Leanne intensely regretted her outburst. It was not in her manner. The BASE had drilled professionalism into her from a young age. As a child tailing her parents then all the way into her adulthood as a legal liaison, she had learnt how to behave, how to act, how to speak. In these days of political trouble between Earth and Mars, a single wrong comment could spark disaster. Nerio had made no secret of its intensifying secession from BASE control; it had formed its own committees and boards and Krasnoyarsk feared it would be entirely independent in the coming years. One day, there might even be a Martian Space Agency to rival theirs.

Leanne considered all of this as she sat in Malinowska's quarters and mopped the blood from her face. When the worst was off, she undressed and examined every bruise and scar Phaethon had marred her with. It could have been far worse. She could have died, could have had her throat slashed open by those awful barbs. Ryan, the insolent Nerio astronaut, had saved her. And now the Martian must be cursing her name for how Leanne had spoken to her.

Embarrassed, dreading the interaction, Leanne climbed down from Malinowska's quarters and ventured to the cockpit – this time, through the main corridors and not the vent system. She heard Ryan's voice as she crossed that stomach-rolling clear tunnel into the bridge. Leanne thought the woman was talking to herself until the crisp tone of Valkyrie responded.

"I can't see anything wrong with him," Ryan said. "His circuits aren't fried, the wiring is intact, apart from where I disabled him. Nothing malfunctioned internally."

"The signal came from outside Phaethon," Valkyrie said.

"Certainly not from Imperium. I've been working solidly with him to try and isolate it."

Leanne stopped in the doorway, arms crossed over her chest. Phaethon was laid out on a central deck, metallic legs splayed and antennae laying on the floor. Ryan searched its artificial innards, poking around indelicately and hacking away at synthetic connections. To Leanne's surprise, an image shifted on a screen nearby, displaying Phaethon's insides like a bizarre ultrasound.

"The signal came from inside this ship," Leanne said. Ryan turned to her. A curl of hair bounced into her eyes and she blew it away.

"Ziegler, I didn't hear you come in," she said.

"Me and Cliff both heard it," Leanne continued, stepping closer but still keeping a wide berth from Phaethon. She did not entirely trust that it would not spring back to life again, or that Ryan wouldn't shock it to do so. "There was interference on our lines and for a brief second, Mandala registered that the signal came from inside this ship."

"From in here?" Ryan straightened and flicked the probe in her hand towards the ceiling. "That's your area, Valkyrie."

"I have no record of any signal, Ryan," Valkyrie said. "Perhaps it was human error."

"Human error," Leanne scoffed. Had Malinowska been reading 2001 or had Valkyrie? It sounded more and more like HAL with every word.

"Humans make more errors than computers," Ryan agreed with Valkyrie. "It's why we're run by Imperium and not by some committee back in Krasnoyarsk."

Leanne had wondered how long it would take for Ryan to mention Martian independence. "Your colony is run entirely by Imperium?"

"Yep."

"A synthetic computer could not understand the human nature of this."

"Well, he's done a good job so far, and he sent me up to minimise risk and to help you. You're welcome, by the way. For saving your life."

Despite what she had vowed to herself, Leanne could not bring herself to be civil to Ryan and she knew that was childish. But Ryan had not given her a reason to trust her, or be polite to her, yet.

"How did you get Valkyrie to work with you?" she asked instead. "It allowed Phaethon back into the ship and has not told me anything of what's happened or what this vessel is."

Ryan chuckled as she returned to Phaethon, removing another circuit and rooting around again. "She might respond more if you call her 'she' instead of 'it'. I forget that the BASE does not refer to their AIs with the proper pronouns."

"Well, it... She hasn't given me cause to think of her as anything near to human or...animal or anything other than a selection of wires."

"Hm." Ryan was obviously not listening. "I don't think there's anything more I can find out about Phaethon. I'll send him back to Imperium to be checked over, but that's all."

"That's all? It killed my commander!"

"You blame Nerio for his death, don't you?" Ryan stood again, hand on her hip. She tilted her head curiously at Leanne, frustratingly calm in the face of this madness. "That's not you speaking as an investigator. You know that the signal did not come from Imperium or from Nerio. We could not have predicted that. If your friend hadn't died, you would not have entirely held us to blame."

Leanne opened her mouth to argue, but she knew, deeply, that Ryan was correct. She had seen that the signal had come from inside the Chimera. There was no use in quarrelling with Ryan, traipsing around and around in circles, when Valkyrie, the caretaker of the Chimera, should have known the source. And Valkyrie had remained quiet, again.

"I'm sorry about Commander Buchanan," Ryan said. "Nerio and Imperium will of course give testimony in any tribunal. But now, I need to find out what this ship is. Otherwise my superiors will vaporise it and we'll never know what it is or what it's doing here."

"You don't think it's a BASE probe sent to spy on you?"

"Why would I think that? Because I'm a 'fucking Martian' who suspects the BASE at every second? The BASE could not build a ship like this."

"We built Nerio. That was our colony before it was yours. Your foremothers were BASE astronauts. And anyway, Valkyrie says this ship is registered to the BASE."

Ryan frowned. Yes, Leanne thought, there are things you don't know. "Is that so?" Ryan asked. "What else do you know about this ship?"

Leanne fought the stupid notion not to tell Ryan; she reminded herself that they were meant to be allies here. "Not much. I haven't managed to access many areas. I've found the crew's quarters and know their names, and I see that the centrifuge is turning, but that's about it. I don't know what it's powered by, what its purpose is or how it came to be here."

"Did you power up the centrifuge?"

"No. It did it itself." Or Valkyrie started it. "When I was in the commander's quarters, I saw where I assume the centrifuge is accessed from. I meant to investigate it but Phaethon..." Leanne looked at the destroyed probe. Phaethon had stood in the way of many things, but it was gone. What stood in her way now? Valkyrie? Ryan? Herself? "I can try and access it."

"That's a plan. You access the centrifuge and I'll try and re-establish comms with Nerio and the BASE."

"I've had no luck so far."

"You're not from Mars."

Leanne decided not to dignify that with a comment. She left Ryan, hoping she was also leaving Valkyrie behind as she climbed back through the transparent tunnel and into the labyrinth of the Chimera's central spine. From the exterior, all appeared to be simple and straight but inside, everything had been chopped and split into various compartments with T-junctions and access corridors sprouting in each direction.

Leanne abandoned all rationality – what was rational about this secretive ship? – and relied on her gut, clambering up levels when she could and looking for any signage. There was none; this area, she had come to determine, was for a crew who knew the vessel intimately. She reckoned, even after years on Helios, she would still lose herself in its tunnels.

So what kind of crew manned this ship? A small one, judging by the few names in their quarters. But who needed people when Valkyrie could do everything? Such a progression had happened centuries ago with the foremothers of these starships: when sail became steam, so many men were not needed to hand, reef and steer. Expanding technology had always eaten the work of humans. Ryan seemed comfortable with it. Leanne was not so sure.

She wondered about the strange Martian woman. Leanne had expected her to bite her head off for her comment and disregard of her planet. It seemed to have barely touched her. Perhaps she stored it away for some later argument, would hold it over her when there was something she didn't want to do. That was what Charlie would have done. Still, Ryan had given herself the hard job: reawakening comms on a bizarre ship like this would not be easy.

"But I'm not from Mars," Leanne said to herself. It made her skin tighten. She hated arrogance. Arrogance got you killed in space. Not treating the stars with the awe and respect they deserved was a sure-fire way to die amongst them.

It was a mantra she had always adhered to. Perhaps it had meant she had not had such an exciting life as others, choosing administration and paperwork over being the vanguard of exploration and discovery, but it also meant she had survived this long in the dangerous world of the BASE. So far.

Leanne shook the thought from her head and ascended another ladder, pulling herself through into one more access way. As she sat at the lip of the hatch, catching her breath and almost bemoaning the loss of micro-gee, she looked aft. She expected to see another passage, sleek and practical, but instead, the ship surprised her.

The corridor ended a few feet away. Cutting it off was a great, metal, thick bulkhead.

Leanne tried to work out where she now sat in the blueprint of the Chimera. She had walked and climbed and double-backed so many times, she thought she would end up in the cockpit again. This was not the cockpit. This was something new.

Slowly, she got to her feet and approached the portal. It did not look like the rest of the doors which rose up into the ceiling. This one was round, reminding Leanne of the old submarine hatches with complex mechanisms. She looked for a way to open it and found a hefty, intimidating latch next to a coded entry lock. There seemed to be no slot for a key-card, only a manual fastener which Leanne did not know how to even begin tampering with. No human had locked this down, she thought. There were no bolts or clamps over the latch, just a computer-manipulated system.

This had to be the entry to the centrifuge. What else would be locked down so severely?

Curious, Leanne approached the door and raised her hands. At the last moment, she hesitated. But there seemed to be no force emitting from the door, no warning signs that it was tripped with electricity or some other deterrent. She took a breath and laid her palms against the cold metal. A firm shove showed it had no give whatsoever, and a quaint knock did not echo hollowly. This was thick, failsafe protection – for whatever existed on the other side.

"Valkyrie," she tried. "Can this door be opened?"

"Hello, Miss Ziegler," the AI stated. "I'm sorry, that action cannot be performed."

"I didn't think so. What's behind it?"

"That is classified information."

"I'm here to investigate this classified information, Valkyrie. It would really help me if you gave me some aid, like you're doing to Ryan."

"Ryan is operating within my parameters, Miss Ziegler."

"And it isn't within your parameters to let me know what is behind this door?"

"That is correct."

Leanne paused and tried a different approach. Ryan had obviously found the correct way to speak to Valkyrie; what Leanne had learnt about the basic AIs on Helios and Endymion was that it was all about the input. "Who are you, Valkyrie? What is your purpose on this ship?"

"I am Valkyrie, the voice of the quantum computer caretaker of the Arcadia."

Leanne's stomach rolled as if she had just made a misstep. "The...Arcadia?"

"Yes. This ship."

"This ship is called the Arcadia?" Leanne breathed out. It was a small piece of information, but beyond all that she had discovered so far, and all that she had managed to get out of Valkyrie. "This ship is called the Arcadia," she repeated. "And what... What is the mission of the Arcadia?"

"That is classified information."

She had pushed her luck again. But that drip of knowledge and the taste of its promise made her thirsty for more. For the first time, she felt a drive to push forward, to discover the truth behind this enigma. She told herself she had done it many times before, countless investigations and cases. This was that, only magnified by a hundred. She could do it.

In her own way, she could do it.

Word count: 2200
Overall: 13,961

Hope you enjoyed this chapter! This time's shoutout goes to Don't Look Back by Carolyn_Hill. It's a beautiful romance full of some amazing ace and demi representation.