The Scrap-Jumper burst from the cancerous sprawl of the Rust Market like a bullet from a wound. Alerts screamed about the damaged docking collar and the cracked viewport, but Kaelen ignored them. Her eyes were locked on the scanner, waiting for the pursuit that was sure to come—the sleek, military-grade ship of the Vyper operatives or the unnervingly fast vessel of the Echoes.
But the scanner remained clear. Only the chaotic traffic of the market and the endless dark.
They were letting her go.
The thought was more frightening than a weapons lock. It meant they were confident. It meant they had a better way to find her than chasing her through the void. The fragment's beacon. They were content to track the signal and converge on her when she was vulnerable, away from prying eyes and the chaotic cover of the lawless station.
She couldn't jump. The FSD was still a mess of fried components. She was stuck in normal space, a sitting duck.
The Curator's data-slate lay on the co-pilot's console, the new identity—Jax Rylan—glowing softly. It was useless if she couldn't shake her pursuers. She needed to disappear in a way a new transponder couldn't accomplish. She needed to become a ghost.
An idea, desperate and half-formed, flickered in her mind. It was a name, a legend from the darker corners of the belt. A myth she'd heard other miners whisper about over static-filled comms when they thought no one was listening.
The Ghost of Kaelar.
The story was a patchwork of rumor and fear. Kaelar was a moon, supposedly. Or a ship. Or a person. It was a place off the charts, a haven for those who needed to vanish completely. A black site where identities were burned away and ships were reborn. The cost of entry was said to be everything you had, and the price of failure was a permanent, silent stay.
It was a fairy tale to scare newbies. But the Curator's files had mentioned it. A single line, buried in a data-dump on smuggling routes: For total scrubbing, only one option: Kaelar. If you can find it.
She had nothing else.
She opened a narrow-beam, encrypted comm channel, broadcasting on a frequency so old and obscure it was mostly used by pre-FTL junk heaps.
"This is the vessel Scrap-Jumper," she said, using her real voice, throwing caution to the solar winds. "I am seeking a ghost. I have a offering. And I am being hunted."
She repeated the message, pouring every ounce of her desperation into the void. She listed the Vyper bounty, the Echoes, the fragment she carried. She was painting a target on her back the size of a planet, but she needed to get the attention of something that feared neither corporation nor cult.
For an hour, there was nothing. Then, a response crackled back, so distorted it was almost unintelligible.
…Coordinates… follow… no deviations… or be erased…
A string of numbers scrolled across her nav screen. A location deep inside a toxic, unmapped nebula known for crushing gravitational tides and sensor-scrambling particles. A place only a fool or a ghost would go.
She input the coordinates without hesitation. "Chip, plot the course. Maximum sub-light speed. And keep a sensor lock on our tail. I want to know the second they figure out where we're going."
The journey was a tense, silent crawl. The nebula loomed ahead, a vast, swirling cloud of violet and crimson gas, lit from within by the faint glow of dying stars. As they approached, the scanner began to fizzle with static. Long-range comms died. The starfield behind her vanished, swallowed by the colorful haze.
She was blind.
She flew on instruments alone, following the precise course she'd been given, making minute adjustments to avoid gravity wells that threatened to crush the ship. The Scrap-Jumper groaned in protest, its battered frame stressed by the unnatural pressures.
Just as she was certain she'd been led into a trap to die, a clearing appeared in the nebula. And in the center of it hung a sight that stole the air from her lungs.
It wasn't a moon or a station. It was a ship. But a ship on a scale she could barely comprehend. It was a Cathedral-ship, a relic from the first wave of human expansion, a city-sized vessel meant to ferry thousands to new worlds. But it had been… modified.
Its original hull was encrusted with generations of additions—spires of scavenged metal, docking arms that clutched like skeletal fingers, and a shield of swirling energy that flickered and danced, absorbing the nebula's radiation. It was ancient, terrifying, and magnificent.
This was Kaelar. Not a ghost. A lair.
A new comm signal, clean and powerful, pierced the static. "Scrap-Jumper, you are cleared for approach to Docking Bay Gamma-Seven. Power down your weapons and your drive. You will be towed."
There was no request for identification. They already knew who she was.
Tractor beams, invisible and powerful, locked onto her ship, pulling her gently toward a yawning hangar bay in the belly of the leviathan. The bay was a museum of forgotten ships. Hulks from a dozen eras were in various states of being disassembled, repainted, and rebuilt.
The Scrap-Jumper was set down with eerie precision between a pre-collapse fighter and a Vyper Dynamics scout ship that had been stripped down to its bare frame.
The atmosphere here was breathable, but it smelled of ozone, metal, and something else… a strange, sterile emptiness.
The main hangar door hissed open. A single figure stood silhouetted against the light, waiting for her.
Kaelen took a deep breath, her hand resting for a moment on the locker containing the fragment. Then she walked down the ramp to meet her fate.
The figure stepped forward. It was a man, though the term felt inadequate. He was augmented to within an inch of his life, his body a seamless fusion of organic and machine. One eye was a human, piercing blue. The other was a multi-spectral sensor that whirred softly as it focused on her. He didn't carry a weapon. He didn't need to. He was a weapon.
"Kaelen Voss," he said, his voice a neutral synth. "You have brought a war to my door."
"I was hoping to leave one behind," she replied, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hands.
The ghost of a smile touched his organic eye. "Nothing is ever left behind. Only exchanged." His sensor eye focused on the locker inside her ship. "You have the item?"
She nodded.
"Then let us discuss your offering," he said, turning. "And the new life you wish to purchase. Follow me."
He led her deeper into the heart of the ghost ship. Kaelen followed, the immensity of the place pressing down on her. She had come to the one place in the galaxy that could hide her from everyone.
The only question that remained was what it would cost her to stay.