The Odys Arcadia was not a warship, nor a cruiser of great repute.
It was an explorer vessel an aging one at that tasked with scouring the outer rim of known space, mapping derelict star systems and scanning for anomalies that science still couldn't categorize.
Her crew were not warriors, but dreamers, scientists, salvagers, and starbound philosophers in rusted boots and patched suits.
Captain Ilaya Ren stood at the bridge, sipping synth-root tea as a faint blip pulsed across the holographic grid.
"That signal again?" she asked.
Her helmsman, a thin-faced technician named Solen, nodded. "Still there. Same trajectory. Not natural drift. It's too consistent. I ran it against known derelicts no match."
Ilaya leaned forward, narrowing her eyes.
The coordinates blinked against a blue-tinted grid like a heartbeat.
"Distance?"
"Eight-point-seven clicks. Slow drift. Minimal emissions. But it's alive… barely."
The captain muttered under her breath. "Out here? In the Expanse?"
The Expanse was a region so far removed from colonized space that many considered it cosmic waste. Nothing survived out here, not even silence it became something else, something heavier.
But this signal… it felt different. Familiar, even.
"Tag it. Let's approach at a low drift. Passive scan only," Ilaya ordered. "And prep EVA suits."
Solen hesitated. "Did you say EVA?"
Ilaya's gaze drifted to the anomaly. She hadn't meant to say it that way. But she didn't correct herself.
Hours later.
The Odys Arcadia slid beside the derelict ship like a ghost ship greeting its twin. The two vessels hung there silent, fragile, the black between them deeper than space.
"No transponder ID," whispered Solen.
"Hull's scarred… damn. This thing's ancient."
"No, not ancient," Ilaya murmured, floating through the docking corridor. "Just forgotten."
She was the first to breach the airlock. The scent was stale metal, carbon decay, ionized silence. Her boots clunked gently against the deck of the Valkyris-9. Emergency lights still blinked red in long, slow heartbeats like the pulse of a tired god.
"Captain," her engineer crackled through comms. "You're not going to believe this."
Ilaya turned. "What is it?"
"There's an A.I. still running. Low-power. Barely alive."
"Name?"
"EVA."
She froze.
They found the memory core deep in the ship's central console chamber, wrapped in reinforced plating, sealed tight by the ship's final command protocols. EVA's voice came on seconds later. Soft. Weathered. Like wind through a forgotten cathedral.
"Query acknowledged. Authority confirmed. Welcome aboard. This vessel contains the recorded final legacy of Pilot Atlas Kael."
The chamber fell still.
"Play it," Ilaya said quietly.
There was a pause. Then a voice filled the chamber. A human voice. Tired. Honest. Worn by loneliness and the weight of silence.
"This is Atlas Kael. I don't know if anyone will ever hear this... but I need to speak. Even if it's only into the void."
The crew listened. Frozen. Wordless.
Outside, the stars blinked. And for the first time in decades, the Valkyris-9 was not alone.