My alarm went off and I got right out of bed. No hitting the snooze, no cussing, no groaning from me. Not on that day. Today was the day we collected that AWOL piece of shit probe.

  We’d been tracking that asshole for the last six months and today we were going to bag it. Bagging it meant going back home, it meant getting paid. See what I’m saying? Today was going to be a good day. It was Friday, I think.

  I showered, dressed, even brushed my teeth for the occasion.

  I checked my watch. It was twenty minutes till ten. You’d think a watch would be pretty useless way out in space, right? With all that faster than light travel, and time dilation, or whatnot, but you’ve got to be synced up to something, and we were synced up to SST— ship standard time— which meant whatever hell time the Captain had her watch set to when we left port six months back. And ETA to capture that little rat bastard probe was around ten thirty. I had some time so I went down to the kitchen. Rondo and Lucy2, his droid partner, were there sitting at the booth. I waved and got myself a cup of coffee.

  “You excited?” Rondo asked, shouting over to me through the empty kitchen.

  I raised my thumb. “I even brushed my teeth.”

  With my coffee I climbed up to the communications bay. Jules was there even though it wasn’t her shift. I had expected that. I mean today was the day.

  “You’re late,” she said.

  “Morning to you too.”

  “It’s night.”

  “They grab it yet?” I asked.

  “We have ten minutes.”

  “So I’m not late,” I said.

  “Just sit down,” Jules said irritably. “And don’t touch anything.”

  “This is my shift,” I said. I hated when Jules talked to me like a child.

  “As commanding comms officer, and this is the day that—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I cut her off, grabbed the second mic, and hit the talk button.

  “What’s cooking out there, Buzz? You see that asshole probe yet?”

  Jules’ mouth dropped.

  Crackle from the speakers. “Candy? That you?”

  “The one and only,” I said moving the mic out of Jules' reach. I was going to say more but Jules unplugged the mic.

  “Don’t see anything yet,” Buzz said. “But as soon as I’m back it’s rematch buddy ol' pal.”

  Another crackle from the speakers. It was the captain. “Refrain from communication until the probe is sighted. Over-out.”

  “You idiot,” Jules said. She looked truly mortified. She was breathing heavily.

  One thing you should know. This “crew” of ours, it isn’t made up of the finest first-class space denizen around. We’re pretty much glorified trash collectors. So all this captain this, captain that, orders this, order that— if I wanted all that, I would have joined the space academy. But I didn’t. I entered the world of space salvage. And anyone that thinks otherwise is a dipshit in my books.

  “Lighten up,” I said. “I’m just having a little fun.”

  “Your little fun could get someone killed. Buzz is out there right now in—”

  Crackle over the speakers. “Uh, guys?” It was Buzz.

  Another the crackle. The captain, “do you see the probe, Buzz?”

  “Not the probe,” Buzz said. “Switching on AV.”

  On the monitors came the fuzzy image of something huge.

  “Is that a moon?” I said.

  “Quiet.”

  Buzz was in a probe of his own he had named Scooter. He maneuvered Scooter around so he could get a better image. The tech on Scooter was ancient and the image was grainy. I had to squint to make anything out.

  Crackle over the comms again. “We can't quite make it out, Buzz. What do you see?”

  "I'm not sure either." Another crackle. "I think it’s a dragon?”

  ----

  The ship we were on, a standard FreightMax EB-12 didn’t have much in the way of windows, so we couldn’t just rush to the nearest one and catch a glimpse of this “dragon”, Buzz found. What we did have was a couple of remote probes of our own though, with AV tech that was about a century more advanced than scooters.

  Rondo, our main probe tech, launched the probes Bull, and Moose. When you’re stuck on space vessels, sometimes years at a time, you start naming everything.

  Over the months, Rondo had taught Lucy2 to pilot the probes and she had learned to man Moose pretty well. You’d think a droid would come fully equipped to do such things as probe operation, but companion droids, right out of the box (sorry for the pun), have the intelligence of a golden retriever. I mean, Rondo wanted a companion, not a physicist.

  As soon as the two probes had jettisoned I was climbing down out of comms.

  Jules didn’t like this. “You aren’t supposed to leave your station!” she yelled at me.

  “Are you kidding?” I yelled back. “I don’t want to hear them describe the dragon. I want to see it.”

  I booked it to the bridge. And I wasn’t the only one. The whole Engineering team: Reynolds, Gilley, and Cho were also huffing it down to the bridge.

  The FreightMax EB-12 are great ships. Solid. Dependable. Efficient. Truly, it’s a great ship. These suckers can pretty much run themselves. Their only real drawback is the captain’s bridge.

  You might have a picture in your mind what the captain’s bridge looks like. Scratch that out completely. The captain bridge on a EB-12 is pretty much a boring-ass cubicle.

  I actually feel bad every time I have to go down there to visit captain Abega and first mate Petrov. It’s like going to visit that weird brother and sister down at the end of street, the one who’s family doesn’t “believe” kids should have video games systems. Like what the hell do you do all day?

  Personally, I think its a little passive aggressiveness on FreightMax’s part. Like they made the bridge crappy on purpose. Why does the captain even need an actual bridge? The ship runs fine enough all on its own. I don’t know.

  But the one good thing about the captain’s bridge is that it has a big old screen to view the probe’s feeds.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  I was standing, squeezed in between Gilley and Reynolds.

  “What’s that smell?” Gilley asked.

  “Smells like mint,” Reynolds said.

  “I brushed me teeth this morning,” I told them.

  “Quiet in the bridge,” Petrov ordered.

  “Smells good,” Gilley whispered.

  “Thanks,” I whispered back.

  On the screen were three feeds: On the left was Scooter’s ancient ass feed that showed a gray image of what I would swear to God was a rocky moon. On the other two feeds were Moose and Bull. These two feeds looked exactly the same— black. The only reason we knew the screen was even on was because of the white bar below each feed detailing their velocity, coordinates, battery life, etc. Other than that the screens were just utter blackness.

  This part of space, beyond the Pegasus Cluster, is no mans land. You could count the number of stars you can see on one hand way out here. We of course weren’t the first to voyage this far out— hell a few years back we were about three light years further out than this right now. Its sort of this crew’s specialty working this far out in the universe.

  Petrov pressed the talk button. “How you doing out there, Buzz? Any sight of the probe?”

  “No sighting of the droid,” Buzz said. “Just this huge fucking thing.”

  Petrov pressed the talk button again. “Just a reminder that all communications are being recorded and logged.”

  “For the record,” Buzz said. “This is a huge fucking thing.”

  Petrov groaned. “Noted.”

  This probe recon was a pretty typical job for us. With two exceptions. Normally, we’re contracted out by some third party— a shell company that always had the most generic of names like Space Systems Inc, or Interplanetary Logistics LLC. All of them contracted out by the big daddies back on earth: The United Space Coalition. This job came from USC directly (they must have wizened up and cut the middle man out completely). And the second exception, this was the first job we’ve had where the probe stopped. We generally pick up probes that have malfunctioned, fried a circuit or something, and they start going off in the wrong direction, or, more commonly they’ve been damaged (flying through a supercluster has its challenges) and we’ve been tasked to retrieve the black box (if it exists). A stopped probe meant one of two things: it was stuck on something that wasn’t moving (pretty much impossible out here), or, like all those other cases, some circuit fried and instead of going in the wrong direction, it just stopped; threw on its reverse thrusters, came to a complete stop, and just stayed there waiting for pickup. Which, makes our job a hell of a lot easier than chasing some loose probe halfway across the universe.

  Petrov was getting antsy. He hit the talk button. “Rondo. You see anything yet.”

  “Nothing yet. Still heading out to Buzz.”

  “What about you, Lucy2?” Petrov asked.

  Lucy2 responded. “Are Moose’s cameras malfunctioning?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” said Petrov.

  “So they’re black?” Lucy2 asked.

  “Yes,” Petrov said. “They’re black.”

  “Then they’re working.”

  Petrov groaned.

  Captain Abega hit the talk button. “Buzz, flash your thrusters again.”

  “Aye, aye captain.”

  On Moose’s and Bull’s feed a white flare, just a dot appeared, and then faded.

  “Did you see that?” Lucy2 asked.

  “Yes,” Petrov said.

  “The cameras are still working.”

  They got out to Buzz a few minutes later.

  “Turning on exterior lights,” said Rondo.

  “Turning on exterior lights,” echoed Lucy2.

  A second later both Moose’s and Bull’s feeds lit up.

  A giant stone egg appeared on the screen. It looked like a coiled snake.

  “The face”, said Cho, disbelief in her voice. “And the arms.”

  It did have arms, wrapped tightly in the folds of its body.

  My initial thought was that it looked old. Like something from those ancient civilizations back on Earth. Aztec, Incan, American Indian? I barely remembered any of my prehistory history classes. All I knew was that it looked old, something made with crude tools, and certainly, it did look like a dragon.

  “It must be a prank,” Petrov said. “Looks like something the Eridan’s would make.”

  “I’m from Eridan,” Reynolds said. “I mean yeah, we love our totems, but this is…”

  Over the comms Jule’s voice came on. “The trace shows Rondo is still a hundred and fifty meters out from the probe.”

  Captain Abega leaned back. “It’s inside it,” she said. She had a finger over her closed mouth. She did that when she thought.

  “We don’t have the gear for a space walk,” Petrov said.

  “No, we don’t,” Abega agreed. Still that finger to her lip. A moment later she hit the talk button. “Buzz, how big is that thing?”

  “About eight-hundred meters tall,” Buzz said. “Radius is still calculating.”

  Eight-hundred meters wasn’t huge, at least not by deep-space standards. There were tiny moons out there. But this thing was clearly man-made, and by that standard, that did make it a pretty big freaking thing.

  A few seconds passed then Buzz said, “The radius is two-hundred sixty meters at the widest.”

  “A perfect egg,” Cho said.

  The ship rocked then, hard. I nearly crashed over Reynolds.

  “Christ!” Gilley shouted. “We’ve been hit.”

  Cho and Reynolds sprinted out the bridge, or at least tried to. The ship started to roll and we were all thrown into the wall, tipping still, onto the ceiling. Anything that was bolted down fell with us.

  Lights were flashing, and alarms were beeping all over the place.

  “Reverse thrusters!” Abega shouted just before she was rag-dolled over her console.

  “Thrusters on!” Petrov yelled over the commotion. He had been smart enough to buckle into his chair the moment the first crash came and he was looking at the monitor on his desk.

  Over the comms came the crackle of Buzz saying, “I’m getting p—”

  He was saying more, but the alarms were blaring, drowning out all comms.

  The captain was up, pulling herself along the wall. She had a pretty good size gash on her forehead that would need to be bandaged. I assumed she was trying to initialize the zero-g but what good would that do? I was expecting the ship to get ripped apart any second and we’d just get sucked out into space.

  “Thruster!” Abega shouted again.

  “They’re on!” Petrov yelled.

  Whatever Abega had hoped the reverse thrusters were going to do, didn’t work out. We tumbled around just the same.

  “Look!” Gilley yelled. He was pointing at the monitors. All three feeds were showed the giant space egg thing growing, getting larger.

  “They’re getting pulled into it,” Petrov screamed.

  “We’re getting pulled into it!” Reynolds screamed back.

  We were thrown around, churned up, rolled, and tossed. How long did that all last? More than five minutes, but less than twenty. I felt like a bug being shook around in a can. But eventually it stopped, coming to a grinding halt.

  “Is everyone alright?” Abega asked. She looked around the room. Blood trickled down the side of her face.

  “You’re head,” Cho said, pointing to her own forehead. “You’re bleeding.”

  Abega touched her forehead and inspected the blood on her fingers.

  I got a pretty good lump growing on the top of my head, but other than that, things could have gone a lot worse.

  We were standing on the ship’s port side. Petrov unbuckled and lowered himself to the floor. He found a medkit and brought to the captain.

  Over the comms, Rondo said, “Captain you seeing this?”

  We all looked to the monitor. Buzz's feed was offline. On Moose’s and Bull’s cameras showed different angles of the same hanger. It looked more like a coliseum than anything else though. It was a huge space with stone columns and dramatic lighting. From where the probes sat we couldn’t see the ceiling.

  “We must be inside it,” Petrov said.

  On the monitor Bull’s and Moose’s cameras circled the area. It was mostly blackness except for those pillars of light and stone every hundred or so meters out, disappearing into shadow.

  On Bull’s feed was the missing probe we had been contracted out to retrieve. Stamped clearly to the probes hull were the letters, USC.

  On Moose’s feed, Lucy2 stopped the cam. I craned my neck, trying to see the image upright.

  Crackle. Over the comms, Lucy2 said, “Anyone know what that is?”

  It looked like a giant pea pod— I didn’t care. On Bull’s feed something was burning behind the missing USC probe.

  “Shit!” I yelled. “Buzz’s probe is on fire!”