The blackness of space wasn’t quite as empty as most thought.  Asteroids, planets, and various bits of space debris were everywhere.  Comets routinely (on a galactic time frame) zipped through space, occasionally colliding with things, collisions that turned big things into more teeny tiny things.  Debris was especially popular near shipping lanes as pirates plied their trade, and the military ships responded in kind.  Radio waves moved all over, some of them communications, some just background noise.  Here and there, the screams of dying stars moved outwards as they expended their energy in one final pulse, a death knell as they went supernova.  Black holes greedily drank these in, their ever-present hunger unceasing as they consumed and consumed.  A binary star system with a black hole between them spun, superheated gasses trailing around the event horizon as they shone with all the colors of the spectrum.

In the deepness of what was once considered the property of the Terran Accord, a small moon orbited a reddish planet.  The planet itself was nothing special in terms of what the Accord looked for when it explored, sending scout ships out like a beehive sending scouts to find nectar.  A mildly toxic atmosphere with swirling dust storms that could strip paint from steel within minutes, no water, and no indigenous life.  But more importantly, there were no resources for them to strip away and then leave, an empty husk hanging in space littered with the refuse of its own defilement.  It was noted on the star charts with the adorable sobriquet of CH-237.5, and then the survey teams moved on.

But it wasn’t entirely without value.  The multi-planetary corporation known as Netflix-Amazon noted that this particular planet existed midway between four habitable systems.  And after failing to see how they could monetize the planet, they had all but given up when fate intervened.  A Bill was passed in the Senate, the Netflix and Chill Bill, a massive undertaking to ensure that the far-flung colonies of the Accord knew where their loyalties lay, and paid for the privilege to do so. And the corporation had suddenly found a use for the planet.

The Affini warship Baeira floated through the darkness, its petals closed as the massive hab-rings moved past each other.  Millions of sophonts lived on the massive vessel, loving and living. They had just completed the successful Domestication of a planet in a nearby system, one which had gone exceedingly well.  Not a single shot was fired, the Terrans there quite happy to accept the gifts of the Compact.  The soldiers of the Accord had unconditionally surrendered, cooler heads realizing that if the might of the Terran Cosmic Navy couldn’t withstand the Compact, they stood no chance.  And nobody there felt like dying for a planet that was light years away and an Accord that did nothing for them. Only took from them.  Which was when the Affini informed the Terrans that nobody was dying, there were no mines or cookpots, and in fact, they’d come to help.  Food and medical aid was brought within moments, the plant-like beings striding from their ships with packages, Terran counterparts also working to help distribute materials.  Buildings were inspected, the occupants brought to temporary housing as the Affini began to demolish unsafe structures and build new ones.  Their fingerprint was on everything, from graceful structures that looked like vine festooned plants to parks that looked natural but had every blade of grass planned for maximum comfort, and to computers that were made of vines, somehow.  

They came, they saw, they conquered…and they left things better than they found them.

And then they moved on, spreading their message of peace and a better life.

In one of the control rooms, an Affini who had been monitoring a screen suddenly looked up in excitement, xers vines quivering.  “Sir!! Sir!!!”, Xe called out excitedly to the officer who was overseeing the stations.

“Yes, Lerupta?  What is it?”, Nariminia asked as he walked over.  The First bloom sitting there was a bit on the excitable side, but xe knew xers stuff.

“Contact!!  Five thousand kilometers away, three points off our starboard bow, Sir.  It’s definitely of Terran make, and it looks like it’s in geosynchronous orbit around a small moon.  Doesn’t seem to be reacting  to our presence.”

Nariminia nodded, and relayed an order to the helm.  The ship shifted gracefully as it turned, the occupants completely unaware of their detour.  And as the ship traveled closer to the Terran vessel, Lerupta and Nariminia kept their eyes, all fourteen of them, on the screen.  More and more data scrolled past as they scanned it.  “It’s old, sir.  Probably around two, maybe two hundred fifty cycles, as Terrans measure it.  See those right there?  Gun emplacements, but they’re not powered up.  And huh…that’s odd.  I’m not picking up signs of life.  Could be a derelict, but not with a power plant THAT big.  See that?”, and a vine lifted, magnified the image, and then pointed at a bulbous structure towards the rear of the Terran vessel.  “Older style power plant, but it’s been out of usage for about two hundred cycles.  And these readings….they’re venting a lot of heat for something with no life signs on board.”

A sudden squelch of static had them looking up.  Another Affini raised her head from her floret who had been giggling and trying to steal her headset.  “Just got hailed, Sir”, she called out to the Captain.

“Well, let’s hear it”, the Captain said, now curious.

A melodious voice filled the room.  “Good evening.  This is the Netflix-Amazon Server Siri 5.0.  Have you paid your weekly subscription?”

The tech officer on deck raised his head, vines still flashing on his instruments.  “It’s not a true AI, just some subroutines devoted to making sure we’ve paid a weekly subscription.  There’s a lot more devoted to maintenance, and how often to open the doors and vent the heat.  A few that I'm disabling right now, which would have blown the ship up if we tried to commandeer it without the proper access codes.  And…hmmm…hello?  What’s this?”

“Hmmm?”, the Captain asked, now even more curious.

“There’s a whole series of commands and subroutines related to…to some humanitarian mission that went uncompleted.  Something about an ethical dilemma that they couldn't solve, but it doesn't go into details.”  

“Huh, that’s interesting.  Well, we’re on an intercept course.  We’ll bring it in and examine it.  A ship that old, who knows what it could teach us?”  The Captain watched as the small blip on the screen got bigger, slowly resolving into a Terran ship.  Classical wedge shape, what had become the now-familiar logo of the Netflix-Amazon corporation emblazoned on the front and the sides. Multiple dishes and arrays festooned the outside, clearly for large data transfers.  It wasn’t transmitting war propaganda, which made the Captain wonder what it had been broadcasting.   Weapons turrets sat idly, proof that his tech officer had done a good job hacking and disabling them.  Not that they needed to worry about such things, but the captain was careful.  What if there was a shot just as a sophont was looking outside and they got scared?  Better safe than have a sophont who may be scared.  

The captain watched as capture vines snaked out, seizing the Terran vessel and bringing it gently into the hangar.  Looking at Lerupta and Nariminia, the Captain grinned.  “Oh…I can see you both practically about to rebloom from excitement..  Go to the Hangar and see what we’ve caught.”  The two were gone before the Captain was able to say another word, leaving behind a few leaves fluttering in the wind.  The Captain snorted, a flower covered head shaking with amusement.  Children.

The two Affini stood in the lift as it made its way down to the hangar bay.  Stepping out, they looked around, Lerupta especially.  Xe hadn’t come down here in a great long while, and xe was looking around, eyes wide.  The normally busy hanger was empty since their last visit to a planet had turned out to be less eventful than others.  Nariminia looked around, and then pointed.  

“There!!  That’s the ship”, he said, and then pointed.  They both walked excitedly over to the ship, even as a team of Affini was getting ready to enter.  One stood at an entrance hatch, tablet hooked up to some sort of interface.  The team looked over and nodded.

“I was the one that spotted it”, Lerupta said excitedly.  “There were no life signs on board, but the mystery is that there’s a huge power plant with no signs of life support systems.  Can I join you?”, xe said as xe bounced.

“Yes, that power plant just kicked into gear for some reason”, the Affini by the door said.  “No weapons that I can tell, and this Bloom here is telling us that there were no life signs.  So…lets open this can of pinata and see whats inside.”  The Affini hit some buttons on their tablet and with a shudder and the flaking of ice that had formed, the hatch opened.  Lerupta and Nariminia both waited until the team was on board and then they entered.

Almost every surface was covered with ice that steamed in the air, and what must have been maintenance drones moved along tracks set into the floor and ceiling.  They were armed with what looked like infrared nozzles, and they continually melted the ice that was on the floor and the tracks.  The interior of the ship was one big room, divided into what looked like triangular slices by the tracks.  Broadcasting equipment was clustered in one corner, and  a catwalk stood about twenty feet up, proving more space.  

“Clear!!”

“Clear!!!”

“All clear!!!”, came the call.  The Affini team came back, regrouping in the center of the room.  Nariminia looked around, seeing large towers covered with blinking lights that extended upwards through the catwalk, hoses full of glowing liquid that ran from the towers through holes in the room to other parts of the ship.  “They…are those servers?  Some kind of informational server?”, he wondered aloud.  “That why they needed this place vented to the outside?  To help deal with the heat buildup?”

Lerupta was looking around, ignoring the rest of the Affini  and then something caught xers eye.  A door at the end of the room that was covered in ice, the only reason why xe noticed it was that there was an arrow leading towards it.  Walking up to it, Lerupta shattered the ice with a few well paced blows.  The door underneath was triple locked, and as the other Affini came over, one pulled out their tablet and interfaced with the door.

“We’re receiving a warning that we don’t have the clearance necessary to enter this room”, the Affini with the tablet.  Tapping a button, the locks disengaged, turning on their axis before retreating into the door.  Loud CLUNKS sounded from inside the door as other mechanisms moved, and steam flooded the room with a hissing sound.    

“Have you ever seen locks like that before?”, Nariminia asked.  He received a lot of headshakes.  Waiting there, he looked around as the door finally finished unlocking.  And then he opened it.

The inside of the room was full of smoke and mist, seemingly all centered around an object in the center of the room.  Wires and tubes snaked into it, and as the mist cleared, Nariminia saw that the object WAS the source of the mist.  He took a hesitant step forward, careful not to trip on any of the tubes, and noticed that some of the tubes were going to these loud humming units.  ‘Refrigeration units’, he realized.  Reaching the object, he waved away the mist, and then cleared the surface - or tried to.  Looking down, puzzling out what the object was, he backed away and turned, eyes wide.  “We need a xenoarcheologist here, now.”

“And a vet.”