I didn't even need to say anything more as Rose immediately slammed the shields on to full power and spun up the guns. Better safe than sorry. Through the shipboard cameras, the two frames were working their way up the passageway toward the multipurpose room, and if I guessed right, the armory.

"Okay, so we definitely need to get over there and find out if there are any survivors. Or at the very least, find out who they were and log it. Maybe find some extra supplies, if it was quick. Fuck. Rose, as much as I hate to say this, we might need the airlock. I'm going to take the Atlas out in case I need to cut through anything on the wreck. So get the room pressurizing and we'll just put our guests in the multipurpose room. We'll worry about deconning it later."

Bringing the Corvus closer to the burnt hull, the scale was truly revealed. Despite the former gunship I piloted being rather large, it was minuscule against the chunk of the capital ship ahead of us. The turret mounted spotlights panned over it, revealing faded scraps of paint here and there on top of scorched metal, but nothing to identify the name of the ship or even enough to guess what class it was. Tabbing over to secondary systems, I brought up the boarding systems and made sure they were powered. The low hiss of air flooding the cabin was hardly a note on my mind with what I was about to do. Sighing, I activated the communication system and said the words every military man dreaded.

"Unknown UTN vessel, this is the UTE Corvus. We are attempting rescue and retreival. If anyone is alive or an AI is powered, please respond on this channel. Otherwise, we will begin boarding procedures."

After setting the message to repeat, the hard part started. Matching the speed and rotation of the derelict so the Corvus wouldn't get hit or thrown clear while I was onboard.

"So we don't know if anyone is alive over there. This is weird as hell though, so I want you to be careful with the sensors. If anything is weird, let me know and I'll get out fast. If anything that isn't UTE shows up, let's just hope it wasn't what did this, or we can shoot our way out. I know you're already on it, but I want both frames armed and armored in the troop bay just in case anyone tries to force the hatch. Rose, you'll be our last line of defense in the multipurpose room with the ponies. That, and if it turns out they are hostile, you can put a round into their heads before they get a chance to fight"

She only sighed a 'yes' at me. I think Rose has really been enjoying her time with the ponies over the last few days, so for her sake I hope they aren't hostile. I don't think it would be good for her to have to execute someone she thought was a friend. Considering we have no idea how to get home yet, friends are more useful than a planet full of enemies. With the hulk looming in the canopy, we were mostly matched up to its movements.

"Could you set the anchors and pull us in? You can tell what spots are best on this wreck a lot better than I can. And for what it's worth Rose, I hope I'm wrong. Probably am, but it doesn't hurt to be careful."

Yeah, she's kinda pissed at the moment. Not even saying a word as a pair of cables shot out from below the Corvus to attach to the wreck. A moment later, a second pair joined them and we started reeling the ship in slowly. Considering my piloting done since Rose was in control, I unbuckled the crash harness and was about to start into the troop bay before a thought occurred. Preparing to push a button, I decided to give our guests a heads up.

"Artificial gravity coming online in ten seconds."

Knowing it would be my first and last chance to breathe without a helmet on in a while, I removed mine while heading to the troop bay. After a second or two, it occurred to me that the air wasn't the usual "aggressive" scent of the planetary air we held for the guests. Wonder why that is.

Entering the troop bay, Rose already had the royals and their guards out of the airlock. Thank god for that. Somehow I think getting locked up in there for longer would suck really hard.

"...be some time. I apologize, but we have to see if there are survivors here. If it wasn't a potential matter of life and death, we'd happily return you home before coming back."

At least the Princesses seemed to understand the thought, although their guards were bristled slightly at the appearance of both armored and armed Frames in the bay, not to mention that Rose was midway through donning a similar set while 1 held a pulse rifle for her.

"She's right Princess. I'm sorry about this, but it is an emergency. The arms and armor are for everyone's protection..."

All of our assembled guests were giving me a strange look. Then I realized that without my helmet, I wasn't connected to the wireless speaker that Rose used for translation. At least my slight facepalm broke the tension some, as Princess AIne giggled a little at my slip up, before regaining her regal impassiveness. Thankfully Rose was already on top of the translation. It was still weird to essentially have 'verbal subtitles' with the translation software though. Seeing Boann speaking and not understanding a thing until the translation came over the speaker system was annoying to say the least.

"At the least, let us assist you with the search. As Princess Aine has shown, we can survive in this 'vacuum' without air with our magic. It is the least we can do."

Resisting the urge to facepalm again, I wracked my mind for an eloquent way to say 'hell no.' The last thing I need to do is potentially catch a treason charge by bringing aliens on a UTN ship. Not to mention Rose would have to arrest and put me in cryosleep. Um. Pass. Thankfully, Rose beat me to the punch by explaining that it would be incredibly unsafe and we would be forsaking our duty if we let them get injured in the pursuit of our needs. Let alone how any UTN crew might shoot first. As a treat, she did offer to let them, mostly Princess Boann who is intently curious about our technology, see me donning the Atlas suit. She'd apparently asked repeatedly about where our large companion was until she understood it was armor.

"By the way Alex, I already explained the plan to them. It'll be okay on our end, and I am watching the sensors like crazy. Once you get on the wreck, I'll be getting the ponies some drinks and a bathroom. Your cam feed will be up on the displays in the multifunction room, so we'll all see what's going on. Don't worry, I'll redact anything that is, or could be classified. Just be careful, okay."

Before I could even reply, Rose grabbed the front of my suit and dragged me down to her. Soft lips pressed tightly against mine for a moment, before withdrawing with a nip of teeth on my lower lip.

"For luck. Never thought I'd have to steal my first kiss though. Now be safe, and if you die on me, I'll beat your corpse back to life so I can murder you."

...

Blankly stepping toward the Atlas while that moment replayed in my mind, I was interrupted by something important. A soft giggle.

"Put on your helmet and pressurize your suit you idiot. Yes, I can see your biometrics, including blood rushing to... places."

It is incredibly hard to ignore the ponies giggling at me while I fumble for the helmet. The raised platform for the armor awaited. Stepping up into the brackets, I made sure to grab the insides of both gauntlets and get situated before pressing the activation button. The suit was already conformed to me, so it was a less flashy affair than the first time. Arms descending from the sides of the pod and assembling the gigantic mechanized suit around me. If I didn't know better, I'd think Rose was messing with me a little, as the codpiece rubbed against my crotch for a moment or two before attaching as normal. Then again, it is Rose.

Like always, it is a long two minutes to have a suit built around you like that. Yeah, you can keep the suit assembled and hop in as needed, but that makes more wear and tear on the joints to rebuild. Easier to store the unit and assemble as needed. The ponies seemed a bit in awe when I stepped out of the pod. Then again, they did just see someone who was slightly taller than the royals turn into a hulking bohemoth of metal plate. Making sure to tie the suit into the translation software, I triggered the external speakers.

"Find that to your liking, Princess? Once we're back on the ground, I'm sure we can answer some of your questions. Not all of them, mind you, but most. If you don't mind, please follow Rose to the multifunction room. I need to vent the air from this compartment before I can go outside."

I'm not sure if the quiet nods from the Royals was good or bad, but I certainly got a blush from Aine when I "accidentally" brushed a gauntlet against Rose's ass as revenge. She actually jumped slightly and turned to glare at me before leading the group deeper into the ship. Once the bulkhead had been sealed, the air immediately began to be pumped from the compartment. That reminded me though.

"By the way, what was with the air? I thought we were going to need to use the compressed stuff from the planet? And we will be talking about that kiss when I get back."

She was silent for a minute, so I reached forward to cycle the hatch in the floor to reveal the surface of the ship a few meters below. I guess it was a good thing I left the majority of the Valiant's systems intact when refitting the Corvus. A few more button presses lowered a breaching collar from within the boarding hatch. Once it was secured against the hull, green lights illuminated around the ring for a moment before flashing out. Or at least I thought they flashed off, it was kind of hard to tell when two dozen cutting lasers fired off at once as the inner ring began spinning.

"Alex... I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply anything. It seemed like something good in the moment. If you want to talk when you get back, I'll accept anything you think is right. And it turns out that the ponies can breathe our air. They say it smells sweeter, like their air after a heavy rain. It would make sense given that would take a lot of contaminants out of the air. Please be gentle with me, and be safe okay."

"Rose, you aren't in trouble. We'll talk when I get back, okay. Until then, I don't want you to think about it and keep an eye on our guests and the sensors, okay. Don't make me make that an order. You know how I hate having to do that. And I promise to be safe, okay. I know you'll pop up with anything from the feed I miss, so keep an eye on me, okay. I'm going to head in."

Looking down at the new tunnel bored through the meters thick armor plate was daunting and impressive at the same time. After a quick systems check and making sure all systems were hot, it was time to go. Pushing off the inside of the boarding hatch, I headed into the darkness below.

Inky blackness awaited me below. Halfway down the shaft, I made the decision to use the suit's built in night vision gear instead of visual lights. Less chance of letting anyone know I was here in case there were hostiles on board. IR lights built into the suit kicked on and flooded the interior of the ship ahead of me with invisible light. Thankfully, the sensors built into the Atlas could still use it to show the inside of the ship in full detail, albeit with muted colors. At least nobody was shooting at me. Despite the shields, I was kind of a fish in a barrel at the moment.

Sliding smoothly out of the tunnel, I could say that artificial gravity was definitely off. We hadn't detected any power signatures, but grav plating was very low power on large ships anyhow. With little more than a gesture, I made sure the suit's boots were magnetized before lowering my bulk to the deck. The spot we'd picked was nearest to the undamaged portion of the wreck without having to worry about cutting into somewhere that someone might be weathering the storm.

Floating wiring, debris, and warped steel met my eyes inside the passageway. Whatever had happened to the ship was brutal and fast. Somehow I doubted there were any survivors, but I had to hope. Using a rough guess of where I was, I picked a direction I hoped would pay off. Rose would already be hard writing all raw data from this to the Corvus' memory while she watched. It was slow going through the passage. Most debris could be brushed out of the way but once or twice I was forced to cut my way forward. Then again, that is kind of what the Prometheus version of the Atlas suits was for. Both gauntlets contained a plasma cutter set that was fed directly from the reactor. So I could just grab whatever was in my way, trigger the cutters, and squeeze until it was cut clean through.

After probably a half hour of this, I finally reached a sealed blast bulkhead. The door was sealed tight and was the first closed one I'd come across. The others were either too badly damaged or had too much damage around them to close. Red markings around the hatch designated it as 5-316-4-E. So at least I knew I was on deck 5 with a machinery space on the other side of the bulkhead. Without knowing what class of ship this was, the frame numbering was kind of useless. More importantly though, the room was showing a positive pressure. Not much, but still about 8psi, so most of one atmosphere. A bit rough for someone to breathe, but doable. Bringing a gauntlet up, I rapped it against the steel door three times, paused, two slower, then three rapid again.

It was awkward to stand in the passage waiting. Thankfully the sensors on the suit didn't show motion, although they weren't strong enough to say what was on the other side of the bulkhead. With no reaction, I anchored the suit and began to unseal the compartment. What was inside will probably haunt me for a long time. The moment the air began to flow past my suit, 'HAZARDOUS ATMOSPHERE' began flashing on my display. It continued to show until the last vestiges of the air vented out into the passage and space. With what would normally have been a squeal of metal on metal, I pushed the hatch open. Only to reveal the the bodies of the better part of a dozen crewmen. They were floating in all sorts of positions, and none of them appeared to have gone easily into the abyss. Whatever had been released into the compartment had eaten away at some of them before they passed. Who knows how long they'd been floating here, frozen in their floating tomb. Hating what I needed to do, I stepped toward the nearest one to find out who he was. Grey flesh, bulging eyes, and a silent and eternal scream met my eyes while I recorded the state of his body. That's also where I learned the name of the ship from his utilities.

"The ship is the UTN Bellerophon. I don't know if she'll be in our records, but I'll work towards the CIC and see if I can recover the AI cores. We can't leave part of a warship floating in deep space either, so we'll have to come up with something for that as well. I know that the odds of nobody being out here are huge, but you know the regs as well as I do. Maybe ask the Royals if they have any ideas. I imagine they aren't enjoying the camera feed any."

In over an hour of searching, I'd found nothing of the crew but bodies. Some tried to survive by putting on suits and died clawing at their masks when the air ran out or chose to take the masks off. Others passed in every position you could imagine. Some in their berths, others impaled by debris, or in one horrifying case, held together by the barest threads. When I brushed by that crewman, they literally came apart and floated down the passage in pieces. A few even had the bright idea to try to use the cryopods to survive. At least their deaths were painless when the power finally failed.

Rose had found the Bellerophon in our records. Nothing detailed, just that it was an Archer class destroyer. The large wreck that dwarfed the Corvus was only a fifth of the measurements for the class. With no idea where the rest went, I continued searching. In time, I eventually came across a frame depot with six frames in good condition. Since the shipboard AI was offline, there was no issue powering them up as a local controller. After updating them with a current map of passable areas, I instructed them to take the parts and tools from the depot to the Corvus. Afterwards, they were to go to other marked compartments to search for anything Rose might deem useful. It felt dirty to salvage the ship, but somehow I doubted there would be an abundance of parts in the future.

The other crew spaces were just as bad. The mess was open to space. Whoever and whatever was in it had been sucked out during decompression with pretty much no chance of survival. Eventually I ended up at the bulkhead that marked the entrance to the CIC and it was shut tightly. Unlike the vast majority of other hatches, these were heavily armored to where my suit would hardly be able to scratch it. In a massive dose of irony, the passageway was open to space so I could try to find another way in.

After over an hour in a tomb, it felt good to be in starlight again. I could only imagine how much more horrifying it would have been if I hadn't had the thought to use the built in night vision. Muted colors instead of full detail on how every crewman had died was a small mercy. It only took a minute to find a way into the command deck. The Bellerophon's death had been so sudden that not all of the blast shutters had closed when the armorplas windows had blown out. With a slight tap of boosters, I drifted towards the wrecked command center.

It was disturbingly clean inside. No bodies, every surface scoured clean of debris or coffee cups when the compartment vented. So just clean and new looking consoles and command boards everywhere. I don’t think the designers counted on this eventuality though, as the AI cores were housed in a console at the back of every command deck. That way if the ship were boarded, they could be destroyed, or if the ship was a loss, they could be pulled before scuttling.

In this case, neither had happened, so the cores were simply sitting there in their armored enclosures. Three AI cores behind thick panels and no power to access them. On a whim, I reached forward to press the releases on the console and was surprised when the latches popped free. Faced with something that shouldn’t be, I cycled a latch on the top of the nearest core ten times before pressing an inset button. A small light lit up blue. It should have been green. The second core lit up red, and the final blue again. The AI had handwritten the ship’s log to the second core prior to deleting themselves before the power failed.

The Bellerophon was literally a tomb in every meaning of the word.

In three hours, I found no survivors. None. Yes, we came out with a smattering of tools, spare parts, the odd weapon from a wrecked arms room, and even extra power cores and parts for the Atlas, but nobody living. At least we ended up with what should be their black box and logs. That way there would be a record of what happened to the ship and her crew.

After some consideration, we decided to have the six frames continue to search the hulk. They were instructed to find anything salvageable and record the state of any crew members they came across. If they did find someone alive, they’d immediately contact us over comms and we’d be on our way. It was simpler to take the royals home and return to finish our morbid task in the morning.

The ponies were quiet when we returned planetside, and understandably so. They didn’t sign up to see any of that, but got dragged into it anyhow. The royals did promise to think about a method to dispose of the wreck after it was completely searched. I don’t think they understood the why of it other than duty, but at least they understood it was something we had to do. Moving the repair enclosure would wait for another day in the near future.

Deciding to call it an early day, I headed to my quarters so Rose could have the frames decon anywhere the ponies had been. Knowing I’d be alone with my thoughts, she followed me silently. It was as if she knew the thoughts floating through my mind about the future and the fate of so many other people.

Not even a word was said as I stripped down to my boxers and crawled into bed. Surprisingly enough, she dimmed the lights. After a moment and the rustle of blankets, she joined me in bed. After today, I wasn’t in a mood to argue as Rose slipped her arms around my waist and pulled me close.

“Alex, about earlier today. I… You have… I need…”

A finger on her lips silenced Rose. Turning slightly, I realized that the rustle of fabric was also her stripping down to just a bra and panties.

“Uh… Rose? What’s all this?”

“I… I’d always read that skin contact was good to calm someone after a rough day. This was a bad idea, I’ll… I’ll… I’ll go now…”

Knowing she’d just go beat herself up and feel horrible for trying something new, I did the only thing that came to mind as she started to get up. Grabbing her wrist, I pulled the petite AI downward and onto me, kissing her roughly before she could complain. I certainly wasn’t expecting her to let out a little moan of surprise and push into the kiss. Let alone straddle me and kiss back. Everything was forgotten when Rose leaned forward and whispered in my ear.

“I meant it all those times when I said you owned all of me, Master. And yes, I have seen your extranet history. I might even have a collar in storage if you want me…”

Uh... Next Chapter: 23. Let us burn... Let us burn... <unedited> Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 3 Minutes