Author: Aubrey Williams

You can practically hear the metal creaking, the knocking of lost air-locks and forgotten corridors, as you pass through the graveyard. It’s the Cemetery; replete with hulks, a collection of battle-blasted wrecked vehicles on the dull edge of the nebula. People have conflicting accounts of whether it was a battlefield or simply a place that different authorities agreed to dump the dreadnoughts they didn’t want to keep. Perhaps ships that flew under different flags simply wound-up here, lost, or maybe they were lured here, killed together by some frightening and unknown power. I venture no comment; other than I find it inherently uncomfortable.

Now, our last salvage run— it was different.

Usually we go to places all the salvagers, rust-pickers, and artefact-hunters collectively agree are safe enough. The Cemetery is so far away, and so unsettling, that it’s considered bizarre if not insane to journey there. My captain— I’m her navigator— was paid a substantial sum by a peculiar trio to take them there, and to look for something specific. A ship with a white underside with decompression damage. Its shape, if intact enough for one, was that of a cigar tube. We murmured when she told us, and all felt the same cold shudders, but it was too tempting to decline.

We were up on the deck, a little bulbous tear on top of the vessel, the passengers practically touching the glass. So many shattered bodies hung in the space around us, huge torn pieces of metal jaggedly hanging in the void. Perhaps there were bodies still in some of the craft. By now they’d be husks, entombed in this uncanny flotsam. There’s something about it, species irrelevant, a forcible imagining of ghost-breath and inexplicable activity.

The trio were, as I said, interesting. An old fellow, bent and gnarled with age, gazed out from his tinted mask. I think he must have been a Gosporan, unable to breathe anything other than his planet’s heavy atmosphere, unless mediated through such a respirator. We’d warred with them before. A tall, upright Human had a sad but proud expression, and his clothes spoke of military service, real wool. He seemed adrift with thought. Then the young Human, who’d clearly seen her fair share of space travel. A scar on her neck, a glint in her eye. She held a satchel with her. We gave them space, not out of dislike, but of some unspoken respect or sympathy.

Suddenly, I saw it— a pale glint from between two massive cruisers, the damaged cigar-shaped vessel. I gave a cry, and rang the bell. My captain turned to the three, who nodded. The military man wiped a tear, and the young woman was flushed burgundy. The old Gosporan seemed awestruck. As we neared the devastated craft, the young star-traveller took something wrapped in silk out from the satchel, and placed it into our jettison tube. I pressed the button, and out from it shot, unwrapped in the void, a wreath of flowers. It made contact with the vessel, and lodged there through an attached magnet.

The Gosporan turned to me, and said in his deep rumble:

“They tried to warn our two peoples, and then tried to save both cruisers when disaster struck. They stayed to give each sailor aboard a chance. Their sacrifice brought the wars to an end. I served on the left, my friend on the right. Her father was a young man who refused to evacuate on the third, our saviour-ship. This is our memorial.”

Suddenly the universe seemed so small, the wrecks glittered. The creaking now had a mournful edge.