With the crew stable and the worst of the emotional fallout contained at least for now. I turned my attention back to the system.

  Laia and John had been working with inhuman efficiency. It was impressive… and a little unsettling. The space elevator was already nearing completion, its frame a gleaming spine stretching from the upper atmosphere to the ground below. A constant stream of transport ships darted in and out of its docking rings, like insects crawling across a silver thread.

  On the planet, a mass mobilisation had begun. Civilians were being herded, some gently, some not, toward the base of the elevator. At the same time, hundreds of launches were still underway, smaller ships making direct lifts to orbit. I didn’t know where most of them were headed. Some would likely disperse to nearby systems. Others would land on hastily-cleared aid stations. And some… some would likely disappear into the void.

  I had no power to deal with those issues, but once again I had to attend to my crew. This time it was T’lish turn.

  She arrived on the virtual bridge with an energy I hadn’t seen in her since the moment she joined us. Her usual quiet reserve was gone being replaced with bright eyes and an animated urgency that almost felt like Mira on her second cup of tea.

  “I need to do down,” she said without preamble, almost bouncing on her heels. “To the surface.”

  I tilted my head. “You to go down there?”

  “Yes! Immediately!” she said, tail twitching with excitement. “I found something. Something incredible.”

  “Does it involve danger, risk of fire, or potentially making us enemies of yet another species?” I asked dryly.

  She blinked. “...Possibly?”

  I sighed. “Alright. What did you find?”

  She dropped a holopad on the console beside me and began scrolling through live sensor feeds and salvaged planetary data. “I’ve been cross-referencing the bioscans from the refugee shuttles with satellite telemetry and localised environmental shifts. There was a cluster of terrain that didn’t make sense that was until I found this.”

  The screen displayed an image: a shallow crater nestled in a marsh-like valley, veined with bioluminescent ridges and organic structures. Faint outlines showed long, podlike shapes stretched across the ground that were almost skeletal. It had taken heavy damage.

  “A birthing pond,” she said, reverent. “it’s damaged, but there are still a few readings.”

  I squinted at the data. “A birthing pond. For what, exactly?”

  Her grin widened. “Organic ships.”

  I blinked. “I’m sorry. What?”

  “That’s why the war started,” she said. “Laia hacked their networks and pulled some historical cultural archives. The native race here has been cultivating bio-engineered vessels that were actually space-capable and grown from genetic templates. They’re not sentient, not in the way we are, but... they’re alive in the sense that trees are alive. Grown, not built.”

  “And the aggressors… didn’t like that?”

  “They saw it as heresy,” she nodded. “Blasphemy, even. Something about violating the natural order of space travel. Religious zealotry layered over xenophobia. The usual cocktail. Too bad they couldn’t understand the true purpose of war”

  Kall-e idea’s aside I watched the screen and checked the reading. The idea of a living ship with a biological hull, organic propulsion, maybe even grown circuitry. Wasn’t unheard of in the science fiction community, but it’s the first time I’ve seen anything like that out in the galaxy.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “We are not going down there to steal one,” I said.

  “We wouldn’t be stealing,” she insisted. “It’s abandoned. No one’s claiming it. Most of the locals are dead, so they won’t care”

  “Convenient.”

  “Laia already confirmed it’s been abandoned by the locals. I just want to study one. Maybe retrieve a small specimen or maybe an incomplete one. I’ve already sourced the containment materials.”

  I frowned, still staring at the data. “T’lish… I already have a crew. I don’t want to be in charge of some bio-pet spaceship. I’ve got enough emotional complications in this chassis without having to feed and walk something that can fly in space.”

  “They’re not pets,” she said, chuckling. “And they’re not even really alive in the animal sense. They’re organic constructs. Like coral reefs, or mushrooms. They react, grow, and respond to stimuli. But they don’t think.”

  “And you want to do what with them? Wire one of those into me?”

  “I don’t want to wire it into you,” she said, eyes bright. “I want to learn from it. Study its musculature, its structure. If I can reverse-engineer parts of its propulsion or structural flexibility, I could redesign aspects of your hull. Maybe even give you more tactile range or fine-motion control, responsive adaptation the kind of things hard-tech just can’t do as well.”

  She paused, then added, almost shyly, “I might even be able to give you a sense of touch again. Real sensation. Bring back some of what it was like… being alive.”

  I didn't expect that.

  In theory, it sounded good. In practice, it sounded like a recipe for emotional instability, maybe even madness. Feeling heat, pressure, texture, all things I remembered, but only in fragments now. Old neural echoes trapped in data. Did I really want those memories awakened?

  And yet… I remembered the last upgrade. How well it had gone. How right it had felt to move more precisely, to reach a little farther.

  T’lish must’ve seen the hesitation softening in my face, because she pounced on it with quiet enthusiasm.

  “Maybe,” she said, voice hopeful, “we could start with your avatar. Let you try it out there first. No risk to your core. Just… a step closer.”

  I looked down at my hands. Virtual. Real enough for this virtual bridge, but lacking when outside of it.

  “And there’s more,” she added, her tone shifting slightly. “This birthing pond the one with active readings, was ground zero. First strike location. There are signs of intense orbital and ground combat. You can see here, and here—” she tapped, highlighting the melted craters, collapsed terrain, the patchwork of scarred earth and fire-burned vegetation.

  The damage was extensive. Charred tree husks, shattered growth domes, splintered hull-buds. A nursery turned battlefield.

  “But it’s still got reading,” she said. “It’s a miracle it survived at all. So we need to move fast”

  I frowned. “you said it was abandoned but it seems there are troops there now. Who’s holding it now?”

  She brought up another data set. Real-time battlefield tracking flickered into view—marked with clean blue lines and friendly indicators.

  “The Immortal Army,” she said. “John’s troops. They’re holding the perimeter. For now.”

  “And the attackers?”

  “They’re still trying,” she said. “Aggressively. Every hour they make another push. It’s not a strategic position anymore—it’s symbolic. They’re desperate to destroy what’s left of the pond, to erase the legacy of it. To make sure no one ever grows another ship again.”

  I leaned in slightly, eyeing the flashing red vectors pressing inward from all sides.

  “So you would be going down into an active warzone.”

  She gave a sheepish shrug. “A barely active warzone. They’re holding the lines. And we’d have John’s clearance.”

  “And this can’t wait?”

  “No,” she said firmly. “If they break through… this entire site could be lost. There might never be another chance to study a complete pond like this. The genetic templates, the pod configurations—it could all be wiped.”

  I stared at the screen again, the skeletal shapes glowing faintly in the haze. A graveyard full of potential.

  That changed things.

  This wasn’t just scientific curiosity. This was preservation. Recovery. Maybe even justice, in some twisted way.

  I still didn’t like the idea of walking into yet another conflict zone. But I was starting to understand the urgency. And T’lish… she was looking at the screen like it held a dream she hadn’t dared to hope for.

  “Fine,” I said. “Start prepping. You do have a plan, correct?”

  T’lish’s eyes lit up like I’d just handed her the universe.

  “Oh, I have a plan,” she said with barely-contained excitement. “Stewie will pilot Chunkyboy in stealth mode as he’s the most familiar with the lander systems now. Laia’s sending a clone unit along for physical support and overwatch, in case anything goes sideways. And I’ll be on the ground gathering specimens, running scans, capturing as much data as I can before the whole site goes up in flames.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “So, a stealthy teenage pilot, an unsupervised field scientist, and a nanite construct with a flair for violence walk into a warzone.”

  I didn’t even get to finish my joke, she looked at me oddly and ran off to the lander.