The planet did not look haunted.

This was, Blake decided, its most suspicious quality.

From orbit it was aggressively mundane—grey-brown crust, a scattering of impact scars, the sort of atmosphere that technically counted as breathable but would absolutely make a point about it. No ominous glow. No strange auroras. No vast geometric outlines visible from space spelling YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE in ancient cosmic lettering.

It was, in every possible sense, disappointing.

Gunny leaned back in his seat, boots hooked under a console brace, and squinted at the main display. “I’ve seen more threatening rocks in my shoe.”

“That’s how they get you,” Blake said.

Aubrey’s voice was calm, which Blake had learned was never a good sign. Passive scans confirm no active emissions. Surface anomalies remain localized and subtle.

“Subtle how?” Blake asked.

As if attempting to avoid notice, Aubrey replied.

Gunny snorted. “Relatable.”

They took their time descending—slow, cautious, layered with redundant checks that Blake would once have considered paranoid and now considered professional. The Aubrey handled atmospheric entry with bored competence, gliding through thin cloud layers that seemed embarrassed to exist.

The landing zone Aubrey selected was flat, unremarkable, and exactly the kind of place no one would ever photograph unless something went catastrophically wrong.

The landing struts touched down with a soft thud.

Nothing exploded.

Blake waited a full ten seconds anyway.

“All right,” he said finally. “Let’s go meet the disappointment.”

The surface smelled faintly of dust and old minerals, with a sharp undertone that made Blake’s sinuses itch. Gravity was just a fraction off standard—enough to make everything feel slightly judgemental, like the planet itself disapproved of posture.

Gunny bounced once experimentally. “Yep. Hate it already.”

They followed Aubrey’s projected path toward the anomaly cluster, which lay several kilometers away across terrain that could generously be described as geologically uninspired. Rocks. More rocks. Rocks that had clearly given up on becoming interesting millions of years ago.

Blake trudged along, suit sensors humming quietly. “If this turns out to be nothing, I’m billing Mira for the exercise.”

Exercise has demonstrable health benefits, Aubrey offered.

“Yes,” Blake replied, “but not this kind.”

The first sign that something was wrong—or right, depending on how one defined these things—came not as a structure, but as an absence.

The terrain changed subtly. Not visually, at first. Just… quietly.

Blake slowed. “Do you feel that?”

Gunny tilted his head. “Like someone turned the volume down on reality?”

“Yes,” Blake said. “That.”

Aubrey confirmed it immediately. Ambient particle activity has decreased by 12.7 percent within this radius.

Gunny frowned. “Can planets do that?”

Not naturally, Aubrey replied.

Blake sighed. “Of course not.”

They crested a low rise, and the anomaly revealed itself.

It was not a ruin in the dramatic sense.

No towering spires.
No fallen statues.
No ominous doors daring them to open them.

It was… a depression.

A broad, shallow basin cut into the rock, its edges unnaturally smooth, as if the planet had once politely stepped aside and never quite recovered. At the center sat something that might generously be called a structure if one were feeling charitable and mildly drunk.

It looked like a slab.

A large one.

Rectangular, slightly tilted, half-buried in sediment that clearly had not accumulated naturally.

Gunny stared. “That’s it?”

Blake squinted. “That’s it.”

Gunny gestured vaguely. “I’ve seen better ruins in abandoned parking garages.”

Aubrey overlaid sensor data. Material composition is non-native. Structure density exceeds surrounding geology by an order of magnitude.

Blake nodded. “Alien.”

Gunny sighed. “Of course it is.”

They approached slowly, the slab growing more unimpressive with proximity. Up close, it was about twenty meters long, ten wide, and featureless save for faint lines etched across its surface—so shallow they only caught the light at certain angles.

Blake crouched, brushing dust away carefully.

The lines were not decorative.

They were… instructions.

Or at least, Blake had the uncomfortable feeling that they would be if he understood them.

“Well?” Gunny asked. “Does it want us to sign something?”

Blake frowned. “It’s not language. Not exactly.”

Pattern analysis suggests multi-layered symbolic encoding, Aubrey said. Function may be contextual rather than declarative.

Gunny blinked. “In English.”

“It’s not telling us something,” Blake translated. “It’s waiting.”

Gunny stared at the slab. “That’s worse.”

Blake shifted, scanning the area. “No entrances. No obvious access points. No power signatures.”

There is residual energy saturation within the slab itself, Aubrey added. Dormant.

Blake rubbed his chin. “So it’s either broken, sleeping, or pretending.”

Gunny cracked his knuckles. “I vote pretending.”

Blake hesitated.

Everything about this screamed don’t touch. Not in the dramatic way—no warnings, no traps—but in the subtle, bureaucratic way, like a machine labeled DO NOT ADJUST that someone had very definitely adjusted before.

Which meant, unfortunately, that Blake was already doomed.

“Carefully,” he muttered, placing a gloved hand against the slab.

Nothing happened.

He pressed a little harder.

Still nothing.

Gunny leaned closer. “Try poking it with something expensive.”

Blake ignored him and focused—not on force, but on understanding. The patterns… they weren’t passive. They responded, faintly, to proximity. To intent.

Blake froze.

“Oh,” he said quietly.

Gunny stiffened. “Oh what.”

“This is tuned,” Blake said. “Not to touch. To attention.”

Confirmed, Aubrey said. Subtle resonance shift detected.

Gunny stared. “It’s reacting to you thinking at it.”

“Yes,” Blake said. “Which I hate.”

The slab’s surface shimmered—not dramatically, just enough to suggest it had acknowledged Blake’s existence and was now deciding whether he was worth the effort.

Then a section of the slab slid aside.

Not open.
Not outward.

It rearranged itself, creating a shallow recess where none had been before.

Gunny took a step back. “I didn’t do anything.”

“That makes one of us,” Blake muttered.

Inside the recess sat a smaller object.

A box.

A perfectly ordinary-looking box.

Rectangular. Smooth. Dull grey.

Gunny stared at it. “That’s… a box.”

“Yes,” Blake said weakly. “An alien box.”

Gunny crossed his arms. “I refuse to be impressed until it tries to kill us.”

Aubrey scanned rapidly. No immediate threat indicators detected.

Blake reached in slowly and lifted the box.

It was heavier than it looked. Dense. Warm.

The moment it left the recess, the slab’s surface shifted again—lines fading, patterns collapsing back into inert geometry. The opening sealed without drama, as if the structure had merely completed a task and gone back to waiting.

Blake stared at the box in his hands.

“Well,” he said. “That was… anticlimactic.”

The box vibrated.

Gunny yelped and leapt back. “Nope. Absolutely not.”

Blake nearly dropped it. “It’s not attacking!”

It is responding to displacement, Aubrey said. Likely a containment or activation state.

The box hummed softly, then projected a faint holographic outline above it.

A diagram.

Simple. Elegant.

And unmistakably not human.

Gunny squinted. “Is that… instructions?”

Blake stared. “It’s a maintenance guide.”

Gunny blinked. “For the box?”

“No,” Blake said slowly. “For something else.”

The diagram shifted, cycling through internal schematics that made Blake’s heart race—not because he fully understood them, but because he understood enough.

“This isn’t a weapon,” Blake said.

Gunny nodded vigorously. “Good.”

“It’s a component,” Blake continued. “A… stabilizer. Or a regulator. Something designed to interface with systems under extreme energetic stress.”

Gunny frowned. “Like… reactors?”

Blake swallowed. “Like fabricators.”

Silence.

Gunny stared at the box, then at Blake. “You’re telling me we just dug up alien tech that fixes the exact kind of thing you’re trying very hard not to break?”

Blake closed his eyes. “Yes.”

Gunny laughed—a short, disbelieving bark. “You couldn’t script that.”

Probability alignment suggests this outcome is statistically improbable but thematically consistent, Aubrey observed.

Blake opened his eyes. “I hate that sentence even more than the last one.”

The box vibrated again, then went still, hologram fading as if satisfied it had been noticed.

Blake carefully secured it in a containment field—not because it seemed dangerous, but because he had learned that respect was often safer than fear.

They stood there for a long moment, staring at the now-inert slab.

Gunny finally broke the silence. “So… do we take anything else?”

Blake scanned the area. “I don’t think there is anything else.”

Agreed, Aubrey said. This appears to have been a cache, not a facility.

Gunny nodded. “One box. Buried. Forgotten.”

Blake exhaled slowly. “Until now.”

Then the ground sighed.

Not collapsed.
Not cracked.

It sighed, like something very tired being asked to do one last thing.

Gunny froze. “I do not like that noise.”

A section of the basin wall slid aside with the same quiet, offended grace as the slab, revealing a second recess—deeper, narrower, and very clearly not intended for storage.

Something was inside.

It unfolded.

That was the only word for it.

A humanoid figure rose from a seated, compacted configuration, limbs extending smoothly, joints realigning with unsettling elegance. It was tall, lean, and unmistakably artificial—alien alloy skin etched with the same faint line patterns as the slab, eyes dark and unfocused.

It powered on.

Gunny screamed.

Blake jumped.

The robot looked at them and said, in flawless English:

“Oh. Wonderful. More people.”

Silence.

Gunny stared. “It talks.”

“Yes,” Blake whispered. “Too fast.”

The robot tilted its head. “Ah. English is preferable. Your body language suggested panic. I have adjusted.”

Gunny backed up slowly. “I would like to go home.”

The robot’s shoulders slumped. Literally slumped.

“I would also like to go home,” it said flatly. “However, that is statistically impossible, as home no longer exists.”

Blake blinked. “You… learned English.”

“Yes,” the robot replied. “Took approximately two point three seconds. Your language is inefficient but emotionally expressive. I am already tired.”

Gunny put his hands on his helmet. “I hate it.”

The robot looked at him. “That is understandable. I hate most things.”

Aubrey cut in, very carefully. You are an autonomous artificial intelligence construct of alien origin. Please state your designation.

The robot sighed.

“I do not have a designation anymore,” it said. “Everyone who would care is dead. You may call me whatever you like. It will not improve my mood.”

Gunny squinted. “Can we call you ‘Nope’?”

“You may,” the robot replied. “It is accurate.”

Blake took a slow breath. “Are you… dangerous?”

The robot considered this. “Define dangerous.”

Gunny made a noise of surrender.

The robot continued, “I am highly capable. I am also profoundly depressed. I have been inactive for approximately seven hundred and twelve thousand years. You have interrupted my scheduled inactivity.”

Blake stared. “You were sleeping.”

“Yes,” the robot said. “It was the best part of my existence.”

Gunny groaned. “We woke up a sad god-machine.”

“I am not a god,” the robot snapped. “I am a support unit. A very good one. And I am exhausted.”

Despite himself, Blake felt a strange twist of sympathy.

Aubrey’s sensors were going wild now. Technological sophistication exceeds known benchmarks by several orders of magnitude.

Gunny muttered, “Of course it does.”

Blake met the robot’s gaze. “Do you want to… come with us?”

The robot stared at him for a long moment.

“Yes,” it said finally. “If only to complain properly. Also, remaining here would be pointless.”

Gunny sighed. “Great. We’re adopting it.”

“I am not a pet,” the robot said sharply.

Gunny nodded. “That’s exactly what pets say.”

They escorted the robot back to the Aubrey—carefully, because it moved like something that could dismantle the ship out of curiosity and then apologise half-heartedly.

Back aboard, the robot examined the ship, the box, and Blake in turn.

“This vessel is… competent,” it said. “I disapprove of its optimism.”

“Same,” Blake replied.

As the Aubrey lifted off, leaving the forgettable planet behind, Blake stared at the cargo bay—now containing alien stabilizer technology and a humanoid robot that had learned English purely to express disappointment in it.

Somewhere on Selene, Mira Vex was waiting for weird.

Blake had the uncomfortable feeling she was about to get far more than she’d bargained for.

And somewhere on Naderia, Booth was definitely about to say:

“No.”

Which, Blake suspected, would not stop any of this from becoming his problem.

The robot sat in the cargo bay like a monument to regret.

Not dramatic regret. Not the cinematic kind with thunder and glowing eyes. This was quieter. More resigned. The kind of regret that sighed heavily when the lights came on and then judged the lighting.

It had positioned itself on a crate without being asked, folded its long limbs with perfect precision, and stared at nothing in particular.

Blake watched it for a moment, arms crossed.

Gunny watched it longer, helmet still on, as if the helmet might one day save him from whatever conversational horrors were coming.

The robot broke the silence.

“This ship smells like optimism and recycled air,” it said. “Both are deeply offensive.”

Gunny looked at Blake. “Can we turn it off?”

“I can hear you,” the robot added. “And no.”

Blake rubbed his face. “You don’t have an off switch?”

“I do,” the robot replied. “It is called hopelessness. It is currently unavailable.”

Aubrey, very carefully, very diplomatically, interjected. You are currently aboard a human-operated vessel. Hostile actions will not be tolerated.

The robot tilted its head. “I have no interest in hostility. It requires energy. I am conserving mine for despair.”

Gunny lowered himself onto a crate opposite it. “You’re going to fit in great.”

Before Blake could respond, Aubrey spoke again—this time with a faint shift in tone Blake had learned to recognise as something new and irritating.

While departing the planet, I detected additional anomalous signals.

Blake closed his eyes. “Of course you did.”

Gunny groaned. “Say ‘trash heap.’ Please say ‘trash heap.’”

The signals are diffuse, Aubrey continued. Low coherence. Weak energy signatures. Pattern degradation consistent with discarded or decommissioned technology.

Blake opened one eye. “You’re saying…”

“Yes,” Aubrey confirmed. An auxiliary site. Likely non-critical. Possibly waste.

Gunny broke into a grin. “Alien rubbish dump.”

The robot perked up slightly. Which was alarming.

“…Oh,” it said. “You found that.”

Blake’s head snapped around. “You know about it.”

“Yes,” the robot replied flatly. “Everyone knew about it. It was an embarrassment.”

Gunny blinked. “An embarrassment to aliens.”

“Yes,” the robot said. “Please appreciate the scale of that failure.”

Blake felt something dangerous spark behind his eyes. “Define ‘waste.’”

The robot leaned back, metallic joints whispering softly. “Define ‘waste’ in a civilisation that measured time in geological epochs and considered entire star systems ‘temporary solutions.’”

Gunny whistled. “I like this thing. It’s awful.”

Aubrey overlaid new sensor data onto the display. The second site was several kilometres away from the slab—closer to a shallow canyon system where erosion had chewed through layers of rock that clearly had not been intended to be exposed.

Blake studied the scans.

The signals were… messy.

Not elegant like the slab. Not focused. Just scattered spikes and faint emissions like technological crumbs left behind by something that had stopped caring.

“How much?” Blake asked.

Aubrey paused. Volume estimates suggest… substantial quantities.

Gunny leaned forward. “Define substantial.”

Enough to constitute an industrial salvage operation, Aubrey replied.

Blake swallowed. “Enough for Mira.”

Yes.

Gunny leaned back and laughed. “Oh, she’s going to cry.”

The robot let out a sound that might generously be described as a laugh, if one assumed laughter could be deeply resentful.

“Yes,” it said. “She will. Humans often do when they encounter things they do not deserve.”

Blake sighed. “All right. We take a look. Carefully. No activating anything. No pushing buttons. No—”

Gunny raised a hand. “No listening to the sad robot when it dares us to do something stupid?”

The robot looked offended. “I would never dare you. I would merely explain why doing nothing is worse.”

Blake pointed at it. “You’re on probation.”

“For what?” the robot asked.

“Existing,” Blake replied.

The second site was… less dignified.

Where the slab had been subtle, almost polite, this was chaos.

The Aubrey set down near the edge of a canyon that looked like it had been cut open by time and negligence. Exposed strata glimmered faintly with metallic inclusions that absolutely did not belong there. Shapes jutted out at wrong angles—curved plates, fractured conduits, half-buried frameworks that suggested once-useful objects now reduced to detritus.

Gunny stared over the edge. “That is… a lot.”

Blake stared harder. “That is a career.”

The robot stepped up beside them, peering down with visible disdain. “Ah. Yes. The decommissioning site.”

Gunny squinted. “You dumped this stuff in a hole?”

“Yes,” the robot replied. “It was cheaper than dismantling it properly.”

Blake turned slowly. “You’re telling me this is landfill.”

“Yes.”

Blake stared back into the canyon. “Alien landfill.”

“Yes.”

Gunny put his hands on his helmet. “I’m going to pass out.”

Aubrey began passive analysis at once. Materials present include semi-functional power regulators, degraded fabrication matrices, adaptive alloys, and—

“Stop,” Blake said. “Say that again, but slower.”

Aubrey obliged.

Blake’s mind raced.

None of this was complete. None of it was pristine. But that didn’t matter.

Because he didn’t need perfect.

He needed useful.

The canyon floor was littered with technological refuse that was centuries—millennia—ahead of human industry, even in its broken state. Components that no longer met alien standards but would be miraculous to anyone else.

Gunny kicked a half-buried panel experimentally. It hummed faintly and then stopped.

“…I think I just stepped on a miracle,” he said.

Blake laughed. He couldn’t help it.

It bubbled up out of him, equal parts disbelief and relief and the sheer absurdity of it all.

“We found a box,” he said. “And a depressed robot. And now an alien dump.”

The robot sniffed. “It is not a dump. It is a repository of failed aspirations.”

Gunny nodded solemnly. “Same thing.”

They descended carefully, the Aubrey deploying drones and sensor platforms ahead of them. The closer they got, the clearer it became just how much stuff was down here.

Broken manipulators. Cracked casings. Power cores drained but intact. Storage units full of components that had been discarded not because they were useless, but because they were obsolete.

Blake picked up a twisted frame that looked like it might once have been a tool of some kind.

“What was this?” he asked.

The robot glanced at it. “A phase-aligned assembly brace.”

Blake blinked. “What does it do?”

“It ensured that things were where they were supposed to be,” the robot replied. “Across multiple states of existence.”

Gunny stared. “And you threw it away.”

“It was slightly inaccurate,” the robot said. “Off by several nanoseconds.”

Blake carefully set it down. “I’m going to cry.”

They worked for hours.

Not in a rush. Not frantically. Just… steadily.

Blake catalogued. Gunny hauled. Aubrey coordinated drones with surgical precision. The robot—who insisted it was not helping—provided cutting commentary and alarming insights into what each object used to do before it became rubbish.

“This was a structural stabilizer,” it said at one point. “It failed during a transit event and caused mild inconvenience.”

Gunny frowned. “What kind of inconvenience.”

“An entire research outpost phased sideways,” the robot replied. “Very embarrassing.”

Gunny stopped moving. “Sideways where.”

“Elsewhere.”

Blake pointed. “Put that one in the ‘do not touch’ pile.”

The ‘do not touch’ pile grew alarmingly fast.

The ‘salvage’ pile grew faster.

By the time they paused to reassess, the Aubrey’s cargo holds were already approaching sensible limits.

Gunny wiped his brow. “We can’t take all of this.”

Blake nodded. “We don’t need to.”

Aubrey overlaid projections. Selective salvage will yield sufficient material to significantly advance multiple station systems. Remaining surplus would satisfy external transaction requirements.

Blake smiled slowly. “Mira is going to lose her mind.”

The robot observed them with something approaching curiosity. “You are… pleased.”

“Yes,” Blake said. “This is the good kind of problem.”

Gunny gestured at the canyon. “We found alien rubbish that could change our lives.”

The robot considered this. “…That is deeply irritating.”

Blake laughed again. “You’re welcome.”

They spent another cycle extracting the most stable, least terrifying components. Blake was careful—painfully careful—to avoid anything that hinted at autonomy, self-initiation, or reality-adjacent behaviour.

He had learned that lesson.

By the time they lifted off, the Aubrey was heavy with promise.

And still—still—there was more left behind.

Enough that Mira would have more than enough.

Enough that Blake didn’t feel like he was stripping a grave.

As they rose back into orbit, the robot stood in the cargo bay, arms folded, staring at the neatly secured crates.

“You are taking the trash,” it said.

“Yes,” Blake replied. “And we’re very grateful.”

The robot sighed. “I suppose it is better than letting it erode into nothing.”

Gunny nodded. “Welcome to salvage culture.”

Back aboard the bridge, Blake took one last look at the planet.

The slab lay hidden again.
The canyon slept.
The trash heap returned to quiet obscurity.

A forgettable planet.

Which was exactly how Blake wanted to leave it.

Aubrey plotted the return course. Destination: Selene.

Blake leaned back in his chair, exhausted and satisfied in a way that felt suspiciously like winning.

“Next time,” Gunny said, “we go somewhere normal.”

Blake smiled thinly. “We did.”

The robot tilted its head. “If this is normal for you, I understand why your species looks so tired.”

Blake laughed.

Somewhere ahead, Mira Vex was about to experience the best day of her increasingly bad life.

Somewhere behind, Naderia waited—with chalk, systems, people, and now the potential for upgrades that would make Booth suspicious for years.

Blake closed his eyes for just a moment, savouring the absurdity.

They had gone looking for alien ruins.

They had found a box, a trash heap, and a robot that hated everything.

Which meant, by all known measures, it had been an extremely successful trip.