The dreadnought noticed first.
That alone was enough to make Blake's stomach drop.
Aubrey didn't raise an alarm. He didn't escalate lighting or seal bulkheads or do anything dramatic. He simply… cleared his throat over the private channel in the way Blake had learned meant bad news, but the polite kind—like a butler announcing there's a bear in the pantry, and also it has a key.
"Captain," Aubrey said evenly, "multiple FTL wake signatures detected at the outer boundary of the graveyard."
Blake froze mid-step.
"…Multiple," he repeated, like repeating it might make it less of a number and more of a suggestion.
"Yes."
Gunny looked up from where he'd been leaning against a crate, instantly alert. His entire body did that "violence is now the default setting" shift. "How many."
Aubrey paused for a fraction of a second longer than usual, which in Aubrey-time was basically an air raid siren.
"Four confirmed vessels. One matches a previously recorded profile."
Blake already knew the answer. His pulse had started racing anyway, like his body was determined to be ahead of the conversation for once. Like, Finally, an opportunity to be useful—by doing a panic sprint inside your ribcage.
"…Grisham," Blake said.
"Affirmative."
Booth made a small, unhappy noise from behind a console. It sounded like a balloon losing the will to be a balloon. Like the universe had pinched him gently between two fingers and he'd made the only sound he had left.
"He didn't come back alone," Booth whispered.
"No," Blake said quietly. "He wouldn't."
Elenor stepped closer, pulling up tactical overlays with the brisk efficiency of someone who had seen enough bad outcomes to stop bargaining with them. "Formation?"
Aubrey projected it into the air without ceremony, like he was presenting the weather forecast. Which, to be fair, it was—if your weather consisted of murder ships with attachment issues.
The shape was ugly. Not military-tight, not clean—but coordinated. Salvage ships reinforced with weapon pods. One heavier hull hanging back like a threat with engines. The kind of ship that didn't need to be fast because it assumed it would still be there when everyone else wasn't.
Blake stared at it, heart thudding.
"They learned," he said.
Gunny grinned, teeth sharp. "They learned we're dangerous."
"That's not the comforting version of that sentence," Blake snapped. "That's the version you say right before you punch a bear and get surprised it punches back."
Gunny shrugged like this was still a solid plan. "Bears respect confidence."
"Bears respect distance," Booth muttered, and sounded personally betrayed that nobody had consulted him before inviting bears into the metaphor.
The dreadnought reacted then—not aggressively, not helpfully.
It withdrew.
Internal systems began powering down to minimal operational states. Doors they'd opened sealed themselves calmly, like a hotel politely closing the pool because someone had brought sharks. The ship didn't panic.
It disengaged.
Blake felt it like a hand pulling away—like the whole place had decided, Absolutely not my circus. Absolutely not my monkeys. I am a dead warship with standards.
"It's abandoning us," he said.
"Correct," Aubrey replied. "From its perspective, the optimal outcome is non-interference. External conflict is outside its preferred modelling scope."
Blake laughed, breathless and bitter. "So it's decided we're no longer its problem."
Gunny shrugged. "Can't blame it."
"Yes I can," Blake shot back. "I absolutely can. I've been emotionally blackmailed by lighting in this place. The least it can do is commit to the bit."
Elenor didn't look up from her display. "Captain. They're vectoring straight for us."
Blake swallowed.
"How long until visual?"
"Approximately six minutes," Aubrey said. "Less if they burn hard."
Booth's voice shook. "They're not here to talk."
"No," Blake agreed. "They're here because last time they lost face. And ships. And pride."
Gunny's posture shifted subtly, the kind of subtle that meant he was already sorting people into "problem" and "solved." "Then they're here to kill."
Silence stretched.
Blake closed his eyes.
He'd argued with systems. Negotiated with ghosts. Rewritten rules that weren't supposed to bend. All of that had felt abstract—dangerous, yes, but intellectual.
This was not that.
This was simple.
Ugly.
Final.
"Aubrey," Blake said quietly. "Options."
"We may remain docked and attempt to evade detection," Aubrey replied. "However, Grisham's previous engagement suggests he has adjusted his scanning protocols. Probability of successful concealment is low."
Gunny snorted. "He's mad."
"He's persistent," Elenor corrected, which somehow sounded worse.
"Alternatively," Aubrey continued, "we may disengage immediately. Engage engines. Depart the graveyard."
Blake nodded. "And let them—"
"—claim the dreadnought," Aubrey finished. "Yes."
Blake felt cold.
Elenor looked at him sharply. "We can't let that happen."
"No," Blake said. "We can't."
Gunny crossed his arms. "Then there's the third option."
Blake didn't answer right away.
Because he already knew what it was.
"Engage," Aubrey said neutrally. "Intercept before they can establish firing solutions. Eliminate threat."
Booth let out a thin, strangled laugh. "That's a nice way to say 'kill them'."
Blake opened his eyes.
His hands were shaking again.
"I didn't want this," he said. Not to anyone in particular. Not really to them at all. More like to the universe, as if the universe was a customer service rep who could be guilted into applying a refund.
Gunny's voice was quieter than usual. "Nobody ever does."
Blake looked at the projected ships—at Grisham's flagship, scarred but rebuilt, surrounded by backup like borrowed confidence.
"They're not backing off," Blake said. "If we run, they chase. If we hide, they burn this place until we show ourselves."
Elenor met his eyes. "And if we fight?"
Blake swallowed.
"Then people die."
The words sat heavy in the air.
Booth whispered, "Captain…"
Blake shook his head. "I know. I know what they are. I know what they've done. That doesn't make this—" He broke off, breath hitching. "—easy."
Aubrey's voice came gently, privately.
"Captain. Reluctance does not negate necessity."
Blake laughed softly, humorless. "You've been practicing that line."
"Yes," Aubrey admitted. "I hoped not to use it."
Blake straightened.
"Get us off the dreadnought," he said. "Now."
The clamps disengaged smoothly. The Aubrey slid free, engines coming online with a low, familiar thrum that felt like a heartbeat returning—like the ship itself had been holding its breath while Blake played philosophy with haunted infrastructure.
The graveyard stretched around them—silent witnesses to what was about to happen. Wrecks hung like frozen accusations. Hulls cracked open like ribs. Everything dead, everything watching anyway, because death had time and nothing else to do.
Gunny moved to his station, fingers dancing with eager precision. "Weapons hot."
Elenor locked in beside him, jaw set. "Targeting ready."
Booth sat rigid, eyes wide, hands clenched in his lap like the universe might let him opt out if he stayed very still. Like camouflage worked on fate.
Blake settled into the captain's chair.
Every instinct screamed at him to find another way.
Another rule. Another boundary. Another clever, human workaround.
There wasn't one.
"Aubrey," Blake said, voice tight but steady. "Open a channel."
The comm crackled.
Grisham's face filled the screen—older, angrier, eyes bright with the kind of anticipation that only came from believing this time would be different. He looked like a man who'd spent a year rehearsing his revenge speech in the mirror and was now delighted he finally had an audience.
"Well I'll be fucked," Grisham said, grinning. "You crawled out after all."
Blake met his gaze.
"You should've stayed away," Blake said quietly.
Grisham laughed. "You cost me ships. Crew. Reputation. I brought friends this time."
Blake nodded once.
"I see that."
Grisham leaned closer to the camera. "Surrender. Power down. Maybe I leave you breathing."
Blake closed his eyes for half a second.
Then opened them.
"No," he said.
The grin vanished.
Blake cut the channel.
His chest felt like it was caving in.
"Captain?" Booth asked softly.
Blake swallowed, hands steadying on the controls.
"I'm sorry," he said. "But we're not letting them have this ship. Or anyone else."
Gunny's voice was calm. Ready. "Orders."
Blake stared out at the approaching ships—at the point where philosophy ended and consequence began.
"Intercept," he said.
And as The Aubrey surged forward to meet Grisham's returning fleet, Blake felt the awful, undeniable truth settle in his bones:
This wasn't the System testing him.
This wasn't a ship learning his patterns.
This was just the universe reminding him that sometimes, the price of holding the line was blood.
And he hated that he was willing to pay it.
The Line Is Drawn in Vacuum
Blake didn't count down.
He didn't give a speech.
He didn't say anything dramatic like do what you must or I trust you or any of the other bullshit captains said right before people died and later pretended had meaning.
He just leaned back in the chair, hands lifting from the controls like they were suddenly too hot to touch.
"Aubrey," he said, voice tight, too calm. "You have the conn."
The bridge went very still.
Even Gunny glanced sideways.
Elenor's fingers hovered above her panel. Booth looked like he might physically crawl into the deck plating if given enough time, and Blake couldn't even blame him—ductwork had never once delivered terrible moral responsibility.
Aubrey did not hesitate.
"Confirmed, Captain."
Blake swallowed.
"Primary objective," Blake continued. "Grisham's ship. Secondary objective: the rest of them. No warnings. No comms. I don't want to hear their voices. I don't want to see their faces."
He stared straight ahead, jaw clenched hard enough his teeth ached.
"I don't want to talk to dead men."
There it was.
The line.
"Understood," Aubrey replied, voice flat, professional, utterly stripped of sarcasm for the first time in a long while."Transferring full tactical authority to autonomous combat execution."
The controls dimmed slightly as Blake's interface privileges collapsed inward.
He was no longer flying the ship.
The ship was flying itself.
And it moved like it had been waiting for permission.
The Aubrey didn't charge.
It fell.
Dropped nose-first into the graveyard's shadow layer, vanishing briefly behind drifting wreckage before reappearing at an angle that made Booth gasp and immediately regret the existence of angles.
Gunny grinned like a man seeing an old friend. "Oh yeah. That's the good shit."
No warning shots.
No flashy maneuvers.
The dorsal turret fired once.
A clean, precise lance of energy speared through one of the escort ships' forward weapons pod. The pod detonated, shredding the ship's own hull in a cascade of molten metal and atmosphere that vented silently into the void.
The ship spun, dead in space, already irrelevant.
Booth stared. "They didn't even—"
The Aubrey rolled, ventral thrusters firing in microbursts, slipping between two incoming firing arcs like it had always known where they'd be.
Because it had.
Grisham's ship opened fire.
Wild. Heavy. Desperate.
The shots burned through debris fields, slagging wrecks that had survived centuries only to die as collateral. Somewhere, a dead ship's dead ship-family probably filed a complaint.
Aubrey didn't dodge.
It wasn't there anymore.
The ship appeared behind Grisham's vessel in a blink-and-you-died maneuver that ignored everything Blake thought he knew about momentum, physics, and the general etiquette of not teleporting behind someone with guns.
Gunny laughed, sharp and delighted. "Captain, permission to appreciate this?"
Blake didn't answer.
He couldn't look away.
The dorsal turret fired again—short, controlled bursts this time. Not at the engines.
At the spine.
Structural weak points Aubrey had already mapped from the last encounter.
Grisham's ship buckled.
Internal explosions rippled along its length as systems failed out of sequence—power routing collapsing, inertial dampeners dropping for half a second that would've turned crew into paste.
Elenor whispered, "That's… surgical."
Booth shook his head, eyes wide. "That's execution."
The remaining ships tried to scatter.
That was their mistake.
Aubrey anticipated it instantly.
Two small, fast targets broke hard left, trying to use the dreadnought's bulk as cover.
Aubrey let them.
Then fired through the wreckage.
The shots punched through ancient hull plating like it wasn't there, emerged clean, and tore the pirate ships apart mid-burn.
No chase.
No drama.
Just removal.
The heavier backup ship—the one that had hung back—powered up its drives, trying to flee outright.
Aubrey didn't pursue immediately.
Instead, the ship turned.
Blake felt it in his gut, like gravity had briefly remembered him.
"Why aren't we—" Booth started.
The ventral turret charged.
Gunny's voice dropped into something reverent. "Oh."
The shot hit the fleeing ship dead-center, not explosive but disruptive. Engines flared once, twice, then died completely as cascading failures ripped through its systems.
The ship drifted.
Alive.
Helpless.
Elenor inhaled sharply. "Aubrey—"
"Threat neutralised," Aubrey said calmly. "No further hostile vectors detected."
Silence fell.
The battlefield was suddenly… empty.
Debris drifted where ships had been seconds earlier. Expanding clouds of vapor and metal glittered in the void like obscene fireworks.
Blake's hands were clenched so tight his nails bit into his palms.
He hadn't moved.
Hadn't spoken.
Gunny finally broke it. "Well. That answers the 'what happens if we let the AI drive' question."
Booth swallowed hard. "Captain… they're—"
"I know," Blake said quietly.
He closed his eyes.
Not in relief.
Not in triumph.
In something like grief mixed with nausea.
"Aubrey," Blake said. "Status."
"Primary hostile vessel destroyed," Aubrey replied. "Three additional ships destroyed. One disabled and drifting. No incoming transmissions were accepted or processed."
Blake nodded once.
"Good."
The word tasted wrong.
Elenor watched him carefully. "Orders regarding the disabled ship?"
Blake didn't hesitate.
"Leave it," he said. "They can call for help. Or not."
Gunny raised an eyebrow. "Merciful."
Blake laughed softly, humorless. "No. Lazy. I'm done."
The controls brightened slightly as authority returned.
Blake didn't touch them.
Outside, the graveyard swallowed the remains of Grisham and his friends without comment.
No witnesses.
No justice.
Just consequence.
Blake leaned forward, elbows on his knees, head bowed.
He'd drawn the line.
And crossed it.
And the worst part—the part that made his chest ache and his stomach twist—was that the universe hadn't argued.
It had simply stepped aside and let Aubrey finish the job.
And somewhere deep inside Blake Fisher, a quiet, terrible understanding settled in:
He could give orders like that again.
And the ship would always obey.
Leaving the Bones Behind
Blake didn't speak for a long time.
The bridge lights dimmed back to normal levels. Consoles hummed. Systems reported green across the board like nothing extraordinary had just happened—like four ships hadn't been erased from existence in under a minute because Blake had finally said enough.
Outside, the graveyard drifted.
Patient. Endless. Full of quiet things that had once been very loud.
Blake stared at it and felt absolutely, bone-deep tired.
"Aubrey," he said finally, voice hoarse. "Plot a course."
Gunny blinked. "Anywhere in particular, Skipper?"
Blake rubbed his face with both hands. "Away."
That earned a small, respectful silence.
Elenor was the first to nod. "Understood."
Booth let out a breath he'd clearly been holding since the shooting stopped. "I vote for anywhere that isn't haunted by a thousand dead warships and one extremely judgmental AI."
"That's not a vote," Blake muttered. "That's a plea."
"Captain," Aubrey said carefully, "the dreadnought remains a significant salvage opportunity. Its material density and technological—"
No.
Blake cut him off with a single syllable so sharp it could've shaved steel.
"No," Blake said. "We're done here. No more graveyard. No more dreadnought. Ever."
Gunny tilted his head. "That thing's a gold mine."
"It's a fucking trap," Blake snapped, then sighed. "Not an intentional one. Worse. It's a place that makes terrible choices feel reasonable."
Elenor studied him. "You're sure."
Blake nodded. "I don't want to find out what I become if I stay."
That settled it.
"Course acknowledged," Aubrey said. "I will remove all standing task flags related to the dreadnought and mark the region as restricted."
Blake snorted. "You can do that?"
"Yes," Aubrey replied. "I was hoping you would ask."
Blake laughed despite himself. "Of course you were."
Preparations were… strangely quiet.
No alarms. No rush. No final desperate scavenging run like Blake's instincts screamed at him to do. He ignored the urge to grab just one more thing, to optimize the departure, to wring every possible advantage out of the place.
That way lay madness.
Repair bots returned. Gunny came back aboard last, armor scorched, humming cheerfully like a man who'd had a productive day at the office. Booth triple-checked seals and then checked them again because that was apparently his love language now.
The children watched from the observation blister as the dreadnought slowly receded, its impossible silhouette fading into the sea of wreckage.
Luna frowned. "Are we… leaving it?"
"Yes," Blake said gently.
"Forever?"
Blake hesitated.
"…Yeah," he said. "Forever."
William squinted. "Is it bad?"
Blake considered lying.
Then didn't.
"It's not good," he said. "And it's not safe. Some places aren't meant to be fixed. They're meant to be… avoided."
William nodded solemnly, as if this fit neatly into his worldview. "Like the third drawer in the galley."
Gunny barked a laugh. "Kid's got instincts."
Booth whispered, "That drawer tried to kill me."
"It tried to kill all of us," Elenor said, deadpan. "It's an equal opportunity hazard."
As the stars stretched and the Aubrey slipped into FTL, Blake felt the weight of the graveyard finally fall away.
The System didn't speak.
The dreadnought didn't follow.
No warning appeared. No ominous message. No final test.
Just motion.
Forward.
Blake stared at the streaking light and felt something settle into place—not certainty, not peace, but direction.
He didn't know where this path led.
He only knew where it didn't.
And for now?
That was enough.