The Rust Market wasn't a station. It was a cancer.
It had begun generations ago as a single, derelict O'Neill cylinder. Then another ship had docked, and never left. Then another. Over decades, it had grown into a chaotic, cancerous agglomeration of welded-together hulls, scavenged modules, and jury-rigged platforms, all orbiting a dead core. It pulsed with stolen power and breathed recycled air that smelled of ozone, fried circuitry, and desperation.
It was the perfect place to hide, because everyone here was hiding from something.
The Scrap-Jumper drifted toward the nightmarish structure, its new transponder—a stolen, ghosted ID from a ship that had been scrapped years ago—broadcasting a weak, harmless signal. Kaelen had patched the worst of the hull breaches with sealant and spare plating, leaving her ship looking like exactly what it was supposed to be: a beat-up junker on its last legs.
She'd left the fragment in its shielded locker, a decision that felt like leaving a vital organ behind. The silence in her head was absolute again, and she hated how much she'd already grown used to its warm, alien presence.
Docking was a nightmarish ballet conducted without a controller. She had to manually navigate a congested traffic pattern of other battered ships, avoiding drifting debris and the occasional jettisoned waste pod. She paid her "berthing fee"—a handful of platinum scrap—to a hulking, modified loader mech with a rusted shotgun welded to its arm, and was granted access to a cramped, leaking docking clamp.
The moment her boots hit the grimy deck plating of the main concourse, the scale of her problem became terrifyingly clear.
Her face was everywhere.
Holo-posters flickered on every available surface, some official from Vyper Dynamics, most bootlegged and crudely copied. Her old mining license photo—pale, unsmiling, hair pulled back—stared out from beneath the words HAZARDOUS CONTAMINANT and the staggering number: 5,000,000 CR.
Bounty hunters, mercenaries, and all manner of grim-faced opportunists crowded the narrow walkways. She heard snippets of conversation, all about her.
"—heard she cracked a Vyper vault, stole prototype tech—"
"—no, it's bioweapon, that's why 'contaminant'—"
"—doesn't matter what it is. Five mil is five mil. I'd turn in my own mother for that."
Kaelen pulled the hood of her patched environment suit lower, keeping her head down and her stride purposeful. She felt a thousand eyes on her, but they slid away. She was just another junker. No one looked for a five-million-credit prize walking right past them. They were all too busy looking for someone who looked like they were worth five million.
Her destination was a place Rourke had mentioned once, in the context of "if you're ever desperate and stupid." A bar and information broker called The Gilded Circuit.
It was buried deep in the original cylinder, in a section where the artificial gravity fluctuated and the air was thick with the smell of spilled synth-ale and rust. The clientele was a step below the bounty hunters outside—cybernetically enhanced information peddlers, hackers whose eyes glowed with data-streams, and things that were more machine than organic.
She found an empty booth in a shadowy corner, the sticky table scanning her for weapons the moment she sat down. A menu flickered to life, listing exorbitant prices for drinks and, further down, for data-packets: System Security Patrol Routes, Ship Registries, Corporate Black Ops… and Bounty Listings.
Her own file was at the top, the download fee a cool 10,000 credits. Someone was making a fortune.
A service droid, its chassis stained with old lubricant, rolled to a stop at her table. "Order?" it buzzed in a synthesized voice.
"I need to speak to the Curator," Kaelen said, her voice low.
The droid's single lens focused on her. "The Curator is occupied. Place an order or vacate the booth."
She slid a small, wrapped package across the table. It was the last of her good platinum, the piece she'd been saving for a true emergency. The droid's claw extended, snatched it, and retracted. A moment of silence.
"Booth 9. He will be with you shortly."
The booth at the back was shielded by a crackling energy field that dampened sound. Inside, the air was clear. Sitting behind a console was a thin, pale man whose lower half was seamlessly integrated into the station's systems. Wires and conduits snaked from his spine into the floor. His eyes were replaced by glowing blue orbs that flickered with data.
"The Vyper contaminant," he said, his voice a dry whisper that seemed to come from the air vents. "I wondered if you'd show up here. It's the stupidest thing you could do. Therefore, the most predictable."
"They always look in the places a smart person would hide," Kaelen said, repeating an old belt proverb. "They never look in the places a desperate one actually goes."
The Curator's data-eyes flickered. "A philosophy that has kept you alive this long. It won't last. What do you want?"
"Two things. A clean identity. Full history, biometric override, the works."
"Impossible. Vyper has flagged all new IDs in the core systems. The price would be astronomical."
"Then we're negotiating. Second. I need everything you have on the thing they're after."
The Curator went very still. "That is a dangerous query."
"You're paid for dangerous."
He was silent for a long moment, his data-eyes scrolling through information only he could see. "The data is fragmented. Inconsistent. Vyper has scrubbed it from public records. What remains is myth. Ghost stories."
"Tell me the stories."
He leaned forward, the wires in his back tensing. "They call it Aether-tech. It is not technology as we understand it. It is… something else. Something older. There are whispers of derelicts found in the deep black, ships not of human design. Vyper has a special division, off the books, dedicated to finding them. They are obsessed. They believe it represents a power beyond anything we possess."
He pushed a data-slate across the table. On it was a blurred, enhanced image. It was the derelict ship. Her derelict ship.
"And you," he whispered, "did the impossible. You found one. And you took something from it."
Kaelen's heart was a drum. This was bigger than she ever imagined. "Who else knows? Besides Vyper?"
The Curator's lipless mouth stretched into something like a smile. "The other ghost story. There are… others. Who believe the Aether-tech is not for us to possess. That it is sacred. They call themselves the Echoes of the First. They see Vyper's pursuit as a blasphemy. And they see you…"
He tapped the data-slate. The image changed to a symbol: a simple, elegant circle bisected by a jagged line.
"...as a thief who has touched the divine. They want the fragment returned. And they want the thief purged."
Kaelen stared at the symbol. She wasn't just being hunted by a corporation.
She was caught in a holy war.