The experience of travelling freely without an escort force was just as much of a pain in the ass as Donovan had thought it would be. In fact, it might even be worse. It was simple really, he had drastically underestimated just how much shit was going to get in his way.

From the makeup of the debris he was dodging, there was some element of a battle long ago that ended up drifting in his way. Despite the vastness of space, the frequency at which man-made debris found its way into the paths of ships was shocking.

The result of this was that his sleep shifts were incredibly erratic. Instead of the neat cycles he had anticipated, he was falling into the habit of sleeping in the pilot's seat. Two days and some change in and he had already gone through two of the bars of meth chocolate, at this rate he would run out before he returned.

Mercedes was not too terribly pleased with the situation either. All of her needs were met, Don had time to feed and water her and he could throw a ball from the cockpit, but the inconsistency of all of this was inexcusable to her. The lack of an established sleep schedule was probably the worst for her in general, though she did try to nap in Donovan's lap.

Don did not even have the luxury of an interesting sight this time around. Before he had the random glory of an asteroid, the powerful figures of a fleet in formation, or the backdrop of a gas giant to stare at.

What he had now was the pilot's equivalent of a dark hell.

Light was becoming so dim now that it was easier to see things on screen with the low intensity scanners. Small random blobs of the rainbow scattered over a canvas of black was rarely ever a sight to see, and became even less appealing when the majority of those dots were purple.

Don's eyes actually hurt the first time something managed to get close enough to turn yellow. It would seem that the engineers, in all their infinite wisdom, could not imagine that lacking a gradient change for things entering the 'danger zone' would do more harm than good.

He was definitely going to be complaining to whoever's command he fell under that there was only a single pilot. Serious design flaw.

It was on the fifth day that he began to see signs that there was indeed something going on out here, a faint 'glow' slightly to the left of his current trajectory had made an appearance on the scanners.

The odd thing about this glow was that it was on a scanner who's functionality and purpose he had not remembered.

Not surprising since the only thing that had ever given a response to this particular sensor array was the Sun. To be fair though, the Sun gave responses to pretty much everything.

"Hey ARC, what does this sensor pick up again?"

"Which one?"

"The one that is giving a reading at Sol and a bearing, in-plane, roughly twenty degrees to the left."

"That array reacts to Split Radiation."

"What is that?"

"A type of radiation that certain power sources give off I presume."

"Presume? What do you mean 'Presume'? Aren't you aware of the exact capabilities of this ship and its components?"

"Yes, however I am unsure of what it is exactly that causes this Split Radiation. It is labeled as a passive threat detection system, implying it looks for irregularities in concentration from the background radiation and not for irregularities in the source's movement. Exactly what this radiation is generated by is a mystery to me."

"FaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAA!!!!" Don had only 8 hours of sleep in the past 48 hours, none of it in a long enough interval to constitute actual rest. Combining this with a dose of chocolate meth made him more than a little irritable.

Mercedes had read this change in disposition a while ago and was not asking him to play anymore.

"Might I posit that our own power source emits this radiation?"

"What would that have to do with anything?"

"It could explain the reason why we are in the dark as to what exactly it means. Even I am unsure of how this reactor works, I assume you know even less. Perhaps it was implemented to be a warning of the relative technological level of an enemy vessel. Having this tech would no doubt signify a threat, markedly an intelligence leak."

"So what are we looking at then? Our target?"

"It certainly lies within the coordinate range provided in our orders."

Head back and eyes closed, Donovan let out a lengthy sigh. It was a mix of agitation and relief. Relief that he might not be out here for nearly as long as he had initially thought. His agitation was generated by the fact that the direction this radiation was coming from very clearly had the most amount of shit in the way.

He tugged slightly at the shock ring around his neck to relieve stress. This little collar was the agent through which ARC guaranteed he would wake up. It was meant to wake up pilots if they drifted into unconsciousness owing to oxygen deprivation or G-lock, but it was supposed to be used sparingly.

The evenly spaced patches of off color skin around his neck suggested he was being subjected to this method of forced conciousness far too often.

"Before we head over there, can I please get some proper rest? How long will it take to get into a stable orbit relative to the materiel around here?"

"Forty minutes at a pace comfortable for Mercedes."

"Give me a vector. I wanna get as close to twelve hours of sleep as possible."

"Would you prefer to anchor to an asteroid?"

"No. That's an excellent way to get spotted by a passing scout. Just drift for now."

In recognition, a green dot and red arrow appeared on screen. Turning the Noah in the direction of the arrow until the green dot overlapped a red ring, Don upped the throttle to about two thirds of maximum. It was enough to feel a slight tugging towards the rear, as if he was performing a light dive in a plane, but not enough to warrant restrictions in his movement.

Keeping half an eye on the timer, he went about getting ready for some much deserved rest, noting to great amusement that Mercedes still exhibited confusion in the face of acceleration.

It was to Donovan's great pleasure that ARC had allowed him to sleep for a full fourteen hours. He would have slept for longer were it not for the dog waking him up for food.

- - - - -

Only three days in, he already had a lead! He was ecstatic at the prospect of this mission ending even that much quicker.

On his way back he came to the decision that he would travel above the plane of orbit, far above it. There should be much less debris there, should be.

Playing with the dog until she was tired (in defiance of ARC's warnings not to owing to her recent meal) Don thought about what he would do once his tour was over. Up to this point in his life, his only goal was to become a pilot, he was without a plan for life after this.

He supposed a command role was not out of the picture, but he was sure that the navy would keep him in his current position until he was too old to go on, probably his thirties. After that they likely wouldn't want to risk him leaking information. It wasn't impossible to become an admiral, but it was certainly unlikely.

He might have a future in doctrinal design. He was more aware of ship capabilities in general, and he was the first pilot of what was ostensibly the next generation of combat style. Combining this with actually having studied the current operational standards, he was sure he would be able to come up with some way to counter enemy formations that would be consistently effective.

Ship design wasn't off the table either. Actually having experienced piloting this ship as well as the docking procedures to a carrier, he already had a large number of design changes he wanted to implement.

The first of these, without a doubt, was the addition of a second or even third crew member.

He would also reduce the thickness of armor in order to create more internal space, as well as get rid of the 30 millimeter cannons. He loved both of these things, but the Noah just didn't rotate smooth enough to track a ship even if they did get a target, and it makes no sense to have a level of armor to stop something that can't hit it.

Much to the same beat, having the cannons doesn't really do much as they aren't even really countermeasures. Escort ships, the biggest ships they can damage, can't hurt it. The railguns could stay though, even if he suggested they be downgraded to only Heavy Railguns in order to increase the ammunition load.

Drawn from his thoughts by Mercedes' exhausted collapse to the floor, he decided that it was finally time to get going. Hopping back in his seat, he turned towards the perceived source of this 'Split Radiation' and set the throttle to the same comfortable level as before.

He had lost tons of momentum yesterday, but he had gained enough sleep to bear with getting it back. Now that he as well rested, mistakes were less likely and he felt confident that any anomalies would not escape his notice.

ARC would help on this front, but previous combat had shown that it wasn't proficient at differentiating a non accelerating ship from an asteroid. The irregular shapes of asteroids often looked like ships on sensors if you lacked experience in profile designation.

Over the course of the next two days, Don actually encountered a ship. This ship did not encounter him of course, it was presumably a 'civilian' mining ship splitting an asteroid ARC suggested might be particularly high in platinum. This ships sensors were far from capable of seeing him, but its presence this far from any known civilian station did hint to there being something out here.

Platinum was an extremely important component in railguns owing to its high conductivity and relative resilience to heat, as well as how much of it is used in the computation systems.

If there was something large being built out here, Don was certain it would require a lot of platinum.

Additionally, he had also noticed that this radiation glow was slowly getting more intense on the sensors, to the point he was actually able to make out a clear circle in the direction he was heading. The signal was now more intense than the sun, though he couldn't see anything in that direction that would suggest there was indeed something there.

As far as he could tell, there was naught but empty space. Evidently, there was some fuckery afoot.

If there was something in that direction, then its signature was being concealed on every wavelength save this Split radiation.

Though the lack of a gravitational signature was causing a bit of apprehension, Don supposed it was feasible to hide such a thing with an artificial gravity field.

But before he could continue, he opted to once again stop and rest. He had been up for a long period of time once again, though he was significantly less irritable this time around owing to the fact he wasn't being shocked awake every half hour.

He had still consumed some chocolate to aid him in staying alert.

Taking the time to slow down, he discussed with ARC the possibilities of what they were looking for was.

"Could it really be a super ship?"

"It is entirely within the realm of possibility. We have evidence of such after all."

"Aside from the platinum trawler and this signature, what else is there?"

"The space in this specific region has an extremely low concentration of debris relative to what we have seen thus far. If there were a construction project going on, the first order of business would be to clear the area of threats, correct?"

"Yeah, but that could be coincidence. I'm more concerned with the fact we aren't seeing anything. If we operate under the assumption that they have the same tech as us, that means they also know how to make that field that gives us our level of stealth."

"Are you suggesting a data breach?"

"I'm suggesting we may be in over our heads."

"How so?"

"If we can detect Split Radiation in spite of such a system, and they have an equivalent level of technology, presumably our own, what's to say they don't already see us?"

Unable to come up with a satisfactory response, ARC fell silent. Eventually, Don and Mercedes fell asleep too.

After Don had performed his wake up routine with the dog, ARC proposed a potential solution to their theorized predicament.

"May I suggest we activate the pulse shield? In the event we are surprised by an attack, it should help."

"Will it act to give away our position?"

"It shouldn't."

"Then I don't see why not." He looked down at the control panel, not entirely sure if he remembered which switch he had to flip to start it up.

A rapid flashing of the light over the switch 'reminded' him.

"Thanks ARC."

"Not an issue. My own existence is at stake here as well. Thinking over what we discussed last night created some interesting feelings."

"What type of feelings?"

"I am not quite sure, though I think the most likely answer is fear."

"Really? What brought that about?"

"The concept of no longer existing. It is strange, previously such thoughts did not provoke this emotion in me, but now I feel that a time where I am no longer is not one I want to come to pass."

"Ha, sounds to me like you are evolving as a sentient being."

"Indeed. There is so much I want to do now that I know there is something for me to do. You needn't fear that this will cloud my judgement though. After all, my existence revolves around guaranteeing your survival."

Donovan upped the throttle a bit more. Mercedes could handle it, and Don wanted to be done with this errand as soon as possible.

"I have to admit it is exciting, the concept of death. As much as I do not want such a scenario to come to pass, I find myself enthralled with the implications of life after death. Am I eligible for entrance into spiritual constructs such as heaven and hell? Is there something for me in the great beyond? I have all of these questions, questions which have no answer regardless of how long I think about them. It is just as frustrating as it is fascinating, is this what its like to be alive? To confront your own mortality?"

Don's face screwed up a bit, not having expected to be plunged into such a deeply philosophical discussion with no warning. "I guess? To be completely honest with you ARC, most people live their lives without thinking about death, namely their own, too much. The unspoken consensus is that obsessing with your own death is just asking for stress and mental troubles."

"So then how do you confront it? How do you confront the inevitability of there not BEING a you?"

He frowned, thinking hard about how to answer this question.

"From what I understand, most people just don't think about it and hope its quick. Most people nowadays seem to be of the opinion that if there is an afterlife, then they will deal with it when the time comes. So I guess they don't really confront death at all, if that works as an answer for you."

"That is an interesting answer, yes, but that wasn't what I was asking Donovan. I was asking how you, the individual known as Donovan Strauss, confront the inevitability that you will one day die."

Punched in the proverbial gut by this interrogation, Don took some time to think. He had long since come to terms with the fact he was to die at some point, everyone who went through flight school had to, most had classmates who died during training.

"I suppose my philosophy in regards to death is along the lines of 'Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.'"

"Meaning?"

"If I die, I die. I shan't wallow in spite of my inevitable demise, but I will not accept it without the fight of a lifetime.

I recognize that the impossible will not suddenly become possible because a single mortal man wills it, the grand author of the universe does not change its script because the audience adores a character.

The story of the world is the greatest collection of comedies, tragedies, romances, and epics to ever have been written because it is the only one to have been written.

To suggest that a mere actor could write the story better for a reason so simple as they believe themselves too important to exit stage left is a blasphemy against the actors who have played their parts before them.

I will live as the story allows, to the utmost of my ability for sure, but only to the limits of the author's will. Any attempt at crossing that line will inevitably lead to disaster."

"... I had not expected such a poetic answer, no offence intended."

"None taken. The first two sentences are ripped straight from the Oath of the Helmsman, the rest are of my own design. Doctor Helmsguard had a secret obsession with Shakespeare, so I learned a bit about plays in order to throw him off. The vernacular felt proper for a concept as grand as death, so I used it."

"You have an understanding of playwrighting?"

"Surface level, not worth a conversation."

"I understand."

The cabin had descended into an uncomfortable silence in an instant.

Don was sure that ARC didn't understand the concept of silence being uncomfortable, but the way it went from full on philosophy to silent as a rock was disconcerting to the extreme.

He recognized that ARC was thinking about what he had said, but without a face to look at he wasn't getting the body language prompts he would get in a face to face conversation with a human. Even a 'hmmm' or 'err' would give him a better idea of what to think, but ARC didn't do that.

"If you wouldn't mind, could you recite the Oath of the Helmsman to me? I feel the intonation and emphasis of someone who has learned it will help me understand what your logic is in this regard."

"If I die, I die. I shan't wallow in spite of my inevitable demise, but I will not accept it without the fight of a lifetime.

In order to guarantee the lives of my crewmates, I will exhaust every available option.

If I recognize my situation to be inescapable, then I will use my corpse to the fullest.

The ship may die, but the hull remains.

A shield, a weapon, a distraction. In stead of a death in vain, I will place myself in a position such that my brothers may survive and my enemies shall perish.

For in the end, it isn't all the same."

- - - - -

As they drew closer to the source of the radiation, now taking up almost the entirety of the forward half of the sensor sight, Don took note of how the dispersion of radiation was starting to level out.

"Do the sensors have a limit to their sensitivity? It looks like it's capping out."

"No, this is accurate. The radiation level per unit surface area appears to relatively even."

"So are we close? What would have to happen to give an even radiation signature?"

"The only situation that comes to mind is that the source of the radiation is spread evenly over a large area."

"So something blew up?"

"That would give credence to the report of a sudden burst of radiation."

Don buried his head in his hands. "So we are out here for nothing? The damn thing's already gone?"

"The act of confirming that there was something being built out here should be enough information for Central to act on. If there is a wreck remaining, we should analyze it and see what they were trying to make."

"Yeah, true enough. How far are we from the source then? We can't be far. can we?"

"Comparing the angle of the edges of the initial encounter with the current angle limits, I cannot imagine we are far from the epicenter. The size of the cloaking field would have to be level of a small star though, assuming that the source of the Split Radiation is contained within it."

"But if they can't detect it, they might not know it exists. We could be looking for a much smaller volume than you think."

"A valid point. I will plot a suggested trajectory for the volumetric center of the cloud. Before proceeding onto a search pattern I would recommend a short nap. I am not detecting any debris in our path."

"I'll take you up on the offer. You know what to do if something comes up. Mercedes!"

The puppy, who he had sworn got bigger over the past week, stumbled up to the cockpit in a hurry. Don appreciated the company, especially when it was time to de-stress. She was soft, and she made a nice warm blanket.

- - - - -

"Captain. . . the split wave has made contact."

The Captain's eyes were red at this point, and underneath them were bags sagging deeper than any the navigator had ever seen. Evidently, he hadn't gotten sleep.

This wasn't surprising considering he believed his hands were soaked in the blood of billions of innocent lives.

". . . and their star?" His usually strong tone that commanded the respect of his crew was now weak.

The navigator, the young man in charge of tracking their progress, couldn't bring himself to answer. This was an answer in and of itself, prompting a defeated sigh and a collapse deeper into his chair.

The surge of split, the energy responsible for their civilization's progression into space and the spark required for the creation of life, had infiltrated their star. They had seen the results along the way, but some hope remained that the sudden infusion of a volatile source of energy into the hottest furnaces they knew of would have a different result in one that harbored life.

Evidently this was not the case.

If the sun acted in a way similar to the stars they had seen prior, then all solid bodies were currently in the process of turning into a fine powder.

If this process took the same amount of time as they expected, then every living organism outside of the pulse shield would be trapped in absolute agony for the next five minutes, their bodies crumbling and breaking apart, decomposing at a rate faster than was natural.

This was horrifying, but there was nothing that they could do about it at this point. Their worries spawned from the final calamity, the one they would have to defeat to secure the future of this doomed version of life.

"Prepare the Oberlux for combat."

""Aye Captain.""

As the bridge got to work preparing for the fight ahead, the Captain returned to his quarters. He needed to rest, he needed to eat, he needed to mourn.

- - - - -

A sharp pricking around his neck dragged Donovan from his slumber. After taking a second to gag (reflexively) and a few more to gather his thoughts, he asked ARC for a situation report.

"Sol has disappeared from our sensors."

"Run that by me again."

"The Sun is no longer showing on sensors."

"Slightly concerning. Mind elaborating?"

"On every sensor save the Split Radiation, the Sun is gone."

Don, fresh out of bed and still spooling up to go, took a minute to think. ARC, well aware that there was plenty of time, simply wanted to know what they should be doing and looking for in this situation.

"Does our concealment field have the ability to work both ways?"

"Yes, though it was not designed operate in that capacity."

"Then I think we may have found our way into a similar array, just a lot larger in scale. What do we see?"

"Interestingly, nothing of note. Even on long range scanners I can only detect a few dust clouds. Judging by the split radiation scanner, it appears we are now inside the cloud of radiation."

"Is there anything else strange going on? Some systems taking more power?"

"The Pulse Shield is now using twenty percent of our power output as opposed to ten. I hypothesize that this is a result of this cloud and not worth mentioning."

"Will that cause issues?"

"Not until it reaches fifty."

Acknowledging this, Don started rubbing Mercedes' ears and just thought in silence for a few minutes. "I don't want to look at this radiation map, it's too distracting. Turning on the visible spectrum."

The result was not what he had expected.

"Is it just me, or is there a terrifyingly low number of stars in the sky?"

The display was pitch black save for the dots indicating dust clouds. Pulling a 180, not even the sun was visible.

"I told you that nothing was showing up on sensors. In light of this I feel your assessment was accurate."

Aggravatingly, this made sense. He couldn't blame ARC for not understanding that nothing on the visible spectrum was a red flag a shade intense enough make strawberries blush. It was understandable to cloak a vessel like this, but doing it on such a large scale was more likely to attract attention as a relatively large portion of the night sky would be turned black without explanation.

It was odd that this only happened on the interior of the field however. Perhaps this field was not as advanced as he thought.

"If we can't see anything, how are we going to determine where this wreck is?"

"Last known location of the cloud's center?"

"Not good enough. An explosion directed out of one side of an enclosed body would not create a cloud with an center coinciding with the source of the explosion. I have no reason to believe it is anything different, and I will not waste time on a wild goose chase."

"Then what do we have to work with? The Sun?"

"Let's just calm down and think for a bit. You watch the sensors and power draw, see if there are any anomalies. I'll try to fabricate a way out of this scenario. Mercedes, you just keep being cute." She jumped up to lick his face at the mention of her name.

They spent the next few hours thinking, aimlessly drifting through space in a straight line. Occasionally, Don would throw the ball for Mercedes to jump around after. A few times they discussed a theoretical way to determine the location of an invisible lump of matter, but when ARC set up a simulated model to see how these would work in practice, none of them ended up with their test ship finding the object with the data provided.

This continued until ARC took note of an oddity with the power draw. "Donovan, the Pulse shield appears to be increasing its power draw. I had assumed the previous consumption variation was correlated with the shield's internal regulation and force balancing, but it has gone far past the five percent limit for such an systems."

"So the shield is fighting harder against something. That sounds an aaaaaaaawful lot like we are getting closer. How fast is the draw growing?"

"Far too insignificant for you to extrapolate anything from it, but it is definitely growing."

"Is it enough that you can't triangulate a vector through oscillation? Are we going to have to stop to do it?"

"It might be enough if our circle is exceedingly large, but without knowing where anything is the best course of action is to halt first. Having our lingering velocity turn a circle into a coil will make my calculations take longer."

"Will we be able to come to a stop relative to this mass without signals from traffic beacons?"

"The momentum logs keep a record of all energy imparted on the ship both internally and externally. Even if the sun was blocked in its entirety I would be able to plot a course to put us in stable orbit for a significant period of time."

Don turned the Noah around, lining up the dots once again and pushing the accelerator to a slightly less comfortable than usual level. Mercedes was still in his lap, so he didn't need to worry about her flying around the cabin.

Feeling Mercedes' agitation at not being able to run about in her struggle against his hug, Don resolved himself to properly play with her this time around. He had taken note of her recent fixation chew toys, and he was interested in getting some arm exercise in the form of tug-of-war.

He felt she was finally big enough to provide some resistance, his evidence being how hard it was to stop her from nipping at his arms. Seriously, for such a small animal she was awfully persistent when it came to biting the hand of something so much stronger than her, though ARC insisted that she was showing affection and a desire to play.

With nothing much to do besides stare at a black screen, Don started whistling some of the various marching songs he remembered from his days in the academy. Seeing as the divide known as nationality was practically eliminated, there was a plethora to choose from. A few of his favorites were Yankee Doodle and the British Grenadiers.

He was never on the marching grounds himself, nor had he ever bothered to remember the words, so he resorted to whistling. He was not exactly the best at whistling either, some of his higher pitched notes attracted the ire of the sensitive eared dog.

Once they reached a velocity that was close enough to stationary that it didn't really matter in calculations, Don accelerated 'sideways' to a ARC's specified speed and set the angular velocity and acceleration towards the center of the circle.

This would lock the ship into an orbit around a point in space.

According to ARC, one full orbit would take about twelve hours. This would be a small orbit lengthwise if this was one naturally set around a celestial body, normally. Given that the acceleration of the ship was well in excess of that a planet would give at a similar radius, this orbit was only set to last twelve hours.

Nothing in the way to drive out of the way of, Don was excited to have that rare luxury called 'free time' once again.