Adrenaline burned through Kaelen's veins, sharp and clean, washing away the awe and fear, leaving only a razor-sharp focus. This was a language she understood. Threat. Response.
The Scrap-Jumper was not a warship. It was a workhorse, a stubborn, durable mule built to take a beating from rocks, not plasma fire. But it was hers, and she knew every rattle and whine in its frame.
"Chip, activate all countermeasures! Deploy chaff and target-decoy drones on my mark!" she ordered, her voice steady now, all tremor gone. Her hands were a blur across the console, rerouting power from non-essential systems to the engines and shields.
> Acknowledged. Countermeasures armed. Shield integrity at 78%.
The pursuing ship was a ghost on her sensors—a sleek, angular wedge of blackened metal that drank the light. It moved with a predatory grace her bulky Scrap-Jumper could never match. No identification markers, no hails. Just the relentless, silent pursuit and that targeting lock burning a hole in her ship's back.
"Who are you?" she muttered, running a spectral analysis on its engine signature. The result made her blood run cold. It was a proprietary corporate blend, used exclusively by…
Vyper Dynamics.
The name was a punch to the gut. The largest, most ruthless megacorp in the Core Systems. Their tendrils were everywhere: mining, manufacturing, private security, black-ops. They were the reason she'd fled to the belt. They didn't send ships this far out for no reason.
They were here for the fragment.
The realization was instant and absolute. They knew. Somehow, the moment she'd pulled that shard free, they'd known. That flare of energy… it must have been a beacon.
A plasma bolt, searingly bright, lanced past her viewport, missing by a hundred meters. A warning shot. They wanted her alive. They wanted the cargo.
"Mark!" she yelled.
The Scrap-Jumper shuddered as it ejected a cloud of chaff and two drones that shot off in different directions, mimicking her engine signature. For a precious few seconds, the enemy's targeting lock wavered, confused by the multiple contacts.
It was all the time she needed.
"Execute jump! Now!"
The ship's Frame Shift Drive whined, spooling up with a strained scream she'd never heard before. The Scrap-Jumper wasn't built for rapid jumps under fire. Alerts flashed across her screen—stress fractures in the hull, power fluctuations in the drive core.
She didn't care.
The starfield outside the viewport began to stretch, the light bending into impossible lines. The pursuing ship fired again, a full volley this time. One bolt grazed her starboard shield, making the entire ship shudder violently. Warning klaxons blared.
> Shield failure imminent. Hull breach in sector 4.
"Come on, come on," she urged, her hand gripping the throttle as if she could physically shove the ship into the void.
With a final, gut-wrenching lurch, the Scrap-Jumper tore a hole in reality and plunged into the swirling, chaotic non-space of the jump.
The screaming alarms ceased. The violent shuddering smoothed into a violent, rhythmic thrum. The viewport was a blinding, featureless tunnel of blue light.
Silence descended again, but it was the high-pitched, strained silence of a machine pushed to its absolute limit. The smell of ozone and scorched metal filled the cockpit.
Kaelen sat there, breathing heavily, her hands still locked on the controls. They were alive. For now.
Her eyes flicked to the navigation screen. Chip had executed the randomized jump, just as she'd ordered. Their destination was a set of coordinates deep in uncharted, worthless space. A place to hide and lick their wounds.
But as she looked at the coordinates, another thought, cold and certain, settled in her mind.
They had found her once. In the unimaginable vastness of the belt, they had found her within hours. That wasn't luck. That wasn't standard scanning.
The fragment. It wasn't just broadcasting when it flared. It was always broadcasting. She was carrying a homing beacon straight to the most powerful corporation in human space.
She unbuckled her harness, her movements slow and heavy with exhaustion. She walked to the shielded locker and opened it.
The fragment lay within, pulsing its gentle, golden light. It looked innocent. Beautiful.
She felt no more downloads. No more emotions. It was just a quiet, warm rock.
But she knew better now.
She had wanted a prize that would buy her silence. Instead, she had stolen the one thing in the galaxy that would guarantee she was never alone again. She had traded the peaceful silence of the belt for the silent, screaming attention of gods and corporations.
The Scrap-Jumper hurtled through the void, a wounded animal fleeing into the dark. But Kaelen knew, with a cold certainty that settled deep in her bones, that the darkness was no longer empty.
It was full of eyes. And they were all turning her way.