In the void between stars, where light bends and time stretches like taffy in the hands of careless gods, there are no screams. Sound requires a medium—air, water, solid ground. In space, the most terrible agonies unfold in perfect, pristine silence.
The corporate prospectors who venture into the black have a saying: "Space doesn't kill you. It just watches while you die."
They don't say that sometimes, something watches back.
PART ONE: THE TOW
Chapter 1: Wake Cycle
The fluorescent lights of the USCSS Magellan's Hope flickered twice before settling into their steady, sickly hum. Three seconds of darkness, then light. Three seconds of nothing, then the buzz. It had been doing that for six months, and Chief Engineer Tomas Varga had long since stopped noticing.
The ship was a tug—a deep-space towing vessel designed for one purpose: drag things from where they were to where someone else wanted them. She was ugly, functional, and older than any member of her seven-person crew. Her hull bore the scars of a hundred gravitational assists and at least one micro-meteorite storm that had left pockmarks across her starboard quarter like cosmic acne.
Varga ran his hand along a corroded pipe as he made his morning inspection. The metal was warm, vibrating with the pulse of the fusion reactor three decks below. It felt almost alive, like running his palm down the flank of a sleeping animal. He'd spent thirty-two years on ships like this—first as a junior tech on J-class freighters, then as an engineer on the lunar runs, and finally here, at the ass-end of known space, babysitting a reactor that should have been decommissioned when he was still drinking on his father's credit chip.
"Engineering to bridge," he said, tapping his comm. "Reactor's holding at eighty-three percent. We've got another six months before I have to tap the reserves."
"Copy that, engineering." Captain Saito's voice was calm, professional, untouched by the tedium of their existence. "Any word on our rendezvous?"
Varga checked the data slate mounted to the wall. "We're three days out from the coordinates. Whatever it is, it's big. I'm reading mass shadows that suggest something in the ten-thousand-ton range."
"Then let's hope it's paying by the ton. Saito out."
Varga allowed himself a small smile. The captain was all right—one of the few he'd served under who actually seemed to remember that the crew were human beings rather than interchangeable parts. It was why Varga had signed on for this run, despite the pay being slightly below standard. Sometimes a good captain was worth more than a good bonus.
The ship creaked around him, settling into its familiar rhythms. Air recyclers hummed. Water purifiers clicked and gurgled. Somewhere in the mess, someone was probably burning the morning coffee again.
Life aboard the Magellan's Hope was predictable. Routine. Safe.
Varga had been in space long enough to know that safety was an illusion, and predictability was just another word for things that hadn't gone wrong yet.