The boarding party was a joint venture, with Prallas Fifthhorn leading the Narvorian contingent; Wraia leading hers. Technically a breach of protocol, but they were so far beyond what regulations accounted for now. She wanted to see with her own two eyes what was inside this thing, not watch it back over the cameras.

Mayeda and a security detail accompanied her in the launch, along with Chief Petty Officer Whitlock, and the young specialist, Yeoman Zellars. Ahead of them the Narvorian boarding craft led the way, a brutish anvil-shaped vessel packed with a retinue of heavily armed warriors.

She watched in silence as the boarding galley drew closer, the massive sphere of the alien space dock filling the viewscreen. It was more than two thousand kilometres across, and up close the evidence of weapon impacts was unmistakable. Deep rents and craters littered the outer hull, and she could see great fissures that dug deep into the inner structure. A seventh wrecked sphere-ship was hanging half out of one of the ruined launch bays, a cavernous hole gaping in its upper section.

But the station was still here. It had survived the battle, just.

"Clay," Prallas rumbled. "We enter. Follow close."

"Copy that," she answered, giving a small nod to her pilot. The galley eased closer to the flank of Prallas's ship as they passed into the yawning shadow of the intact launch bay. "Stand by for evasive manoeuvres. All barriers to maximum."

"Aye, ma'am," the man replied, his voice tight with unease.

Wraia waited for some kind of security measure – automated defences or barriers – but it seemed this place carried no such armaments. They passed inside without incident, and she gazed in amazement at the interior. Hundreds of circular passageways opened off from the main bay, together with at least fifty huge mooring clamps, each one bigger than the boarding galley. They snaked out from the walls – massive clawed umbilicals that glowed with a yellowish light.

"Readings?" she asked softly.

"Definitely reading a power source deeper within the structure," Zellars replied, the yeoman's eyes glued to her console, as though not wanting to confront the reality of what was currently showing on the forward cameras. "Energy signature doesn't match any Sol-Fleet specs. Readings get distorted towards the centre – probably a power core of some kind."

"How old do you think this thing is?" Mayeda murmured, examining the camera screens with a curious eye.

Wraia shrugged. "Impossible to say without testing."

"Old enough for those wrecks to settle into orbits and form a full ring around half the system," Whitlock interjected grimly. "So I'd say very old. Which means whatever's still powering this place must have a hell of a kick."

Pursing her lips, Wraia nodded as they drifted deeper in. Towards the rear of the bay she could see a larger passage cut into the centre of the wall, a space large enough to drive the whole shuttle through if they wanted to.

"There," she said, pointing. "That's our way in."

"Aye, ma'am."

"Navigator Fifthhorn, there's a main entry at the end of the bay. We should start there."

There was a moment of static on the comm, before Prallas answered. "Agreed." He didn't say anything more, but she saw the bulky Narvorian boarder shift its trajectory slightly, drifting downwards with manoeuvring thrusters pulsing.

"Stay with them, Ensign."

The pilot nodded, his hands precisely over the controls. She felt the faint kick of their own thrusters bringing them down into line with Prallas's vessel. Moving in a diagonal formation, they edged down towards a huge, flat lip of rocky prominence. It probably wasn't a landing pad, but it was large enough for them to use for that purpose. The scale of this whole place made Wraia's head spin.

The galley shuddered faintly, then lurched downward. Ahead of them, the Narvorian boarder did the same, its thrusters firing suddenly.

"Hells!" the pilot blurted, his hands snapping tight around the controls.

The ship vibrated up and down its length, and she felt the chair rattle against her spine. The pilot let go of the controls for an instant, one hand darting for the maneovering thruster controls. She felt the thump and the rumble beneath her, and slowly the galley levelled out.

"What was that?" Wraia snapped.

"Not sure, ma'am," he replied, his eyes racing over the displays. "No damage. All systems show nominal."

"I... err, ma'am?" Yeoman Zellars blurted from further back at the sensor station.

"Report?"

"I'm reading a breathable atmosphere out there," Zellars answered. "And there seems to be functioning artificial gravity. About zero-point-eight of Earth-standard."

"The turbulence," Whitlock murmured. "We must've passed inside some kind of envelope."

"Confirm those readings," Wraia ordered, swivelling in her chair.

"Confirmed, ma'am," Zellars told her. "Oxygen content's a little higher than optimal so I wouldn't recommend extended exposure, but we should be fine to move around without helmets for short periods."

"Finally some bloody good news," Mayeda grunted.

Wraia spun back to her console, opening the comm. "Chief Navigator, we're reading atmosphere and gravity in the interior. Can you confirm?"

"We see the same," the Narvorian rumbled. "The air will sting, but we can endure it. It seems built for your kind."

"Built for us?"

"Whatever we hunt, they seem different in many ways. It is... unlikely they would breathe the same as you."

The obviousness of Prallas's statement was like a slap in the face, and Wraia felt her cheeks redden with embarrassment that she hadn't thought of it herself. While there were plenty of intelligent species like the Narvorians who were oxygen breathers, even they had wild variance in what their optimum atmosphere would be. Beyond them, there were a host of alien races whose atmosphere would kill a human in minutes.

The odds that the builders of this place would have almost the exact requirements of a human seemed fantastically slim when she thought about it.

"Agreed," she said tersely. "But why?"

"I would ask that we land, and then we may find out."

"Can't argue with that," Mayeda muttered with a smirk.

She cast him a disapproving look before responding. "Copy that, Chief Navigator. Let's see what's inside."

*

The station felt even bigger now that they'd left the galley. Wraia craned her neck back, following the huge arc of its interior upwards as far as she could. Her mind boggled at the scale of it. The thing was orders of magnitude bigger than anything human beings had even attempted.

"Ma'am," Mayeda said, striding up to her with his pulsar shotgun hanging across his chest. "We're ready to move out."

She dragged her attention back down, bringing one hand to rest on her sidearm as she observed the boarding party. Her pilot remained aboard the galley, but everyone else was kitted up in full gear. They still had their suits, but helmets remained clipped to belts for now. Wraia could taste a faint sweetness in the air, but otherwise it didn't feel that different to any terraformed planet she'd set down on.

It ought to have been a welcome sensation, but right now it only reinforced Prallas Fifthhorn's assertion that atmosphere – possibly even this whole facility – had been built to accommodate human beings.

Did that mean some human offshoot was behind all of this, Wraia wondered? Some humanoid cousin from a far flung star? That seemed awfully far-fetched, even considering everything she'd experienced thus far.

But what did that leave?

Squaring her shoulders, Wraia tried to banish speculation from her mind. They wouldn't find out by guessing, but by doing. She walked forward, the rest of the Cobra's contingent falling in behind her as she strode across the landing area to join Prallas Fifthhorn and his warriors.

The Narvorian leader cut a fearsome figure, his big body bulked out with a thick suit of blast-plate and a helmet, power mace sizzling with destructive energy in one hand. Around him, the entourage of soldiers were no less imposing: six veterans in iron grey armour. All of them carried heavyweight blast-pikes – six feet long, half rifle and half long-reaching axe.

Looking at them, Wraia was suddenly very glad to have the Narvorians on their side.

"Are we ready?" she asked simply. The portable translator built into the throat section of her suit relayed the words in Narvorian.

"We are," Prallas grunted in Sol-Galactic, dipping his head to her. Then he rattled off a command in Narvorian that the translator passed to her as 'let the hunt begin'. The guards spread out, blast-pikes levelled, and started walking into the tunnel.

She gave a small nod to Mayeda, and fell into step behind their comrades. Now was not the time for pride. The heavily armoured Narvorians probably had a better chance of surviving a salvo from any hidden defences.

They passed under the huge rise of the tunnel mouth, moving in a loose covering formation. Wraia's eyes shifted to the ground as she walked, feeling a slight unevenness beneath her feet. It looked like rock more than any kind of metal, but smoothed out by some inexpert hand to create a relatively level surface.

Moving deeper, they soon encountered a maze of honeycomb passages branching off from the main tunnel, some of them lit with a faint gold light from nodes studded in the ceiling. Many others were dark – dead or dormant. Despite this part of the station being operational, Wraia could see the stress fractures in the interior walls, the thin jagged lines zig-zagging up and down the huge construct.

Ahead of them, Prallas halted, nostrils flaring for a moment. Then he rotated and trudged down one of the adjoining passages.

Giving a small nod to her crew mates, Wraia didn't question it, following the Narvorians into the thinner hallway. The floor remained relatively flat, but sloping downwards and curving to the left, like a gently spiralling ramp. Some of the lighting nodes were broken – they looked like smashed eggs.

"Power readings are increasing," Zellars said quietly, eyes fixed on her scanner as she walked. "Low but definite. We're getting close to... well, something."

Wraia frowned, loosening her pulsar in its holster. The lack of security – of even the most basic intruder alarm – was slowly grating at the back of her mind. This place didn't look like any kind of military installation to her eye, yet it had drawn an armada to this corner of space.

"Clay," Prallas rumbled from up ahead. "You should look."

Even with his awkward pronunciation, she could hear the unease in the Narvorian's voice. Squaring her shoulders and with one hand resting on her side arm, she motioned Mayeda to follow with a dip of her head, then strode towards the head of the passage. She walked past Prallas's entourage, to where their leader stood.

The slope ended, broadening out into a large, oblong chamber that stretched several hundred meters at least, sporadically lit by the same clumps of lighting nodes. Whatever damage the station had received, only around half of the lights in the room operated, giving it an eerie, tomb-like quality.

Light enough, however, to see the series of coffin-like depressions in the right hand wall. Wraia swallowed; glanced at Prallas. The Narvorian gave her a faint grunt and nodded.

"With me," she said quietly, stepping into the chamber and tugging a torch from suit's belt and thumbing its activation switch. A thin beam of light sliced into the half-light as she approached the first indent.

It looked like a pod of some kind, constructed of a thick lattice of orangey resin that seemed to seep out of the very walls. She cocked her neck to one side, shining the torch over it.

"The hell is this stuff?" Whitlock murmured, moving up beside her.

"Don't touch anything," Mayeda advised.

Whitlock gave him a withering look. "I wasn't planning to touch it."

"Yeoman," Wraia said. "How do you read that?"

Zellars cleared her throat, raising the scanner to the resin. "Conductive material. I've got faint power readings."

As if to accentuate her remark, the resin pulsed softly with a yellowish glow. Wraia recoiled, but through the pulse of light she saw a shape behind the lattice and her eyes widened with horror. She stepped forwards, shrugging off Mayeda's hand and bring her torch close to the resin, close enough for the light to pierce the semi-transparent material.

There was a body beyond it.

"Oh, hell," Mayeda murmured, shaking his head grimly.

"Human," Prallas grunted from behind them as the Narvorians spread out into the chamber. "Human inside?"

Wraia nodded, edging closer despite her shock. Her mind was compartmentalising now; searching for the facts before even attempting to draw a conclusion. Through the resin she could see the a beige colonial jumpsuit laid over a withered frame – a body too thin to be alive. She raised the torch light towards the head.

Even distorted by the lattice, she could see the hollow, sunken skull of a dead woman, her skin perforated by dozens of thin tendrils of the resin. The light throbbed again, faintly, and she watched in horrified fascination as the tendrils withdrew back into the walls.

"N-no life signs," Zellars stammered, scanner held up in trembling hands.

"It's a colonist," Wraia replied shuffling back and trying to calm the thundering of her heart. "I'm guessing from Myrr-Idol."

"That's why we didn't find any bodies," Mayeda growled. "That thing must've brought them here."

"That's why they made the atmosphere this way." Zellars let the scanner drop, looking at Wraia in astonishment. "They needed this section to be breathable for their... cargo."

"What in the hell for?"

"This resin," Whitlock interjected, grim-faced as she examined the pod. "Must be some kind of filter. They've extracted... something from the body."

"Extracting what?"

"I think you'll need a doctor to tell you that."

"Check the other pods," Wraia ordered brusquely with a wave of her hand. Wordlessly the boarding team began to spread out, torches flickering in the gloom as they moved down the wall. Even glancing down the line she could see dozens of pods in just this chamber. Who knew how many more where in this place?

Wraia walked slowly, getting as close as she dared to the strange resin. The sweet smell remained, but mixed with a coppery scent, like honey and blood. The next two pods held two more colonists, both in the same condition as the first, their bodies ravaged by whatever barbaric process this machine subjected them to.

The third pod held someone different.

Her light illuminated the body inside the amber resin, and she felt the blood in her veins go cold. It was definitely another human being, but she recognised the steely blue of the Sol-Fleet uniform. She recognised the rank bars, distorted but visible, printed on the left shoulder. A naval officer; a higher rank than her.

There was only one person it could be.

"Dear God," Wraia breathed. "It's Captain Ackerman."