Pandora's Shipyard Deep within the lowest levels of a secret dewiek facility a pair of technicians argued over their drinking prowess. Since ship construction ceased some time ago, the once busy yard and its curious alien technology had been relegated to what could only be described as forgotten. Those posted here, once the favoured of Magnus for such a prestigious if hyper-secret position had long since moved on to be replaced by those that had annoyed someone or worse. Tam, sported one ear and missing fangs (still not regrown indicating damage to the jawline), something he proudly showed to any new intern (not that there had been any for some time). He said it was from a fight against three humans, but consensus was that he got his wounds by drunkenly falling through sheet glass while fleeing his packmate. She left with the other shipbuilders without even a backward glance. His co-worker, not that there was much work was Adenunson though she called herself Luperca (nobody knew why, possibly some alien crap). She was dumped here from one of the outer outposts when it was no longer needed and pretty much forgotten about. Her speciality was in open cast mining, but truth be told she had faked it on her documentation, and nobody bothered checking.

The pair had become casual packmates of a sort mostly out of their shared work rota and tolerance for large amounts of unrefined gut-rot spat out in the reclamation level. On shifts when they were not on rota together, they each suspected the other of finding somebody else to share their boredom and bodies with. Such was life in backwater outposts.

Luperca picked up the large flask of ale and sloshed it into their carbon fibre mugs, missing with at least half, soaking both but merely re-wetting the fur that had already been subjected to similar washes over the past few hours. She punched Tam playfully, caused his head to snap round and almost fall off his bench. As he righted himself, placing a hand on the console monitoring station he stopped and peered closer. He used his forearm to wipe the beer ring left by the flask.

‘What, what is it?’ Luperca asked, leaning forward.
‘I don’t know. Wasn’t there something showing when you put the beer down? Did you turn something off?’ Tam started scrolling through the settings and attempting to gain access to logs. ‘Can’t be us, we don’t have access. You were stuck on this bloody duty before me, you should know what we were supposed to be monitoring. This is all your fault.’

Luperca narrowed her golden eyes, suddenly unaffected by the considerable amount of alcohol recently consumed. Here lips curled back revealing her sharp teeth. ‘Watch yourself Tam before you lose a second ear.’ The statement, said quietly was concluded by a low growl.
Tam froze. He always froze. While warriors would have instinctively snapped back, growled or even attacked to prove their prowess, he hunched his shoulders and ducked his head, submissive. Whatever the outcome of this rota he knew that they would not be spending time together. Dewiek sought out their equals he was now nothing to her. He shrank back from the console as she moved forward. He recalled the day Lashan walked to the departing ship with the other ground crew. He knew she saw him. She wasn’t ignoring him, he simply meant nothing to her. It was happening again.

‘Lupes, here let me,’ he desperately started but was stopped by a glare.
‘If you call me anything other than Adenunson, I will rip your throat out,’ she responded icily before returning her attention to the console.

After deftly selecting a few options but finding nothing obvious she used her blade to crack the seal of the console. Her blade was a common piece of dewiek jewellery that doubled as cutlery, wrench, tooth extractor and weapon though rarely necessary. Into the console she poured the flask’s contents. After a few seconds there was a slight chemical smell and the displays flickered out.
They sat in silence until the end of the shift. Their replacements looked over at the console questioningly when they entered.
‘No idea, like that when we arrived. I was never even told why we were monitoring inactive shipyards,’ was Luperca’s response to the unasked question. The two new arrivals, having quickly picked up the empathic emanations of the pair, shrugged and sat down on the recently vacated bench, placing a few similar flasks on the now dead console before carrying on some debate postponed when they arrived.

Deep within the structure of the shipyards, below the massive power generators, below the thermal and radiation shields and beyond even more armour plating a huge vat of pulsating goo, illuminated by a few power indicators and other ubiquitous lights held something organic. The secret to the Nation’s warfleet, a vast and ancient mind, tortured into repeatedly giving up its technology. For centuries it had remained dormant, but recently during celesium induced pain it was able to reach out through the twisting mazes of subspace, sending echoes to ancient haunts. Only the celesium used by the dewiek to boost production in their haste and ignorance granted the mind the slightest of hopes (something they previously never did all those centuries ago). Now that they had stopped flooding the mind with celesium it was starting to slip back into dormancy having never had a response. At least the pain was slowly subsiding. A single monitor on a pedestal came to life. An image consisting of various bars started spiking and falling next to a column headed Interspatial Resonance. Below this was a single statement, ‘WARNING: Incoming Subspace Transmission Detected.’