If the Stars Should Appear

*If the Stars Should Appear* is the second episode of the series, picking up after the pilot, *Old Wounds*.

## If the Stars Should Appear

### Synopsis

The U.S.S *Valkyrie*, including the recently-reconciled Jenna and Martin, comes across an enormous unknown ship drifting in space, estimated to eventually collide with a star, where millennia-old mysteries of its origins lie within.

### Plot Summary

#### Act 1/3

A bored Arthur and Markus are in the middle of star mapping on the *Valkyrie*’s bridge, wishing that something exciting would show up; they’re bored to the point, in fact, where they refer to this task as one of the most dull activities available to a UIFA officer. Not even a point made by Arthur’s girlfriend about how they’re the first from the Planetary Union to be in this area of currently unexplored space - outside of the frontier - can reinvigorate them. Martin enters the bridge and provides diagnostics data from engineering to Jenna, causing the others on the bridge to see the friendly way in which they're interacting with each other, a complete contrast to their animosity towards one another during most of the previous episode. Andrea soon manages to finally get Arthur and Markus excited when she suddenly picks up readings of a large artificial object nearby, to which Jenna tells Arthur to adjust their heading to go and see what it is. The bridge crew are all quickly shocked as the artificial mass they find turns out to be a ship of colossal size, large enough to fit several thousand *Valkyries* into.

Finding from Connor that their own ship's sensors are unable to get through the hull of the larger one in front of them, which is apparently two millenia old, Jenna decides to take an away team with her to investigate the inside in-person, especially after Markus reveals that he's mapped out its trajectory: in four months, it will drift into the gravity well of a nearby star and will get disintigrated.
Leaving Hank in charge, Jenna, Martin, Connor, Eve and Andrea head over to the other ship in a shuttle. Connor says the total size of the interior is two-hundred and ninety-three square kilometres, which Andrea estimates to be almost the size of Earth's Los Angeles. Jenna remarks that, as a result of this enormous size, the race who built the ship must belong to the AA development classification.

Upon docking, the five exit the shuttle through a corridor of the ship, coming across a metal door at the end of it which appears to be ancient. When attempts by Jenna to open it fail, Andrea manages to easily do so with the strength from her half-Xelayan status, and the away team step out into a sunny and wide open rural landscape atop a grassy hill after passing across a metal catwalk. Eve reasons that they must be in a bioship - the biggest one the Union's ever known of, in fact. Connor finds there to be several million humanoids populating the ship, and Jenna splits the five up into two teams so as to tell these natives of their impending danger: herself, Eve and Connor will take up one of the teams going to the left, while Martin and Andrea split off into the other going right. After telling the latter to first go back to the shuttle and tell the *Valkyrie* that they're going for a look around, and that they should reconvene back where they are at 1 PM, she sets off with Connor and Eve down the hill.

#### Act 2/3

As Jenna's group of three walk through an area of dense woodland a few minutes later, Eve points out the presence of a wood cabin in the clearing in front of them. Deciding that now is "time to meet the locals", the former knocks on its door, and a woman with a downwards triangular-shaped area of spots on her forehead emerges. Before the Captain can finish introducing herself though, the woman, seemingly startled by the three who are clearly outsiders, quickly shuts the door. Jenna decides to try again; this time a man who is presumably the woman's husband emerges with a shotgun, to which Connor manages to stun him with his pistol before he can do any harm.