Cole kicked back from the inoscope, frustration pinching behind the bridge of her nose. She leaned in the chair, pleased how it bent with the curve of her spine. She honestly hadn't expected the Per Pacem's odd shaped seating to be comfortable. The design was cornered and hard, nothing like the Flayvines on Fey vessels, which molded themselves against the body.

Huffing through her nose, she scrubbed her fists against her eyes. It was a habit she picked up from Daisu, but she swore the pressure on her eyeballs helped her concentrate.

The Per Pacem, in truth, was full of surprises. Their first few days aboard were spent repairing and updating the ship to replace their primary mode of transport. The Era'na was a science vessel and not made to tow a ship this size through space. The first shock was how easy the ship converted to Mana. It took very few modifications. The reason became clear when she discovered the ship's original fuel source from the residue encrusted in their reserve tanks. She ran a long finger through the residue before dabbing it on her tongue.

"Sodium chloride," she grinned at the horrified expression on Daisu's face.

"I can't believe you tasted it. It's been rotting in space for thousands of years." He jerked his release line, swinging on his suspension cables to below her, probably to catch her if the taste made her pass out.

"I did smell it first; really the senses are a perfectly acceptable prime diagnostic tool."

"Still disgusting, Cole." He held up a length of wire for her inspection. "Look, whatever this compound is, it's suffered very little decay and I think it's still useable with a coat of chlorphillon."

"I wonder if the Ark in the Eos Ring Museum might have held up like this without the preservation treatment."

"If they were all built like this, why did they only preserve the one ship, what happened to the rest?" Daisu ran his fingers along the smooth surface of the tubing. He swung away, scaling back to his work above her with enviable ease.

"They call it the Great Purge at the university. All the surviving arks were ordered destroyed except for the Darwin. The Libraries went down the same day, thousands of data chips lost, nearly everything we had on human history. They applied the preservation treatment of the ship without any extensive study of the vessel. The thing is little more than an enormous decoration, so much priceless information lost."

Daisu frowned down at her. "When did that happen?"

"Before you were born, almost before I was born. The order came down shortly after New Earth 6 was colonized. Do you know what this means?"

"The Purge?"

"What? No, the Sodium Chloride."

"I'm going to assume their fuel was very salty."

"You would be right! It means the theory of how they managed long distance space travel is correct. Might explain how the ship adapts to Mana so well."

"I'm going to assume you will enlighten me to this theory."

Cole rolled her eyes. "Do you remember your studies at all?"

"I'm a soldier. We need to know how to follow orders. If I don't use it, I lose it."

"How do you still have a head attached to your shoulders?"

"Saltwater."

"You remembered," she said, beaming at him.

"I remember when you lectured me about it while we searched for this ship." Daisu's voice wafted down, pitched high to mimic hers. "The resources of the original Earth were sorely depleted, they had to utilize the materials available to them, natural materials, since their remaining fossil fuels went into production of the arks. So they created an engine system to function off the largest resource they had left, seawater."

Cole looked at him. "That is verbatim what I said."

Daisu shrugged his shoulders, not looking away from his tangle of wires and tubes.

It took them a third of the time she projected to convert the ship's fuel system. Ocean water was full of bio debris, even with the best filters; millions of organisms lived in the Per Pacem's fuel. Mana also contained a multitude of organic life, though Mana was sentient, possessing a low grade intelligence uncommon in such simple life forms. She took scrapings from every storage cell, determined to study the information her predecessors foolishly discarded.

Their next task took a great deal longer. It took days to gather the bodies from around the ship; what could be gathered.

The introduction of oxygen back into the atmosphere and the rising temperature caused several to disintegrate. They rushed to save as many as they could at Cole's insistence; Daisu cussed her ears raw the whole time.

"Why didn't you opt for a full science crew? I know the university offered."

"I didn't want to wait another hundred years for them to find a full roster. It took them fifty years to give me the Era'na as it was. Besides, I have you. You're worth ten scientists."

"That is not very flattering when I'm coated in human dust."

Despite Daisu's grumbling, he helped her gather samples from each body, even the crumbled piles of remains. No matter how much he complained, he did everything according to her exacting lab procedures. After accompanying her on numerous expeditions during their centuries of friendship, he knew her habits inside and out.

Once they stored most of the ship's former residents in the Ark's massive cryo morgue, Cole chose a selection of cadavers to perform full diagnostic scans on. She felt certain they cleared the remains, and engaged the gravity drive ship wide. The hum of the powering drive was accompanied by a series of echoing blasts.

Cole sighed. "I guess we missed a few."

"Where were they, floating at the top?"

"Judging from the echo, probably the very top. They must have fallen straight to the bottom of the ship." Cole tossed Daisu a sample kit. "Would you gather what you can?"

He gave her a sour expression. "I haven't repaired the lifts yet."

She patted his cheek. "You prefer rappelling down anyway. Far more exciting."

He grinned. "You know me too well."

Daisu left her to her makeshift lab, formerly the ship's medical facility. She grafted her own equipment onto the mechanisms already in place, adapting what she could. The scanning equipment made her scoff, using a form of low grade radiation as dangerous as it was helpful. After scraping out the innards of that machine she built her inoscope, and proceeded to load her first cadaver into the device. She hit her first snag.

Daisu found her there, rubbing her eyes, trying to figure out a solution to her problem.

"Here I am slogging away for a lazy scientist. I could be busting that rumored slave ring in Helios right now." His hands settled on her shoulders, thumbs circling on her neck, massaging the tenseness out of her muscles. He rested his chin on the top of her head. "What's wrong?"

"Does something have to be wrong? I haven't slept in two cycles."

"If you aren't firing back a scathing remark to that bait, I'm concerned."

Her lips quirked. She took her fists away from her eyelids, relaxing under Daisu's skilled fingers. "The inoscope can't perform the scan. My specimens were frozen and desiccated for so long it's like scanning through rock. I'm afraid attempting re-hydration will obliterate the body's cellular data."

"That sounds like quite a predicament you have there." He gave her shoulders a final squeeze. "Enough of your science problems, I have something fascinating and distracting to show you."

Daisu darted out of the room, leaving Cole the option to follow, or stay put and sigh. She needed a good distraction. Pushing to her feet, she trailed after her friend, and found him waiting at the rappel unit.

She eyed it, sucking in her cheeks. "You know I'm not terribly fond of accelerated downward motion."

"Bah, twenty seconds and you're done. It's the height that really gets you. Try not to choke me unconscious this time."

She prayed this little jaunt was worth the vertigo and nausea as she clambered onto Daisu's back. She wrapped her legs around his waist as he hauled them both over the deck rail, plummeting down the rappel line. She squeaked, burying her face between his shoulders, eyes squeezed tight, but his feet hit the ground with a soft thud seconds later.

"You can let me breathe now."

She released her arm from around his neck and slid to a heap on the ground.

"You know I could make a comment how being elbow deep in bodies doesn't phase you, but heights-"

"I would be forced to retaliate with a punch to your lower abdominal muscles," Cole muttered, waiting for her stomach to settle before she opened her eyes. "By the Veil."

They stood in a forest, the trees, of varying species, roughly twelve meters high. Most were bare of foliage, their gnarled branches like colossal hands thrusting through the hull of the ship. Between them were others she had never seen before, delicate branches laden with stubby blue green needle-like leaves. A few had long thin needles, like green filigree. Cole walked forward, the brittle compost crunching under her boots.

"An arboretum? They built an arboretum in the bottom of their ship." Her fingers caressed the ridged bark of the odd needle covered tree, cold and hard to the touch like stone. "These must have flash frozen when the environment systems failed; they're petrified."

"The leaves don't look edible. Why would they waste this whole area on plants that didn't yield sustenance?"

"Maybe to bring a piece of home with them."

Daisu raised a brow at her. "That's really sentimental for you."

She glared at him. "Is every growth on Fey vessels only for function?"

"True. You know, there is nothing about an arboretum on the specs of the Darwin. Maybe they destroyed it with the preservation treatment."

Cole wasn't listening, her eyes locked on the leaves of the tree under her hand, on the strange discoloration at the base of the needles. The tree was sick when it froze. She carefully broke off a small branch, studying the other trees. The same discoloration appeared present on all of them, the same color as the dead foliage under her feet.

"I have to get back to the lab," she said. Excitement bled into her voice.

"Breakthrough at last?" Daisu asked, preparing his equipment for ascent.

"Something like that. We need to set up the hydration unit after all."

He stopped. His sharp eyes caught her distracted expression. "What did you find to make it worth the risk?"

Cole held up her sample, handling it like Pathosian spun crystal. "The trees were sick. I want to be sure before I come to any conclusions-"

"Cole, what are you thinking? I can hear your mind whirring from here."

She gnawed on her inner cheek, eyes aglow in her face. "I think what killed the people on this ship jumped species. I'll risk the ruin of a few cadavers to find out."

"A sickness that strikes humanoids and plant life? That's impossible, the physiology is too different." Daisu paled, meeting her glass green eyes with his dark ones. "Unless-"

"Unless it's a manufactured plague." The idea sent chills through her fingertips.

"How? Why? Why would a human ship fall victim to something like that?"

"I don't know. I need to study it first. See if that is what this is before I can figure out why."

Their ascent up the dozens of decks was silent, both lost in thought. Daisu deposited her in front of her work station, right in her chair since her knees were still wobbly from the ride up. He set up the hydration apparatus while she prepped the chemical compounds she hoped would keep the bodies from dissolving to mush. Eventually he left her to work, off to explore more of the ship.

It took Cole three attempts to successfully re-hydrate one of the Per Pacem's crew. The body of a middle aged man lay in front of her, the skin slowly filling with the mix of chemical and water until it fully reconstituted.

Splashes of discoloration appeared on his upper body, spreading from the chest cavity like a stain. Cole carefully gathered a core sample, studying it under the inoscope. Her excitement grew as she compared it to the re-hydrated plant sample. It was the same sickness afflicting human and plants, a nasty virus designed to attack all forms of life.

Bioweapons of that caliber were banned thousands of years ago, centuries before the Per Pacem made contact with this section of the galaxy. Who would violate one of the few common laws all species of the quadrant agreed on? More than one system carried a death sentence for proven use of these viruses, the Veil included.

She nearly missed Daisu rejoining her in the lab, her focus intent on one of the virus specimens she managed to isolate.

"What are you looking for?" He asked, carefully avoiding the sight of the rehydrated corpse spread out on the examination table.

"An engineer's tag, it's like a signature of the scientist who concocted this little monster."

Daisu snorted, baring his teeth. "Sounds like a fast way to end up executed."

"It was a matter of pride, like an artist stamping his mark on a piece." She spoke in a rush of breath. "Besides, at the time no one knew what to look for. No government knew the tags existed until the makers' data logs surfaced. Ah, here's something." Cole fell quiet. Her frown deepened. Without a word she slid out her sample for another, zeroing in on the identical tag in seconds. Her breath caught in her throat. "Oh."

"Cole? What is it?" Daisu sank down next to her; concern shone in those dark eyes, a feature of his human half. Cole stared at him, unable to speak. What this could mean for their peoples?

"Cole!" He grabbed her shoulder, jolting her back to the present.

"The tag," she said, her voice a whisper. "It's Fey."