The signature emitter was located in what Cohen called the ‘underbelly’ of the ship. The only way to access it was by opening a hatch in the wall and sliding down into a small chamber wherein there would be, in theory, barely enough room for a Kragorian’s body.

 Pearl’s Human body was only slightly better off - the heat from the ship’s engines (ready to launch at a moment’s notice) pressed down against her, adding to the claustrophobic feel of the space.

“Get out of there as soon as you erase that signature,” Cohen barked from above. 

“Don’t die, okay?” Yaann pleaded, nervously playing with her own tail. “If you can’t do it just call me and I’ll lift you right up!” 

“Good luck,” Cohen said, placing a hand on Yaann’s shoulder. “We’ll be counting on you.”

Then the hatch was shut and for a moment Pearl was immersed completely in darkness.

The signature of a ship was akin to a tattoo on its heart. There were three ways to remove it which were known to Pearl - paint over the tattoo, change what it read, or destroy the heart itself. 

In this case, the latter was unacceptable. Pearl had no idea what sort of systems the Kragorian used to track the ship. If they planned to use it as bait explicitly they may have devised a process which would allow them to track even a dead ‘heart’, or placed failsafes which would track other aspects of the ship’s unique functions if the heart failed.

Pearl was left with two options; change the signature or remove it entirely. Changing the signature very likely required a delicate hand and intimate knowledge of the ship’s systems. It was something very difficult to do if one was not an expert or a specialized criminal. 

She remembered accompanying Olaan to a rendezvous point where an alien smuggler had bragged to them, adolescents at the time, about how adept he was at the process.

“Those U.U.C dopes looking for their property might as well be chasing ghosts.”

Pearl understood how changing the signature would be useful in many cases. It misidentified the ship - making it appear on scans to be more or less formidable than it was or effectively hiding it from those searching for stolen property. It also made the ship’s theft less obvious, as a total lack of signature immediately raised alarm in those who cared to look.

However, Pearl was not adept at changing a ship’s signature. She’d never tried before and this was not an ideal environment to learn. She raised her hands as light began to fill the space, a screen above her and one option left.

She had to destroy the signature.

There was an open panel beside the screen where someone seemed to have pulled out several wires and run several more through the walls. Pearl stared at the mass, momentarily hesitant to stick her hand into what screamed ‘electrocution pit’ before steeling herself with the fact that no one had ever encountered the Kragorians face-to-face and survived to tell the tale. 

After reaching into the mass of wires and finding the switch Cohen had told her about, the screen flickered to life and she was able to quickly access the ship’s innermost systems - courtesy of the engineering team, Pearl assumed.

The first roadblock came soon after, a blaring alarm composed of several different clanging, screeching sounds and bright red lights which flooded the small area, seeming to press Pearl against the hard surface of the ship. It was nothing compared to even the O.R.C.A’s emergency klaxons, blotting out everything except for the painful cacophony of noise and the light and the desire to escape it by any means necessary.

Driven by sheer panic, Pearl forced her eyes open a fraction in an attempt to take in the screen. There were several lines of text being displayed, options, she realized, and in the middle there was one she recognized - Exit.

Immediately, her hand shot out towards it but just as she was about to slam her palm against salvation her fingers curled. 

Groaning, she closed her eyes again, covering her ears. It did nothing to stop the relentless sound but something wasn’t right. She needed to think. Something wasn’t right. Why was? Why was?

Why could she read it?

Pearl gritted her teeth together. She felt as if she were being crushed beneath something. She was in a dying brain during its last, panicked moments - synapses firing and every alarm blaring as loud as it could. She would die if she didn’t- If she-!

But she shouldn’t be able to read it. She had seen what she assumed to be Kragorian before reaching this point and she couldn’t read any of the other options. Only the middle option, ‘Exit’, was written in U-Lang.

A trap, she realized. Pressing that button would either kill her or lock her out of the controls permanently - but at the moment it was difficult to see that as undesirable.

Pearl folded her ears in an attempt to block out more sound and tried to remember Yaann and the rest of the Teretiwelligans. She’d made a promise. She remembered Cohen patting her shoulder before opening the hatch, wishing her good luck, Hakeem’s panicked expression. She remembered Olaan. She’d dragged ceir so far away from home. Would she be able to face any of them if she failed now? Intentionally?

Forcing her eyes open and her body forward so it was as close to the screen as she could get, Pearl searched. The other lines of texts were all short, roughly equal to a single word or phrase, and she quickly discarded them for now. It was likely that they were also variations of ‘Exit’ for other no-contact species which might infiltrate the ship. Instead, she steeled herself and desperately searched the searing, pulsating red.

There. In the midst of it she saw a patch of slightly darker red, a symbol. Without stopping for a second’s consideration, Pearl’s hand shot forward, making contact.

Silence.

For a moment, Pearl thought she had managed to kill herself before everything slowly came into focus yet again. She blinked, falling back. Her eyes burned and a headache seemed to have its jaws wrapped around her ringing skull. Everything was strobing, tinted red. Hot. It had grown hotter.

“Cohen to Pearl! Pearl! Hey, are you still alive?” The engineer’s voice sounded tinny, small compared to the ringing.

Pearl reached for her communicator, her own voice unsteady. “I am fine. I am going to continue working.” The heat and the sudden quiet made her want to sleep.

“You need to answer when a superior checks in!” Cohen said, sounding faraway.

“Yes,” Pearl said, already letting their voice fade to the back of her mind as she focused on the screen again.

There was a gigantic wall of text filling all available space. Squinting, Pearl didn’t see any recognizable words or symbols. As she took out her translator she hoped that her haste to end the previous test hadn’t cost her context necessary for the current one.

The translator worked slower than Pearl would have liked. There was no helping it with such a large amount of text in an almost completely unknown language but every second that ticked by was another second the Kragorians drew closer and by the time it finished Pearl’s heart was racing. A bead of sweat trailed down her nose, wiped away.

What was able to be translated and identified was precious little. Many of the words were unable to be translated at all and what was translatable often repeated - signaling to Pearl that there was an issue. Either the text was repeating itself or the Kragorian language was context-based to some extent, which the translator couldn’t pick up on.

Stumped, Pearl took a moment to utilize the silence and think, fighting fatigue. The screen didn’t seem to be counting down to anything but it was still a highly time sensitive matter. With nothing to go on and the Kragorians drawing nearer, Pearl attempted to think backwards. For what reason was there a large wall of text? 

She pulled down the fabric covering her mouth and tried to breathe in slowly. The difference between having it off or on was negligible. Another bead of sweat ran over her lip. She kept seeing flashes of red.

Perhaps it was a tongue twister or a passage from something of cultural significance like religious text? But she didn’t know what sort of answer that would necessitate. 

Pearl paused, then looked at the screen again. In truth, she didn’t know how she would input an answer. The text filled the screen completely, giving no room for any input. That in itself was a clue.

Leaning forward again, Pearl attempted to compare the translated words to the ones on screen to see if she could glean anything from the spacing. No luck. She tilted her head, hoping maybe it would make more sense from another angle. Nothing.

Frustrated and beginning to panic, she attempted to think again. It was growing hotter. How close was she to the engines? Focus. A large wall of text with many repeating words. Repeating words.

A thought struck Pearl. What if the words didn’t matter? Hadn’t there been a symbol before, swimming in red? 

Cursing her haste, Pearl fell back and stared up at the low ‘ceiling’. There were dents and scratch marks littering the metal. How many before her had died here, on this ship? She remembered the mural and shivered, attempting to take a deep breath though the air seemed thick and the heat did nothing to clear her mind.

Pearl glanced at the screen before looking back down at her translator, her vision swimming. Then, startled, she looked at the screen again.

She could see it. From this far away she could almost see a shape. 

Indecision froze her. There was no indication that the shape was actually there. Certain letters weren’t darker and none of the translated words hinted towards a shape or symbol. It was possible the ‘shape’ was nothing more than afterimages from the strobe lights which had been seared into her vision or a result of the heat but Pearl had nothing more to go on and time was running out. She didn’t know how many more of these tests the Kragorians had put in place.

After taking a deep breath, she reached out and carefully drew the shape she saw there, growing even less hopeful as she did so. There was no indication the screen was registering what she was doing at all.

However, as soon as she pulled her hand away, the screen changed.

The first and most pressing matter was the fact that there was a timer. A timer which did not utilize U-Lang numbers and was thus impossible for Pearl to understand.

Secondly, there was only a single line of text and a box for input beneath it. 

‘THE MOTHER OF ALL ATE ALL THAT WAS NATURAL. THE MOTHER OF ALL ATE ALL.’

Reading this from her translator, Pearl privately despaired. The answer seemed to be linked to Kragorian mythology, in which case she was out of luck and, glancing at the countdown, out of time.

Tapping the side of the translator, she attempted to calm her breathing. She had to fight past the air and think. The reference to a woman eating reminded her of the mural Yaann had shown her but that didn’t tell Pearl how to answer the question. Should she input ‘bird’ or the name of a specific bird or another variation on the sentence presented? There were birds in the picture books but not on Opranov. There was a gray sky above and cool, refreshing air. Clouds were overhead, heavy and warm like steam and someone-

Jolting, Pearl realized both that she’d nearly passed out and that the hole was not only growing steadily hotter but increasingly hotter. Soaked with sweat, she pinched her skin between her nails, looking back down at the translator. She had to focus. The digits on the countdown were still doubled but she didn’t know for certain what that meant. 

After pouring over the sentence four more times, she was struck by how strange it was. Again, the fact that she could read it.

Previously, the translator had only been able to pick out a few bits and pieces of the Kragorian language but this was a fully adapted phrase. Which meant, possibly, that it was well known. 

Again, that didn’t mean much for Pearl on her own - being from Opranov she knew very little about the universe at large, but she still had access to the U.U.C database.

Quickly, she pulled up the encounter log for the Kragorians and skimmed; pinching, biting, and screaming herself into focus whenever she felt her consciousness slipping away. 

One phrase stood out to her and this time she input it without hesitation, seeing the countdown reach single digits.

‘TWO HUNDRED EYES AND TWO THOUSAND TEETH’

Then the screen changed again, and Pearl nearly collapsed at what she saw.

The ship’s signature.