Reborn as a Spaceship

It was time to test the shield variant of the lander.

The crew gathered on the observation deck, anticipation high but spirits cautious. Stewie leaned against the railing, arms crossed tight across his chest. "I really hope this one doesn't implode. That's four Landers this week."

Mira gave him a quick side hug. "Hey, forced evolution, remember? Each failure is one step closer to something better."

He snorted. "Tell that to my hands."

Wayfarer appeared beside us, his avatar ever moving. "I've mapped the planet," he said calmly, "and there's a deeper trench. The deepest."

That made me look up. "How deep?"

"Forty-seven thousand, five hundred and thirty meters."

I frowned. "That can't be right. This planet isn't even that much bigger than Earth-Standard."

"It is," Laia confirmed, her avatar perched on Mira's shoulders. "Unusual, but not unprecedented. The mantle's behavior here is different. The ocean floor is thinner in that region, and geological instabilities have formed a trench that extends into the upper mantle. The water composition is likely hyper-mineralised and closer to a gel than normal water under that pressure."

"Pressure that high would destroy anything short of a Traxlic ship," Stewie muttered, rubbing his face. "My poor lander…"

"You built this one better," Mira reminded him. "It's a prototype, it's death is for science."

He grumbled something unintelligible, but went to double-check his shield power readings.

He had made improvements. This test included both standard energy shielding and a limited-use dimensional shield the same as used on the drone in the drone races. The goal was simple: use the shields to bleed off some of the oceanic pressure. It wasn't perfect, but it might just give the lander enough time to reach the bottom and come back up.

The dive site was far from our landing zone, so we repositioned The Arbiter and dropped the lander from the air. The descent began smoothly. At ten thousand meters, the pressure began to claw at the hull. At twenty-five thousand, the shields were consuming power at a rate that made even Laia pause.

"It's holding," she said, "but we've only got minutes before they overload."

Stewie's hands hovered over the abort controls. "I'm ready to pull the plug."

"Hold steady," I said. "We're already past every previous depth. Let's see what's down there. We won't learn anything unless we push the barriers." Stewie face told me he didn't like that answer, and I could understand that, but we might as well learn what we could.

The light cut through the thickened water like a knife. At forty-seven thousand meters, the lander reached the seafloor.

The image feed stabilised just long enough to reveal jagged rock formations, mineral-streaked sediment… and something else.

"Is that…" Mira squinted at the screen. "Are those blue crystals?"

I stepped closer. "That looks like Telk."

Laia immediately leaned in. "Visual match: 92%. Size and structure consistent with Telk."

"We need a sample," I said.

"We don't have time to get a sample and resurface," Stewie warned. "Shield countdown: sixty seconds."

"Laia," I said.

Without needing further instruction, she activated a rapid bridge shift and replaced the lander's internal command bridge with her clone now in sentinel form. With the lander's exterior breached by the clone, the water's containment depended solely on the shield.

The clone was efficient, almost clinical. It used a micro-drill, collected a palm-sized piece of crystal, and returned. Thirty seconds.

The lander's shields failed five seconds later.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

A series of loud cracks split across the external feed. Panels buckled. Hull integrity dropped to critical levels and then the feed went black.

"Lander destroyed," Laia confirmed. "Sample retrieved."

A moment later, her clone emerged in the lab with the sample in hand. She placed it gently on the table.

We gathered around it like it was a relic.

"It's Telk," Mira whispered.

Laia was already scanning. "No. Not quite. Composition: 0.5% Telk. The remainder is an unrefined Telk no superconductive properties. Normally seen with Telk"

"Raw Telk?" I asked.

"Maybe pre-Telk. Or something similar. The structure is almost right, but it's inert."

I watched the scanner output scroll past. "Can it become Telk?"

Laia paused. "Unknown. There are no confirmed records of Telk formation. Not even NeuroGenesis had that information. We had extracted it asteroid before."

Wayfarer leaned closer, his voice low. "And if this is a vein, even partial… it will draw attention."

I nodded. "That's the problem. Whether it's Telk now or can become Telk later, someone is going to care. I am sure some powerful people know how Telk is formed"

Wayfarer watched me for a moment. "So. Are you giving up on this find? your pacifist leanings?"

"No," I said, already pulling up files. "Laia, do you have the specs for John's railguns?"

She tilted her head. "I do. But it's not a small weapon."

"I'm not planning on mounting it to a skiff," I said. "We need to make some orbitals defences."

"So you're giving up on your pacifist ideals?" asked Wayfarer watching me carefully.

"You planning for war?" Stewie asked, wary.

"I'm planning for reality," I said. "If we can confirm this planet has Telk. Even the smallest percentage then it's not about if someone comes, it's about when. If we file a claim, they'll come. If we don't, they'll come anyway and have legal means to take it.

Mira looked at the crystal, then at me. "So what do we do?"

"We hedge," I said. "Laia, draft a message. Just enough data to log the claim, not enough to raise alarm bells. Send it to T'lish and get her to have Lynn start the claims process. Have them dispatch our most secure hauler with no crew, fully automated. Keep it quiet."

She nodded. "On it."

"And make sure," I added, "that no one outside this room knows what we found. That includes T'lish and Lynn"

Wayfarer was still staring at the crystal. His expression was unreadable.

"This planet is young," Wayfarer murmured, his voice distant, like he was listening to something only he could hear. "But it holds secrets."

"Yes," I said quietly. "And now we've found one."

None of us truly understood what we were sitting on. But the implications were already causing me a headache.

Everyone had their mission now.

Stewie was already pacing near the drone lab, muttering to himself about energy yields and structural stress tolerances. He knew his purpose: to build a stronger lander. One that could survive the trench and return again. But he wasn't sure how to power the kind of shielding that had saved the last prototype for the length of time needed. I could see it gnawing at him, and I let it. I trusted him and knew he could do it.

My own task was clear. I needed to survey this planet further, understand the breadth and depth of what we'd found. Was the Telk scattered across mineral seams like gold? Or was it locked in some catalytic process, slowly evolving from its inert state? The more I knew, the better we could prepare. Or hide but before I could do that I needed the lander so I moved to other pressing issue.

The harvester drones launched within the hour—dispatched in formation across the system sweeping for key resources. Their primary target wasn't Telk. I'd redirected them toward metals, alloys, and rare superconductors. The kind of material needed to build what I didn't want to need.

Railguns.

Laia had noticed. She hovered nearby, her avatar poised in its more human configuration, arms folded and wings flapping slowly, eyes unreadable. "You're building them yourself," she said, not a question. "Why?"

"Because if something is going to take a life," I said, not looking up from the holographic schematics, "then it should be my responsibility to build it. Not Stewie. Not Mira. Not you. Not Wayfarer, whose concept of life and death is shaped by your strange upbringing."

She was quiet a moment. "You think it's inevitable."

"I think we've just stuck a flag into something the entire galaxy wants. And it won't matter how quietly we did it. Sooner or later, someone hears the echo."

I didn't like it. I'd avoided direct violence wherever possible. Yes, there had been casualties with pirate raiders caught in explosive traps, sabotage that caused ships to self-destruct but I hadn't pulled a trigger. I hadn't watched a sensor display light up with a confirmed kill and known it was mine. It was a thin line. But a line, once crossed, would mean something. Even for me.

But this system, this world… could be a cornerstone. To my miniature empire, as Laia once teasingly called it. It was time to make a stand.

Wayfarer, as ever, offered his own solution. "We could crack the planet," he said, his tone more analytical than cold. "Break it open. Shatter the mantle. Collect the fragments in orbit. Mine them clean with standard harvesters. Quick. Efficient. We'd be gone before anyone knew we were here."

I turned to look at him. "And what if something's already evolving? What if this world's potential isn't just mineral?"

"It's not sentient," he said, mildly.

"Yet, but there very real possibility that sentient life will evolve here" I replied.

I knew what I was saying. Slower extraction meant higher risk. Meant others would find out. But I wasn't going to strip-mine a world that might one day grow its own sentient life for the sake of Telk and profit.

"If we do this," I said, "we do it clean. We take what we need, and when we're done, we leave it better than we found it."

Laia nodded silently. Even Wayfarer offered a small pulse of agreement, though I could feel his lingering confusion at the sentiment.

This was the new direction. The shape of what we would become.

Not conquerors. Not scavengers.

Caretakers. Guardians. Builders.

And if someone came to take it from us?

Well, maybe it was time to show a different set of teeth.