Commodore Augustine Hellefax sat crosslegged in the command seat at the front of the bridge of the orbiting battlecruiser [i]Lucifer[/i], a glass of purple claret from the garden world of Tarim nestled gently in his left hand. The projector before him displayed the holographic likeness of some civil servant giving his report on terraformation efforts, or lack thereof as these tended to go.

"Additionally," the flickering hologram droned on, "the atmosphere generating-plants have only been running at a capacity of 15 to 23 percent for the past decimester. The supply of nitrogen-rich compounds is just not available. As you are aware, these generators can only produce atmosphere if there is material to burn."

"Then why is there nothing for the generators to burn?" The Commodore asked after a brief sip.

"To be quite frank with you, Governor, I had hoped you would be able to answer that question. My suspicion is that recent storms in the southern badlands have halted efforts at the nitratine quarries; the same storm systems that destroyed 62 percent of our early successional plantings in the southern craterlands we discussed earlier."

"Fair enough," the Commodore sighed. "We will speak again when you have the atmosphere generators running at higher capacity."

"How do you propose I do that, Governor?" The holographic administrator demanded, his ability to hide his frustration clearly failing. "The quarries are flooded. Even if they weren't, the miners won't return to work in those regions because they're afraid of pirate raids. I don't know how to do what you ask of me!"

"That is your duty. Figure it out." Before the administrator could reply, the Commodore tapped his finger on a control panel on the right armrest of his seat. The colonial administrator's hologram disappeared into a cloud of flickering static before the projector went dark.

"How dreadfully tiresome," the Commodore groaned as he took another sip of his wine.

Commodore Hellefax spun his seat around, looking through the panoramic windshield at the very front of the bridge. Out on the horizon, the hazy gray atmosphere met the pitch blackness of space in a fuzzy line of grayish-blue. Some four hundred kilometers below him, through the transparent flooring beneath the command seat, the ash-stained, crater-pocked surface of Crucible rolled by. The past five anni had been so dreadfully tiresome. For five anni Commodore Hellefax had been relegated to occupation of this laser-blasted cinder, charged with turning this graveyard of a planet into a habitable world and keeping pirates from regaining control of it. Such a charge - Hellefax was convinced - was beneath a Commodore of the Imperial Authority. It would be better to simply pawn this hellish world off onto some pauper noble and be done with it. His superiors surely knew this as well; Hellefax was convinced that he was assigned to Crucible as some cruel, undeserved punishment.

"Bastards resent my noble birth," Hellefax grumbled to himself in between sips of Tarim claret. "It's the only reason they keep me in exile here, charged with cleaning this shitheap of a planet."

In a bout of fury, the Commodore drew his glass from his lips and threw it to the floor. The glass shattered instantly against the transparent floor, casting a spray of purple wine and glass shards against Crucible's equatorial ash desert.

"They will rue the day they sent me to this damnable world," the Commodore declared. "One day they shall pay dearly for this."

The bulkhead door at the back of the [i]Lucifer's[/i] bridge drew upward with a mechanical whine, allowing Captain Brelgam Narmassus to stride into the bridge. Still clad in the combat armor and his soot-soiled cape from his foray onto the surface, the Captain approached the Commodore's seat at the fore of the bridge.

"Captain Narmassus, I am gladdened that your expedition to the surface was brief. I trust you and your cohort found nothing of interest down there."

The Captain's eyes flickered to the puddle of wine and shattered glass on the floor beside the command seat. "Governor, you've spilled your wine,"

"So I have."

"You [i]know[/i] how I feel about food and drink on the bridge," Captain Narmassus growled, concealing his frustration behind his emotionless visage. "The instruments on the bridge are extremely sensitive to moisture, and a simple spill could compromise the combat-readiness of... nevermind it," the Captain ending that thought with a shake of the head. "Governor, do we have the bridge to ourselves?"

"Yes. We are alone," Hellefax affirmed.

"And the hologram communicator is off?" The Commodore tapped a button on his armrest once again to confirm the hologram projector was indeed off and that there was no potential for eavesdropping.

"What did you find on the surface, Narmassus?"

"To be frank, Governor, we are not sure precisely [i]what[/i] it is. It is a xeno construct, built by the indigenous race that lived on Crucible before the planet was glassed. That much we know. It appears to be some sort of machine."

"Strange xeno constructs are nothing new, Captain. If I recall correctly, most of these energy anomalies are nothing more than xeno machines producing warning signals that their battery supplies are running low. What does this machine do?"

"I believe it could be a thinking machine."

The Commodore leaned forward in his seat upon hearing the Captain's revelation. "A [i]thinking[/i] machine? What makes you believe that this construct is a thinking machine."

"It... it sensed my presence. It sensed my approach and it seemed as though it reacted to my being there."

"That does not make it a thinking machine. Reacting does not equate to thinking. A thinking machine is able to generate inputs without living outputs. Your approaching would have only been a living output. Besides, there has not been a thinking machine built in thousands of years. Nobody knows how one would even go about building one anymore."

"[i]Man[/i] has not," Captain Narmassus corrected. "Who is to say the indigenous xenos did not build thinking machines before they were destroyed? Whatever this construct might be - thinking or not - I wish to know what you wish done with it. Man-made or xeno-made, a thinking machines is dangerous. I say we take no risks with this construct and destroy it immediately."

"No," Commodore Hellefax denied at once. "Prepare a squadron of dropships and take me to this construct. I wish to see it for myself before anything is done with it."

"As you wish, Governor," Captain Narmassus acknowledged. With a bow, the Captain turned on his heels and left the bridge to assemble the Commodore's landing party.

Alone in the bridge, Hellefax turned in his chair back and looked down upon the puddle of wine and shattered glass on the transparent floor of the bridge beneath him.

"A thinking machine is dangerous," said the Commodore to himself, "but who is to say one could not be useful?"