Tanya practically ran through the corridors, her magnetic boots making rhythmic clangs against the metal deck plating. The access codes burned in her mind along a map she had always known but never seen.
The bridge door recognised her approach. Panels that had remained stubbornly sealed for a week suddenly glowed with amber light. She entered the set of symbols in her mind.
The door opened.
Tanya stepped onto the bridge of the Genesis. Her headlamp shined off of few of the systems. All standard human computer systems as far as bridges went it was nothing exciting.
She had expected something revolutionary, some glimpse into advanced engineering that would make human technology look primitive. Instead, as she dug deeper into the systems, she found exactly what they had been noticing all week. A chaotic mixture of salvaged alien systems and human interfaces, all jury-rigged together with the kind of "good enough" mentality that made her weep.
The knowledge Feravincio had granted her was comprehensive but frustratingly surface-level. She knew what systems the ship possessed and how to activate them, but not how they actually worked. Everything was plug-and-fly, designed for operators rather than engineers. Reverse-engineered alien technology bolted into place with human adapters and prayer. To Tanya it showed what type of person Feravincio bonded had been.
"Unbelievable," she muttered, running her hand along the main control panel. The interface flickered to life under her touch, holographic displays materialising in dusty air. "Could last for two centuries and they couldn't be bothered to integrate anything properly."
Footsteps echoed behind her. Cameron, Janet, and Amara appeared in the doorway, staring at the bridge with wide eyes.
"How did you get in?" Cameron asked immediately, already moving toward the nearest console.
"I had a chance to chat with someone who knew the ship personally," Tanya said, not looking up from the system diagnostics she was running. "Just a little bit of gardener business."
She braced for follow-up questions, but they didn't come. Her friends had learned to accept that sometimes weird alien stuff just happened when Tanya was involved.
"What are we looking at?" Amara asked, studying the holographic displays with the calculating expression she used when assessing threats.
"A mess," Tanya replied bluntly. The diagnostic readouts painted a grim picture. "Most systems are offline. Either age degradation, lack of power, or errors I can't even identify without deeper analysis."
She navigated through the ship's manifest, each line item making her heart sink a little more. Then she hit the weapons systems and felt genuinely conflicted.
"Oh," she said softly.
"What?" Janet leaned over her shoulder, reading the display. "Oh. That's... that's a lot of firepower."
The Genesis mounted a weapons package that would make a military dreadnought jealous. Laser batteries for point defense. Rail guns for kinetic strikes. A mass driver capable of accelerating large projectiles to relativistic speeds. Torpedo launchers with magazines that suggested someone had been very concerned about hostile encounters.
All offline, thank God. The last thing they needed was accidentally triggering weapons systems they didn't understand.
"At least they're dead," Tanya said, marking the weapons as lowest priority for restoration. "Not sure if having them online would make us safer or just a bigger target."
She navigated deeper into the systems, searching for what she really wanted. There—maintenance and repair systems. The icon looked like a stylized crab.
"Please work," she whispered, pressing the activation command.
The display changed, showing a series of chambers deep within the ship's hull. Status indicators flickered from red to amber, life support systems engaging after centuries of dormancy.
"What are we looking at?" Cameron asked.
"Crabs," Tanya said, pulling up the visual feed and routing it to the main viewscreen.
The chambers came into focus, revealing hundreds of objects that did, in fact, look disturbingly like crabs. They ranged from the size of her hand to the size of a small vehicle, all encased in preservation gel that was now draining away.
As they watched, the crabs began to move. Claws flexed, well more like useful manipulator appendages rather than simple pincers. Legs unfolded. Sensor clusters that might have been eyes swiveled in their sockets.
"Everything really does evolve into crabs eventually," Janet said with a laugh. "That's amazing."
"They're maintenance drones," Tanya explained, reading the system descriptions. "Organic constructs designed for ship repair. They can patch hull breaches, replace components, even fabricate simple parts using the ship's raw materials." She paused. "Like most things on this ship, they're biological rather than mechanical."
The crabs were already moving, scuttling through corridors toward hull breaches and damaged systems with purpose that suggested sophisticated programming or maybe actual intelligence. Tanya wasn't entirely sure which.
"Can you access the engines?" Cameron asked, already moving toward what he believed was the engineering console.
Tanya pulled up the propulsion systems and felt her excitement die. "Main engines are dead. No power. The ship uses multiple vortex drives connected in some kind of array—" she studied the schematic, "—which apparently lets it open an extra-large window into vortex space. Useful for moving something this massive, but they're all offline."
"Power source?" Amara asked.
"Antimatter generators." Tanya found the fuel status and winced. "Which ran dry probably a century ago. And I don't know the startup procedures even if we had fuel."
//The workshop can provide temporary power,// Sage suggested. // External power is insufficient for full operations, but adequate for basic propulsion and life support.//
"How temporary?" Tanya asked aloud.
//Weeks at most. The workshop was not designed to power capital ships. But it would allow the Genesis to move under its own power while repairs proceed.//
"Better than nothing," Tanya said, sharing Sage's suggestion with the others. "Once the crabs patch the major hull breaches and we get some basic systems online, we can at least move this thing."
"Move it where?" Amara asked quietly.
The question hung in the air. Tanya had been so focused on getting the ship operational that she hadn't thought through the next step.
She turned to face Amara, expecting another argument about taking everything to Davidson, about proper authorities and official channels. Instead, Amara's expression was troubled.
"You're not going to suggest Davidson?" Tanya asked cautiously.
"No." Amara's tone was flat. "I was wrong to keep pushing that option. I've spent the last week thinking about what happens when we reveal the full extent of this ship to anyone in authority, and every scenario ends badly."
She gestured at the bridge around them. "This ship is too advanced. It's a poison pill, Tanya. Davidson couldn't protect us from the attention it would draw. The Emperor himself might try to claim it. Other powers like the Republic, the Collective and the Fall Kingdom could all intervene. We'd be crushed between competing interests before we could even understand what we have."
"So what do we do?" Janet asked. "We can't hide a ship this size forever."
"So we use Eden-Five strategically," Tanya said, thinking it through. "The prefab office, the fabrication facility we've been building, all of those stay operational for legitimate business."
"Exactly," Amara said, warming to the idea. "Furrow Inc. maintains its public presence. You have every reason to be on Eden-Five regularly. Your family sees you, you keep your connections, everything looks normal."
"And the Genesis stays hidden off the main lanes," Cameron continued, pulling up potential coordinates. "Close enough for practical access via beacon navigation, but invisible to casual observation. We shuttle between locations as needed. On different business trips"
"Two operations," Janet said with growing enthusiasm. "Public face on Eden-Five doing revolutionary but explainable work. Private research and development on the Genesis for the really impossible stuff."
"It's actually perfect," Amara added. "Anyone investigating Furrow Inc. finds exactly what they expect. That is a small but innovative shipbuilding company on a farm colony. They'd have no reason to look for a hidden capital ship."
Tanya felt relief wash over her. "So I don't have to choose. I can have both."
"You can have both," Amara confirmed. "We just need to be smart about compartmentalising. Your parents don't need to know about the Genesis. The new recruits work on public projects. Only the core team, that is us, will have the full picture."
"Best of both worlds," Cameron agreed. "Home base and secret workshop."
Tanya didn't think it would be that easy, living a double life would catch up with them eventually.
"A stopgap measure," she said quietly. She knew that the scope of what she was becoming was too large to be contained by her home world, but she could live in an illusion for a little while longer.
Outside the bridge, throughout the ship's vast hull, hundreds of organic crabs scuttled toward their assigned tasks. Hull plates would be sealed. Systems would be restored. The Genesis would slowly wake from its two-century sleep.
She had a ship to repair, a crew to coordinate, and a family back on Eden-Five who deserved at least a few more visits before everything changed irreversibly.
"Alright," she said, turning back to the control panel. "Let's get this ship moving. We've got a hiding spot to find and a lot of work ahead of us."