The Mech That Buried Nine Worlds

Chapter 10 - The Crew

Chapter 10 · 1,637 words

By the next cycle, everyone knew.

Sloane had made the announcement at the morning briefing, a brief, factual statement about the discovery of an unknown relic during salvage operations, the assignment of maintenance apprentice Tavian to continue interface work under ship authority, and the expectation that all crew would cooperate with the recovery effort. The words had been measured. The implications spread through the Drift.

Tavian sat in the mess hall with his meal pouch and waited for the reactions to start.

They didn't have to wait long.

Orson was at the pilots' table, surrounded by the usual cluster of high-sync crew. He was laughing at something Ravi had said when his eyes found Tavian across the mess hall. The laugh died. Orson said something to the pilot next to him, low, but carrying, and the group turned to look.

Tavian kept his eyes on his meal pouch.

"So the zero-sync found a toy." Orson's voice carried the particular projection that high-sync pilots developed, the confidence of people who had never been ignored. "Wonder what it does. Sit there and rust at you?"

Laughter from the table. Ravi added something Tavian didn't catch.

Orson leaned back in his seat. "Captain's wasting time on it. A mech that a zero-sync can activate. That tells you everything you need to know about what it's worth."

The words were casual, delivered with the offhand contempt of someone who had never been required to think about Tavian at all. Orson was being dismissive, which was worse than cruel. Cruelty implied that Tavian mattered enough to hurt. Dismissal meant he didn't matter at all.

Tavian said nothing. He'd heard worse. He'd heard the evaluation results read aloud, the technician's flat voice announcing zero across twenty protocols while the crew watched. Orson's contempt was familiar. It was the sound of the pilot hierarchy reinforcing what everyone already knew, or thought they knew, about a zero-sync maintenance apprentice who'd gotten lucky with a piece of buried wreckage.

Orson turned back to his conversation. The topic shifted. Tavian was forgotten.

The dismissal sat heavy in Tavian's chest. He stood, disposed of his meal pouch, and walked to the maintenance bay.

Dex was already there.

He was at Tavian's usual workstation, elbows deep in a diagnostic queue that Tavian hadn't touched in three days. The backlog had been growing: hull plate seal checks, disposal cradle maintenance, the recurring issue with the C-deck waste recycling unit. Work that Tavian was supposed to be doing, that he'd been neglecting during his off-shift sessions with the mech.

Dex didn't look up when Tavian entered. He was focused on the diagnostic, his hands moving with the efficient precision that made him the best light-utility technician the maintenance crew had.

"You're behind," Dex said.

"I know."

"Hull plate seals are overdue. Disposal cradle needs hydraulic fluid. C-deck recycler is going to throw another error by end of week if the filter doesn't get replaced." Dex pulled his hands from the workstation and looked at Tavian. "I've been covering what I can."

Tavian stared at him. "You've been doing my shifts?"

"Someone had to." Dex's tone was matter-of-fact. No martyrdom. No request for gratitude. "You're assigned to the mech now. Captain's orders. Your maintenance queue doesn't stop existing just because your assignment changed."

"You didn't have to —"

"Halden was going to flag it." Dex shrugged. "If he flags it, you get written up. If you get written up, the captain reconsider who's working on the mech. So I've been covering."

He turned back to the diagnostic. "Pressure checks on the EVA suits are next. I'll get to them after lunch."

Tavian stood in the doorway and watched his friend work. Dex's hands were sure, methodical, carrying the same careful attention that Tavian brought to his own tasks. He was doing the work through the quiet assumption of burden. You saw what needed doing, and you did it, because the person who needed it done was your friend.

"Thank you," Tavian said.

Dex waved a hand without looking up. "Don't make it weird. Just get to the mech."

Tavian moved to his own station. The diagnostic queue Dex had cleared was smaller than it should have been. His friend had been working overtime, eating into his own rest periods to keep Tavian's backlog from becoming a problem. The thought sat in Tavian's chest alongside the heaviness of Orson's dismissal, a different weight entirely.

The bay door opened again.

This time it was someone Tavian didn't recognize. A woman, mid-thirties, lean, with the particular focused look of someone accustomed to long hours of concentration. She carried a portable sensor array, research-grade hardware rather than standard maintenance equipment.

"Apprentice Tavian?"

He turned. "Yes?"

"My name is Leona. I'm the civilian archaeologist contracted for debris analysis on this operation." She paused, aware that her arrival might be unexpected. "I'd like to see the mech."

Tavian's first instinct was caution. Sloane had claimed the mech. Access was now controlled. "The captain handles access requests."

"I've already spoken with the captain. He's granted me observation access, pending your cooperation." Leona's tone was professional, precise. She held up a data pad. "I've been tracking an anomalous energy signature from the deep field for six days. The signature doesn't match any of the twenty known relic patterns. I believe it's connected to your discovery."

Tavian looked at the data pad. The readings were detailed: energy fluctuations mapped over time, frequency analysis, spatial origin triangulation. This was someone who had been paying close attention.

"Why do you want to see it?" he asked.

"Because whatever you've found is generating an energy signature I've never encountered in eight years of ruin-site research." Leona met his eyes. "I study extinct civilizations. Their patterns, their failures, what they valued enough to preserve. Your mech doesn't match any known civilization. That makes it the most significant discovery in this sector in a decade, and I would like to understand it."

"You want to study it."

"I want to observe it. Record what I can. Offer my expertise if it's useful." She paused. "I'm here because I've spent eight years cataloging ruin sites across three sectors, and I have never seen an energy signature like the one your mech is producing."

Tavian considered her. She was a researcher, a framework he hadn't encountered before. No combat bearing, no sync-enhanced posture. Clean hands and research-grade tools.

"I'll need to clear it with Sloane," he said.

"I've already cleared it." Leona's expression didn't change. "But I wanted to speak with you first. You're the one who's been working with the machine. You're the one who knows what it's like."

She wanted to know what the mech was like. That was a different question from anything Tavian had encountered. Orson saw junk. Sloane saw profit. Dex saw a friend's discovery. Leona saw something worth understanding.

"I'll let you know," Tavian said.

Leona nodded. "Thank you." She turned to leave, then paused. "The energy signature. When you connected to it, what did it feel like?"

Tavian blinked. "What?"

"The interface. The connection." Leona's eyes were intent. "The Lithari civilization described a quality in their relic interfaces, a sense of presence, of being observed by the technology itself. They called it the third realm of sensing. Your mech's energy signature has similar characteristics."

"You know about the Lithari sensing classifications?"

"I know about a great many things." Leona's tone was dry. "That's what I do."

She left. Tavian stood in the maintenance bay and processed the conversation.

Orson saw junk. Dex saw a friend. Leona saw a research opportunity. None of them saw what Tavian saw.

But they each saw something. And each of their perspectives would shape what happened next.

Tavian returned to his diagnostic queue. The work was familiar, grounding. His hands moved through the tasks Dex had left him: pressure checks, seal inspections, routine maintenance that kept the Drift functioning. The mech was waiting in its bay, under Sloane's authority, under the crew's newly focused attention.

He would continue the work. He would follow the navigation data. He would do what he had always done: care for broken things, understand them from the inside, give them what they needed.

Dex worked beside him in comfortable silence. The maintenance bay hummed with the Drift's systems, the familiar sounds of a ship that kept its crew alive. Somewhere in the debris field, the black mech waited, warm and partially alive, the navigation data still pulling at the edges of his mind.

Tavian was seen now. Noticed. Judged by some, supported by others, studied by a third. His position had changed. He was no longer invisible, and the privacy of his stewardship was gone.

But the work remained. And the work was what mattered.

He pulled up the navigation impressions one more time, testing their edges. The Lithari ruin site was still there in his mind: crystalline structures, harmonic frequencies, a direction that pulled. But something had shifted since Leona's visit. She'd mentioned the third realm of sensing. The Lithari had named this quality: the feeling of being observed by the technology itself. And the mech's energy signature matched their patterns.

The navigation data pointed to a Lithari ruin. The mech was Lithari in no way they could identify. But it was sending him to their site, and it was producing signatures their researchers had documented.

Tavian closed the diagnostic queue and stared at the blank wall of the maintenance bay. Two questions, tangled together: What was the mech, if nothing in its architecture matched the Lithari? And why was it leading him to their ruins?

He didn't have answers. But the questions had weight now, and they were no longer his alone to carry.