Bridge 1, command deck: at the bottom of the rabbit (hell)hole
The console screen blinked blankly at them. For the third time in an hour.
The bridge was dim once more. After the initial rush of logs, most of the screens had returned to standby, as if the ship herself was catching her breath after remembering too much, too fast.
Belck sighed through his nose—the kind of sigh that suggested deep, philosophical disappointment—and ran another query, his fingers dancing across the console with the grim precision of a man defusing a bomb. "Still nothing in the main records," he muttered, tapping a few more keys like he could shame the machine into obedience.
"Maybe that’s it, then," Neer offered, spinning lazily in his chair. "The gallant Morgenstern survived the perils of uncharted space, angry Corsairs, and supply shortages, but not, tragically, the rigors of regular data backups."
Belck drummed his fingers against the console, thinking. "No. No, it's too clean. Even on a dying ship, you'd expect corrupted logs. Half-written files. Ghost entries. Not... nothing." Belck nodded slowly. "Unless..." He trailed off, squinting thoughtfully at the console. "Unless the logs were moved. Not erased—just... misplaced."
"Misplaced," Neer echoed, deadpan. "Like a pair of socks."
"Like encrypted military socks," Belck corrected grimly, already diving back into the console. "Old Rheinland emergency protocols sometimes scatter critical files into obscure system caches. Some sort of desperate 'save it anywhere' function. Or bad coding. It's a fine line."
"Marvellous," Schmidt said dryly. "We’re hunting for the navy’s lost laundry."
"Better than hunting ghosts," Neer pointed out.
They bent over the console again, the frustration slowly ebbing into cautious anticipation as Belck tunneled through deeper, dustier layers of the ship’s memory—past user directories, past maintenance logs, into the ancient, half-forgotten domains reserved for dead diagnostics and ghost systems.
Fifteen long minutes passed, punctuated only by the soft clicks of keys.
Then—A sharp beep. A flicker.
Belck froze. His eyes widened, gleaming like a man who had just stumbled across treasure under his bed.
"Found something," he breathed.
Schmidt leaned in. "Please tell me it’s not a vintage software update."
Belck grinned like a schoolboy caught raiding the jam cupboard. "Nope. Logs. Hidden deep in a diagnostics buffer tied to the lower auxiliary power grid."
They stared at the blinking folder on the screen—simple, unassuming, and more precious than gold.
"Well, gentlemen," Schmidt said, clapping Belck on the back, "looks like the old girl still has a few ghost stories left."
The folder opened, and a list of logs scrolled into view—timestamps stretching almost a year beyond the last entry they'd seen and scattered across the months like footprints leading through a wasteland.
The first file blinked invitingly: "Maintenance & Discretionary Survival Measures – Captain’s Summary, Month 12."
They exchanged a look.
“Could be good,” Neer ventured.
“Could be awful,” Belck countered.
“Could be both,” Schmidt concluded, reaching for the console.
He hesitated just a fraction of a second—then pressed play.
The bridge lights dimmed again, and the voice of Klaus von Tanner filled the air—older and wearier—ready to tell the rest of his story.
