The story, for a moment, leaves the bright, busy bridge of the "Odyssey" and travels to a place of deep, quiet, and lonely darkness.
In a remote, uncharted asteroid field, a place that didn't even have a name on any star chart, a single, small, and completely invisible ship hung in the silent void. It was a listening post, a secret hideout, and a self-imposed prison. And inside it, a ghost was watching the universe.
Lord Valerius was alive. But he was not the same man he had once been. The proud, arrogant, would-be emperor was gone. In his place was an older, quieter, and much more tired man. A network of fine, silver scars covered one side of his face, a permanent reminder of his defeat, of his hubris. The fire of ambition in his eyes had been replaced by the cool, detached curiosity of a scientist watching an experiment.
