“Lost on my own ship,” Tikva muttered under her breath as she stopped in the middle of an intersection, hands on hips and casting her gaze down each direction. The turbolift she had just left was her only bearing, but nothing else was familiar to her in the slightest.

Catching her own reflection in the glossy black wall panelling, she squinted momentarily at herself, then shook her head. “No, no. I don’t need a guide,” she said, refusing to stoop so low as to ask the computer for directions. She’d checked the deck plans before leaving her office, told Stirling to go mind his own business and left the bridge confident in her ability to navigate the halls of her own command.

“I can navigate the Trellian Belt with my eyes closed,” she continued, stopping as footfalls sounded around the gentle bend of the corridor in one direction. Two of the crew came jogging along, shirts emblazed with ‘CAN’ and wearing rucksacks. A quick sidestep to make room for them and they passed.

And then one of them stopped, continuing to jog on the spot as he turned to face her. “Can I help, Commodore?” he asked, confusion and concern on his face.

The gig was up.

“Archaeology offices,” she stated.

The man smiled, then pointed the way he and his companion had come. “Two sections that way, hang a left and keep walking till you get to the outer corridor. Then right and first door on your left.”

A quick repeat of the instructions, confirmation of a good read-back and the runners were back on their way, leaving Tikva to continue wondering by herself, the halls on this bereft of life seemingly. “Where’s a psychotic cleaning bot when you want one?” she asked herself.

“Ma’am?” a voice asked, causing Tikva to spin around quickly. “Oh, Commodore, sorry!” the young woman stuttered out.

“Commander Imad,” Tikva got out, shaking her head to clear the unwanted peanut gallery away. “I was just on my way to see you.”

“Was just on my way back with snacks.” Sana Imad held up her hands, one with a carrying tray, six large sealed cups held tight, the other with a large paper bag that looked full. “Drew the short straw on the coffee run.”

“You have replicators in your office, yes? Or at least the nearest lounge?” Tikva asked as she fell in Sana for the last bit of the journey. “Why’d you need to go get drinks?”

“Because Can-Can Coffee is way, way better?” Sana countered, confusion evident. “Hot chocolate, two sugar, almond milk, no marshmallows, yes?”

“You’ve met Stirling then.”

“Lovely fellow,” Sana said with genuine affection in her words as they stepped into what had to be one of the most scenic office spaces aboard Canopus. Someone, somewhere, some when had clearly done a lot of horse-trading to land the archaeologists aboard ship a collective office with a view of the outside universe.

Though right now all that could be seen was, to Tikva at least, the relaxing and reassuring multihued trails of light as Canopus casually reminded the universe at large of a few ways around the Laws of Relativity and made a mockery of classical physics.

Yeah, but is a ship this large actually moving, or are we just moving the universe around us?

Well, arguably both, depending on your frame of reference.

We are not moving the universe. Just a small part of it, kinda. Enough for us to go faster than light.

“Remarkable singing voice too,” Tikva said as she came face-to-face with about the only science officer aboard Canopus she actually knew. “Lieutenant W’a’le’ki, here is a positively magnificent influence on Mr Fightmaster. I’m so glad you agreed to come to Canopus.”

“The labs here do offer a far better chance to do my work and follow-up analysis,” W’a’le’ki said, the sibilant hiss on the letter s only really there if one listened for it. “And Stirling was quite persuasive in his arguments for why I should come.” The Irossian woman then took a coffee from the tray before diving into the offered bag, fetching out a frosted pastry. A smile, an excuse, and she was moving away back to a workstation that looked half-buried under padds, books and a handful of monitors all lit up with even more research material.

A few other faces, passing introductions that she knew she’d never remember, then Tikva was herself armed with her hot chocolate of choice and a bear-claw that would murder her diet and definitely be sending her to the gym, if not a sugary coma first. “Is everything on this ship designed to make me actually need a ship this big?” she asked after taking a bite of the bear-claw, luxuriating in the divinity in morsel form.

“Can-Can’s is a sometimes food,” Sana answered with obvious mirth. “Do not make it a regular part of day, that’s for sure. They do a magnificent ka’ak from time to time that you just have to try.” As they arrived at Sana’s office, actually partitioned from the others, holographic displays sprang to life, filling the office space. The only furniture was a series of short bookcases around the walls and three chairs, all pushed against walls as well, but easily moved.

In the middle of the holographic displays slowly spun an upscaled rendition of the crystal lens that Malakai Spencer had delivered. A few metrics hovered nearby, then holographic windows, thankfully static, hung in the air, displaying a vast quantity of information. Journal articles, opinion pieces, a few maps from various worlds and one of the Thomar Expanse itself.

“The Cordemi Dynasty crown jewel,” Sana announced as she set her cup down on a bookcase and proceeded to drag a couple of chairs into the holographic halo, even producing a small side table and then waving Tikva to a seat, the holographic windows lowering to accommodate. “Safely stored in the ship’s vault, after a couple of extensive but non-intrusive scans.”

“I’ve been trying to do what reading I can myself about them, but have to admit, archaeology tends to put me to sleep. I’m of the pop-archaeology sort.”

Sana chuckled lightly before continuing. “So jazz up any briefings, keep them short and save the research papers and excruciating details for conferences and university presentations?”

“Yes, please,” Tikva said a little sheepishly. “But what I’ve managed to surmise is we’re looking at a space-faring, warp capable race of pseudo-octopi, who a couple of hundred years ago had a bad run-in with the Breen, lost an important cultural relic and since then have basically retreated to their home oceans and resorted to polite xenophobia. But before then, they had a number of colonies and outposts spread out over about a hundred light-years.”

“That certainly covers the high-notes,” Sana confirmed. “They’ve been warp-capable for about five-hundred years and still go out on excursions from time to time. There’s evidence for them on numerous worlds across the Expanse once you start looking for them.”

“On account of them being in the oceans?”

“Exactly! There’s a bipedal bias that’s served pretty well at keeping their old colonies and outposts mostly hidden that I’m hoping we might be able to roll back if opportunity arises.” Sana smiled, obviously trying to sell the idea. “I’d love to get Sundiver involved in such a project since they have an amazingly well-staffed Cetacean Ops division.”

“Submit the proposals to your department head and I’ll ask about them,” Tikva answered.

Sana’s grin grew before she got back on track. “So, the jewel is in fact a red diamond, but not like anything I’ve ever seen from a dig. Or a jeweller, for that matter. It’s clearly an engineered lattice, with extensive structures more in line with an isolinear chip, or crystal memory storage.”

“Does it contain data?”

Sana shrugged. “Possibly. But I stopped the scans when we started to realise there might be something there. It’s Cordemi property, ma’am, and we have a duty to respect it.”

“Got to say though, I am curious.”

Of course we’re curious!

Ancient data storage? Has to have secrets.

Probably boring secrets though.

“Oh certainly!” Sana agreed. “And if this were an extinct civilisation, I’d be all over it by now. But the Cordemi aren’t. They’re still out there, looking for their lost relic and wondering what exactly happened to the crown princess they sent to negotiate with the Breen.”

“Anything else you can tell me about the jewel at a surface level?”

“I think it’s older than the Cordemi’s modern civilisation,” Sana said, waving a hand and summoning one of the science reports about the jewel. “Based on surface scans and carbon ratios in the outer shell, I want to place its formation somewhere at about eight hundred to six hundred thousand years ago.”

“So possibly signs of another elder civilization? There many of them recorded in this region of space?”

“Not that I’ve seen in the literature. But the Breen could be hiding something. Cardassians too if they think there’s some benefit to it.”

There was something about Sana’s mental glow, or taste, that set Tikva off and forced the next question. “What else is there?”

“Well, it just feels too perfect to be a coincidence.” Sana waved another data set closer to the two of them. “The crystal’s outer edge is perfectly circular. Not surprising if someone engineered it and, say, wanted to show off? But the to perfect part is the diameter, especially when converted to SI units.”

“And that is?”

“Eight point four-zero-zero-one centimeters. Exacting down to the nanometre.”

“And it ends up on Canopus?”

“Freaky, right?”

Tikva sighed, contemplating the ‘coincidence’ presented to her. “Eight-four-zero-zero-one.” She rubbed at the bridge of her nose. “And the alien ziggurats that Bismarck was turning up as well before the Vaadwaur attacks as well…”

“Ziggurats?” Sana asked, immediately pulling up a dialog box and typing away, bringing up filed reports and recordings made by the various ships of the squadron as they had encountered such structures.

“Ancient, abandoned structures made with primitive methods in places they most certainly shouldn’t be, depicting semi-recent galactic events, but vandalised differently at each site to hide future events.” Tikva sighed, waving her own hand and catching Sana’s interface system easily enough to input her own searches. “Always wondered if we can combine archaeology with the Department of Temporal Investigations.”

Sana actually smiled at the thought. “Oh, that should be fun!”

“Now I know you’ve never met them,” Tikva countered with her own smile. “Let me show you what we have on those ziggurats while I try and work on this thing,” she held up the bear-claw. “Honestly, this ship is far, far too comfortable.”