Darkness embraced Viktor and his men as they descended through a metallic throat with no visible end; their flashlight beams vanished before reaching the bottom. Only the hissing of their stabilizers upset the overwhelming silence. It was hard to make anything else on the walls beside the faint strips of bluish light, guiding them deeper and deeper into the guts of the alien vessel. The temperature threshold warning had disappeared from his heads-up display; contrary to the outside, the tunnel was so cold that Viktor could feel it even through his suit. A few more meters and the light strips expanded into squared spirals creeping down the walls like neon veins. A new room followed—about twenty by sixteen feet, semi-spherical, and just as dim. Dust particles danced before flashlight beams as the crew examined this new location.

Viktor could hear the blood pumping through his veins, his heart pounding and a beating in his eardrums—all magnified by the utter silence. Such calmness made him think for a moment that they had emerged on a different world, thousands of miles away from the violence of the pyroclastic clouds of Centauri Ab. His brain struggled to adapt to this new location, planting the muffled growls of exploding rocks back in his ears.

One light vein on the wall developed into a small screen, resembling a gleaming sticker on the flat surface. It had a horizontal line like a ruler, three characters, and a red button; the user interface was too minimalistic, almost dull.

“Should we press it?” Casper asked.

Viktor looked at the Lieutenant, waiting, hesitant, and then nodded.

A thick finger bashed the button. The vents on the ceiling had gone unnoticed until they started hissing and coughing dust, making everyone flinch. “Oh, God, no. It’s… it’s toxic gas.” Casper hyperventilated. “We’re in a containment room. We’re gonna die!” He grabbed Lucas and urged him back the way they came. “Hurry, back to the exit!”

“Lieutenant, calm down,” Viktor said.

Too late. Casper’s panic had already infected Lucas. Both tumbled towards the tunnel they had emerged from, flapping arms instead of using their stabilizers.

“Hurry up, Farmer,” Casper yelled to Lucas, “we don’t have much time!”

As the ridiculous scene unfolded, Viktor only watched in dumbfounded silence. Inside his helmet, a green prompt at the top right read “AIR: OK.” He then reached to the locks on the collar of his suit and released with a clacking sound.

Casper froze as the Commander took off his helmet. “Viktor, no! What the hell are you—?”

With his helmet off, Viktor’s head plagued with second thoughts as he prepared for his first breath of alien air. What if the heat had damaged his sensors? What if the atmosphere was toxic and his lungs turned inside out? Trusting his life to his equipment suddenly seemed like a bad and reckless idea. It was too late now, though. Eyes closed, Viktor’s fears dissolved as the cold, stagnant oxygen flowed into his lungs. A deep breath of renewed life. His eyelids slid open. The more he spent inside that metal behemoth, the better his pupils digested the darkness. His vision cleared into his old friend and the young Doctor looking at him, still frozen, perplexed.

“Are—are you okay?” Casper asked.

“The atmosphere is breathable,” Viktor replied.

The vents stopped hissing, and the layout of the panel shifted; a green bar grew from the horizontal ruler, and the characters on the button were different, as well as its color. Colors. They had a similar meaning to whoever dwelled this vessel, or so it seemed; red is bad, green is good.

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“Oxygen,” Lucas whispered to himself, also releasing his helmet.

“They can’t be too different to us,” Viktor reaffirmed. “They breathe oxygen, and the locks and hatches require hands with opposing thumbs.”

Lucas nodded. “They have an oddly coherent writing system too.”

“The making of their ships follows at least the basics of ours. We’re in an airlock of sorts.”

“How do you do it?” Casper said. “How do you both manage to take this so calmly?”

Viktor shrugged. “We’re on an alien ship stranded in what might be actual hell, looking for its crew,” he quoted his old friend.

Casper lifted an eyebrow at the Commander, removing his helmet last.

Another hiss startled the party. A large frame drew in the wall, next to the panel, and split open. The square light veins continued down the newly revealed passage, which faded out ahead.

“After you.” Casper extended a hand at Viktor, inviting him inside.

And so, the three astronauts resumed their journey, following the light through corridors inhabited by dust, what seemed like insulating material, and floating panels and cables ripped off the walls. Most doors they encountered were locked. It occurred to Viktor that the ship could be in an emergency lockdown. However, he wouldn’t dare to guess the technology that drove that massive craft. From time to time, the crew encountered an open door, inviting, but with time wrapping tighter and tighter around their necks, they couldn’t afford any detours.

“We’re getting close,” Casper said, the source of the signal showing but feet away.

The same wireframe map projecting inside his helmet also displayed inside Viktor’s; three red dots moved down a tubular shape ending in a circular area. That area was a tall wheel-shaped chamber, traversed by a suspended walkway. Up and along the circular wall, dozens of slots lay empty, each one with a closed door at the bottom and a red light to one side. The rails beneath the structure hinted the whole wheel could rotate. Far above, an opening aligned with a single slot.

“Looks like a cannon or a weapon of some sort,” Casper said.

A good guess, Viktor thought. The wheel resembled an ammunition loading belt. “A battleship? Stuck in here?” Viktor said.

“Who knows? Maybe Centauri’s gravity field trapped it in here.”

Lucas examined the wheel arching above. “Escape pods. They realized they couldn’t get out and jumped ship.”

“To where? Centauri Ab? That’d be suicide,” Casper said.

“Yeah.” Lucas sighed, realizing the flaws in his theory.

A bit of silence and Viktor gave the countdown in his heads-up display a quick look; they had already spent half an hour. “All right. Double down, gentlemen.”

The party pushed through the entrance at the end of the walkway. More passages and tight corridors proceeded. The farther they went, the more farfetched their escape using the same route became. Forty-five minutes into the mission and the outcome so far had been more and more unanswered questions.

A sturdy door obstructed their advance. Judging by its looks, whatever lay past had to be significant. The source of the distress signal. A thin crevice in the door revealed it was unlocked. Viktor didn’t hesitate; he shoved in both hands and pushed with both legs against the frame to slide it open. The wall cried with the rub of metal on metal, opening only slightly. Casper joined him, and the door didn’t have more options but to oblige.

Flashlight beams cleaved the void ahead, revealing a walkway past a few stairs. As Viktor entered, a glowing strip extended down a crevice on the floor until reaching what seemed like a command station. It forked left and right, then stranding down more stairs into a lower level. Square branches grew through walls and ceiling like roots, contouring a vast room around the crew. Making out further details of the place was hard with the contrast of bluish light and dark.

The party continued down the walkway when a metallic groan stormed the room, followed by a dazzling flash past the command station. Viktor’s eyelids squeezed shut to guard his pupils against the hurting, blinding light. “Watch out!”

“Agh, shit. What’s that,” Casper exclaimed.

Viktor’s eyes opened cautiously; his surroundings had turned into white smudges over a dark canvas. As his vision cleared, the brightness shaped into a bright stream of energy flowing from an elongated pyramid jutting from the ceiling and into a socket below. The command station projected images in holographic screens floating above it. The walkway split the lower level in two, each half with a corridor ending in a small area with pods filled with a gleaming liquid and a small display at their side.

“I think we found the bridge,” Viktor said in a quiet tone.

Casper looked left and right. “Hmm… seems like nobody’s home. What a letdown.”

A reply storming from above caught the three men by surprise, forcing them to recoil, guarding against an unknown threat. “Aperu khem ama. Fam merut babakh,” the metallic groan had shaped into a voice just as unsettling.

“W—what’s that?” Casper said again.

“Language profiling complete. Accuracy up to thirty percent. All critical systems online,” the voice replied.

“Language profiling?”

Lucas went past his superiors, sight fixed ahead. “Impressive. The ship’s computer somehow analyzed our speech pattern and built a language database. What kind of algorithm could be capable of that?”

“Let’s not worry about that, Doctor,” Viktor said. “We have less than an hour to find something useful and head back.”

“That’s a good place to start.” Casper pointed at the command station.

Viktor turned at Lucas. “We’ll see if we can get any useful data. You go and have a look around and take pictures of everything—I’m sure Kepler will find them useful.”

Lucas’s eyes darted from side to side, taken by surprise by his Commander’s task. He hesitated at first, but he gathered his courage and accepted the challenge with a nod. With the push of a button, a small camera popped next to his flashlight. One last stare of terror mixed with forced bravery at his superiors, and he was off to the lower level. Whatever he was trying to prove—to himself or the Commander—, the rookie was doing a remarkable job so far.

“Thirty percent my ass. I can’t make a single sentence,” Casper said.

Viktor found him at the control station. He joined the man in examining the contents of the holographic displays. The technology was familiar, but the data was a mess of English mixed with alien glyphs; if this was all the vessel was willing to give them, all their efforts would’ve been futile. Frustration wrapped its dirty fingers around Viktor’s gut, pressing tighter and tighter, a wicked grin drawing on its face. “There has to be something we can use,” Viktor said, holding back thoughts of defeat. But the more he squinted, reaching for a miracle, the more cryptic the data became. The words resembling English were only acronyms. In his desperation, Viktor attempted to infer their meaning by usage, but it was useless. Their mission had hit a wall. Tighter. Frustration’s grin became a perverted chuckle, whispering in his ear that he was running out of time. And still, things can always get worse. Distant explosions roared into the bridge, and then it shook like an enraged beast, metal bending, suffering to an unseen force.

“We need to get out of here,” Casper said while recovering, his terrified glance scanned the chamber.

Right after, the stream of energy past the control station died. Then the holographic displays. Then the rest of the bridge. Absolute darkness befell upon the crew. Once again, the light strips were their only company. Whether the information on the control station was useful or not, it didn’t matter anymore—it was gone for good.

“Commander?” Annie said through a broken radio channel, strained. “Commander, can you hear me? We have a situation out here.”

“Come in, Captain, what’s going on?” Viktor replied.

Annie grunted as if battling to tame a centaur. “You need to get out right now. Telemetry is reporting multiple eruptions going off on the surface—lots of material is coming up to the atmosphere. I’ll hit us at any moment.”

“ETA?”

“Ten, maybe fifteen minutes.”

Viktor didn’t reply, witnessing powerless the worst possible scenario unfolding before him. Blood pumped hard through his temple and forehead, the back of his brain stinging.

“A pyroclastic storm… shit,” Casper said to himself.

Paths traced in Viktor’s mind, striving for a way out. There was none. None ended in them running home with the data they had come for: the origin of that godforsaken craft. Maybe they weren’t supposed to know. Maybe luck wasn’t laughing at them, but saving them from a deadly secret. Even so, the thought that all this had been in vain was too much to stomach. Finally losing his cool, the Commander bashed an enraged fist against the dead console. “Dammit.”

The vessel shook once more; Viktor could picture tornadoes of fire and dust battering the craft.

“Viktor, we need to go, man,” Casper urged, his voice decomposing with terror.

The Commander didn’t move. He was staying. He planned his next words, unsure how Casper would take them. “I’ll stay,” he would tell him. “Take the Doctor and return to the ship. I’ll broadcast any useful data I can find.” Not a chance in hell Casper would agree, but he didn’t have to.

Right before Viktor put his head through the noose and kicked the chair, Lucas’s hesitant voice came over the radio. “Commander?”

“Where are you, Farmer? We’re getting out of here, come on!” Casper shouted at the stairs to the left.

“But I just I found this back there.” Lucas emerged from the lower levels, holding a box in his hands. His doubtful sight shifted between his superiors and his newfound acquisition.

Once again, the bridge shook, to which the three covered. “And what exactly is that, Doctor?” Viktor said.

“Um, it’s a…” Lucas turned the box around in his hands, searching for something. The shell was drab olive and composed of small panels. “Wait, it spoke just a second ago. I wonder if…”

“Spoke? We have no time for games, Doctor.”

“Yeah, yeah, just…” Lucas shook the box and hit it with his lower palm a few times, seeking a response.

And then, the box… it spoke.

“Greetings, Commander Larsson,” the apparatus voiced in a dull tone, deep but metallic, like through a modulator. “I am Designation U-257, second Khasut in charge of piloting this craft. I request you to take me to your leader. There is information of critical importance I must deliver.”

Only the first three or maybe four words were as much as Viktor’s brain managed to process. A talking alien box, the absurd thought bounced inside his skull.

“Holy shit, man,” Casper shrilled at Viktor. “Did that thing just speak to you?”

Viktor hadn’t even considered sentient speech. It could’ve been a recorded message. That would be, of course, if the box hadn’t called him by name. “D—Doctor? Where did you get that?” he whispered as if trying to prevent the device from hearing.

“It was near the pods back there. It spoke to me,” Lucas said.

“And you just went ahead and grabbed it? Have you lost your mind?” Casper said.

“But it said it’s one of the vessel’s pilots. It probably can tell us where did the fleet come from and what were they doing here.” Traces of determination showed in Lucas’s usual vacillating tone, speaking as if trying to convince himself that he was onto something rather than his superiors.

Needlessly so… He was onto something. He might as well be holding the whole future of humankind in his hands. Viktor snatched the box and held it high, sifting through the thing. Its minimalistic making didn’t tell much. Some panels composing its shell were glossy and seemed detachable. A glow pulsated weakly under its crevices, the whole thing resembling a failing heart. “Is it true?” he uttered to the alien box—there wasn’t time to worry about how foolish he looked talking to the thing. “Is it true? Can you tell us where you and your… people come from?”

“I…” the box trailed off for a bit, lost in thought. “I’m afraid I have no recollection of any previous events. My memory unit is on emergency lockdown, rendering its contents inaccessible at the moment.”

“Screw that. We’ll bust it open and rip the data out of that damned thing if necessary,” Casper suggested.

Viktor didn’t say it, but the same thought had crossed his mind.

The box glowed faintly again. “Still, I have a message to deliver, Commander. I have a… a message? No.” The more it spoke, the more traces of emotion showed in its dull tone. “No. Don’t listen to them, Commander. Don’t—” it continued, flustered, panicking. “Turn back. You’re not supposed to be here. You are in danger.” Its voice faltered, glitching, but then it went back to its former stiff tone. “Please… Commander. I have a… message. Please, take me to your leader.”

The box wheezed, and it spoke no more.

And as the glow in it died, the three astronauts couldn’t do but glance at it with eyes wide open, perplexed. “What the hell was that?” Casper said.

Viktor shook the box like a child who had got a broken toy as a birthday gift. “I—I don’t know. What happened?” Any hope that had managed into his troubled soul flushed away in a second.

“Um… back there it said it was running out of power. I guess it—”

A deafening booming noise and the entire bridge quaked, worse than the last time. The craft cried in pain, metal twisting as if it was diving into a black hole. A red hue replaced the darkness of the bridge.

Green was good. Red was bad.

“Commander, we’re out of time,” Annie radioed, “the storm is already on us!” She grunted, the fuss and rattle in the background building up.

“Look, man, that robot thing is as good as is gets,” Casper spoke as the bridge shook like it would tear apart any second. “Let’s get it back to Kepler—they’ll know what to do.”

Casper’s voice, the ruckus of the strained vessel, Annie’s urging broadcast—Viktor spaced away from it all. He glared at the dead box in his hands, weighing options. He didn’t have any; time wasn’t stopping for him. Every second stacked heavy on his shoulders, pressing him to make up his mind. Each one spent was one less they could use for their escape. It might as well be too late already; maybe they were to die in those clouds along with its secrets.

Another blast went off outside. Then another, and another, like a furious mob banging on a door, pressing.

“Viktor, it’s now or never, man,” Casper shouted, shaking him.

Seeking for a way around an infinitely spanning chasm was useless. Viktor stared at his old friend, who looked back at him like a captive animal begging for release. “All right then. Let’s head back to the ship.”