The Azure Kraken tore through the void like a spear of shadowed light, its hull shimmering faintly against the distortions of warp space. At ten times the standard cruising speed, the vessel was little more than a phantom streak blazing across the star charts.
Inside the captain quarters, Emery sat in stillness, legs folded, eyes half-closed in meditation. His breathing was calm, yet his mind was far from it.
He replayed every piece of intelligence he had gathered since leaving the miners on Planet 8632. Those poor souls had known nothing of the greater storm unraveling across the stars. To them, the only truth was fear—fear of the unknown, fear of the evacuation order, fear of being swept away in tides of war they could not comprehend.
Ironscar the raider had known slightly more, having traded rumors and stolen reports within the Neutral Zone. But even he, hardened by decades of lawless survival, had possessed only fragments of the truth.
