radio off so they couldn’t hear him complaining about them under his breath.


    “Damn kids these days. No respect for rank or protocols,” Dunn groused. He had brief pang of empathy with his old trainer, before remembering what a psychopathic bastard he was. That flash fried the empathy, but he was still in a bit of a morose mood.


    “How much we getting paid for this?” Barr asked. The youngest of the crew, he had just earned his first rune and was working on gathering his full set. The cost of finding the appropriate rune pattern was weighing on him and all he did was ask how much money they were going to make or how much something cost.


    “Salvage only. So make sure we keep the explosive decompressions to a minimum,” Dunn said. It had been a miracle to find this planet out in the middle of nowhere. Corrupted databases cross referenced with library logs that had been written with pen and paper. Years of hunting, of crossing off a half thousand different destinations until they had arrived in system and found this singular floating station.


    They hit a vertical hall and Dunn shut off his boots and kicked himself up, gliding though the station as he swept his rifle back and forth. A display popped up in his HUD as the Alliance’s A.I had finished mapping the station. He was a floating blue dot against a white outline, each of the other five members of his combat team a different color. Mallory and Hazel were a pair of bright yellow dots isolated in the bowels of the ship.


    “Salvage?! Dunn, that won’t even pay for fuel! This shit is so old that it’s not even worth steel scrap!” Barr complained bitterly behind him. Dunn grunted and stowed his annoyance with the younger man. Money wasn’t his concern.


    The display flashed and a green arrow pointed to a horizontal hallway to his right and he grabbed a well-positioned rung and changed directions. He kept the boots off and used the hand rungs to continue propelling himself further towards where the A.I said the bridge should be.


    “Barr, you need to chill. You will have a full pattern soon enough, bugging us about money every other day isn’t going to make it show up faster,” Daisy said. Her voice of reason was lost in Barr’s retort of needing the cash now.


    “Our grade is ass until we’re fully patterened. That means only shit jobs. Can’t upgrade the Alliance or try to find our own ships working shit jobs now, can we?”


    “You leave the Alliance to me. As for your own ship, you need a bit of seasoning before anyone in their right mind lets you Captain one,” Dunn said, trying to end the bickering. He had only just earned his own Captaincy a year ago and his crew was young and inexperienced and it showed.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    “Sorry, sir,” Barr finally took the hint and dropped it. There were a few snickers, but for the most part no one said anything negative as they entered what was indicated to be the bridge. Panels ran from one side of the room to the other, all of them dead. The team spread out, poking their noses around as Dunn activated his radio and turned it to the private channel for Mallory.


    “We’re in the control room. ETA on power?”


    “Right now,” Mallory responded as the room came to life. Lights flickered and sputtered about for a moment before fully half of them stayed on. The rest faded away as the years proved too much an obstacle to overcome.


    “Oh shit, we overloaded something, hold on,” Mallory said, and all the lights flashed out again. The sudden darkness took everyone off guard and a few complaints drifted his way as Dunn spun his light around. As fast as it had happened, it reversed, and light came streaming back in.


    “Alright, can’t get the fans going or the air circulating, but powers on to the bridge.”


    “Thanks, Mallory. Good job,” Dunn said. He looked over to the center console and floated towards it. A series of input slots were there, and he grunted in annoyance as he fished around in a side pouch on his belt. This old tech was annoying with all its different sizes of inputs, but that was why he always came prepared. He slung his rifle and knelt down, using one arm to hold himself down, and found the appropriately sized jack. He inserted it and his helmet flashed a few times as the old language was slowly converted over to a text he could read.


    Most of what was available were system diagnostics, the old station was in dire need of repairs, and a peculiar sized data entry. It was much too large to be simple text and when he went to access it he found that it wasn’t even locked behind the most primitive of firewalls.


    Something whirred, a projector sliding free of a metal panel in the center of the room, and light spluttered a few times before the image of a man was showing. There was a pale blue dim light to him, but he was undeniably human.


    “Oh shit, this place is human. Wonder what fleet he branched off of,” Daisy said as she walked closer to the projection. The image was showing a man of slim build, his cheeks sunken in and his eyes dark and haunted. His head was cut close to the scalp leaving nothing more than a trace of blonde fuzz.


    A speaker coughed, once, twice, and then with a third rattle it sounded off, distant and tinny. The words were undeniably a proto version of Fleet Standard, each word sounding like he should know it, but not quite. The A.I from the Alliance quickly deciphered the words and started to play them in through his ears.


    “My name is Jon Caspar. I am the last survivor of Daedalus Station, and I have come to the conclusion that there should be some type of record here. Of what happened. Just…just in case. So, if you’ve found this without me, then I’m dead. So…that sucks.” The man shrugged his shoulders and then gave a melancholic grin.


    “It should be expected though. I watched as the last of the World-Ships left the system two weeks ago.”


    “Holy shit,” Daisy muttered over the comms as she started to piece it together. The rest of the team had yet to voice anything out loud, but everyone was paying rapt attention to the hologram.


    “I’ve done a few things that should be considered illegal, but seeing as all the governments have collapsed, I don’t think anyone will be after me anytime soon,” the man chortled to himself.


    “I used my admin privileges to raid secure systems to compile a timeline of key events that led to our demise. As for the general history of our species, well I downloaded as much as I could and stored it on hard drives and placed them in lockup. They should survive down there.”


    “Mallory, I need you to get to wherever this lockup is and find it right now. Data recovery gear,” Dunn ordered.


    “On it, boss,” Mallory said.


    “As for the events that directly caused our destruction, I have compiled videos and interviews here and will play them in chronological order with my own commentary. Always wanted to narrate something,” Caspar looked off into the distance, eyes glazing over momentarily.


    Then he snapped back to attention and looked over everyone. He sighed suddenly, shrinking on himself. The view changed a bit as he sat down suddenly, a chair appearing in frame.


    “August 16^th, 2037. That is the first time we have definitive proof of a metaphysical-perpendicularity. Layman called them rifts, portals, slices, or anything other than metaphysical-perpendicularity. Cause that’s a fucking mouthful. On an undisclosed island in the Pacific, and I tried to find the island name, believe me, a group of Marines were sent to investigate an abnormality. No one knew what it was or could have even comprehended what they were about to unleash.” Caspar shook his head slowly, the weight of the events evident in his slumped shoulders.


    “I have video footage that survived from Lance Corporal Shane Dupont. The Lance Corporal would also be the first person recorded to ever secure a rune.” Jon Caspar flickered away and a new video started to play.