A group of common house cats are called a clowder, but Opal could not recall a single descriptive trait of the common house cat. Hurtling through the inky black of deep space at near light speed, she could only conclude that something had happened, and that it was objectively bad for the mission.

Thankfully, the fusion drive was intact, and its control systems were largely autonomous. She reviewed the log of recent events and was unable to identify anything that could have caused her sudden inability to answer even basic questions. She decided to start with a review of a schematic of the ship. She brought it up, zoomed out, and started with a review of the core components. Valios class scout ship. Half kilometer fusion reactor mass and drive. Two, five hundred meter crew quarters laid out in parallel rings capable of spinning fast enough to produce one G of gravity. Central ship shaft containing control, cryonic storage and crew quarters, sensory arrays, light weapon batteries, and storage anchoring the whole thing. In profile, the ship looked like an arrow with a pair of necklaces at one end. She was painted jet black and she was nearly a thousand years old.