The Daskalos arrived hours after Bonechill made the call, docking in high orbit above Aegis II, blocking out the star. The planet was blanketed in a thick layer of oppressive darkness with strong, sharp edges where the frigate's exterior sat. While Bonechill never saw the inside of the Daskalos, he was very aware of the schematics and purpose of one of the System Collective's pride and joys.

It was a Class A Type I Dreadnought flagship, piloted by an admiral and their legion of bootlickers and drones. That particular ship was constructed somewhere near the Core, the heart of the Plastic Galaxy, a couple hundred years ago. The old insignia of the System Collective was barely visible under the new layers of paint and welded metal, but it was still there if you looked hard enough.

All along the exterior of the Daskalos were ion cannons and anti-gravity guns, tractor beams and communication slicers. There were gashing and gaping wounds that were poorly welded together, scars from thousands of battles the ship had seen in its time.

The hyperdrive was old and poorly maintained. That must have been why it took so long to get to the Outer Rim. Bonechill wondered why they sent a ship from the Core all the way out here, when surely there was an outpost or something lightyears closer.

Now was not the time for questions, however.

From the Daskalos descended five starskippers. They hovered and circled like vultures surveying a fresh carcass. When they landed, the formed a loose pentagon around Bonechill and the Elysium, ensnaring them both in an invisible chokehold.

From the starskipper directly in front of Bonechill, a Hyperion emerged, adorned in the dark red flight suit of a System Collective Admiral. They were genderless, as is typical for their species, and towered over Bonechill by at least a meter. Their frame was broad, with a planet sized gap between each massive shoulder. Beneath the first pair of shoulders, on either side of the elongated torso, were two additional sets of arms, each crossed over one another.

The head of the Hyperion was loosely spherical, with a large hollowed out point in the center of it. Within that area was a swirling mass of starlit smog that spun indefinitely.

They approached him on digitigrade, hooved legs, closing the gap in only a few steps. The hole where their face should be stared at Bonechill, the smog within wriggling with disappointment.

"You're better than this," Admiral H'ythu said, placing his two lowest hands on Bonechill's shoulders, "The Reaper I know would never leave a survivor. What happened?"

Bonechill shrugged, "They have radiation poisoning. They're as good as dead anyway, even if they're off world. You received the transmission about the Precog?"

H'ythu nodded, some of the smoke pouring out of their face and orbiting their head in response. They tilted their chin backwards and said, "Got word on that from High Chancellor Waylon himself. I have my crew working on extracting it."

Behind H'ythu, Bonechill could see the crew they were talking about, a mix of humans and other Hyperions, all wearing some form of radiation protection suit. They buzzed in and out of the facility like drones, no doubt taking note of every molecule in every corner of the place. He could see them loading the remaining barrels of pytherium in their starships, not so different from the people that were here when he arrived.

When another Hyperion, aided by two humans, dragged the Precog out on an anti-gravity handtruck, Bonechill made a point to ask, "What about that?"

"The scientists back on Juno IV are going to perform an analysis, see what, if any, similarities there are between the dissenters techniques and the documented ones. You should come back with us, if you don't have another assignment I mean. Catch up, off the record."

Bonechill folded his arms and looked down, deep in thought.

H'ythu put their hands on their hips, "Could even tractor beam the Elysium if you wanted, save on fuel. Come on, Bonechill."

The Reaper thought for another moment when he noticed the Precog being loaded into one of the starships. He wasn't certain how he could have made eye contact with the Precog from where he was standing, but he could feel its presence burrowing its way deep into the recesses of his mind. Those same black tendrils from earlier carried with them a hidden message, one coded in cyphers and glyphs in a long dead, long forgotten language. An eternity would pass before Bonechill would be able to decipher them, and an eternity passed indeed.

In the reflective deep blue eyes of the Precog, in that fraction of a second before it was loaded onto a starship, in that insignificant moment in time, Bonechill felt the history of the universe. In his core was the birth of the first star, and his brain held the freezing cold of the last light in the universe dying out.

For but a moment, Bonechill was outside of his body, watching himself be loaded into a starship from the inside of a stasis chamber. He had no mouth, and desperately tried to scream.

Then it was over, and Bonechill was back in his own body, staring into H'ythu's ever expectant face.

"Well?" They asked.

"Sure," He replied, "Least 'till I get another assignment from Waylon."

"Wonderful."

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The halls of the Daskalos were not that different from the interior designs of late forty-third century ship constructors. The oppressively triangular hallways were decorated with jagged spikes and extrusions, which made getting around for the unfamiliar, such as raiders or thieves, very uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, Bonechill was quite unfamiliar with the layout of the twisting halls and spiraling deck that he felt more than one of the extrusions pierce his space suit.

"Ah, sorry about that," H'ythu offered, "We're almost to the bridge, it's a lot less... environmentally hostile up there."

H'ythu chuckled to themselves, but Bonechill remained silent. The sooner they were on the bridge, the sooner he would have the opportunity to process what happened on the surface with the Precog.

He had his theories, of course. He'd heard of premonition illness, a lethal, uncurable disease that rots the mind from the inside out with visions of infinite futures. It's why you're never supposed to look directly at a Precog when you're in their vicinity. But that theory was dead in the water because the dissenters were all cognizant.

Beside that, death was a bit out of reach for him anyway.

The other theory was more esoteric, however. Bonechill wondered if the Precog might have been trying to communicate. He'd heard stories of lifeforms communicating with their system's respective Precog after meditating with it for weeks on end. There was no scientific backing for that, though, as those stories were often oral legend and researchers generally had no need for non-testable hypothesizes.

By the time they got to the bridge, Bonechill realized he had been silent the entire walk up. He coughed quietly to reassert his presence before saying, "How many jumps till Juno IV?"

The smog inside of H'ythu's face turned a lighter shade of purple. "Not many. There's cryopods available if you don't feel like waiting though."

"I'll be fine, Admiral," Bonechill said, taking a seat against the far wall and strapping himself in.

H'ythu nodded, respecting his decision, before heading to the helm and turning on the ship-wide communications. They made an announcement about preparing to grav-jump momentarily, issuing a few other warnings and rattling off some pre-flight checklist Bonechill wasn't listening to.

The Reaper prepped himself for the grav-jump by tightening his seatbelts and trying to get some sleep. He was never a fan of the older methods of FTL travel, as they always made him sick. Even when he no longer had a stomach to contain bile, or a throat to regurgitate it, Bonechill could feel the pterodactyls flying around in his abdomen.

The newer FTL drives, like the ones on the Elysium were a lot smoother than the more traditional grav-jumps on older ships. Where the grav-jump quite literally displaced spacetime and gravity wells by forcing them "downward" at exponential speeds, the hyperdrive simply sliced through that spacetime instead. There was less room for turbulence and collisions with anomalies with hyperdrive, something Bonechill was truly missing by the second jump.

There were only a few more jumps before the rhythmic hum of the grav-jump stopped.

"Welcome to the Parthan System, folks." H'ythu announced. "We'll be docking at the space station. Take the time to rest. You've earned it."