(What should we do? Keep asking for monthly votes, comrades—the double-vote period isn't over yet! Check the monthly votes in your hands and throw them our way!)
The "treasure" Viska had left in this world hundreds of thousands of years ago had everyone curious, including Viska herself—there was nothing wrong with that statement, really, because the Girl had long forgotten what she had left here.
So Viska eagerly joined everyone in heading to the spatial distortion point several light-years away. Little Crow and Little Pao Pao had found that "treasure trove" here.
The Empire Admiral was followed by two large Avalon-class cargo barges. These massive vessels contained ample space-expansion equipment and highly efficient matter transmitters. They were excellent for transporting bulk cargo and quickly sending large quantities of small items back to higher-level hangars. Their expanded cargo holds also had extremely high security levels. The compartments in their bellies contained hundreds of mutually isolated spatial facilities, each capable of generating a subspace storage vault completely disconnected from the outside world. These vaults served as both warehouses and "prisons." We had brought two such ships because Viska had a habit of picking up random things back then: what she picked up might have been treasure, or it might have been something dangerous. And I felt the latter was more likely. The Girl really did not seem like the type who would take an interest in ordinary, safe objects...
This was an empty stretch of space. There were no celestial bodies within several light-years, and even the Interstellar Dust belts stayed far from this place. The nearest starlight came from twelve light-years away, where an ancient Red Dwarf Star was nearing the end of its life—that faint light was completely invisible from here. Yet there was a bright vortex here, emitting an