The bridge was glowing with a faint light. It wasn't a big thing, but every panel along the wall was suddenly lit by the screens coming to life as well as the buttons and knobs having glowing lights within them. Overhead, the dome itself had what appeared to be a ring of lights flowing around it, glowing softly to provide more illumination. It wasn't bright, but more like emergency lighting.

"Holy fuck!" Vanessa exclaimed, taking in the sight once their eyes adjusted to the light.

"Damn, this is amazing!" Agreed Pepper.

"I guess I pressed the right button, huh?" Nessa laughed.

"Maybe? Or maybe the bridge was in a standby mode and waiting for something to be used? If the engines were never damaged, this whole ship could still be functional." Pepper thought aloud.

"Yeah, except for the giant hole." Nessa joked.

"True. That means those smaller ships are probably all functional too. The weapons took out all of the living aliens, leaving the ships intact."

"But something destroyed that other ship." Nessa pointed out.

Pepper sighed in frustration. "Yeah, but we don't know what. We may need to bring Lena over here. Or any of the pilots really, they would understand a bridge more than we do."

"Do you think this one can move?" Vanessa stared around in wonder.

Pepper joined her in gazing at her surroundings. "No, I don't think so. If the enemy knew how to destroy the ship in one shot, then over where the hole is was probably where the flight controls were. But that doesn't mean that a lot of the instruments can't still be used. We may be able to do a lot with that."

"Do you really think this is a colony ship of some sort?" Vanessa asked quietly.

"I do. Unless they were running an interstellar cruise ship while packing weapons, it is the most likely explanation I have." Pepper theorized.

"Then let's say you're colonizing a new planet. You'd bring a lot of information from your home world, right? Cultural information, technical documents and specifications, you name it!" Nessa was getting excited at the prospect of learning more than they ever could have by just grabbing a few weapons. "This is where the real wealth is."

Pepper sat back and realized she was right, there should be so much information accessible to them right here. They didn't even need to explore the rest of the ship! "So, we need to let everyone else in on this, right?" She asked nervously.

Vanessa thought about it for a moment. Normally, she would have already been calling her father about the discovery, but his actions lately, and even before in talks about destroying ships to leave nothing to other companies, made her hesitate. "I think we need to, but not yet. I want to see if we can get the information ourselves first. Maybe we take some pictures and show them to Lena first and see if she can help. Or, if we're lucky, she can come over again with us after Emily is done with her work."

"This information needs to be saved," Pepper decided aloud.

"Right. That is why we're keeping it quiet for now."

"Well, let's go see what all of the different screens show, it might give some clues about what we're dealing with."

As they moved about the room, they studied each of the screens. Most showed some sort of data readout, though without understanding the language and numbers it wasn't possible to know what they were measuring or displaying. One panel on the far side had several screens, each of which had a view from a different camera, and the girls stared at it, entranced. One camera showed their ship, another the planet below. Two showed views of space, most likely above and below the ships, and the last two showed views both fore and aft in the ring itself. The forward view was trained on the smaller ships in front, and the large bulk of the ruined ship beyond.

Pepper examined the controls around the screens, each had a small dial next to it, with a soft blue light glowing from within. Picking the dial next to the screen showing the forward view, she tentatively turned it clockwise. Little by little, the view zoomed in until they were looking right into the hull of the other ship. The ruins were impressive, but it was clear that Miles would need to cut through some of the sealed doorways to find anything of use in there. Most of the ship looked completely wrecked.

"These cameras are better than ours. A lot better!" Vanessa commented as she zoomed the camera pointed at Uranus into the icy clouds.

"You know, we should recommend that this ship be refurbished and made into a base. I bet it wouldn't be too hard to get crew quarters and everything set up here. Having power already set up would help a lot."

"And it would make sure that all of the information is kept safe!" Nessa agreed.

Pepper nodded her head in agreement. "I still want to try and get the information ourselves though."

Vanessa switched her attention to the camera facing their ship and zoomed the camera in to see what detail could be made out. She immediately dialed the camera back out though when she zoomed in on a naked Emily straddling Xavier on the bridge. "Well, I guess we're not the only ones in the mood!" she muttered.

"We can just pretend we didn't see that, right?"

"Oh yeah, definitely!" Vanessa was sure her face was beet red, and thankfully hidden by the mask after that!

"Okay, let's keep moving, maybe some of the other panels have something to show us!" Pepper suggested.

The remaining screens did have quite a bit to show, but none of it made sense to them. There were several screens with graphs and bar charts, and even more with data readouts, but none of them were decipherable, and were therefore useless. But then they came to a screen with a keyboard. Each key had a different character on it, just like the keyboards they were used to. It seemed obvious that this was for entering some sort of commands, but they weren't sure what. Of course, they still had no idea how to translate anything, so they couldn't do much.

Pepper picked a few random buttons which generated some sort of word in black text on the white background, and then pressed one of the slightly larger keys on the right-hand side, where she would expect an Enter key to be. Nothing happened. She pressed one of the other larger ones, and the cursor dropped to the next line, spitting out a line of blue colored words. Was that an error message? Did she do something right?

"Well, you did something," Vanessa commented. "But I have no idea what!"

"I probably shouldn't do any more, I might fire a weapon or something." Pepper grumbled.

"So, there are all kinds of stations here, at least a dozen, what kinds of things would you need on the bridge of an interstellar space craft?"

Pepper considered her answer, trying to think of what advanced technology could be available to the race that had built the amazing craft she was inside. "Okay, let's assume the pilot's chair and captain were where the hole is."

"Makes sense." Vanessa concurred.

"So, using our terms, they need some sort of radar, life support, communications, and navigation. That seems like a base level to have. The keyboard could have been a research station, and they could have other panels for machinery like condensers and oxygen recovery. If they were here to resupply something from the atmosphere, that could be another station, and if they're really advanced then there could be something like gravity generators too."

"That's a lot!"

"Oh, and did you notice that the bunk room had the beds going in every direction?" Pepper asked, excited.

"Yeah, it was pretty messy," Nessa acknowledged.

"Right! We always have our bunks situated in the same direction and they rotate and cushion you against the g force. Maybe their ships have a way to negate that. They'd almost have to in order to bring kids, right? So, there should be a panel for that too."

Vanessa just looked at Pepper, a smile stretched across her face. How lucky was she that Pepper had found the photos and brought them to her? Little observations like that made so much sense when they're pointed out, but she saw it after one day in a single room.

"Oh! And there could be hydroponics somewhere too! Maybe they were bringing plants from their world if they have a specialized diet? And damage control! That would be good to find, it might have the ship schematics with airtight hatches and all!" Pepper continued, oblivious to Nessa staring at her.

"I think you made your point!" Vanessa laughed. Now, let's get back to the ship, I think we need to run some of these pictures past Lena.