The Scrap-Jumper was gone.
In its place, nestled in the same docking bay, was a ship that was both familiar and utterly alien. The Steward's people had worked with a terrifying, silent efficiency. They had stripped the old junker down to its frame, reinforcing the hull with a composite alloy that drank the light, making it a deeper, non-reflective black. The new transponder, broadcasting the Jax Rylan identity, was wrapped in layers of electronic countermeasures the Curator could only have dreamed of.
The cracked viewport was replaced. The mangled docking collar was now a seamless, retractable airlock. Even the interior smelled different—like ozone and cool metal instead of recycled air and desperation. They had kept the name, etching Scrap-Jumper II on a small, discreet plate by the airlock. It felt like a joke. This was a predator disguised as scrap.
Kaelen ran her hands over the new console. It was her ship, but it was also theirs. A tool provided for a job.
The first job.
The coordinates were already loaded into the nav computer. A location on the fringes of the nebula, a place the Steward's files called the "Garden of Glass." The retrieval target was listed only as a "biological sample." The pay against her debt was substantial. The risks were listed in cold, clinical terms: extreme tectonic activity, corrosive atmosphere, "localized temporal anomalies."
It was a suicide mission. It was a test.
She lifted off from the Cathedral-ship, the new engines humming with a power that felt illicit. The journey through the nebula was smoother this time, the ship's upgraded sensors painting a clearer picture of the gravitational tides and debris fields.
When she emerged, the Garden of Glass filled the viewport.
It was a planet, or the corpse of one. Its surface was a jagged, glittering plain of obsidian shards and crystalline formations that thrust into the sky like spears. There was no soil, no water—just a billion fractured edges catching the light of its dying red sun. Electrical storms crawled across the horizon, silent flashes of purple lightning connecting the crystal spires. It was beautiful and utterly lifeless.
"Scan for the beacon," she instructed Chip, her voice tight.
> Scanning. Beacon detected. Source is subsurface. Geological readings indicate significant instability.
A map overlay appeared on the main screen, showing a network of tunnels and caverns beneath the glass plain, leading to a chamber where the beacon pulsed. The entrance was a fissure, barely wide enough for the ship.
She set down at the edge of the fissure, the ship's landing gear crunching on the glassy ground. The atmosphere was thin and acidic, eating away at the hull plating with a faint hissing sound. She wouldn't have long.
Suiting up in her upgraded environment suit, she attached a heavy plasma cutter to her belt and stepped onto the surface. The crunch of glass under her boots was the only sound in the dead world.
The fissure was a dark, narrow crack descending into blackness. She activated her helmet lamps and climbed down.
The tunnels were not natural. They were smooth, boreholes, carved by something immensely hot and precise. The walls were the same obsidian glass, and her light refracted through them, creating a dizzying maze of reflections. She saw a dozen versions of herself, all moving in unison, all looking just as tense.
…Echo…
The thought came from the fragment, safe in its newly shielded locker aboard the ship. It wasn't a warning this time. It was a observation. A statement of fact. This place was a echo of something. A memory held in glass.
She pushed deeper, following the signal on her suit's HUD. The tunnel opened into a vast, spherical cavern.
And there, she stopped, her breath catching in her throat.
The cavern was not empty. It was a museum.
Held in crystalline pillars that grew from floor to ceiling were specimens. Creatures of impossible biology, frozen in moments of terror or flight. A six-legged beast with iridescent scales. A floating, jellyfish-like entity the size of a shuttle. Things that looked half-plant, half-machine. They were all exquisitely, terrifyingly preserved, their forms perfect down to the smallest detail.
This was no garden. It was a trophy room.
In the center of the chamber, on a pedestal of clear crystal, was her target. A single, seed-like pod, about the size of her fist, glowing with a soft internal light. It was the source of the beacon.
The biological sample.
As she approached, her light glinted off something behind the pedestal. Another crystalline pillar. And inside this one was not an alien beast.
It was a man.
He wore an environment suit of an old, outdated design. His face was visible through his helmet, frozen in a silent scream of agony and surprise, one hand outstretched toward the pod. A Vyper Dynamics logo was stenciled on his shoulder.
The Steward hadn't sent her to retrieve a sample. He'd sent her to finish a job one of his competitors had failed. This was a trap that had already been sprung.
A low, deep groan echoed through the cavern. The floor vibrated. A crack shot up the wall next to her, and the preserved head of a monstrous reptile shifted, its dead eyes seeming to track her movement.
The planet was waking up.
She didn't have time for horror or moral outrage. She lunged for the pod, her gloved fingers closing around it. It was warm, almost alive.
The moment she pulled it free, the entire cavern shuddered. The crystalline pillars hummed, and the light within them flared, casting the frozen nightmares in a hellish glow. The corpse of the Vyper operative seemed to glare at her, accusingly.
> Seismic activity increasing. Cavern integrity failing, Chip's voice reported in her ear, calm against the rising roar.
Kaelen turned and ran, the pod clutched to her chest. The tunnel behind her collapsed in a shower of glittering, razor-sharp shards. She dove forward, the glass tearing at her suit as she scrambled on hands and knees back the way she'd come.
The world was coming apart around her. The maze of reflections became a chaotic disco of shattering light and splintering crystal. She followed the map on her HUD, her heart hammering against her ribs.
She burst from the fissure just as the ground beneath her feet gave way, the entrance collapsing into a sinkhole of broken glass. She didn't look back. She sprinted for the ship, the acidic air burning at her compromised suit.
The airlock hissed shut behind her. She threw herself into the pilot's seat, slamming the throttle forward. The Scrap-Jumper II lifted off just as the entire plain of glass beneath it fractured into a billion pieces, swallowing the Garden and its collection of horrors forever.
She didn't breathe until she was back in the void, the hellish planet shrinking behind her.
On the co-pilot's seat, the pod glowed softly. She had her prize. She had passed the test.
But as she looked at it, all she could see was the frozen face of the dead Vyper operative. The Steward hadn't just wanted a sample. He'd wanted to see if she had the stomach to walk into a graveyard and rob it.
She had.
The fragment in its locker pulsed, a warm, almost approving throb against her mind.
…Efficient…
Kaelen set her jaw and pointed the ship back toward the nebula. Back toward the ghost. She had a delivery to make.