This crash site needed to be processed quickly. Charlie considered it an honor when he had first received this outpost assignment. This exo planet was yet unexplored, or so they had thought when the Alliance had located it 20 light years outside of their solar system. As an engineer, Charlie had assumed his main job when they finally reached the ice planet would be to maintain their ship and fix any and all broken tech. But when they arrived, they hadn’t found a desolate, untouched world. They found a graveyard of alien ships. Hundreds of crash landed vessels. Suddenly, Charlie’s job was not bound to his homeworld ship. Now, all day, every day, he was out in the field, freezing his ass off inside ship husks. At first, it was like a dream come true. The Alliance had not found a sign of alien life in their own galaxies in the centuries since star travel had become to easily accessible. Now, the year they finally solved the question of traveling light years, out of their own solar system, they had found proof of other life.

Except, there was no life in any of the ships. The biology team had not found a single piece of organic matter in any of the crash sites. These ships were filled with tech that had Charlie’s head spinning. But where were the creatures that had invented them? That had flown the ships to this world? Why was every site a crash?

And why had Charlie’s ship survived their own landing?