The silence was the worst part. Not the engineered quiet of a corporate vault or the profound emptiness of the void, but the specific, ragged silence of a machine that had screamed itself hoarse and was now dying. The Stray Dog drifted, limpet-docked to a nameless shard of rock and ice, its port side a mangled ruin of blackened composite and weeping conduits. The only light in the cockpit was the angry, pulsing red of the emergency alerts and the cold, indifferent glitter of the stars. Zaina Petrova sat at the comms console, her face a mask of exhaustion carved by the crimson glow. Her objective was simple: find a safe harbor, any port in the system that would take them.
She had been hailing for hours. The first five attempts had dissolved into the static of the Resonance Field, unanswered. Now, a connection finally held, a thin, wavering thread to a station master on the edge of the Belt.
— Negative, Stray Dog, — the voice was tinny, laced with fear. — We can’t risk it. Yama-Mitsui has the whole sector on lockdown. Taking you in is a death sentence.
The connection cut. Zaina didn’t flinch, but Kaelen saw the muscles in her jaw tighten. Another door slammed shut in the cold dark. He felt the Ghost-Eater Shunt at the base of his neck, a useless weight of cold metal. In the battle, it had been a weapon, a compass in the storm. Now, it was just a scar, a reminder of the ghost he carried and the trouble he brought.
Zaina opened another channel, this one to a flotilla commander she knew, a man whose ship she had flown escort for during the Titan skirmishes. The response was faster this time, the voice clearer, colder.
— The price is too high, Zaina. You're running with ghosts and corporate killers. We have families, contracts. We can’t touch you.
The words landed like physical blows. Ghosts and corporate killers. Kaelen was the ghost. He was the killer. He was the poison that was turning Zaina’s entire network to ash. He looked away from the viewport, the endless starfield suddenly feeling like a cage. The commander’s voice wasn’t just a refusal; it was an accusation, and it was true. This was the price of his choice to chase the truth, a cost paid by everyone who got too close.
She tried two more contacts. One was a silent, immediate disconnection. The other was a simple, automated message: This channel is no longer in service. Zaina leaned back, the fight draining out of her. The list of potential allies on her screen was a graveyard of crossed-out names and dead links. They were an island, and the tide was rising.
A new alert chimed, sharp and clean, cutting through the chorus of damage warnings. It wasn’t a standard hail. It was a secure, encrypted message, its icon a complex, interlocking knot of black and silver he’d only ever seen in the Ceres Down-Spiral. Rexer. The information broker. The man to whom he was now indebted.
Zaina’s eyes narrowed as she read the text displayed on the screen. Her expression remained unreadable, a careful blankness she had perfected over years of high-stakes negotiations. Kaelen didn’t need to see the words. He could feel the shift in the cockpit’s psychic atmosphere, a cold, transactional pressure that had nothing to do with Yama-Mitsui.
— What is it? — he asked, his voice rough.
For a long moment, Zaina didn’t answer. She stared at the message, her finger hovering over the console. Then, with a quiet finality, she tapped the screen. The message vanished.
— Nothing, — she said, turning back to the dead comms channels. — Just more static.
But Kaelen had seen the first few words before she deleted it: “Your debt is due. Deliver the Empath…” She had refused. She had chosen to stay on this sinking ship with him, a choice that cost her the only lifeline they’d been offered. The silence that followed was heavier than before, filled with the weight of her loyalty and their shared, hopeless fate.
— External aid probability is less than five percent.
Walter Bell’s synthesized voice cut through the quiet. The raven Uplift stood motionless behind the pilot’s chair, his amber optic scanning the bleak telemetry. His assessment was not emotional. It was a simple, brutal fact. Their resources were critical. Their allies were gone. They were completely, utterly on their own.
The red emergency light pulsed, casting long shadows that danced like ghosts. The ship’s failing life support hummed a low, mournful dirge.
Then a new signal cut through the static, clean and cold.
