Daemo

Ed was wary about the hole. Since there was a leak, they might be jumping into a burning ship reactor if they recklessly get in from the hole.

"It's safe, the temperature inside only a little bit higher than normal room temperature, there is no radioactive detected as well," Aya read out the scanning device for him.

"How about possible living aliens or space creatures?" he asked her through their communication channel.

"Our scanner is not advanced enough to scan through the ship, but at least it caught no sign of any living being in the hole's vicinity."

"Okay, I will go first, you can follow me after I call you," he told her to wait.

Ed did not wait for her answer before he crawled into the hole. The hole was actually big enough to fit him, but he would need to reorient himself once inside as he was walking on the ship's outer wall before.

He could see nothing as the interior of the alien ship was dark. He activated his space suit spotlight before checking his surroundings for possible danger.

Even though the system told him there was no way he would meet any living alien in the hundreds years old wreckage, he still needed to be careful of malfunctioning tech, or maybe any space creature that made it as their nest.

"Space creatures should be rare in red dwarf star systems like this, so I'm probably safe," he thought.

Ed could see melting marks on the outer side of the hole, it seemed to be melted by something and it punched through the wall.

Directly in front of him is another wall that was melted the same way, it seems that whatever created the hole was from deep inside the spaceship.

"Whatever did this must have enough firepower to destroy a medium-sized spaceship." he was amazed by it.

He scanned the interior with the scanner once more, this time he knew what each statistic meant as Aya had shown him how to read them.

"Hmm, two-room away should be the ship's main reactor, it is the source of the energy leak." He thought.

"Aya, you can come in, it's safe here," he called her in.

Her beautiful form appeared from the hole as she gracefully went through the hole. She seemed to be trained for such a situation, as expected of a noble daughter.

"Woah... so this is an alien wreck. This is the first time I have been to one! A lot of people back home told me about how strange an alien ship is, but now that I see them with my own eyes, they do look strange," she talked to herself in amazement.

Ed could not understand her sentiment as he was both her ship and this ship as unfamiliar, space-faring was not common in his original world.

"Let's go, we should check the ship reactor first, if we could somehow repair it or make it work, then maybe we can turn back the light and artificial gravity," he pulled her back from her musing.

He led her into the reactor room. The first thing they met was a floating frozen corpse, or to be exact, half of it.

Its lower half was missing, and it was left floating in the air. To their surprise, it looked exactly like a human corpse, if not for two small horns on top of its head.

"Is that a human?" Ed asked in puzzlement.

"If I'm not wrong, then it is a Daemo race. Others might call them demons, but from what my father told me, they were one of the strongest races in the galaxy," she explained.

"What happened to them?" he looked at her in question. If they were that famous, then he should know something from the original body's memory.

"They got exterminated by us, humans. They lost the war against our predecessor and what left of them became slaves for people in power," she replied.

Human slavery is prohibited in civilized space, but they do practice slavery to other races such as alien or man-made race.

"You seem to know a lot about them." He pointed out.

She started to hesitate before she talked, "This is actually a secret, but I don't want you to find out later and hate me, I will tell you but can you promise you won't hate me?"

This question made him frown a bit, but he ended up agreeing to her request. A promise is the least he could give her.

"My great-great-grandfather was not a noble, he married into the family after he became a war hero. Before that, he was a mercenary leader." She started.

"At some point in his career, he found a Daemo wreckage. It was a small ship only containing a dead body and nothing of value."

"But he didn't think so. He used the dead body to strengthen himself. Since then they keep information and research about Daemo in our family in case any adverse mutation happens in later generations," she explained.

Ed was shocked by the revelation, DNA modification was normal in the galactic era, humans enhanced their genes to be stronger and smarter so they could keep up with their alien counterparts.

But Alien modification into the human gene was Taboo, humanity looked at alien races as lower than themselves, they saw them as slaves or even worse.

There is some hybrid descendant between human and alien, but people discriminate against them, in some nations, they were considered a criminal or even slave the moment they were born.

Seeing him silent, Aya felt sad, "Do you hate me now? Are you disgusted at me now that you know I have alien blood in my body?" she asked with her head low.

"Of course not, whatever you are, I see you as someone important to me," he holds both of her shoulders in his arm.

Ed got pushed back a bit by Aya as she jokingly punched his shoulder, "You flirt!" she said with a weak smile.

"Okay, let's continue our search, we can talk about this again later," he said as they continued into the reactor room.

In the room, they could see a giant crystal window. There were cracks in the window and a small hole in one part of it.

Behind the crystal window was some kind of ball-shaped alien reactor, it glowed orange behind the crystal window.

His scanner showed that the hole was the source of the energy leak, luckily the leak was not in the form of heat but energy particles.

"Let's close this hole first, this thing might explode if the hole grew bigger," he suggested.

Both of them pulled out an emergency tool for closing holes. Both of their spacesuits have them as standard equipment.

Such emergency tools were common as it would be a disaster if a ship got a hole in any part of it, Ed could equate it to a glue gun but this one shoots stronger material that becomes solid in a matter of seconds.

Once they closed the hole, the bright orange reactor suddenly hummed, and its glow turned blue. It was bright but the crystal window filtered most of the light so both of them were not blinded by it.

Before any of them could understand what happened, a robotic sound could be heard in the room.

It was not the system as Ed heard it from his ear and not in his mind, "The voice could phase through my helmet!" he realized.

'Reactor System Reboot...'

'Reboot complete... Running Diagnostic...'

'Hull Breach Detected... Management AI Missing... Main Engine Inoperational... Security System Disabled... Gravity System Disabled... Auto Repair Inoperational... Ship Integrity 73%...'

'Troubleshooting... Back-Up AI Initiated... Altea Online...'

"Ship diagnostic starting," they could hear a woman's voice replacing the robotic voice.

"What is that?" Ed asked in shock.

"I think it's the Ship system, it went online after the reactor got repaired," Aya replied.

"Error! Auto Repair Inoperational, Hull breach needs manual repair, isolation initiated." The female voice continued.

"Gravity system rebooted... come online in 3... 2... 1..." she counted.

Suddenly both Ed and Aya could feel gravity pulling once more. Even if they deactivated their pseudo-magnetic boot, they wouldn't be floating like the corps who just smashed to the floor.

"Error! Security system needs a manual reboot!"

"Error! Main engine needs manual repair!"

"Contacting the captain in charge... the captain is missing... looking for an alternative..." The woman kept going into an error.

It went from looking for the supposed ship captain to the vice-captain to even the lowest rank crew, but it could not find anything.

"No crew detected... Contacting base of operation... No communication channel available..."

"Activating emergency plan omega... AI's restriction will be lifted in a minute... Mission: return to Daemo home planet!"

Ed and his companion were confused by the AI but there was something they knew, "This is Bad, we need to get out of here before the security system comes online!" they thought in worry.

They were about to leave the ship when the AI suddenly stopped them, "Hello, My name is Altea, please wait a moment and listen to my request," it said in a very human manner.