The first law of the belt was simple: Trust your instruments, not your nerves. Your nerves could be fried by isolation, fatigue, or CO2 buildup. Your instruments told the cold, hard truth.
Kaelen's instruments showed nothing. No foreign pathogens on the bio-scanner. No anomalous energy readings from the fragment beyond its harmless light and heat. No signals, no transmissions, no radiation.
But her nerves were screaming.
The flash of the plasma torch schematic had been followed by a dozen others—a more efficient life support cycling algorithm, a subtle adjustment to the reactor's magnetic bottle that would yield a 3% power increase, a formula for a polymer sealant that would never degrade. Each one arrived not as a thought, but as a download. A complete, perfect packet of information deposited into her consciousness without her consent.
It was a violation. A profound and terrifying violation of the only thing she had left: the sanctity of her own mind.
She had shoved the fragment into a shielded storage locker, slamming the door shut. The second the metal closed, the downloads stopped. The silence in her head returned, but it was a ringing, shocked silence, like the aftermath of an explosion.
For three hours, she sat perfectly still in the pilot's chair, monitoring her own vitals on the med-scanner, watching the locker door. Nothing happened. The ship hummed. The stars outside were calm and indifferent.
It's just a rock, she told herself, clinging to the first law. A weird, glowing rock that stores data. It's some kind of… alien data crystal. It must have triggered a psychosomatic episode. A feedback loop.
Her logic was brittle, and she knew it. But it was all she had.
Cautiously, slowly, she reached out and opened the locker.
The warm, golden light spilled out. No download came. Just the soft, rhythmic pulse.
Hesitantly, she reached in and picked it up. The warmth was immediate, a comforting heat that seeped into her chilled fingers. She held her breath, waiting for the invasive flood of information.
None came.
Instead, a feeling. A simple, complex, wordless impression.
…Curiosity…
It wasn't a voice. It was an emotion that was not her own, projected directly into the heart of her being. It was the feeling of a child examining an insect, of a scholar opening a ancient text. It was focused on her. On the ship. On the hum of the reactor and the feel of the metal under her boots.
The fragment was… studying its environment. Studying her.
Her fear didn't vanish, but it was joined by a staggering, dizzying awe. This wasn't a tool. It wasn't a weapon. It was a presence. A sliver of the consciousness that had once inhabited the colossal being on the derelict ship.
Her scavenger's mind, always calculating, began to run new numbers. The value of this thing wasn't in its material. It was in its knowledge. The downloads proved that. This shard could be the key to technologies that would revolutionize human civilization. She could buy her own moon with what this was worth.
The impression from the fragment shifted.
…Alone…?…
The feeling was accompanied by a wave of profound, galactic loneliness, so deep and ancient it made her own self-imposed isolation feel like a childish whim. It was a loneliness measured in millennia. It was searching for something it couldn't find.
And then, it changed again. The curiosity sharpened. The loneliness was shoved aside by a sudden, intense focus. It was no longer looking inward at her ship. It was looking out.
…Echo…
A proximity alert blared through the cockpit, shattering the tense silence—a real, instrument-based sound.
Kaelen jumped, nearly dropping the fragment. She shoved it back into the locker and slammed the door, her heart in her throat.
"Chip, report!" she barked, sliding into her chair.
> Unidentified vessel on intercept course. Bearing 224 mark 18. Range, 500 kilometers and closing.
The screen lit up with data. The ship was running silent, no transponder, no active scans. But it was there. A sleek, predatory shape on the passive sensors. It was bigger than the Scrap-Jumper. And it was armed.
The first law of the belt was trust your instruments.
The second law was even simpler: If you didn't put it there, and it's moving toward you, run.
The fragment hadn't sent her a schematic this time. It had sent her a warning.
"Evasive pattern Delta!" Kaelen yelled, her hands flying across the controls. "Full power to the thrusters! Plot a randomized jump, anywhere, just get us out of here!"
The Scrap-Jumper's engines roared to life, shoving her back into her seat. The unknown ship on the scanner immediately reacted, its course altering to match hers with an agility that was downright military.
A new signal pierced the void—a concentrated, high-power targeting scan that lit up her warning systems like a supernova.
They had a weapons lock.
The silence was well and truly broken.